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Absolutely Revolting

June-July 2006, no. 282

Thuy On reviews Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch
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Swallow the Air won the 2004 David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers. Judging by this slender volume of work, the choice was a judicious one. Thematically, Tara June Winch’s début effort travels along the well-worn path of fiction based on personal experiences, with the protagonist propelling the narrative through a journey of self-discovery. In this respect, Swallow the Air nestles snugly in the semi-autobiographical framework favoured by first novelists, but the sophistication and subtlety of the prose belie Winch’s age; she is twenty-two, but writes with the élan of those much more accomplished. Swallow the Air can either be read as a novel with short chapters or as a series of interlinked short stories.
Book 1 Title: Swallow the Air
Book Author: Tara June Winch
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $28 hb, 198 pp, 0702235210
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/gj029
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Swallow the Air won the 2004 David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers. Judging by this slender volume of work, the choice was a judicious one. Thematically, Tara June Winch’s début effort travels along the well-worn path of fiction based on personal experiences, with the protagonist propelling the narrative through a journey of self-discovery. In this respect, Swallow the Air nestles snugly in the semi-autobiographical framework favoured by first novelists, but the sophistication and subtlety of the prose belie Winch’s age; she is twenty-two, but writes with the élan of those much more accomplished. Swallow the Air can either be read as a novel with short chapters or as a series of interlinked short stories.

After the death of their ‘head sick’ mother, fifteen-year-old May Gibson and her older brother Billy are left in the care of their aunt, who, though loving and well-meaning, is nonetheless imprisoned in a spiral of gambling and alcohol abuse. Her predilection for brutal men also causes much grief in the otherwise happy household. A nasty altercation one night with the latest ne’er-do-well beau finally shatters the family, and the siblings are left reeling in its wake. Billy resorts to mind-numbing drugs to escape from his own private hell, while May leaves home and begins her peripatetic wandering. Hitchhiking across the land from the east to the north coast, she is on a mission to trace the footsteps of her ancestors. With a black mother and a white father, questions of self-identity and heritage continually plague her. Long abandoned by her father, and separated from her mother, May is doubly bereft; though part of both cultures, she belongs wholly to neither.

Read more: Thuy On reviews 'Swallow the Air' by Tara June Winch

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Lisa Gorton reviews Biplane Houses and Collected Poems by Les Murray
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Perhaps only John Shaw Neilson and Judith Wright have brought an equal sense of place to Australian poetry: the sense of place as a fact of consciousness with geographic truth. But in his latest collection, Biplane Houses, Les Murray considers more airy habitations – flights, cliff roads and weather – and the collection has a matching airiness that is only sometimes lightness ...
Book 1 Title: Biplane Houses
Book Author: Les Murray
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $24.95 pb, 93 pp, 1863952144
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Collected Poems
Book 2 Author: Les Murray
Book 2 Biblio: Black Inc., $45 pb, 577 pp, 1863952225
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Perhaps only John Shaw Neilson and Judith Wright have brought an equal sense of place to Australian poetry: the sense of place as a fact of consciousness with geographic truth. But in his latest collection, Biplane Houses, Les Murray considers more airy habitations – flights, cliff roads and weather – and the collection has a matching airiness that is only sometimes lightness. Take his sequence, ‘Nostril Songs’, a set of poems about smells and their messages: playful, fluid with small shocks of precision. It is the longest sequence in this collection. That is to say, Biplane Houses has no sequence with the weight of Murray’s 1972 sequence, ‘Walking to the Cattle Place’ or ‘The Idyll Wheel: Cycle of a Year at Bunyah, New South Wales, April 1986–April 1987’; nothing with the reach of his 1992 sequence, ‘Presence: Translations from the Natural World’. All the same, there are poems here to equal any he has written. ‘The Welter’, for instance, which begins:

How deep is the weatherfront of time

that advances, roaring and calm

unendingly between was and will be?

A millisecond? A few hours? All secular life

worldwide, all consequences of past life

travel in it. It’s weird to move ahead of ¼

Here that word ‘weird’ helps define the character of this collection: its light touch and quizzical kind of seriousness; its sprezzatura.

It is an airiness to equal the idea of air in this collection: crowded with smells and weather and all that endures, like the past, out of reach or out of ken but, in effect, momentous:

Tropopause, stratopause, Van Allen –

high floors of the world tower

which spores and points of charge

too minute to age climb off the planet.

                                    ‘Airscapes’

Read more: Lisa Gorton reviews 'Biplane Houses' and 'Collected Poems' by Les Murray

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Judith Keene reviews Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the dictatorship 1915–1945 by Richard Bosworth
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Contents Category: History
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Article Title: Tinctured by fascism
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One thing is certain: Mussolini would not like this book. Indeed, it is exactly the sort of writing that would rouse Il Duce’s ire. In the last disintegrating days before his ignominious end, when Mussolini realised that his erstwhile allies, the Germans, had outmanoeuvred him, that members of his inner circle were frantically making arrangements to flee Italy, and that partisan uprisings had set Lombardy and the Po Valley alight, the archbishop of Milan offered what was supposed to be a soothing observation: that Il Duce should take heart that he would be remembered by history. Enraged by this assurance, Mussolini declared: ‘History, don’t talk to me of history. I only believe in ancient history, in that which is written without passion and long afterwards.’
Book 1 Title: Mussolini’s Italy
Book 1 Subtitle: Life under the dictatorship 1915–1945
Book Author: Richard Bosworth
Book 1 Biblio: Allen Lane, $59.95 hb, 692 pp, 0713996978
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One thing is certain: Mussolini would not like this book. Indeed, it is exactly the sort of writing that would rouse Il Duce’s ire. In the last disintegrating days before his ignominious end, when Mussolini realised that his erstwhile allies, the Germans, had outmanoeuvred him, that members of his inner circle were frantically making arrangements to flee Italy, and that partisan uprisings had set Lombardy and the Po Valley alight, the archbishop of Milan offered what was supposed to be a soothing observation: that Il Duce should take heart that he would be remembered by history. Enraged by this assurance, Mussolini declared: ‘History, don’t talk to me of history. I only believe in ancient history, in that which is written without passion and long afterwards.’

Read more: Judith Keene reviews 'Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the dictatorship 1915–1945' by Richard Bosworth

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Article Title: Lord Jim
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for Bryan Ennis

‘To in the destructive element immerse’
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for Bryan Ennis

‘To in the destructive element immerse’

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Lyn McCredden reviews ‘At the Flash & At the Baci’ by Ken Bolton
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I learnt today, while being read Ken Bolton’s poetry aloud by a friend (a native South Australian), that Hindley rhymes with ‘kind’ and not with ‘wind’. My friend spontaneously started reading to me and couldn’t stop. It runs on, this K.B. speaking voice: compulsive, South Australian, poetic, paranoid, poignant, funny. One way of describing the experience of reading Bolton is that you feel like you are an outsider, looking in at the window, nose pressed against the glass, and inside are all the poet’s friends: children, loved musos, long-term waitresses, artists, favourite poet-heroes. But then K.B. tells you that he is the perpetual outsider, too, solipsistic, meditative. My friend chose, almost randomly, the poem ‘Mostly Hindley Street’, with its wide lines rolled out across the page – in turn witty, desultory, intertextual, local and cosmopolitan – each daring you to take them too seriously, to miss the flipness, daring you to take K.B. seriously, as poet, or person. He might be just like his references (he suggests) – that old prig Thomas Gray, for one, who ‘never spoke out’:
Book 1 Title: At the Flash & At the Baci
Book Author: By Ken Bolton
Book 1 Biblio: Wakefield, $24.95 pb, 224 pp, 1862546924
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I learnt today, while being read Ken Bolton’s poetry aloud by a friend (a native South Australian), that Hindley rhymes with ‘kind’ and not with ‘wind’. My friend spontaneously started reading to me and couldn’t stop. It runs on, this K.B. speaking voice: compulsive, South Australian, poetic, paranoid, poignant, funny. One way of describing the experience of reading Bolton is that you feel like you are an outsider, looking in at the window, nose pressed against the glass, and inside are all the poet’s friends: children, loved musos, long-term waitresses, artists, favourite poet-heroes. But then K.B. tells you that he is the perpetual outsider, too, solipsistic, meditative. My friend chose, almost randomly, the poem ‘Mostly Hindley Street’, with its wide lines rolled out across the page – in turn witty, desultory, intertextual, local and cosmopolitan – each daring you to take them too seriously, to miss the flipness, daring you to take K.B. seriously, as poet, or person. He might be just like his references (he suggests) – that old prig Thomas Gray, for one, who ‘never spoke out’:

Read more: Lyn McCredden reviews ‘At the Flash & At the Baci’ by Ken Bolton

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Marina Cornish reviews One Way Ticket: The untold story of the Bali nine by Cindy Wockner and Madonna King
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When it was reported in 2005 that nine Australians had been arrested in Bali on charges of trafficking heroin, the public response was scornful and incredulous. In the wake of the media saturation of Schapelle Corby’s trial, such blatant attempts to flout the severe drug laws of Indonesia, with quick cash the only apparent incentive, seemed incomprehensible. As the story filtered through the press, a division appeared in ‘The Bali Nine’, as they were swiftly dubbed, between the mules – Martin Stephens, Renae Lawrence, Scott Rush and Michael Czugaj – who were apprehended with more than eight kilograms of heroin strapped to their bodies, and other members of the group, most of whom had not left the country before. These were Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, identified as the ringleaders of the operation, and Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, who were arrested in their hotel room with more than 300 grams of heroin. The mules claimed that Chan and Sukumaran had made repeated threats against their families should they not co-operate; and that they and Matthew Norman were innocent victims of an international drug-trafficking ring.
Book 1 Title: One Way Ticket
Book 1 Subtitle: The untold story of the Bali nine
Book Author: Cindy Wockner and Madonna King
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins, $29.95 pb, 257 pp, 0732283469
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‘We’ve told young Australians again and again, don’t take drugs out of this country, don’t take them into Asian countries, because you can’t expect any mercy. Now we’ll keep pushing that message but people have to understand that if they defy it, and they get caught with drugs, they can’t expect the Government to bail them out.’

John Howard

When it was reported in 2005 that nine Australians had been arrested in Bali on charges of trafficking heroin, the public response was scornful and incredulous. In the wake of the media saturation of Schapelle Corby’s trial, such blatant attempts to flout the severe drug laws of Indonesia, with quick cash the only apparent incentive, seemed incomprehensible. As the story filtered through the press, a division appeared in ‘The Bali Nine’, as they were swiftly dubbed, between the mules – Martin Stephens, Renae Lawrence, Scott Rush and Michael Czugaj – who were apprehended with more than eight kilograms of heroin strapped to their bodies, and other members of the group, most of whom had not left the country before. These were Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, identified as the ringleaders of the operation, and Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, who were arrested in their hotel room with more than 300 grams of heroin. The mules claimed that Chan and Sukumaran had made repeated threats against their families should they not co-operate; and that they and Matthew Norman were innocent victims of an international drug-trafficking ring.

Read more: Marina Cornish reviews 'One Way Ticket: The untold story of the Bali nine' by Cindy Wockner and...

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Michael Wesley reviews ‘Australian Security After 9/11: New and old agendas’ edited by Derek McDougall and Peter Shearman
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Contents Category: International Studies
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Article Title: Still the frightened country?
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A decade ago, security was the poor cousin to economics in policy studies and public discussion.  When John Howard took office in 1996, we were in the midst of an era of euphoric globalisation in which the popular imagination was dominated by wonder at the spread of the free market, growing volumes of trade and finance, and seemingly ever-rising wealth and standards of living. As Paul Kelly has observed, Howard realised early that in this context a government’s perceived capacity to manage the economy – balancing budgets, reducing unemployment, keeping interest rates down – was, to the mind of the electorate, the prime indicator of its fitness to govern. Australians, living through the longest economic boom in decades, had become fearful of a return to the days of economic turmoil and uncertainty. In this era, national security was a most unfashionable topic – at best a distraction, at worst a distortion of the ‘beautiful numbers’ delivered by globalisation.
Book 1 Title: Australian Security After 9/11
Book 1 Subtitle: New and old agendas
Book Author: Derek McDougall and Peter Shearman
Book 1 Biblio: Ashgate, £50 hb, 206 pp, 0754645150
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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A decade ago, security was the poor cousin to economics in policy studies and public discussion.  When John Howard took office in 1996, we were in the midst of an era of euphoric globalisation in which the popular imagination was dominated by wonder at the spread of the free market, growing volumes of trade and finance, and seemingly ever-rising wealth and standards of living. As Paul Kelly has observed, Howard realised early that in this context a government’s perceived capacity to manage the economy – balancing budgets, reducing unemployment, keeping interest rates down – was, to the mind of the electorate, the prime indicator of its fitness to govern. Australians, living through the longest economic boom in decades, had become fearful of a return to the days of economic turmoil and uncertainty. In this era, national security was a most unfashionable topic – at best a distraction, at worst a distortion of the ‘beautiful numbers’ delivered by globalisation.

Read more: Michael Wesley reviews ‘Australian Security After 9/11: New and old agendas’ edited by Derek...

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Peter Haig reviews ‘Packer’s Lunch’ by Neil Chenoweth
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Article Title: Unholy triumvirate
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One of the three central protagonists of Neil Chenoweth’s book, Graham Richardson, famously titled his autobiography Whatever It Takes (1994). Despite the title’s hints at candour, Richardson’s book eluded all but the most passing references to Kerry Packer. As Chenoweth points out in his alarming new book, this, from the man John Button had dubbed the Minister for Kerry Packer, represented storytelling at its most elliptical. More than Richardson’s book, Chenoweth presents the tale of Whatever it Took. It is not an edifying spectacle.
Book 1 Title: Packer’s Lunch
Book 1 Subtitle: A rollicking tale of Swiss bank accounts and money-making adventures in the roaring 90s
Book Author: Neil Chenoweth
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $45 hb, 356 pp, 1741145465
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One of the three central protagonists of Neil Chenoweth’s book, Graham Richardson, famously titled his autobiography Whatever It Takes (1994). Despite the title’s hints at candour, Richardson’s book eluded all but the most passing references to Kerry Packer. As Chenoweth points out in his alarming new book, this, from the man John Button had dubbed the Minister for Kerry Packer, represented storytelling at its most elliptical. More than Richardson’s book, Chenoweth presents the tale of Whatever it Took. It is not an edifying spectacle.

Read more: Peter Haig reviews ‘Packer’s Lunch’ by Neil Chenoweth

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Article Title: Divining Colander
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The kitchen vessels that sustained
Your printed books, my poems, our life,
Are fallen away. The words remain –
Not all – but those of style and worth.
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For A.T.B.

Read more: 'Divining Colander' by Rosemary Dobson

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Philip Harvey reviews ‘The New Puritans: The rise of fundamentalism in the Sydney Anglican Church’ by Muriel Porter
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A couple of years ago I attended the patronal festival at St James’, King Street, Sydney. The preacher was the Dean of Newcastle, who, after the blessing, opened with ‘Greetings from across the Chasuble Belt!’ The large congregation erupted into laughter, then settled in for twelve minutes of civil gospel. This is because Sydney Diocese, alone in the Anglican Communion, requires its clergy to sign an understanding that they will not wear Eucharistic vestments, including the chasuble. The ban is but one outward and visible control mechanism of an inward and enclosed evangelical attitude that typifies the power play within the diocese.
Book 1 Title: The New Puritans
Book 1 Subtitle: The rise of fundamentalism in the Sydney Anglican Church
Book Author: Muriel Porter
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $29.95 pb, 184 pp, 0522851843
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A couple of years ago I attended the patronal festival at St James’, King Street, Sydney. The preacher was the Dean of Newcastle, who, after the blessing, opened with ‘Greetings from across the Chasuble Belt!’ The large congregation erupted into laughter, then settled in for twelve minutes of civil gospel. This is because Sydney Diocese, alone in the Anglican Communion, requires its clergy to sign an understanding that they will not wear Eucharistic vestments, including the chasuble. The ban is but one outward and visible control mechanism of an inward and enclosed evangelical attitude that typifies the power play within the diocese.

Read more: Philip Harvey reviews ‘The New Puritans: The rise of fundamentalism in the Sydney Anglican Church’...

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Roland Bleiker reviews Global Matrix: Nationalism, globalism and state-terrorism by Tom Nairn and Paul James
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Article Title: Nationalism with a global face
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Books on globalisation abound, to the point that it has become difficult to say anything new about the issues at stake. But despite this challenge, Tom Nairn and Paul James manage to add substance to the debate. They do so by rethinking the relationship between nationalism and globalisation. The defining feature of this engagement is the authors’ attempt to circumvent what they believe is a very polarised debate.
Book 1 Title: Global Matrix
Book 1 Subtitle: Nationalism, globalism and state-terrorism
Book Author: Tom Nairn and Paul James
Book 1 Biblio: Pluto Press, $52.95 pb, 304 pp, 0745322905
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Books on globalisation abound, to the point that it has become difficult to say anything new about the issues at stake. But despite this challenge, Tom Nairn and Paul James manage to add substance to the debate. They do so by rethinking the relationship between nationalism and globalisation. The defining feature of this engagement is the authors’ attempt to circumvent what they believe is a very polarised debate.

Read more: Roland Bleiker reviews 'Global Matrix: Nationalism, globalism and state-terrorism' by Tom Nairn...

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Shirley Walker reviews ‘Learning To Dance: Elizabeth Jolley – Her life and work’ edited by Caroline Lurie
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Article Title: At the end of the day
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Elizabeth Jolley’s many admirers will be delighted with this new collection of autobiographical fragments, philosophical pieces, short fiction (some previously unpublished) and a number of rarely seen poems. It is designed, according to its editor, Caroline Lurie, to demonstrate the ways in which Jolley channelled her life story into her fiction, creating ‘something more revealing, more artistically truthful than a conventional autobiography’. Given Jolley’s age and circumstances, this collection could well contain her final comments on the writing process, as well as on the larger questions of exile, love and loneliness.
Book 1 Title: Learning To Dance
Book 1 Subtitle: Elizabeth Jolley – Her life and work
Book Author: Caroline Lurie
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $39.95 hb, 309 pp, 0670029742
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Elizabeth Jolley’s many admirers will be delighted with this new collection of autobiographical fragments, philosophical pieces, short fiction (some previously unpublished) and a number of rarely seen poems. It is designed, according to its editor, Caroline Lurie, to demonstrate the ways in which Jolley channelled her life story into her fiction, creating ‘something more revealing, more artistically truthful than a conventional autobiography’. Given Jolley’s age and circumstances, this collection could well contain her final comments on the writing process, as well as on the larger questions of exile, love and loneliness.

Read more: Shirley Walker reviews ‘Learning To Dance: Elizabeth Jolley – Her life and work’ edited by...

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Simon Marginson review ‘Hayek’s Challenge: An intellectual biography of F.A. Hayek’ by Bruce Caldwell
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On February 19 this year, Francis Fukuyama jumped ship. In the course of an essay in the New York Times on the failings of the American strategy to ‘democratise’ the Middle East, he declared that, ‘I have numerous affiliations with different strands of the neo-conservative movement’, but ‘neo-conservatism, both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support’. The neo-conservative project, he stated, has become self-contradictory. Though the Bush administration retains an evolutionistic scepticism about the limits of social engineering in domestic matters, it feels no such restraint in foreign policy, where its faith in the transformational uses of American power and in the exceptionalism of American virtue has overcome traditional doubts about the malleability of humanity.
Book 1 Title: Hayek’s Challenge
Book 1 Subtitle: An intellectual biography of F.A. Hayek
Book Author: Bruce Caldwell
Book 1 Biblio: University of Chicago Press, $48.95 pb, 500 pp
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On February 19 this year, Francis Fukuyama jumped ship. In the course of an essay in the New York Times on the failings of the American strategy to ‘democratise’ the Middle East, he declared that, ‘I have numerous affiliations with different strands of the neo-conservative movement’, but ‘neo-conservatism, both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support’. The neo-conservative project, he stated, has become self-contradictory. Though the Bush administration retains an evolutionistic scepticism about the limits of social engineering in domestic matters, it feels no such restraint in foreign policy, where its faith in the transformational uses of American power and in the exceptionalism of American virtue has overcome traditional doubts about the malleability of humanity.

Read more: Simon Marginson review ‘Hayek’s Challenge: An intellectual biography of F.A. Hayek’ by Bruce...

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Sonja Kurtzer reviews ‘Eddie’s Country: Why did Eddie Murray die?’ by Simon Luckhurst
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It is painful to read Eddie’s Country, a book that takes the reader beyond the formality, the statistics and the mind-numbing complexity of the Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody held between 1987 and 1990. Instead, we are called to bear witness to the frustration and grief endured by one family as it sought answers to questions arising from the unexpected death, in police custody, of Eddie Murray.
Book 1 Title: Eddie’s Country
Book 1 Subtitle: Why did Eddie Murray die?
Book Author: Simon Luckhurst
Book 1 Biblio: Magabala Books, $29.95 pb, 340 pp, 1875641947
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It is painful to read Eddie’s Country, a book that takes the reader beyond the formality, the statistics and the mind-numbing complexity of the Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody held between 1987 and 1990. Instead, we are called to bear witness to the frustration and grief endured by one family as it sought answers to questions arising from the unexpected death, in police custody, of Eddie Murray.

Read more: Sonja Kurtzer reviews ‘Eddie’s Country: Why did Eddie Murray die?’ by Simon Luckhurst

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Stephen Garton reviews ‘Return to Gallipoli: Walking the battlefields of the great war’ by Bruce Scates
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Article Title: The pilgrimage market
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Why does ANZAC day seem more popular now than forty years ago? Despite the thinning ranks of veterans, attendances at dawn services in most capital cities are up, crowds at the marches are large and enthusiastic, numerous historians and former members of the armed services seem to be running profitable battle-field tour businesses, and the desire of young Australian backpackers to include Gallipoli (particularly on Anzac Day) in their itineraries increases every year. This popularity is even more remarkable given that in the 1970s and early 1980s Anzac Day was a source of controversy and dissent: anti-war protestors, Vietnam veterans who felt excluded from the national ethos, indigenous Australians who felt their wars were overlooked and feminists determined to highlight the problem of women raped in war, all saw this national day of commemoration as an occasion to press their cause. The RSL did not respond well to these attempts to undermine the sanctity of the day. The re-emergence of Anzac Day as a site for unity and cohesion, particularly amongst younger Australians, is intriguing.
Book 1 Title: Return to Gallipoli
Book 1 Subtitle: Walking the battlefields of the great war
Book Author: Bruce Scates
Book 1 Biblio: CUP, $39.95 pb, 297 pp
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Why does ANZAC day seem more popular now than forty years ago? Despite the thinning ranks of veterans, attendances at dawn services in most capital cities are up, crowds at the marches are large and enthusiastic, numerous historians and former members of the armed services seem to be running profitable battle-field tour businesses, and the desire of young Australian backpackers to include Gallipoli (particularly on Anzac Day) in their itineraries increases every year. This popularity is even more remarkable given that in the 1970s and early 1980s Anzac Day was a source of controversy and dissent: anti-war protestors, Vietnam veterans who felt excluded from the national ethos, indigenous Australians who felt their wars were overlooked and feminists determined to highlight the problem of women raped in war, all saw this national day of commemoration as an occasion to press their cause. The RSL did not respond well to these attempts to undermine the sanctity of the day. The re-emergence of Anzac Day as a site for unity and cohesion, particularly amongst younger Australians, is intriguing.

Read more: Stephen Garton reviews ‘Return to Gallipoli: Walking the battlefields of the great war’ by Bruce...

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Article Title: Vincent Buckley
Article Subtitle: Aspects of the imagination
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This is one way of doing it:

No New Thing

No new thing under the sun:

The virtuous who prefer the dark;

Fools knighted; the brave undone;
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This is one way of doing it:

No New Thing

 No new thing under the sun:
The virtuous who prefer the dark;
Fools knighted; the brave undone;
The athletes at their killing work;
The tender-hearts who step in blood;
The sensitive paralysed in a mood;
The clerks who rubber-stamp our deaths,
Executors of death’s estate;
Poets who count their dying breaths;
Lovers who pledge undying hate;
The self-made and self-ruined men;
The envious with the strength of ten.

They crowd in nightmares to my side,
Enlisting even private pain
In some world-plan of suicide:
Man, gutted and obedient man,
Who turns his coat when he is told,
Faithless to our shining world.
And hard-faced men, who beat the drum
To call me to this Cause or that,
Those heirs of someone else’s tomb,
Can’t see the sweeter work I’m at,
The building of the honeycomb.

The ‘Preacher’ who tells us in Ecclesiastes that there is ‘no new thing under the sun’ is the one who sums up human life as ‘a vapour’s vapour’, and there are few moments in his lamentation when he does not sound like a beleaguered man. In prose or in poetry, Vincent Buckley (1925–88) could sound like his sibling, though it was also often his pleasure to ironise the ironist. He approved of people’s fighting their corner, but, like most of us, he preferred not to be cornered in the first place. I think of ‘No New Thing’ as one of his tutelary poems; stark-eyed about the troubles to hand, or conceived of, he mounted defences instinctively, of a characteristic and often of a complex kind.

Read more: ‘Vincent Buckley: Aspects of the imagination’ by Peter Steele

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Pam Macintyre reviews eleven books
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This splash of books demonstrates that the vigorous publishing for the young adult market embraces subjects as varied as mental illness, bullying, sleuthing in medieval times, crime in the present, defending an occupied Australia and two dead mothers; and is written across the genres of realism, fantasy and historical fiction. But how much is enticing to the adolescent reader?
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This splash of books demonstrates that the vigorous publishing for the young adult market embraces subjects as varied as mental illness, bullying, sleuthing in medieval times, crime in the present, defending an occupied Australia and two dead mothers; and is written across the genres of realism, fantasy and historical fiction. But how much is enticing to the adolescent reader?

Read more: Pam Macintyre reviews eleven books

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Christopher Hilliard reviews Fabianism and Culture: A study in British socialism and the arts 1884–1918 by Ian Britain
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Philistinism and anti-intellectualism enjoy each other’s company so much that it can be bracing to be reminded that it is possible to be both an intellectual and a philistine. That, at least, was a charge levelled at the British Fabians by some former members of the Fabian Society – and by some historians too quick to take those apostates at their word. The Fabians had unimpeachable intellectual credentials, but their preoccupation with policy, the mechanics of municipal and national government, and strategies for getting their policies implemented (initially by ‘permeating’ existing political parties, and later, in the case of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, through the Labour party) was such that they could appear ascetic and unmoved by the pleasures – and the potential – of literature and the arts.
Book 1 Title: Fabianism and Culture
Book 1 Subtitle: A study in British socialism and the arts 1884–1918
Book Author: Ian Britain
Book 1 Biblio: CUP, $89.95 pb, 344 pp
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Philistinism and anti-intellectualism enjoy each other’s company so much that it can be bracing to be reminded that it is possible to be both an intellectual and a philistine. That, at least, was a charge levelled at the British Fabians by some former members of the Fabian Society – and by some historians too quick to take those apostates at their word. The Fabians had unimpeachable intellectual credentials, but their preoccupation with policy, the mechanics of municipal and national government, and strategies for getting their policies implemented (initially by ‘permeating’ existing political parties, and later, in the case of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, through the Labour party) was such that they could appear ascetic and unmoved by the pleasures – and the potential – of literature and the arts.

Read more: Christopher Hilliard reviews 'Fabianism and Culture: A study in British socialism and the arts...

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Fred Ludowyk reviews ‘Words, Words, Words’ by David Crystal
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David Crystal has written numerous books on language – ‘over 100’ proclaims the cover blurb. In the chapter titled ‘Wordbirths’, Crystal muses on how rare it is to know who created a new word. In this regard, at the Australian National Dictionary Centre we have been tracing the term barbecue stopper, which is first recorded in the Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 2001: ‘That’s one reason he [John Howard] will talk about improving the balance between work and family, a topic he describes as a “barbecue stopper” because it engenders so much conversation whenever people get together.’ Did the prime minister invent the term, or was it the creation of his speechwriter?
Book 1 Title: Words, Words, Words
Book Author: David Crystal
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $32.95 hb, 216 pp
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David Crystal has written numerous books on language – ‘over 100’ proclaims the cover blurb. In the chapter titled ‘Wordbirths’, Crystal muses on how rare it is to know who created a new word. In this regard, at the Australian National Dictionary Centre we have been tracing the term barbecue stopper, which is first recorded in the Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 2001: ‘That’s one reason he [John Howard] will talk about improving the balance between work and family, a topic he describes as a “barbecue stopper” because it engenders so much conversation whenever people get together.’ Did the prime minister invent the term, or was it the creation of his speechwriter?

Read more: Fred Ludowyk reviews ‘Words, Words, Words’ by David Crystal

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Gary Simes reviews ‘Diggerspeak: The language of Australians at war’ by Amanda Laugesen
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While I was reading this book, news came that Peter Casserly, the last surviving digger who fought on the Western Front in World War I, had died, aged 107. Like Marcel Caux, who died in 2004, aged 105, Casserly always repudiated the Australian glorification of Gallipoli, refusing to participate in Anzac Day marches, join the RSL or even to talk about his wartime experiences. Yet after eighty-seven years of silence on the subject, Casserly had not forgotten the language that diggers used in 1917. The Sydney Morning Herald report of his death quoted from an interview he gave. ‘Another time Fritz derailed a train with English soldiers on board,’ he recollected, adding that, ‘Jerry was always trying to blow up the train with all its ammo.’ The soldiers’ terms to refer to their enemy, the Germans (or ‘the Hun’, as it pleased supporters of the conflict to say then), were Fritz, the pet-form of the common German given name Friedrich, and Jerry, an English pet-name that echoed the word German. Likewise, the Turks were called Abdul and Johnny Turk.
Book 1 Title: Diggerspeak
Book 1 Subtitle: The language of Australians at war
Book Author: Amanda Laugesen
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $34.95 pb, 206 pp
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While I was reading this book, news came that Peter Casserly, the last surviving digger who fought on the Western Front in World War I, had died, aged 107. Like Marcel Caux, who died in 2004, aged 105, Casserly always repudiated the Australian glorification of Gallipoli, refusing to participate in Anzac Day marches, join the RSL or even to talk about his wartime experiences. Yet after eighty-seven years of silence on the subject, Casserly had not forgotten the language that diggers used in 1917. The Sydney Morning Herald report of his death quoted from an interview he gave. ‘Another time Fritz derailed a train with English soldiers on board,’ he recollected, adding that, ‘Jerry was always trying to blow up the train with all its ammo.’ The soldiers’ terms to refer to their enemy, the Germans (or ‘the Hun’, as it pleased supporters of the conflict to say then), were Fritz, the pet-form of the common German given name Friedrich, and Jerry, an English pet-name that echoed the word German. Likewise, the Turks were called Abdul and Johnny Turk.

Read more: Gary Simes reviews ‘Diggerspeak: The language of Australians at war’ by Amanda Laugesen

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Geordie Williamson reviews Bernard Shaw: A life by A.M. Gibbs
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However respectful its intentions, literary biography invariably takes on the character of a siege, laid by oneself against another. Every biographical subject, unwittingly or not, builds fortifications to repulse such invaders, and George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was no exception. He did, however, adopt a characteristically sly defence. His castle was regularly open to the public. Inside, he would be on hand to guide visitors through its rooms, an amusing if distant squire, knowledgeably arguing the architectural merits of his own, not insubstantial, additions, and giving the punters their money’s-worth with polished tales of eccentricity, debt and alcoholism for each of the family portraits. He was both garrulous curator and living artefact in a museum of his own design.
Book 1 Title: Bernard Shaw
Book 1 Subtitle: A life
Book Author: A.M. Gibbs
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $59.95 hb, 554 pp
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However respectful its intentions, literary biography invariably takes on the character of a siege, laid by oneself against another. Every biographical subject, unwittingly or not, builds fortifications to repulse such invaders, and George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was no exception. He did, however, adopt a characteristically sly defence. His castle was regularly open to the public. Inside, he would be on hand to guide visitors through its rooms, an amusing if distant squire, knowledgeably arguing the architectural merits of his own, not insubstantial, additions, and giving the punters their money’s-worth with polished tales of eccentricity, debt and alcoholism for each of the family portraits. He was both garrulous curator and living artefact in a museum of his own design.

Read more: Geordie Williamson reviews 'Bernard Shaw: A life' by A.M. Gibbs

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Gregory Kratzmann reviews Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture edited by Stephanie Trigg
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In her essay in this collection, Jenna Mead quotes from the work of a co-contributor, the Australian medievalist David Matthews. He tells a story which is likely to resonate in the memories of many of us who have, by choice or otherwise, studied medieval culture at university in this country. His tutor at the University of Adelaide, in the course of a seminar on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, asked the class about the famous line which describes Bertilak’s castle: ‘Towres telded bytwene, trochet ful [th]ick.’ ‘Where might the nearest example of such an architectural feature be found?’ The class, suspecting some academic trick, fell silent, not making the imaginative connection to the tower of the administration building ‘about two hundred yards away’.
Book 1 Title: Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture
Book Author: Stephanie Trigg
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $42.95 pb, 325 pp
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In her essay in this collection, Jenna Mead quotes from the work of a co-contributor, the Australian medievalist David Matthews. He tells a story which is likely to resonate in the memories of many of us who have, by choice or otherwise, studied medieval culture at university in this country. His tutor at the University of Adelaide, in the course of a seminar on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, asked the class about the famous line which describes Bertilak’s castle: ‘Towres telded bytwene, trochet ful [th]ick.’ ‘Where might the nearest example of such an architectural feature be found?’ The class, suspecting some academic trick, fell silent, not making the imaginative connection to the tower of the administration building ‘about two hundred yards away’.

Read more: Gregory Kratzmann reviews 'Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture' edited by Stephanie...

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Angela Downes reviews Devotion by Ffion Murphy
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Devotion is more than the portrayal of a woman suffering from post-natal paralysis and grappling with the legacy of betrayal. Ffion Murphy’s impressive first novel alludes to landscapes mythological in scope, and explores the psychological complexities of intimacy, fidelity, sexuality, and language.
Book 1 Title: Devotion
Book Author: Ffion Murphy
Book 1 Biblio: FACP, $27.95 pb, 268 pp
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Devotion is more than the portrayal of a woman suffering from post-natal paralysis and grappling with the legacy of betrayal. Ffion Murphy’s impressive first novel alludes to landscapes mythological in scope, and explores the psychological complexities of intimacy, fidelity, sexuality, and language.

Read more: Angela Downes reviews 'Devotion' by Ffion Murphy

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Carol Middleton reviews ‘Left Bank Waltz: The Australian bookshop in Paris’ by Elaine Lewis
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Elaine Lewis established and ran the Australian Bookshop in Paris from 1996 to 1998. It acted as an outlet in France for Australian books, a nexus for travelling Australian writers and a cultural hub in the Parisian arts scene. This is the story of the bookshop in its heyday, before Lewis returned to Australia and the bookshop retired to an online existence.
Book 1 Title: Left Bank Waltz
Book 1 Subtitle: The Australian bookshop in Paris
Book Author: Elaine Lewis
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $27.95 pb, 342 pp
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Elaine Lewis established and ran the Australian Bookshop in Paris from 1996 to 1998. It acted as an outlet in France for Australian books, a nexus for travelling Australian writers and a cultural hub in the Parisian arts scene. This is the story of the bookshop in its heyday, before Lewis returned to Australia and the bookshop retired to an online existence.

Read more: Carol Middleton reviews ‘Left Bank Waltz: The Australian bookshop in Paris’ by Elaine Lewis

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Grant Bailey reviews ‘Socialist Champion: Portrait of the gentleman as crusader’ by John Barnes
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Besides being a bookseller, publisher and literary agent, Henry Hyde Champion (1859–1929) – the subject of this fascinating biography – was also, at various stages, an army officer, a journalist, and a socialist organiser. Born in England to a wealthy family with aristocratic roots, Champion turned his back on a conventional upper-class life after witnessing the appalling poverty of London’s East End. He embarked on what was to become a lifetime of activism on behalf of the poor and the working classes. Champion was a pioneer socialist of late nineteenth-century England and in this capacity, had dealings with such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and the union leader John Burns. He was a key participant in the London Dock Strike of 1889, which was to prove a watershed for the labour movement, and was an early promoter of the eight-hour day.
Book 1 Title: Socialist Champion
Book 1 Subtitle: Portrait of the gentleman as crusader
Book Author: John Barnes
Book 1 Biblio: Australian Scholarly Publishing, $39.95 pb, 362 pp
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Besides being a bookseller, publisher and literary agent, Henry Hyde Champion (1859–1929) – the subject of this fascinating biography – was also, at various stages, an army officer, a journalist, and a socialist organiser. Born in England to a wealthy family with aristocratic roots, Champion turned his back on a conventional upper-class life after witnessing the appalling poverty of London’s East End. He embarked on what was to become a lifetime of activism on behalf of the poor and the working classes. Champion was a pioneer socialist of late nineteenth-century England and in this capacity, had dealings with such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and the union leader John Burns. He was a key participant in the London Dock Strike of 1889, which was to prove a watershed for the labour movement, and was an early promoter of the eight-hour day.

Read more: Grant Bailey reviews ‘Socialist Champion: Portrait of the gentleman as crusader’ by John Barnes

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Jake Wilson reviews Lies I Told About A Girl by Anson Cameron
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Anson Cameron’s Lies I Told about a Girl may not bend the public record enough to qualify as ‘alternate history’, but it does take off from an intriguing speculative premise. What if the young Prince of Wales, sent ‘down under’ for a term at an exclusive boarding school deep in Victorian logging country, had arrived in 1975, the year of the Dismissal? And what if the prince – known here as Harold Romsey, or YR (‘Your Royal’) – had become romantically involved with a fellow student who happened to be the daughter of the federal opposition leader?
Book 1 Title: Lies I Told About A Girl
Book Author: Anson Cameron
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $22 pb, 276 pp
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Anson Cameron’s Lies I Told about a Girl may not bend the public record enough to qualify as ‘alternate history’, but it does take off from an intriguing speculative premise. What if the young Prince of Wales, sent ‘down under’ for a term at an exclusive boarding school deep in Victorian logging country, had arrived in 1975, the year of the Dismissal? And what if the prince – known here as Harold Romsey, or YR (‘Your Royal’) – had become romantically involved with a fellow student who happened to be the daughter of the federal opposition leader?

Read more: Jake Wilson reviews 'Lies I Told About A Girl' by Anson Cameron

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Luke Beesley reviews The Dolphin People by Torsten Krol
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Erich, a sixteen-year-old German, narrates the adventurously plotted The Dolphin People, by first-time novelist Torsten Krol. Wishing to escape the aftermath of World War II, Erich, his younger, effeminate brother, Zeppi, mother and Uncle Klaus (soon to become his stepfather) crash their plane over the Amazon. A primitive tribe called the Yayomi discovers them and takes them for rare dolphins. Their status as such earns them respect, and they have little option but to exploit it in order to settle into Yayomi life.
Book 1 Title: The Dolphin People
Book Author: Torsten Krol
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $32.95 pb, 356 pp
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Erich, a sixteen-year-old German, narrates the adventurously plotted The Dolphin People, by first-time novelist Torsten Krol. Wishing to escape the aftermath of World War II, Erich, his younger, effeminate brother, Zeppi, mother and Uncle Klaus (soon to become his stepfather) crash their plane over the Amazon. A primitive tribe called the Yayomi discovers them and takes them for rare dolphins. Their status as such earns them respect, and they have little option but to exploit it in order to settle into Yayomi life.

Read more: Luke Beesley reviews 'The Dolphin People' by Torsten Krol

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Patrick Allington reviews ‘A Short History of Cambodia: From empire to survival’ by John Tully
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Cambodia is best known for the Angkor temple complex, and for Pol Pot. This primer incorporates the famous monuments and the Killing Fields into 2000 years of history, from pre-Angkorean Funan to the present. As John Tully suggests, it suits ‘tourists, students and general readers’. Writing a ‘short history’ presents specific challenges: the author must balance a narrative that tells a comprehensible story with the reality that history is messy and contested. While Tully cannot avoid discussing eras, issues and personalities with haste, the chapter on the Angkorean civilisation is especially crammed. In part, this reflects his obligation to acknowledge scholarly disagreement, but a more detailed and leisurely account of the Angkor era would have been welcome. In contrast, the chapter on the French protectorate (1863–1953) is assured and authoritative, which is unsurprising since Tully previously wrote the majestic France on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia, 1863–1953 (2002).
Book 1 Title: A Short History of Cambodia
Book 1 Subtitle: From empire to survival
Book Author: John Tully
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 281 pp
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Cambodia is best known for the Angkor temple complex, and for Pol Pot. This primer incorporates the famous monuments and the Killing Fields into 2000 years of history, from pre-Angkorean Funan to the present. As John Tully suggests, it suits ‘tourists, students and general readers’. Writing a ‘short history’ presents specific challenges: the author must balance a narrative that tells a comprehensible story with the reality that history is messy and contested. While Tully cannot avoid discussing eras, issues and personalities with haste, the chapter on the Angkorean civilisation is especially crammed. In part, this reflects his obligation to acknowledge scholarly disagreement, but a more detailed and leisurely account of the Angkor era would have been welcome. In contrast, the chapter on the French protectorate (1863–1953) is assured and authoritative, which is unsurprising since Tully previously wrote the majestic France on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia, 1863–1953 (2002).

Read more: Patrick Allington reviews ‘A Short History of Cambodia: From empire to survival’ by John Tully

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John Button reviews ‘Vital Signs, Vibrant Society’ by Craig Emerson
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Craig Emerson is a good man to have around in federal politics. He has ideas, which is what politics should be largely about. And ideas, in the barnyard of Canberra politics, are almost as scarce as hen’s teeth. Emerson has a PhD in Economics from ANU. In earlier times, as an adviser to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, he had a reputation for being a bit of an environmentalist. Traditionally, the two disciplines don’t sit happily together. He managed to embrace them both.
Book 1 Title: Vital Signs, Vibrant Society
Book Author: Craig Emerson
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $29.95 pb, 233 pp
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Craig Emerson is a good man to have around in federal politics. He has ideas, which is what politics should be largely about. And ideas, in the barnyard of Canberra politics, are almost as scarce as hen’s teeth. Emerson has a PhD in Economics from ANU. In earlier times, as an adviser to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, he had a reputation for being a bit of an environmentalist. Traditionally, the two disciplines don’t sit happily together. He managed to embrace them both.

Read more: John Button reviews ‘Vital Signs, Vibrant Society’ by Craig Emerson

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Judith Armstrong reviews ‘From Paesani to Global Italians: Veneto migrants in Australia’ by Loretta Baldassar and Ros Pesman
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The 120,000 expatriate Italians living in Australia, all of them newly entitled to vote in the recent election, contributed significantly to the knife-edge defeat of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in April 2006. Before the counting of all such votes in the four electoral regions into which his own government had divided the world, Berlusconi looked to have a one-seat majority. Then the votes of emigrant Italians swung the outcome the other way. For the first time, their say elected six expatriate senators and twelve deputies, including one of each from the Australia/Asia/Africa region – both of whom happen to live in Melbourne.
Book 1 Title: From Paesani to Global Italians
Book 1 Subtitle: Veneto migrants in Australia
Book Author: Loretta Baldassar and Ros Pesman
Book 1 Biblio: UWA Press, $29.95 pb, 256 pp
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The 120,000 expatriate Italians living in Australia, all of them newly entitled to vote in the recent election, contributed significantly to the knife-edge defeat of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in April 2006. Before the counting of all such votes in the four electoral regions into which his own government had divided the world, Berlusconi looked to have a one-seat majority. Then the votes of emigrant Italians swung the outcome the other way. For the first time, their say elected six expatriate senators and twelve deputies, including one of each from the Australia/Asia/Africa region – both of whom happen to live in Melbourne.

Read more: Judith Armstrong reviews ‘From Paesani to Global Italians: Veneto migrants in Australia’ by...

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Contents Category: Commentary
Custom Article Title: A Defence of Creative Writing
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In her review of Arabella Edge’s The God of Spring (ABR, March 2006), Melinda Harvey asserts that the novel is ‘classifiable as “artist fiction”, that boom genre of literary fiction ...’ a genre that involves, she declares, ‘a kind of “painting by numbers”, which is why it’s not surprising that many of its best exponents, Edge included, are graduates of Creative Writing departments’. I am not interested in arguing with Harvey’s analysis of Edge’s novel: it is her casual dismissal of works by ‘graduates of Creative Writing departments’ that concerns me. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard similarly purse-lipped comments, variations on the ‘this author is a writing school graduate (sniff) – and it shows …’ theme, I’d be – well, I’d have a jingle in my pocket. I can only assume that such jaundiced remarks spring from some misapprehensions about, or perhaps a studied indifference to, what graduate writing programmes actually involve. As a graduate of one such programme – I was in fact one of Arabella’s MA classmates— I am glad to be given the opportunity to help dispel some common, but decidedly mistaken, notions.
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In her review of Arabella Edge’s The God of Spring (ABR, March 2006), Melinda Harvey asserts that the novel is ‘classifiable as “artist fiction”, that boom genre of literary fiction ...’ a genre that involves, she declares, ‘a kind of “painting by numbers”, which is why it’s not surprising that many of its best exponents, Edge included, are graduates of Creative Writing departments’. I am not interested in arguing with Harvey’s analysis of Edge’s novel: it is her casual dismissal of works by ‘graduates of Creative Writing departments’ that concerns me. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard similarly purse-lipped comments, variations on the ‘this author is a writing school graduate (sniff) – and it shows …’ theme, I’d be – well, I’d have a jingle in my pocket. I can only assume that such jaundiced remarks spring from some misapprehensions about, or perhaps a studied indifference to, what graduate writing programmes actually involve. As a graduate of one such programme – I was in fact one of Arabella’s MA classmates— I am glad to be given the opportunity to help dispel some common, but decidedly mistaken, notions. 

Read more: Commentary | A Defence of Creative Writing by Wendy James

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Biographers like to start their versions of the life of Samuel Barclay Beckett by wondering if he left the womb on 13 May 1906, as his birth certificate indicates, or on Good Friday, April 13, as he claimed. This time the master of grim humour and existential doubt isn’t having a lend of us – it was black Friday – though his claim to memories before that passage are more doubtful. Nevertheless, for me, the Beckett myth is born with the story of when he was a boy growing up in Foxrock, outside Dublin, fearlessly climbing a sixty-foot fir tree in the family garden. Standing atop, with his arms spread wide, he launches himself into the sky like an Anglo-Fenian Icarus; apparently, he had always wondered if the lower branches would catch him. Finding that they did, more or less, this naturally became the ten-year-old’s favourite pastime. To his mother’s horror, he repeated this plummet over and over again, and he didn’t always injure himself.
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Biographers like to start their versions of the life of Samuel Barclay Beckett by wondering if he left the womb on 13 May 1906, as his birth certificate indicates, or on Good Friday, April 13, as he claimed. This time the master of grim humour and existential doubt isn’t having a lend of us – it was black Friday – though his claim to memories before that passage are more doubtful. Nevertheless, for me, the Beckett myth is born with the story of when he was a boy growing up in Foxrock, outside Dublin, fearlessly climbing a sixty-foot fir tree in the family garden. Standing atop, with his arms spread wide, he launches himself into the sky like an Anglo-Fenian Icarus; apparently, he had always wondered if the lower branches would catch him. Finding that they did, more or less, this naturally became the ten-year-old’s favourite pastime. To his mother’s horror, he repeated this plummet over and over again, and he didn’t always injure himself. 

Read more: Commentary | Waiting on Beckett by Anthony Cordingley

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Brian Matthews reviews ‘Drawing The Crow’ by Adrian Mitchell
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I had never been to Adelaide in my life when I arrived for an interview that, as it turned out, would result in my spending the next twenty-five years in South Australia. The early November heat was too much for my Melbourne best suit, and I was carrying my coat when I walked gratefully into a city pub for a post-interview beer. In the bar – air conditioned down to a level threatening patrons with cryogenic suspension – I tried Southwark and then West End, finding both just drinkable, and lingered in front of a wall poster about the Beaumont children, by that time missing for nine or ten months.
Book 1 Title: Drawing The Crow
Book Author: Adrian Mitchell
Book 1 Biblio: Wakefield, $22.95 pb, 179 pp, 1862546851
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I had never been to Adelaide in my life when I arrived for an interview that, as it turned out, would result in my spending the next twenty-five years in South Australia. The early November heat was too much for my Melbourne best suit, and I was carrying my coat when I walked gratefully into a city pub for a post-interview beer. In the bar – air conditioned down to a level threatening patrons with cryogenic suspension – I tried Southwark and then West End, finding both just drinkable, and lingered in front of a wall poster about the Beaumont children, by that time missing for nine or ten months. 

Read more: Brian Matthews reviews ‘Drawing The Crow’ by Adrian Mitchell

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Michelle Griffin reviews ‘The Infernal Optimist’ by Linda Jaivin
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Article Title: The armour-plated cause
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There is every reason to admire this novel’s intent, but with the best will in the world I couldn’t recommend the result. Linda Jaivin’s current affairs comedy about the Villawood Detention Centre is so conscious of its pedagogic goals that it fails to offer a decent story. And it’s not funny. Believe me, I wanted to like it. Jaivin is a terrific writer with an enviable range, capable of the witty, surrealist smut of Eat Me (1995) and the kind of nuanced cross-cultural analysis that underpinned The Monkey and the Dragon (2001), her undervalued biography of Chinese rock’n’roll dissident Hou Dejian.
Book 1 Title: The Infernal Optimist
Book Author: Linda Jaivin
Book 1 Biblio: Fourth Estate, $27.95 pb, 329 pp, 0732282756
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There is every reason to admire this novel’s intent, but with the best will in the world I couldn’t recommend the result. Linda Jaivin’s current affairs comedy about the Villawood Detention Centre is so conscious of its pedagogic goals that it fails to offer a decent story. And it’s not funny. Believe me, I wanted to like it. Jaivin is a terrific writer with an enviable range, capable of the witty, surrealist smut of Eat Me (1995) and the kind of nuanced cross-cultural analysis that underpinned The Monkey and the Dragon (2001), her undervalued biography of Chinese rock’n’roll dissident Hou Dejian.

Initially, I liked her gambit, smuggling revelations about life behind the razor wire into a popular fiction format. God knows, the appalling mistreatment of refugees and other detainees has been detailed in features, documentaries, and news reports without changing a damn thing. Maybe it’s time it hit the book groups instead. But perhaps Jaivin, who has been visiting Villawood for years and who has already written two plays inspired by mandatory detention, is too close to the subject to treat her prose with the professional brutality that comedy requires. 

Read more: Michelle Griffin reviews ‘The Infernal Optimist’ by Linda Jaivin

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Contents Category: Advances
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Article Title: Advances - June-July 2006
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Last month it was autobiography’s turn, when David McCooey examined recent Australian memoirs (La Trobe University Essay, ABR, May 2006). Now it is biography’s turn: the genre will be the subject of the 2006 Australian Book Review/La Trobe University Annual Lecture, titled ‘Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography’. Our distinguished lecturer is Professor Ian Donaldson, Director of the ANU’s Humanities Research Centre, head of the latter’s new Biography Institute, and Consultant Editor for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is a general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (due for publication in twenty-five volumes in 2007), and is completing a life of Jonson for OUP.
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Last month it was autobiography’s turn, when David McCooey examined recent Australian memoirs (La Trobe University Essay, ABR, May 2006). Now it is biography’s turn: the genre will be the subject of the 2006 Australian Book Review/La Trobe University Annual Lecture, titled ‘Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography’. Our distinguished lecturer is Professor Ian Donaldson, Director of the ANU’s Humanities Research Centre, head of the latter’s new Biography Institute, and Consultant Editor for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is a general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (due for publication in twenty-five volumes in 2007), and is completing a life of Jonson for OUP.

Read more: Advances - June-July 2006

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Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters to the Editor- June-July 2006
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Want to write a letter to ABR? Send one to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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A reply to Maria Nugent

Dear Editor,

We appreciate Maria Nugent’s constructive and affirming review of our book, Human Rights and Narrated Lives (ABR, April 2006). She takes care to detail some of the complexities of our approach to human rights narratives in local and global settings. In her final paragraph, however, she ponders the point of it all and asks the question: ‘What conclusions can be drawn from the case studies, except to say how unpredictable the impulse and the demand to witness are?’ This is certainly a pertinent question, although we believe that there are a number of more significant conclusions that could be drawn from the study.

Read more: Letters to the Editor - June-July 2006

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