Michael McGirr

Michael McGirr reviews 'The Fighter' by Arnold Zable

June–July 2016, no. 382 • 23 May 2016

Arnold Zable may be unafraid of pain, but he is no masochist. Masochism wants to control pain: Zable is much more of a liberator. Since the publication of his first book, Jewels and Ashes (1991), Zable has embraced profound stories of struggling people with honesty and wisdom. Zable has been a servant of those stories, never trying to smother them with his own voice or bury them under fancy theori ... (read more)

Michael McGirr reviews 'Waiting' by Philip Salom

April 2016, no. 380 • 24 March 2016

I first encountered the work of Philip Salom in the pages of The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991). Anthologies, of course, have their limitations, but they can be a great place to meet people. Salom's first poem in that book, 'Walking at Night', includes an image of the urban sky: 'Streetlights glow overhead / Like the teeth of a huge zipper; the universe / steals in when the zipper ... (read more)

Michael McGirr reviews 'Santamaria' by Gerard Henderson

January-February 2016, no. 378 • 18 December 2015

In 1980, when I first came to Melbourne from Sydney, I found myself working among homeless people in the inner city. I was guided by a fantastic nun, one of those forthright people with a fearless sense of justice. She stood up to police and clergy alike. One day we had a long wait in the casualty department of St Vincent's Hospital with a gentleman from the streets who had been in a brawl. I lear ... (read more)

Michael McGirr reviews 'Pope Francis: Untying the Knots' by Paul Vallely

April 2014, no. 360 • 27 March 2014

I have never met a pope, but I have sometimes felt their shadow. In 1981, at the tender age of nineteen, I was a novice in the Jesuit order. We lived in a vast establishment in Sydney: the community included naïve youngsters such as myself, wily old retired Jesuits, as well as representatives of every age group in between. It was quite a fun place to live. One day, we were all summoned to a commu ... (read more)

Michael McGirr reviews 'The Colonials' by Brian Fitzpatrick

February 2014, no. 358 • 19 January 2014

Brian Fitzpatrick – a notable historian, intellectual, and civil libertarian – was a prominent Melbourne figure in the middle of the twentieth century. He died in 1965 and survives partly as the central figure in Sheila Fitzpatrick’s poignant memoir My Father’s Daughter (2010), an affectionate and yet painfully honest book. It describes Fitzpatrick’s difficult marriage, his awkwardness i ... (read more)