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Watsonia: A Writing Life
No other writer has journeyed further into the soul of Australia and returned to tell the tale
Watsonia collects the fruits of a writing life. It covers everything from Australian bush humour to America gone berserk; from Don Bradman to Oscar Wilde; from Animal Farm to the Australian parliament. Wherever Watson turns his incisive gaze, the results are as illuminating as they are enjoyable.
Artfully arranged, Watsonia showcases the many sides of Don Watson: historian, speechwriter, commentator, humourist, nature writer and biographer. It also features several previously unpublished lectures and a wide-ranging introduction by the author. This comprehensive anthology – replete with wit, wisdom and diverse pleasures – is essential reading.
Watsonia collects the fruits of a writing life. It covers everything from Australian bush humour to America gone berserk; from Don Bradman to Oscar Wilde; from Animal Farm to the Australian parliament. Wherever Watson turns his incisive gaze, the results are as illuminating as they are enjoyable.
Artfully arranged, Watsonia showcases the many sides of Don Watson: historian, speechwriter, commentator, humourist, nature writer and biographer. It also features several previously unpublished lectures and a wide-ranging introduction by the author. This comprehensive anthology – replete with wit, wisdom and diverse pleasures – is essential reading.
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Published January 15, 2021
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About the author
Don Watson
73 books67 followersWatson grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the former Premier of Victoria, John Cain.
In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 27, 2021
Watsonia is a suburb of Melbourne, in the north. Recently a colleague of mine mentioned he was going on a train journey in the vicinity, adding that as a conscript in the late 1960s, he had spent some time in the barracks there, a place I had driven past occasionally on my way to elsewhere.
Don Watson, on the other hand, is a man from rural Gippsland, who has made his name as a thinker and observer, more than anything else and his writings range from the historical to the political and social, in the mis/use of language and as a travel writer, more particularly in the United States.
This volume covers a broad span of topics written over the years, sorted under Beginnings, Leaders and Leadership, Australian Traditions, The Words to Say It, Australian History, Injustice and Ideology, Sport and Nature, America, and Writing and Art. An Epilogue provides two pieces on indignation and optimism.
I mention these to give an overview of his interests. Sport includes being a man of the turf, an interest that has passed me by and his compendious reading of literature of various kinds filters through all his works, and his thinking. There's interesting musings about Mark Twain, for instance, and Tocqueville gets a run in the American section, where he runs a critical eye over its history and culture, expressing in some way the ambivalence that many Australians have towards the United States, which in some ways he also applies to his homeland.
I first encountered his work in his Caledonia Australis, a history of Gippsland in which he describes its exploration and invasion, the first comprehensive work I'd read that engaged with both sides of Australian settlement. This book contains the introduction to a newer edition.
Watson's capacity as an historian has interested me ever since, although here he seems uneasy about giving himself a label, or claiming any real ambition, being kind of a wanderer. This is refreshing in these days of emphasis on career, almost from birth and an education system that in many respects demands early choices and sticking to a plan, which can be demotivating to some, me included, as well as not enabling people to find their way, starting off somewhere and ending up everywhere else.
Anyway, this book is a collection of his work in its many aspects. If you want to find out about Australian politics, history and culture, its historians, the tragedy of current language use, re3flections on religious and social upbringing and life elsewhere, then this hefty tome is a place to go. Watson's work is accessible and acerbic, personal and philosophical and it challenges you to think, even when you don't notice you're doing it.
Don Watson, on the other hand, is a man from rural Gippsland, who has made his name as a thinker and observer, more than anything else and his writings range from the historical to the political and social, in the mis/use of language and as a travel writer, more particularly in the United States.
This volume covers a broad span of topics written over the years, sorted under Beginnings, Leaders and Leadership, Australian Traditions, The Words to Say It, Australian History, Injustice and Ideology, Sport and Nature, America, and Writing and Art. An Epilogue provides two pieces on indignation and optimism.
I mention these to give an overview of his interests. Sport includes being a man of the turf, an interest that has passed me by and his compendious reading of literature of various kinds filters through all his works, and his thinking. There's interesting musings about Mark Twain, for instance, and Tocqueville gets a run in the American section, where he runs a critical eye over its history and culture, expressing in some way the ambivalence that many Australians have towards the United States, which in some ways he also applies to his homeland.
I first encountered his work in his Caledonia Australis, a history of Gippsland in which he describes its exploration and invasion, the first comprehensive work I'd read that engaged with both sides of Australian settlement. This book contains the introduction to a newer edition.
Watson's capacity as an historian has interested me ever since, although here he seems uneasy about giving himself a label, or claiming any real ambition, being kind of a wanderer. This is refreshing in these days of emphasis on career, almost from birth and an education system that in many respects demands early choices and sticking to a plan, which can be demotivating to some, me included, as well as not enabling people to find their way, starting off somewhere and ending up everywhere else.
Anyway, this book is a collection of his work in its many aspects. If you want to find out about Australian politics, history and culture, its historians, the tragedy of current language use, re3flections on religious and social upbringing and life elsewhere, then this hefty tome is a place to go. Watson's work is accessible and acerbic, personal and philosophical and it challenges you to think, even when you don't notice you're doing it.
April 12, 2021
An excellent anthology of essays, across 40+ years on Australia's history, politics and culture along with terrific observations on the US. The final essay on the early response to the pandemic. Loved all of it - his declarations on history and humanity, but especially enjoyed his insights on the microcosms; smaller personal qualities pettiness, resentment, kindness and humanity that have shaped our modern evolution.
June 17, 2021
I try to read everything by Don Watson. His reflections are honest, thoughtful, challenging and mostly correct. This book covers decades of his speeches and articles. I especially enjoyed this refections on leadership and Australian politics. hi essays at the end on "Indignation" and "Optimism" are great.
February 5, 2021
Watsonia
Ripper of a read. Forty years, we are told, of writing - long may you continue. Cause for reflection, review and humour.
Ripper of a read. Forty years, we are told, of writing - long may you continue. Cause for reflection, review and humour.
October 24, 2024
Despite his protestations, almost everything Don Watson writes is better than good. And much of it is great. This is a long collection of his work. It’s a bit like a really big box of very rich chocolates. Perhaps it was designed to be sampled rather than read end to end. I listened to the full 25 hours in order over many drives over several weeks. I don’t think this did the works justice. Reading it this way tended to highlight, unfairly, the repeated themes and gave an impression of repetition that a more prolonged exposure, less continuously, would not have caused. Nevertheless, it was a surfeit of riches. The analyses of US politics were particularly relevant just a few weeks before the 2024 US elections. Watson remains one of my favourite writers.
April 22, 2022
This is a book which I will read time and time again. I confess to never having heard of Don Watson before my mum gifted me Watsonia. If you like words, if you like truth, wit and hyperbole; Watsonia is for you. If you want to hear another voice, a voice of experience and reason commenting on major characters and events of contemporary history, Watsonia is for you. The author even succeeded in making me interested in horse racing, although I am not.
When I read a book and a sentence or a phrase stops me, makes me go back to re read it and ponder it, to savour it - than I know I am reading something great.
When I read a book and a sentence or a phrase stops me, makes me go back to re read it and ponder it, to savour it - than I know I am reading something great.
December 21, 2023
Obviously Don Watson is a skillful writer with an astute historical and political perceptive. There were some essays that educated me on topics which had previously had only a murky understanding of, like the realities of settler communities in Australia or the rise of cooperate language. Ultimately though it was quite long volume and a lot of the biographical pieces I felt flew over my head if I didn't know the politics of the relevant period. Although its very intelligent prose this can only compound the confusion sometimes. All things considered its a book better suited those from an early generation than me.
March 18, 2021
I enjoy Don Watson. I have more than a few of his books and contributions to our collective commentary.
Yet I found this anthology curiously deadening; for an edited collection there was way too much repetition and variance on too few a number of themes.
This could have had tremendous punch at a third if the length. That would have read like a very satisfactory meal, this, instead, is a bucket of gluttony. Too long, too laboured and in the end simply boring.
Yet I found this anthology curiously deadening; for an edited collection there was way too much repetition and variance on too few a number of themes.
This could have had tremendous punch at a third if the length. That would have read like a very satisfactory meal, this, instead, is a bucket of gluttony. Too long, too laboured and in the end simply boring.
April 28, 2023
I've read many of Don Watson's articles before, but they're just as good the second time around.
March 20, 2021
Excellent writing.
Beautifully read by David Tredinnick who it was a pleasure to listen to for 25 hours and 44 minutes.
Beautifully read by David Tredinnick who it was a pleasure to listen to for 25 hours and 44 minutes.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews