After 85 years of publication, Meanjin, Australia’s second-oldest literary journal, and one of its most culturally elite publications, is closing.

In its day it published Helen Garner, David Malouf, Judith Wright, Patrick White and need I say more.

If you are in America and reading this, imagine the most staid, boring and elitist literary publication and you’ll get an idea of the type of guff Meanjin published.

It was a literary magazine for high street literary people, who use the word ‘spaces’ when they mean places.

No one bought it and I’ve never met a person who has read it.

It was published by Melbourne University and closed on financial grounds.

In short, it was losing a shit load of money.

The cultural elite are outraged.

Lit Guru Sophie Cunningham said Meanjin’s closure “reinforces my sense that universities are no longer spaces that support or nurture literature or the arts in this country.”

In the last several years, she said, universities have, “shown themselves unable to manage robust debates or the complexities of freedom of speech.”

That’s true but it has nothing to do with closing Meanjin.

One woke warrior asked, “What does it say about our literary culture when one of the sector’s most venerable organs is simultaneously allowed to vanish?”

It says that mercifully there are still people who can tell a pig wearing red lipstick is still a pig.

Meanjin was part of old Australia. It may have raised questions in the 1950 and 60s but for as long I can remember, it has been doddering around, pissing its pants.

It’s main claim to fame was it allowed one bunch of wankers with similar political ideas to talk to other wankers with similar political ideas.

People who write sci-fi, crime, speculative fiction, horror, etc, will ask – “What’s a Meanjin?”

Exactly.