Bob Ellis's many differing lives as film director, politician, broadcaster, songwriter, novelist, playwright, actor, speechwriter, critic and mob orator inform this abundant, entertaining and lucid book. From the background whispers of Australian federal politics to the raucous Babylon of Cannes and the green remorseful beauty of Ireland and the cheerful heroism of Eritrea, from the surprising charm of Joh Bjelke-Petersen to the soft-spoken iconoclasm of John Ralston Saul and the contrasting life trajectories of Cheryl Kernot, William Shakespeare and O. J. Simpson, from the ordinary concerns of domestic suburbia to the larger issues of mortality and Aboriginality and nationhood, there seems little of our life on earth and the heroes we briefly worship that Bob Ellis, rumpled, ubiquitous court jester, has not thought about or illumined with warmth, commonsense and occasional gusts of humour. So It Goes is a book for all the seasons of the heart, of youth and age, of laughter and grief and those bursts of irrational hope that, somehow, keep us going.
