Arts
Melbourne = somewhere. Hobart = nowhere. The way it always has been …
… Why I am bothering to write this? Because an event of historical cultural significance took place on that Tuesday evening in Hobart without a single review: evidently due to a quota on the number of local cultural events to receive a write-up issued by editorial staff located in Melbourne. Melbourne = somewhere. Hobart = nowhere. The way it always has been. So, location, at least, does evidently continue to matter after all. What about quality then? Michael Kieran-Harvey is perceived in the media as a controversial figure mostly due to being extraordinarily talented but not particularly vain. Thus airs and graces, fooling around with stupid manners and dumb ego stroking, tend to be curtly dispensed with in his public dealings. He is outspoken but not mealy-mouthed. He can entertain with élan equivalent to that of the late, widely-placarded Tasmanian Errol Flynn, enjoys an equivalent standing in his own field but, of course, Tasmania – despite improving at cricket since I was a boy, MONA as well as local writer Richard Flanagan recently winning the Man Booker Prize – seems as ever before neither willing nor able to support or acknowledge world class within its midst …