The city as archive

Mapping David Malouf's Brisbane

Authors

  • Roger Osborne University of Queensland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2015.34

Keywords:

David Malouf, digital map, fiction and non-fiction, evocation of the past, Brisbane

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on my creation of a digital map that plots locations from David Malouf’s fiction and non-fiction. I consider the vestiges of David Malouf’s past — particularly his grandparents’ fruit shop and its relationship to his spiritual home at 12 Edmondstone Street — and I demonstrate how Malouf’s words leave traces of his experience at these locations. Recognition of these traces requires alertness to the ways in which the past is communicated through historical registers, maps and literature. Our recognition is enhanced through a deliberate evocation of the past in our own experience of the city. My map, ‘David Malouf’s Brisbane’, helps this to occur.

Author Biography

  • Roger Osborne, University of Queensland

    Roger Osborne is a scholarly editor, book historian and literary scholar, working at the intersection of traditional archival research and digital humanities. His edition of Joseph Conrad’s Under Western eyes was published in 2013, and his Joseph Furphy Digital Archive was launched in July 2015. Roger is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland.

References

Bitto E. 2008. ‘“Our own way back”: Spatial memory in the poetry of David Malouf’. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 8, http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/viewArticle/669.

Barns S. 2011. ‘Street haunting: Sounding the invisible city’. In M. Foth and C. Satchell (eds), Social butterfly to engaged citizen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 203–17.

Brisbane City Council Heritage Register 2015. ‘Malouf’s fruit shop and residence (former)’. http://heritage.brisbane.qld.gov.au/heritage_register/placeDetail.do?action=read&placeId=1546.

de Certeau M. 1984. ‘Walking in the city’. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. S. Randall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 91–110.

Leer M. 1985. ‘At the edge: Geography and the imagination in the work of David Malouf.’ Australian Literary Studies 12(1): 3–21.

Malouf D. 1985. ‘12 Edmondstone Street’. 12 Edmondstone Street. London: Vintage.

Malouf D. 1994. ‘As happy as this’. In B. Yahp (ed.), Family Pictures. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, pp. 97–116.

Malouf D. 2008. Johnno. Ringwood: Penguin.

Malouf D. 2014a. ‘A first place’. In D. Malouf, A First Place. Sydney: Knopf.

Malouf D. 2014b. ‘My multicultural life’. In D. Malouf, A First Place. Sydney: Knopf.

Osborne R. 2015. ‘David Malouf’s Brisbane’. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zugo3jABXEN8.kMgbbj9ZKPRI&hl=en&usp=sharing.

Published

2015-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Osborne, R. (2015). The city as archive: Mapping David Malouf’s Brisbane. Queensland Review, 22(2), 118-130. https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2015.34