''Kindling Does for Firewood'' is a novel by Australian writer Richard King, published by Allen & Unwin Academic (). The novel, King's debut, won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1995. A review in ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' states that the "clearly talented" author used experimental/stream-of-consciousness monologues. The reviewer states that King "...aims for a flip tone in this debut chronicle of

slackers A slacker is someone who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic. Origin According to different sources, the term "slacker" dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the British Gezira Scheme in the early t ...

in Melbourne, Australia". The review states that the romance between a female postsecondary student, Margaret and a male bookstore clerk, William, is "doomed from the start". Margaret is from a regular middle-class family, but Peter lives with unemployed roommates who only consume beer and drugs. The unemployed roommates are somewhat like the Lost Boys from the ''

Peter Pan Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical ...

'' stories; King acknowledges the influence of the ''Peter Pan'' stories in his work. Paul Dawson, commenting on the Australian Vogel Awards, stated that the $20,000 award "...can be seen as a barometer of cultural preoccupations, mapping shifts at the edges of literary culture: here is where the direction of young writing appears to be moving, or at least where judges and publishers want it to move." Dawson states that " could be argued that Richard King's lightweight ''Kindling Does for Firewood'' was a safe option or the Vogel Award giversin the wake of the elen Demidenko scandal in 1995." The Helen Demidenko scandal involved her Vogel Award in 1993 for ''The Hand That Signed the Paper'', "contributing to public debates about the responsibility of writing history". ''The Hand that Signed the Paper'' is about a Ukrainian family trying to survive a decade of

Stalinist purges The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nikolae ...

and state-imposed poverty and famine. When the media discovered Helen Dale's identity and legal name, this promoted much debate on the nature of identity, ethnicity, and

authenticity Authenticity or authentic may refer to: * Authentication, the act of confirming the truth of an attribute Arts and entertainment * Authenticity in art, ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic Music * A ...

in Australian literature.

Author

Richard King was born in Melbourne in 1968. He studied arts at Monash University, with a major in politics and philosophy. In addition to several plays, he wrote a second novel, '' Carrion Colony''.

References

{{Reflist Grunge lit 1996 Australian novels