---

Media Dragons and academics on naming blogger Grog's Gamut, aka Greg Jericho. Don't believe the hype - To invert Beckett: I could go on, I want to go on, but I won't go on

'I FEEL myself empty and can't put pen to the implacably white paper," French poet Mallarme wrote in an 1864 letter to a friend.
To be an old man and finished at 23 ...

In 1901 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, that precocious poet, stopped writing his celebrated verse at 26, after penning a pamphlet in which he had a character, Lord Chandos, speak for him: "I have quite lost the faculty to think or speak on any subject in a coherent fashion . . . Everything fell into pieces in front of me, the pieces into more pieces, and nothing could be contained in single concept any more."

Fifty years later, Samuel Beckett would express something similar: "There is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."Nothing to express


Teach Us To Sit Still Man Bites Murdoch - Jornalist weaves threads of past and present
Sacked Herald Sun editor launches 'a toxic mix of backstabbing and undermining and double dealing, of treachery and appalling duplicitous behaviour.' Ray Martin conceded he could have his 'card marked' by Rupert Murdoch's men for launching Bruce Guthrie's book Man Bites Murdoch at Bottega restaurant.

WHAT'S the collective noun for a room full of former newspaper editors? A press gang? A sack of editors, perhaps? Whatever, it was direly needed at the launch of Bruce Guthrie's memoir, Man Bites Murdoch, at the Bottega restaurant on Bourke Street yesterday.... Martin said the book served as a fantastic window into the alcohol- and adrenalin-fuelled newspaper world, and Guthrie's story was a litany, a catalogue, a cocktail, a toxic mix of backstabbing and undermining and double dealing, of treachery and appalling duplicitous behaviour.

• Ray jokes: Bruce Guthrie tell-all book 'the greatest pack of lies' [Without an anthology you haven't really existed Writers on writing ; We struggle writing songs to be honest. It's not easy. The thing is that we don't consider ourselves as natural musicians, we are more amateurs. song writing ]
• · · He is one of the world's most important men - but to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd he was simply known as "Spanky Banky" - nickname for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Party Thieves ; Self-promotion and personal selling are skills many of us aren’t confident with but for writers they have to be good at telling their own stories to sell their work. Media
• · · · The secret lives of judges ; One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to - Blocked: Why do writers stop writing?
• · · · · The best way to look at literary awards, and strong dollar, is to see them as a necessary evil. Strong dollar and tax loophole 'hurting Australian artists' ; We have always, of course, found solace in our canine pals - the writer Milan Kundera famously said, "Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent." But our reaching out to them in previously unseen ways - not only through the books, but also devices like Puppy Tweets, a USB receiver attached to your pooch that activates your computer to send you tweets from Fido such as, "I bark because I miss you" - is a manifestation of people seeking new Dogs are our link to paradise; The struggle to exist and to remember; most of all, the struggle to speak. Can you be creative and still make money in Australia?
• · · · · · Amazon called on writers and publishers on Tuesday to submit short works to a new section of the US online retail giant's electronic bookstore called Kindle Singles; Where in the World is Cold River - http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/

WHEN, early in Shakespeare's greatest play, the ghost of King Hamlet makes his fateful nocturnal appearance on the battlements, it is the stolid realist Horatio who distrusts the evidence of his senses. "But this is wondrous strange!" he mutters lamely. Prince Hamlet, by contrast, exalts in the weirdness unfolding before them and delivers a firm rebuke to his friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy... it is absurd to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

Dreams of Water - a gathering of people in charge of the world's books suddenly turns into a bloodbath When writers start to show their age