Tag Archive

David Carlin

Image of a magnifying glass and pen atop the pages of an open book next to a small globe.

The Intoxicating Other Worlds of the Encylopedia

David Carlin, Literary Hub, October 2019

The curious and disturbing wonder of encyclopedias is their deadpan quality. Like the archetypal stern schoolmaster, they are not big on jokes...Blind catalogues of other stories they are hiding or eliding, encyclopedias can’t or won’t fess up to the blinkers they are wearing. Neither the rose-coloured glasses, nor the telescope myopically fixed to one eye.

Read more

The Circular is a project of The Sydney Review of Books. We’re supported by the Australia Council’s Sector Recovery Initiative fund.

We send a weekly newsletter featuring the most interesting, useful and surprising recent non-fiction published by and about Australian writers.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.