Think your grandparents aren’t cutting edge? Do you roll your eyes and smile politely when they talk of the good old days before quadraphonic stereo and the joys of writing with squid ink and quill by the light of the full moon?

Go looking around their bookshelves. Amongst the Graham Greene, Zane Grey and Maeve Binchy, you might find a copy of Meanjin. Don’t throw it out; not only is it worth a few dollars in the white gloves of a second-hand bookshop owner, but it is also a connection to a previous time.

The dust-layered and brown-paged book in your hands will be one in a line of issues stretching back to 1940, the least flashy year of World War II. Meanjin has beaten all comers in the longevity stakes. With the carcass of “Australia for the White Man” The Bulletin no longer polluting the literary landscape, Meanjin is now the oldest continuously published magazine in Australia (may not actually be true, but doesn’t it sound good for the story?).

So what makes this magazine so good? Why should you listen attentively to your grandparents? Well, the quality of the writing in each issue is uniformly high and the pieces in them are varied, running from short stories to ‘State of the Nation’ pieces to poetry to the occasional masters thesis dressed up as journalism. So far, so unsurprising.

Why you should read them, fair Antipodean, is because these pieces are distinctly Australian. Not because of an Australian style of writing, a horror-inducing concept if there is such a thing (some churlish writers claim ‘Meanjin’ is an Aboriginal word for “couldn’t get published in the New Yorker“). I would argue that it is subject matter, not quality, that blocks these pieces from a wider audience. Interviews and colour splashes highlight the magazine’s grounding in place – that place being the cultural life of Australia.

It wouldn’t be an Australian cultural icon without its own dramas. The sacking of the board in 2007 was greeted with boos. The recent Peter Craven/Sophie Cunningham stoush hasn’t reached the pistols-at-dawn level of many literary falling-outs, but the day is still proverbially young. The introduction of the new editor Sophie Cunningham has probably been for the best. I, for one, was sick of the old ugly layout of the magazine, complete with glossy cover shots of important writers. I still quaintly belong to that camp that believe writers should be judged on the writing, not the face they put on the back of their Picador paperback. Since Cunningham’s new stewardship, there has been a change in the magazine’s focus.

Recent issues have featured a piece on the Australian suburbs, complete with paintings for illustration. It has also been fascinating to see someone’s thesis on Aboriginal life in Port Phillip turned into a graphic novel, by several different artists. The fiction is often excerpts of new writing, reminiscent of writing workshops and spare room ideas. It also features substantial short stories by serious writers, writing about serious topics.

That poorly-copied cousin of serious writing – poetry – also gets a look-in. While there is plenty in the dead art vein of “the cat / sat on / the mat”, there’s also poetry inscribed in the sky with fire.

I love seeing my life reflected back at me in these pieces. So hold on to your grandparents’ book. Put it on your shelf. Or buy your own, so you can one day talk about the good old days of writing with a blinking cursor on a screen and lament the passing of coal-fired power stations to your sighing grandchildren. Then point them in the direction of your bookshelf. They might learn a thing or two.