I read Paige Clarke’s article in the SMH recently and it started me thinking – and not for the first time – that Australian literary culture is in deep, deep shit.

Clarke’s a good writer. She writes from the heart and that’s good enough. She may even be a great writer just as long as she steers away from the regressive dominant paradigm that has infected Australian literary culture.

For the record, Clarke looks a bit Chinese. For the record, I look a bit like Kermit the Frog, but what the hell has that got to do with anything?

Clarke wrote ‘She is Haunted’ when studying creative writing at Melbourne University. The feedback from fellow students was, in her words, ‘muted’.

That’s because they’re, white, middle class kids who subscribe to PC values but have fuck-all idea of the lived experience of a Chinese Australian, an Aborigine or refugee, because they’ve never met one. Much feedback in creative writing classes is tendentious bullshit.

In fact, her stories aren’t about race. She found a publisher who showed it to an agent. The agent said, “make it more Chinese.” The agent was thinking about the market. She said introduce more Kung Fu or reference the I Ching. Add more ghosts. Bring back Bruce Lee! It’s like telling George Orwell to give 1984 a ‘happy ending’.

With me she would have said, “Make it more like a frog”. Croooak!

In a quote from Clarke that’s rolled gold, “This feedback led me to question my worth to the industry. I contemplated whether my writing was regarded because of the writing itself or because I was a Chinese writer.”

Eventually, she found an agent and a publisher who believed in the book and it’s out now and it’s a good read if you ignore the PoMo stuff.

So if you’ve got a book in you that is full of new ideas, is pushing the boundaries of fiction or which contains the Shock of the New, remember, that’s the last thing most agents and publishers want.