Sunday 20 February 2011

A Town Like Alice Revisited

Ages ago I wrote a post about A Town Like Alice. To my surprise, when I read the novel I discovered that it's not about Alice Springs, as I'd always imagined it would be. Instead, it turned out to be about a character who aspires to create a town as good as Alice Springs - and eventually succeeds in doing so. How sadly ironic that aspiration seems, when you read this beautifully written but dreadful article. The phrase in it that most disgusts me, I think, is the one describing the approach the police are taking to the shocking problems in the town: "Crisis management through image burnishing and press release, the modern way."

4 comments:

  1. Yup, to talk up is to solve the problem. Sigh...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shit. Rather different from the cheerful picture of the beer-drinking 'Lucky Country' sold to us by Paul Hogan when I was a young chap.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The phrase 'Lucky country' was always meant to be ironic - although I don't think its coiner, Donald Horne, could have envisaged the scenes that Rothwell describes in Alice Springs.

    ReplyDelete