THE INNOCENT READER

Adelaide, D

THE INNOCENT READER

Adelaide, D

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Publisher:: Picador
Citation:: 2019
Issue Date:: 2019

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Adelaide, D https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3220-8821	en_US
dc.date.issued	2019	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	2019	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/136394
dc.publisher	Picador	en_US
dc.title	THE INNOCENT READER	en_US
utslib.location	Sydney	en_US
utslib.for	1904 Performing Arts and Creative Writing	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Creative Writing Program
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CPCE - Centre for Creative Practices and the Cultural Economy
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	false	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	Sydney	en_US
pubs.rights-statement	THE INNOCENT READER: REFLECTIONS OF READING AND WRITING Background Straddling traditional academic approaches to literary criticism and personal responses to texts, the bibliomemoir is an emerging genre. Butler (2018) questions the ‘hegemony of the academic essay as the archetypal genre of scholarship’, arguing that thinking, feeling and reflection are more appropriate for literary study. Building upon examples of international (Gekoski 2009; Mead 2017; Shwalbe 2017) and Australian bibliomemoirs (Carr 2008; Walker 2010; Koval 2012), The Innocent Reader tests Butler’s thesis with a series of personal essays that are informed by both literary and reading theory. It extends the genre by discussing writing craft and practice through the lens of reading, a concept hitherto unexplored in Australian literature. Contribution The 14 essays in the 72000-word collection examine the processes of reading and writing from childhood through to late adulthood, and function as autonomous works that collectively also comprise a memoir. Implicitly, the collection argues that reading informs writing practice in unique ways. An autoethnographic approach allows interrogation of the relationships between reader and book, reader and writer, and writer and editor. While Francine Prose famously examined some of these relationships (2006), and numerous writers have used how-to books to explore a similar theme (Disher 1983; Bird 1988; King 2000; Grenville 2001), Adelaide takes both approaches a step further, the final essay imaginatively demonstrating the thesis of the book: that there is no easy division between the acts of writing and reading. Significance Published by Picador, and labelled ‘a hymn to the uncanny power of fiction’ (Bird) and a ‘trove of wisdom for readers, writers and students’ (Wyndham), The Innocent Reader consolidates the author’s reputation as a leading fiction writer and academic. An extract was selected for The Weekend Australian; reviews appeared in major publications such as Sydney Morning Herald and ABR.	en_US

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/136394