As regular readers know, I think the literati are typically poor analysts of political and policy matters.

Though Nobel-prize winning author J.M. Coetzee’s style suggests to me a more analytical mindset than is usual among literary figures, comments in yesterday’s SMH on books and writers on Australia he has found interesting are not encouraging me to revise my theory:

Other writers I was impressed by included Mark Davis, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe, who try to place recent developments in Australia in a world context.

I gave up on Davis’s book, but I did finish and blog on Boucher and Sharpe’s book on ‘postmodern conservatism’ in Australia.

One of my criticisms was that is that it doesn’t place recent developments in Australia in a world context, but rather confuses recent developments in world politics with an Australian context.
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