Peter Carey goes troppo!

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/silencing-australian-voices-20090128-7ryu.html

One thing that's been quite embarrassing about the whole feverish debate on parallel importation currently consuming the Australian book industry has been the performance from many of our well known authors. Individual authors seem to have fallen over themselves in some absurd contest to contribute the most appalling drivel to the opinion pages of the nation's press.

It's been a race to the bottom.

Today, however, we must surely acknowledge the winner - Peter Carey. His article in today's Age is a gem. As an exercise in fantasy and farce it is without peer! It's good because it is sooo bad.

Seriously, in my twenty years of following and contributing to this never-ending debate I have never read anything as brilliantly comic.

However, the good side is probably this: Carey's descent into farce has surely pulled the debate back from the brink. We probably won't get any more of these frequent, drunken, fantastical meanderings from any other authors. Intelligence and good old-fashioned common sense might start to re-emerge as debate touchstones.

Boy, how refreshing would that be!