If Frankel has the real third way bottled, I look forward to his pulling the cork. Scholarship, like politics, best proceeds from questions rather than answers. Bauman’s work, like that of Bernard Smith, is for me, in this context, a point of departure, not arrival. Other doors remain open.

Peter Beilharz, Bundoora, Vic.

H.G. Wells in Australia

Dear Editor,

A brief comment on Barry Smith’s forceful essay on ‘H.G. Wells in Australia’ (ABR, October 2001). Smith notes that the ‘only Australian book Wells seems to have encountered in his tour was Daisy Bates’s The Passing of the Aborigines (1938)’. In fact, he met Xavier Herbert at the Sydney FAW dinner where Wells spoke shortly before he left Australia, and he read Capricornia when he got back to England. In a personal letter to Herbert, Wells said the novel was of ‘utmost importance to the colour question’ apart from ‘damn good reading’ (MS, Fryer Library University of Queensland). He added that while travelling fast and busily he liked what little he saw of the Aborigines but that Australia ‘put my back up’. He couldn’t stand Daisy Bates. Wells offered to write a publicity piece for the novel, saying that it was ‘certainly one of the most important books of this year [1939] and ... the best written and spirited novel that has ever come out of Australia ... it deals with one of the profoundest and most moving of human problems, the intermixture of races’ (Fryer Library). This was sent to the London publisher of the novel, Rich and Cowan, used as a blurb, then forwarded to the ‘Publishers’ Circular’, while the original publisher, P.R. Stephensen, reprinted it in his ‘Publicist’. Frances De Groen recounts the story in her biography Xavier Herbert (UQP, 1998), adding: ‘Over time Herbert would develop an idiosyncratic theory of human nature based largely on The Science of Life and The History of the World.’

Readers of ABR might also be interested to know that a detailed study of Wells’s visit, including his full itinerary and many responses in the press, and also complementary perspectives to Smith’s, appeared in an article in ALS (May 1990) by Roslyn Haynes, author of H.G. Wells: Discoverer of the Future (Macmillan, 1980).

Laurie Hergenhan, ALS, Brisbane, Qld

ABC and independence

Dear Editor,

While I accept Andrew Riemer’s basic premise that The Boyer Collection was published largely as a public-relations spin on behalf of the Corporation, his ABC is a lot different from the one I worked for (ABR, October 2001). I was the producer of the nightly newsreel in the early 1960s as this country was about to become seriously engaged in the Vietnam War. My boss, the Controller of television news, included in his duties the responsibilities of a Commonwealth Censor. During World War II, my boss had worked for the Security Service and well understood the importance of propaganda. One of his first instructions to me in covering the Vietnam War was never to show any Australian bodybag shots.

ABC television news, then, was something of a shambles. Long lunches in the 729 Club and the Great Northern were common. Film editors, who were paid in cash, were seen on Friday regularly stuffing their wages into the 729 poker machines. The Controller of television news was president of the Club. Staffers regularly freelanced for The Mavis Bramston Show and seemed to spend more time on their freelance work than their ABC duties. Everyone assumed that they had a job for life. I doubt if these conditions exist today. I know nothing about the new general manager but the repeated attacks on him would suggest to me that the vested interests of the ABC claques have been working overtime. The new programmes are no better or worse than what we have seen before. In some cases, they show some improvement. The hoo-ha made about the lack of science programming was clearly unjustified.

I also disagree with Riemer about Radio National. I find its breakfast program irritatingly presented, badly paced and poorly researched. Classic FM is a gem.

Val Wake, Port Macquarie, NSW

When in doubt, point it out

Dear Editor,

The August issue of ABR included a letter grumbling about modern biographical practices, provoked by Brian Matthews’s generally favourable and balanced review of my biography of Francis Adams. The juxtaposition of the headline ‘When in doubt, make it up’, with a reference to Struggle and Storm, is ironic as well as annoying. A more accurate tag might read ‘When in doubt, point it out’, as anyone who had read the book would know. Nonetheless, Val Wake had no qualms about using the review as an occasion to lament the ‘worrying trend among biographical writers’ to produce ‘fictional reincarnations’.

Struggle and Storm is a textual reincarnation, as any written biography must be, but rather than trying to complete the historical record by ‘making it up’, the narrative commentary draws the reader’s attention to gaps and problem spots, and offers alternative interpretations or educated guesses (in a different font, so that the guesses are clearly signposted as such). It has been disconcerting to find that any kind of playfulness or use of multiple voices in a biography ends up being discussed as though it were ‘fictionalising’, even when one of the functions of the second voice is explicitly to identify the kind of ‘fictional’ or ‘speculative’ material that inevitably finds its way into any biographical narrative. It may be self-conscious, but it’s no more fictional than the most orthodox biography (which, as Matthews points out, is another question altogether).

But what if Struggle and Storm had been an example of ‘fictional biography’, or biography with some fictional elements? It would still be wrong to lump all examples of that genre together, as Val Wake does. Would-be critics should discriminate between biographical works that are (deliberately? carelessly? artistically? sloppily?) unclear about the extent to which the author has augmented ‘facts’ with ‘fiction’, and those which deploy the usual scholarly apparatus (thorough research, acknowledgment of sources, use of evidence to support interpretation etc.) in innovative or creative ways. Responsible researchers are well able to respect the principles of accuracy and acknowledgment of sources, and to apply them across a range of literary genres, even when issues of ‘truth’, ‘representation’ and ‘fact’ are up for discussion. The alternative to writing an ‘authoritative’ biography is not simply, as Wake’s formulation suggests, to ‘make it up’.

After eight years of research and considerable soul-searching about how to write the book, I chose to use a slightly unconventional narrative structure rather than either give up or ‘make it up’. This doesn’t mean that the biography is fictionalised, much less dishonest, or even ‘trendy’; it does mean that a book about Francis Adams has at last been written and published. Should this sort of thing be ‘encouraged’? Perhaps Val Wake had other books in mind when he wrote to ABR (books he had already read, for instance?), but his letter cast a careless slur, while taking an oversimplified view of biographical writing.

Meg Tasker, Ballarat, Vic.

Patrick Wolfe responds to Roger Sandall

Dear Editor,

I am loath to dignify Roger Sandall’s response to my review of his unpleasant book with a reply. Nonetheless, one gross misrepresentation cannot be allowed to stand. I stated that Sandall’s attack on Raymond Williams, who is dead and unable to respond, was shameful (ABR, September 2001). Sandall replied (ABR, October 2001) that, when the original essay was published twenty years ago, Williams was alive and able to respond. The original article appeared in the journal Encounter in October 1980 (vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 84–92). The following extract from Sandall’s book (p. 172) was not included in that article: ‘Today Williams resembles one of those huge fallen statues of his hero Stalin, the legs broken and the head detached, with weeds growing out of its nostrils and mould mantling the lifeless eyes. It might well be asked what reason we have for discussing him at all. What could a man so morally corrupt have to tell us about culture?’ This is the most extreme among a number of examples that I could quote. Such statements are truly shameful, as is Sandall’s inept attempt to avoid responsibility for them.

I also questioned whether Sandall had actually read the books on which he commented. Curiously, he did not seem to think it injurious to concede that he had not. My main point, though, was that Sandall’s book had received undeserved publicity as a result of a right-wing campaign to promote material that is hostile to Aboriginal interests. On this, Sandall has nothing to say.

Patrick Wolfe, Melbourne, Vic.

Julian Burnside and the Tampa affair

Dear Editor,

Thank you and Julian Burnside for his inspiring and compassionate ‘Commentary’ on the refugee situation. I am a fourth-generation Australian and a great-granddaughter of a Eureka Stockade participant, and never in my relatively long life have I been so ashamed to be an Australian.

Your magazine has been eagerly awaited over many years, and is a small luxury to which I am clinging amid the wreckage of a rapidly disappearing nest egg, thanks in no small part to the GST on books!

Frances Hemming, Panorama, SA

The ABA and GST

Dear Editor,

The Australian Booksellers’ Association believes that books are an integral part of a civilised society. Reading is the key to all forms of education. Reading improves knowledge and increases our understanding of the community in which we live. Books promote literacy and literacy is a fundamental right for all. Until last year, successive Australian governments recognised the importance of books and exempted them from all sales taxes and duties. Since the introduction of a ten per cent GST on books, Australia has become one of the few developed countries that taxes books. Most others have a zero or preferential tax rate on books.

If ABR readers believe that books should be exempt from GST, may I urge them to register a protest by signing the petition at www.notaxonbooks.com

Mark Rubbo, Carlton, Vic.