Dexies, doof and depth: The Paris End’s long-form journalism moves from Substack to page

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.