The Paris End is a weekly Substack email newsletter featuring long-form literary journalism and Melbourne-centric content. Founded in 2023 by Cameron Hurst, Sally Olds and Oscar Schwartz, it was envisioned as an outlet for writing about Melbourne culture, akin to The New Yorker’s treatment of its namesake city. Even the name, The Paris End, is a reference to the eastern end of Melbourne’s Collins Street.

Review: EXCLUSIVE! Dispatches from The Paris End – Cameron Hurst, Sally Olds, Oscar Schwartz (Giramondo)

Hurst, Olds and Schwartz write and edit the essays, with Aaron Billings providing cartoons and other writers contributing to a guest column. The endeavour is all the more impressive because many of their essays require weeks of reporting, and there are no salaried positions in this type of publication. It is clearly a passion project.

The passions that appear to animate the publication’s three authors are richly varied. They are intellectual, a bit Jewish, sometimes queer, left-leaning, always quirky. They are clearly informed by their other life’s work, whether that is undertaking a PhD (Hurst), co-editing an art history publication (Hurst) or editing a collection of experimental essays (Olds), or writing poetry (Schwartz).

A new anthology, from Sydney-based publisher Giramondo, collects 19 previously published Paris End essays. The mere existence of this book suggests there is an audience for this writing far from Melbourne’s grid-like CBD and art-filled laneways. But, for non-Victorian readers, what is the appeal of these hyperlocal stories?

The strongest essays found in EXCLUSIVE! Dispatches from The Paris End combine the authors’ unique interests with unusual, Melbourne-specific cultural phenomena. It opens, for instance, with Hurst’s essay, “En Plein Doof”, about attending a suburban park rave and bumping into the proprietors of a backyard art gallery called Guzzler. Hurst is a writer and art historian, and her expertise is clearly on display – bringing a degree of gravitas to this otherwise grotty portrait of the contemporary art scene.

Like many of the most compelling essays in this collection, it inspires readers to wish they could accompany the writer on the adventure being documented. In the absence of this possibility, we might resolve to visit the relevant locations or events themselves. While two of the 19 essays in the book are dispatches from London, resolutions such as this represent precisely the value of a hyperlocal publication.

Giramondo

Hurst, Olds and Schwartz do not shy away from the darker aspects of their chosen subject matter. For example, “En Plein Doof” touches on misogyny, the rising costs of rental accommodation and the politics of commercial art galleries.

Guzzler has shut its doors since this essay was first published in March 2023, though this is not mentioned in the book. This is one of the liabilities of an anthology of journalistic essays: some of the stories date themselves. For example, Olds watches the 2024 US presidential election results at a pub in one essay and Hurst reports from the extradition trial of Julian Assange in “WikiFreaks”. (The “WikiFreaks” essay is arguably more successful than the book’s only other dispatch from London.)

The features that keep the essays interesting for readers outside of Victoria are the same ones that keep them (relatively) timeless. There is the aforementioned willingness to engage with difficult or tricky subject matter – from Jewish anti-Zionism to the housing crisis.

In “Not in Our Names”, Schwartz interviews Max Kaiser, author of the book Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism and organiser of a Jewish presence at many pro-Palestine rallies in Melbourne. Meanwhile, The Paris End Substack has included multiple essays about the housing crisis, but for this book they selected one focused on a not-for-profit Melbourne-based developer called Nightingale, questioning its claims to an ethical and sustainable approach to development.

Not hectoring

Considering the complexity of subject matter, the essays tread an impressively fine line – offering a take that is interesting and substantial, yet not hectoring.

Another engaging aspect of nearly all these essays is their unwaveringly personal perspective. When Schwartz writes about the Melbourne open mic comedy scene, for instance, his essay concludes with a hilarious account of him performing his first-ever comedy set, a word-for-word delivery of a Jerry Seinfeld routine.

An essay about dexamphetamine or “dexies”, a stimulant commonly prescribed for ADHD, contains a strong mix of reportage and personal memoir. While the documented behaviour is legally dubious, the author is redeemed in readers’ eyes because it is clear he is attempting to educate and build empathy for others in his situation, rather than offering simple entertainment.

Even with three writers, each with their own distinctive voice, the anthology coheres around certain personality traits: all are funny, gossipy and delightfully weird. The quality of the prose is also consistently high, a prerequisite for long-form literary journalism. It is the rare Substack email newsletter that works as a book.

There is no standout writer among the three. Hurst, Olds and Schwartz all contribute highlight essays, often informed by impressively detailed reportage. However, not all of the essays are equally strong. Those that stray from the publication’s focus on Melbourne culture tend to investigate more abstract or even scholarly subjects, such as “male lesbianism”, a deep dive into author Frank Moorhouse’s archives at The University of Queensland, or watching classic films and musing on a long-distance relationship.

The book’s three authors suggest “things become important through one’s attention to them”. They continue, “We would pay attention to the ground we stood on.” This is a worthy observation.

It is a delight to reach the end of a book and realise there is already a sequel, of sorts – each week, a new email newsletter is released to Paris End subscribers.