“The void behind the camera – the void which is our constant companion as we travel through the screenplay – analogises the complete lack of any built-in, intra-diegetic, authoritative reader. The void emphasises the fact that the act of stepping behind the camera – of inserting ourselves into this visual equivalent of the agentless sentence – is on us; the act of turning words into images is an interpretive act for which we have an undeniable responsibility.”

From Scudder, E. “When God Takes up the Camera: Coetzee’s Two Magdas” presented at the Reading Coetzee’s Women conference (Prato, Italy)

“Elizabeth of Hungary loves her father-in-law, so she ‘wears her worst dress to his wake’ (61). Here with hyperbole Brown alliteratively lampoons the idea that devoutness requires debasement” (228).

From Scudder, E. “Amy Brown’s The Odour of Sanctity: Longing’s Life Story” in Truth and Beauty: Verse Biography in Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Victoria University Press)

“Consider the convention that says vampires must be invited into a house before entering. The invitation we issue implicates us in the stranger’s entry: we are not invaded by the uncanny so much as we consent to its admission. But invitation’s inflection does not put us at ease with our visitors; if anything, our collusion in their entry makes us less comfortable. It may make us question the extent of our own responsibility for the visitation of the odd” (138).

From Scudder, E. “Dear Thief: Anna Jackson’s The Gas Leak” in The Journal of New Zealand Literature 35.2 (Victoria University of Wellington)

“Paisley Rekdal has said that, as a child, she used to dress up as Mae West, and here she is doing a similar thing: she is trying on Mae West’s language, or at least, a language that curiously resembles Mae West’s way of speaking. She is costuming herself … in a certain evocation of the ‘Mae West sound’ ” (39).

From Scudder, E. “Storying the Portrait: the Case of Mae West” in Biography 39.1 (University of Hawai’i)