Death of a River Guide (39 page)
Read Death of a River Guide Online
Authors: Richard Flanagan
And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?
âAnd what do you do, Mr Faulkner?' asked Clark Gable after being introduced to William Faulkner at a party
.
âI write,' replied Faulkner
.
âAnd what do you do, Mr Gable?'
Â
Collected here for the first time are the very best of Richard Flanagan's wide-ranging, free-wheeling writings on everything from a near-fatal kayak trip to directing film and writing novels; from baking bread to bushfires to art to war; from refugees on the run to Jorge Luis Borges to his celebrated essay on the rape of Tasmania's forests, credited as a key to halting Gunns' two-billion-dollar pulp mill.
Sparkling, moving and always surprising, this is exhilarating reading from one of Australia's finest writers.
Praise for
And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?
âRichard Flanagan examines the quotidian â and the extraordinary â in a welcome collection of his writings ⦠Few can match his eloquence, unflinching honesty and capacity to surprise, as this potent collection attests.'âBron Sibree,
The Courier-Mail
âWhat unites all the pieces, from 1995 to 2010, is a care for the precision of words not to dazzle but to carry a strong and infectious feeling for the subject ⦠This collection proves that at least a portion of what passes through our hands each day is worth bottling, cellaring and revisiting as it gets better with the years.'âMalcolm Knox,
The Saturday Age
âThe well-tempered prose of sweet reason. Highly recommended.'âIan McFarlane,
The Canberra Times
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian
Copyright Act 1968
), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Death of a River Guide
Published by Random House Australia 2012
Copyright © Richard Flanagan 1994
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at
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First published by McPhee Gribble in 1994
First published by Vintage Australia in 2012
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Flanagan, Richard, 1961 - Death of a river guide [electronic resource]/Richard Flanagan
ISBN 9781742756127 (ebook: epub)
Drowning victims - Fiction.
Franklin River Region (Tas.) - Fiction.
Franklin River (Tas.) - Fiction.
Tasmania - Fiction.
A823.3
Cover images: hands © Luca Pierro PHOTOGRAPHY/Getty Images; background © Maarten Wouters/Getty Images
Cover design by Gayna Murphy
Author photograph by Colin MacDougall
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