Ethics of writing
Interesting article about Helen Garner, whose The Spare Room I've recently enjoyed very much http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/truly-helen/story-e6frg8h6-1111115933083 I particularly like this quote "She pushed out small collections of stories before drifting into non-fiction, essays, columns, film reviews, lured by the quick sprint and what writer Janet Malcolm refers to as the stirrings of reportorial desire." This question of invading privacy comes up a lot when reading Garner's autobiographical novel (where she IS the narrator). Janet Malcolm is an interesting journalist who is very aware of how a journalist crosses a line to get on intimate terms with a subject. "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." "Like Sylvia Plath, whose not-niceness she has laid open with surgical skill, she discovered her vocation in not-niceness ... Malcolm's