Woolworth

• Did you know that 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Patrick White winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Australian writer to be so honoured?
• Until last week, neither did I.
• As a lover of White’s writing, I was shocked by my own lack of awareness, which was quickly overshadowed by the realisation that seemingly everyone had overlooked it.

Cultural cringe

• There should have been conferences and celebrations – a festival that would leave the Opera House in the dust!
• The 50th anniversary of White’s best-known novel Voss in 2007 was marked with a two-day symposium.
• The cringe, Phillips wrote,
  mainly appears in an inability to escape needless comparisons.
• The Australian reader, more or less consciously, hedges and hesitates, asking himself ‘Yes, but what would a cultivated Englishman think of this?’ When it comes to White’s reception, especially post-Nobel, the cringe is everywhere apparent.
• Here were signs, at last, that Australians could produce real literature – at least, according to Europe and Britain.

A writer unread?

• He infamously chastised mainstream Australian writing as little more than the “dreary dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism”.
• A.D. Hope’s similarly infamous review of The Tree of Man judged the novel to be “pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge”.
• White’s uneven reception reflected an anxiety about what Australian literature actually was.
• The preeminent questions asked in undergraduate Australian literature units are still: What is Australian literature?
• That Watts and Tsiolkas are both novelists themselves might explain their fervour for White, a writer who fits well under the moniker a “writer’s writer”.

Reputation

• The question that is asked of White is not just “should we read him”, but should we study him.
• White’s reputation as a canonical writer, and more specifically as a “difficult” modernist author and a “writer’s writer”, is a disaster when it comes to getting people, including students, to actually read him.
• He is not only the kind of writer one would expect to study at school and university; many people assume he can only be read in those contexts.
• Of course, White is a difficult writer, though it is often overlooked that he can also be funny, especially in his depictions of suburbia.
• She had noticed seed at Woolworths and Coles; it was only a matter of choosing.
• So far departed from the rational level to which she had determined to adhere, her own thoughts were grown obscure, even natural.
• Vain or not, it would seem, maybe until now, that the award has been the crowning achievement.

• WASHINGTON, July 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Red Cross elects to its National Board of Governors, Kathryn McLay, chief executive officer, Sam's Club.
• "What an honor to welcome Kathryn McLay to the Red Cross Board of Governors.
• The Red Cross is led by a Board of Governors who govern, direct and oversee management of the business of the organization.
• At the Annual Meeting of the Red Cross held on July 12, 2023, delegates from local Red Cross units elected Kathryn to a three-year term.

• The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the online grocery market.
• The rapid growth in e-commerce is the key factor driving the growth of the global online grocery market.
• The online travel booking platform market size is estimated to grow by USD 1,107.21 billion at a CAGR of 14.85% between 2022 and 2027.
• The rising consolidation of online travel agencies is a key factor driving the growth of the online travel booking platform market.

• Under the arrangement, Uber Eats drivers will not only complete home delivery for the supermarket, drivers will also pick and pack orders from supermarket shelves.
• The Coles partnership is a significant development that will see Uber Eats drivers working inside the supermarket alongside traditional employees and customers.

The gig economy enters the supermarket

• The supermarket duopoly have been steadily recruiting gig workers into their home delivery offerings since Coles set up a partnership with Airtasker in 2017.
• From another, the supermarkets are absorbing gig workers into their own activities.

Potentially tens of thousands of jobs at stake

• Coles says the Uber Eats drivers will “complement rather than compete” with existing direct-employed supermarket employees.
• Read more:
  'A weird dinging sound that everyone dreads': what rapid deliveries mean for supermarket workers

  For now, gig workers and employees will work alongside each other.

• As they bring the gig economy into their workplaces, it has the potential to affect tens of thousands of jobs.

Grocery is a winner-takes-all industry

• The new partnership was announced just days after grocery delivery startup Milkrun officially folded.
• Milkrun was the last standing of four Australian rapid grocery delivery startups launched in the past couple of years.

Essential service or frivolous convenience?

• The supermarkets often frame their new deliveries services as benefiting “vulnerable Australians”, such as the elderly and people living with disabilities.
• The implication is that the availability of rapid grocery delivery is a social good, rather than simply a convenience.
• However, if the service is truly essential, it seems the people doing the work should be valued and supported with well-paid and secure employment.
• What’s more, it’s not entirely convincing that rapid grocery delivery in its current form is essential at all.
• Many personal shoppers I interviewed said on-demand purchases tended to be frivolous.