This site, run by Brentley Frazer, is a veritable smorgasboard of art, poetry, music, bookshops and open forums from every angle and every corner of this little blue planet.
The site is free and easily accessible for anyone with access to the internet and boasts something like 10,000 hits a day. And as the readership has grown over the past couple of years, so has the quality of the contributions – whether in short fiction, poetry, literary criticism or social commentary.
Don't get me wrong, this is not some lefty cyber-pamphlet. The site fosters a range of views (some of them pretty off-beat!) and only asks that people think rather than simply react. Some time ago Frazer stopped posting individual issues and opted for regular updates, thus encouraging continual visits by his swelling army of devotees.
The magazine's motto is: “Look forward, answer back”, and I could think of none more apt. In my opinion Retort is one of the truly great success stories of contemporary Australian publishing, and a triumph for democracy as it is understood on this island.
Not everyone thinks so though, and Retort has had its funding threatened more than once by elements who have taken a disliking to the site's rather overt political content. So be warned: when you visit this site Big Brother is probably watching you. And I don't mean the one in the Round House.
