The Monthly Essays

An elderly black man with large, bright eyes sits in bed, his wiry frame hunched over as he writes. He lights a cigarette and barely inhales before blowing smoke into the air. Dawn is near. I am sifting through old videos on the ground floor of the man’s four-storey Brooklyn brownstone. A glowing figure on a

Nick Feik, the editor of the Monthly, asked me to write an essay for his esteemed rag. Now I’m a bit pissed off at the Monthly, so initially I didn’t really want to do it. I’m a bit pissed off because Richard Flanagan did a piece on Mona (my museum, and the only reason anyone asks me to write anything) and me for the