Career
Marx moved to Sydney in his late teens to pursue a career in music with the rock band I Spartacus (previously known as 'A Dog for Jonathon'), one of the better 'underground' bands of the day in Newcastle. By his own account, the band was less than successful, Marx becoming "the type of shocking wanker that today I can't stomach ... a guy who thought his destiny was to thrill the world on the rock and roll stage". When I Spartacus disbanded in 1990 — the dissolution due, in part, to Marx's own "spiral into drug and alcohol dependence" — Marx began writing reviews and articles for the free Sydney music press and was soon employed by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian edition of Rolling Stone as a freelance music correspondent. He became notable for reviewing albums while openly admitting he had not listened to them, choosing instead to search the packaging and liner notes for "the tell-tale signs that you're in for an hour of crap".
In 1994, Marx worked as a reporter for the Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Truth, before being employed by Australian Consolidated Press as a senior writer for men's titles such as The Picture and Ralph. In 1999, he became editor of Australian Style, causing controversy when he assigned accused anti-Semite author Helen Darville to interview British Holocaust denier David Irving.
In 2004, Marx won Best Feature Article at the Australian Business and Specialist Publication Awards for his investigation into the history of Henry Leighton Jones, the legendary Australian doctor purported to have engaged in the transplantation of monkey glands into humans.
Marx was author of the Fairfax news blog The Daily Truth until he was dismissed on 20 August 2007 following his publication of a satirical piece on the Australian Labor Party leader and former prime minister Kevin Rudd's visit to a New York strip club.
Marx has written three non-fiction books to date: The Damage Done - Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison (1997), which he co-authored with Warren Fellows; the controversial Sorry- the Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright (1999); and Australian Tragic (2009).
In 2012, Marx was nominated by Rolling Stone magazine as "Male of the Year", for his contribution to Australian literary culture.
Read more about this topic: Jack Marx
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
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“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)