Some of the pieces here are very good, others dull or seemingly pointless. Without a doubt the silliest essay, soi-disant, is Harold Bloom’s piece on John Kinsella. Of course, it was a pleasure for John to have Harold write an introduction to his book of poetry, but why on earth, other than for the sake of publicity, was it included here? In no sense is it an essay at all; rather, it is a series of poems with excited interjections by Bloom, of which the most amusing is: ‘Kinsella, in his country youth, seems to have shot so many predatory parrots that their souls will haunt his way into purgatory.’

One also finds miscellaneous book reviews, a matter-of-fact newspaper obituary, an interview, and four ‘columns’ by one author. The reader might be further puzzled by the presentation of five authors who have two pieces each: these huddling twosomes are printed together as though their titles are only subtitles. I think it would have made for more attractive reading – and for less short-term confusion – if their twinnings had been split and separated through the book.

But enough of generic severity. There is a long, generous luncheon of reading here. As far as traditional essays are concerned, David Malouf and Gerard Windsor have produced gems; in each case, they discuss Australian identity and its available symbols. As for pieces driven by sheer argument, it is good to read Robert Manne biffing Keith Windschuttle once again, Kate Jennings on the rackety money world, and Delia Falconer rescuing the historical novel in a time of weariness and anxiety: troubled by the way a friend says, ‘Sometimes I read and find myself thinking, it’s all just text.’

Jessica Anderson and Helen Garner are delightful on belatedly picking up new skills: in the former’s case, on her computer; in the latter (wait for it!), on a ukulele. Garner’s, along with Clive James’s on Bing Crosby, is one of the few funny pieces in this collection. It is certain that we live in an unfunny time, the surreal age depicted in Gideon Haigh’s recent Quarterly Essay – there’s that noun again – entitled Bad Company: The Cult of the CEO. However, it may be that the world of the CEO will vanish as completely as that of the Tasmanian Tiger, brilliantly revisited along with the endangered Tasmanian Devil by Danielle Wood, a writer I had not encountered before this; her tale of the Thylacine Editions competition is quite something, but the essay darkens as it goes.

Two hydra-headed pieces are surely outstanding, one from the world of terrifying action, the other from patient reflection on a visionary artist. Frontline journalist Paul McGeogh takes us into Iraq over a period of five months, ending with frank bewilderment about Shiite politics: ‘Time bomb? It’s more like a cluster bomb.’ Murray Bail, far in the civil West, writes about Colin McCahon, the great New Zealand artist, in fourteen numbered sections that correspond to that painter’s Fourteen Stations of the Cross. I would call Bail’s dazzling essay poetic in its imagination, except for the fact that he holds poetry in such contempt. He thinks that poets achieve their results by way of slippery metaphors, which is a bit like tampering with the ball. That’s a real prose writer for you.

Turning back to the book reviews, I find that J.M. Coetzee’s and Barry Hill’s stand up strongly, giving us something solid to chew upon, tough filiations to follow through to their end. On the other hand, the reader may sometimes like to pluck plums from the book, here and there, in the manner of Little Jack Horner. Thus we have ‘We enter the narrow lane on foot and there’s a sharp click as Rabena cocks his pistol’, and ‘It is easy to mistake Waugh for who he is not, but who is he?’ and again, ‘Booth dreams apocalyptic visions for his figures caught in either fire-licked landscapes or immobilized in snowbound silent woods.’

Simplicity of style can be a winning trait, as it is for me in Robert Gray’s trail of memorious pieces about his mother and her upbringing. Elsewhere, there can be a weight of pomposity in an essayist’s prose, most notably in Barry Humphries’s essay on Charles Conder.

Only one essay plays with language poetically, and that is Ashley Hay’s variations on a theme of colours, which reminds one that most writers here, like most writers anywhere, don’t look at things, other than their computer, books, and the study walls: they tend to be indoor creatures, unlike Tom Keneally, who here travels to the icebergs and bars of Antarctica. And, of course, unlike the gutsy McGeogh.

To put the matter in a nutshell, this book is a gallimaufry or congeries of many writings, many kinds of writing. You need not try to make sense of its rationale: you may not be able to, because its genres are scrambled. But it contains a great deal of good summer and autumn reading. Take it to the beach, at the risk of sand in the spine, or simply have it by your bed for dipping.

But, for serious reflection, we could turn to this sentence from Malouf, thinking about how it applies not only to ‘the one day of the year’ but to many of our apparently solid institutions:

The fact that Anzac Day is now in the hands of Australians at large, their day, to shape as they please, to make a focus of whatever feelings and beliefs they need to express privately or in common, means that what it is now is not what it is likely to be fifty or even twenty years from now.

This particular insistence will do us very well indeed.