Brett Hetherington
Goodreads Author
Born
in Canberra, Australia
Website
Twitter
Genre
Influences
George Orwell, Paul Theroux, Isabel Fonseca, James Baldwin, Doris Less
...more
Member Since
January 2014
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Brett’s Recent Updates
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"“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…” Who was David Foster Wallace? Was he Yorick?
The tissue of Infinite Jest is the stuff paranoia is made of… No contents are left in the entire world anymore…" Read more of this review » |
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""The whole law of human existence is only that a person should be able to feel awe over something infinitely great. If you deprive people of the infinitely great, then they will stop living and die in despair. "
Demons, F. Dostoyevsky I was reluctant " Read more of this review » |
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Brett Hetherington
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Naomi's review
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The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private:
"I really enjoyed this. It was certainly a bit dated (especially about trans people) but on the whole very interesting and I felt challenged. I didn’t always agree with the amount of sympathy given to men but it was a balanced look at the impact patri"
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Brett Hetherington
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Brett Hetherington
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"
I read it and re-read it as a teenager and loved it.
I'm not sure I've come across anything quite like it since: the crystal beauty of his sentences i ...more " |
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"“Can’t you finally see sense? You are to live, and you are to learn to listen to life’s damn radio music, to respect its spirit that lies behind it while laughing at it all. That’s all. Nothing more is asked of you.”"
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Brett Hetherington
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“Later that night, I passed through a public garden [in Córdoba] that was
displaying hundreds of small multi-coloured flags. They were part
of a protest against the Israeli government’s military action in
Gaza and were accompanied by a prominent list of the names of
those who had been killed. I was heartened to see that in a
provincial city like this one there were people who were well aware
of events a long way outside their own area. The continuing existence of this display in a public place was an example of local
government tolerance towards left-wing causes, and I wondered if
the same attitude would be shown by the town hall in conservative
Madrid, 400 kilometres away.”
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displaying hundreds of small multi-coloured flags. They were part
of a protest against the Israeli government’s military action in
Gaza and were accompanied by a prominent list of the names of
those who had been killed. I was heartened to see that in a
provincial city like this one there were people who were well aware
of events a long way outside their own area. The continuing existence of this display in a public place was an example of local
government tolerance towards left-wing causes, and I wondered if
the same attitude would be shown by the town hall in conservative
Madrid, 400 kilometres away.”
―
“I love wide stretches of open land, but to the average Spaniard, who typically thrives in company and is most at home in a crowd, these fields of Extremadura (which literally means “extremely tough”) could even be intimidating, only partly because not far back in time there were bandits in the region.
They were named as the ‘extreme’ end of the country.
If it is at least not totally empty, there is certainly a sense of that great lonesome feeling created by the far-off, long, long line at which the earth's surface and the sky meet: a pleasant melancholy of an imagined solitary truck crawling across a plain, the ancestral memory of a caravan trail or a child’s drawing of a single emblematic tree on a small hill.”
― Slow Travels in Unsung Spain
They were named as the ‘extreme’ end of the country.
If it is at least not totally empty, there is certainly a sense of that great lonesome feeling created by the far-off, long, long line at which the earth's surface and the sky meet: a pleasant melancholy of an imagined solitary truck crawling across a plain, the ancestral memory of a caravan trail or a child’s drawing of a single emblematic tree on a small hill.”
― Slow Travels in Unsung Spain
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.”
― Richard II
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.”
― Richard II
“When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”
― Homage to Catalonia
― Homage to Catalonia
“But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight. Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life. How often this has caused me to feel that my memories, and the labours expended in writing them down are all part of the same humiliating and, at bottom, contemptible business! And yet, what would we be without memory? We would not be capable of ordering even the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a mere neverending chain of meaningless moments, and there would not be the faintest trace of a past. How wretched this life of ours is!--so full of false conceits, so futile, that it is little more than the shadow of the chimeras loosed by memory. My sense of estrangement is becoming more and more dreadful.”
― The Rings of Saturn
― The Rings of Saturn
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