SOURCE: Harrison-Ford, Carl. “The Short Stories of Wilding and Moorhouse.” Southerly 33, no. 2 (June 1973): 167–78.

In the following essay, Harrison-Ford discusses differences in the works of Wilding and the Australian writer Frank Moorhouse.

In the few published commentaries on the contemporary Australian short story, the names of Michael Wilding and Frank Moorhouse have been linked quite often. It is a natural enough connection to make, but it must be added now that both writers have had collections of stories published¹ within weeks of each other, that their differences assume the greater significance. The connections are still there, but they are misleading, often superficial ones. First, and most misleading, is the shared subject-matter of urban, particularly inner-city, life and social, sexually-oriented milieu. Secondly, this subject-matter has until recently frustrated both writers' frequency of publication and both collections have a surprisingly high proportion of previously unpublished material. Of those stories published, many...