Luke Carman is an Australian fiction writer and academic. He is known for his collection of semi-autobiographical stories, which is entitled ''An Elegant Young Man''. The stories are set in

Liverpool Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...

, Australia, a suburb outside Sydney. He has been called a post-grunge lit writer, a reference to an Australian literary genre from the 2000s which emerged following the 1990s grunge lit genre.

Career

''An Elegant Young Man''

His first book, ''An Elegant Young Man'', won the

NSW Premier's Literary Award ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

for New Writing. ''An Elegant Young Man'' is a collection of short stories that are linked together, and which are semi-autobiographical. The stories have a

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

whose name is also Luke and who lives in the author's hometown. Carman stated that he used Liverpool, Australia, as a setting because Australia's "western suburbs have been largely absent from the face of Australian fiction", with an effort to show the "...ugliness of working class suburbia and the pain of being an outsider" with "...authenticity, warts and all." In one of the stories, a teen who "...dreams of fame fade into an adulthood of blue collar work"; the narrator/author is described as a "...passive force, constantly in the midst of the action but solely as an observer who cannot save anybody", as if in "

paralysis Paralysis (also known as plegia) is a loss of motor function in one or more muscles. Paralysis can also be accompanied by a loss of feeling (sensory loss) in the affected area if there is sensory damage. In the United States, roughly 1 in 5 ...

", until characters' lives are "quietly lost to monotony." In another story, a female character who faces an abusive relationship becomes addicted to drugs. Carman used a "writers’ network" to hold discussions about draft versions of the book and perform the drafts, which helped him to develop his writing

Other activities and awards

He is a casual academic at

Western Sydney University Western Sydney University, formerly the University of Western Sydney, is an Australian multi-campus university in the Greater Western region of Sydney, Australia. The university in its current form was founded in 1989 as a federated network ...

's Writing And Society Research Centre. In 2014, the '' Sydney Morning Herald'' named him the Best Young Novelist. One of his stories, "Liverpool Boys", is used in the SBS podcast series entitled '' True Stories'', which showcases what SBS calls "Australia’s best emerging and early-career writers." He has published in ''HEAT'', ''Westside'' and the ''Cultural Studies Review''. ''Intimate Antipathies'', a collection of his essays was published in July 2019 by Giramondo, while a further collection, ''An Ordinary Ecstacy'', was published in 2022.

Essay on Melbourne's literary scene

In 2016, Carman's essay on the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

literary scene attracted international attention. An article in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'' stated what while "Australian creative industries are in crisis... Luke Carman’s galvanising and venomous essay has started the wrong conversation" with his essay, a "jeremiad against the Melbourne literary scene that was published in the journal ''

Meanjin ''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is an Australian literary magazine. The name is derived from the Turrbal word for the spike of land where the city of Brisbane is located. It was founded in 1940 in Brisban ...

''. Carman's essay criticizes "arts administrators at creative institutions – journals, festivals, funding bodies and hubs", who he states are "anti-artists". Ben Eltham states that top arts administrators may earn higher salaries than the poorly-paid writers. At the journal ''Overland'', Emmett Stinson stated that the "response

o the essay O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...

has been overwhelmingly negative"; however, he stated that for "...all of its hyperbolic rhetoric, the essay is a call for a limited form of underclass literary revolt – and the studied refusal of a creeping professionalisation" in the writing world.

References

External links