Gleeful Sadness

The first Wednesday of the month is always a day of excitement in the Absent Proof household. Only one question is on everybody's lips - namely, 'Will the editor of the Australian Literary Review manage to get through his editorial without stuffing something up?'

The answer today is, 'No.' Once again, Luke Slattery has proved himself unequal to the task. Sadly, after a dull but not unpromising start - some pretty clunking sentences, but no actual grammatical errors, for the first four paragraphs - disaster strikes:

"Khalil does not expect that the new generation to revive the heady spirit of the 1970s; rather ..." - what does that mean? What happened to the thread of thought started before the semi colon? Coherence is lost. The reader is confused. And yet we're supposed to take this publication - which proclaims that it is 'in partnership with the Group of Eight universities' - seriously.