The Haphazard Amorist

Pornography or new classicism? That’s just one of the questions raised by this satiric new “novel”. In the world here conjured up with deceptive skill, pornography takes on a very different meaning.

Central to the puzzle is a man claimed by eminent scholars of the future as “the first of the new classic poets”. Yet from the evidence of three autobiographical accounts unearthed at the Pastoral Pub, Aldonga – and reproduced now for the first time – he was an unassuming clerk in the Canberra public service. His only passions were hock and soda water, and his sister Francis. His name, George Byron (or “Biro” to his friends).

How then did this man infect the entire western world with his art and, in the words of his later critics, prepare the twentieth century for the twenty-first? Perhaps there’s a clue in the account – pieced together from his diaries – of his last years roaming the South Pacific, avoiding autograph hunters and seeking refuge in nostalgic despair.

The Haphazard Amorist is a work of speculative fiction, a parody of academic criticism, with some darkly humorous scenes of British and French colonialism.