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Absolutely Revolting

August 2003, no. 253

Welcome to the August 2003 issue of Australian Book Review!

Andreas Gaile reviews My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
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Contents Category: Fiction
Custom Article Title: Andreas Gaile reviews 'My Life as a Fake' by Peter Carey
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To an outside observer of the Australian literary and cultural scene, the Ern Malley hoax is one of those spin-offs in the Australian experience that keep on conjuring up Mark Twain’s famous dictum of the nature of the country’s history: ‘It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies ... 
Book 1 Title: My Life as a Fake
Book Author: Peter Carey
Book 1 Biblio: Knopf, $45 hb, 288 pp, 1740512464
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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To an outside observer of the Australian literary and cultural scene, the Ern Malley hoax is one of those spin-offs in the Australian experience that keep on conjuring up Mark Twain’s famous dictum of the nature of the country’s history: ‘It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies ... It is full of surprises, and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.’ Coming out only a few years after the Demidenko–Darville hoax rocked the literary scene down under, Peter Carey’s fictionalisation of a true fake’s secret life clearly bears the mark of Twain’s comment, which Carey has already used as an epigraph to his novel Illywhacker (1985), and which he seems to have born in mind ever since.

Let us begin with a short recapitulation of the facts in the strange case of Ern Malley. In the history of twentieth-century Australian literature, the Australian Ossian Malley stands out as one of the country’s most influential poets, an icon of the literary avant-garde and, paradoxically, of the reaction against it. Malley’s creators, Harold Stewart and James McAuley, had unwittingly faked so well that, instead of the ‘nonsense’ and ‘bad verse’ they claimed to have perpetrated, their poems were hailed as a literary sensation, fulfilling all the premises of high modernism. Malley, embodiment of their animus against modernism, thus escaped from his life as a fake to become a respected artist, hailed by Max Harris, editor of the spearhead of avant-gardist literature in Australia, the Angry Penguins magazine, as ‘one of the most outstanding poets we have produced’. It is right at the point where the fake, in a manner reminiscent of Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice, defies his creator’s art that Peter Carey’s new novel sets in. Unsurprisingly, it is a lie that triggers the whole narrative: ‘And that is really where the story begins, for it was clear to me that he was lying.’

Read more: Andreas Gaile reviews 'My Life as a Fake' by Peter Carey

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Stathis Gauntlett reviews ‘Summer Visit: Three novellas’ by Antigone Kefala and ‘The Island/L’île/To Nisi’ by Antigone Kefala
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Article Title: Exilic Colour
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Readers who share Helen Nickas’s view that Antigone Kefala’s fiction forms ‘a continuous narrative which depicts and explores the various stages of an exilic journey’ may be pleased to find more instalments in her fourth book of fiction, Summer Visit. The first of the three novellas is an account of an unsatisfying marriage, told with a controlled detachment that makes its title, ‘Intimacy’, seem ironic. In contrast, the third, ‘Conversations with Mother’, contains a series of elegiac apostrophes of the deceased; the connections with Braila and other congruities with a figure familiar from previous writings again encourage an assumption of autobiography.
Book 1 Title: Summer Visit
Book 1 Subtitle: Three novellas
Book Author: Antigone Kefala
Book 1 Biblio: Giramondo. $20 pb, 120 pp
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Book 2 Title: The Island/L’île/To Nisi
Book 2 Author: Antigone Kefala
Book 2 Biblio: Owl Publishing, $24.95 pb, 181 pp
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Readers who share Helen Nickas’s view that Antigone Kefala’s fiction forms ‘a continuous narrative which depicts and explores the various stages of an exilic journey’ may be pleased to find more instalments in her fourth book of fiction, Summer Visit. The first of the three novellas is an account of an unsatisfying marriage, told with a controlled detachment that makes its title, ‘Intimacy’, seem ironic. In contrast, the third, ‘Conversations with Mother’, contains a series of elegiac apostrophes of the deceased; the connections with Braila and other congruities with a figure familiar from previous writings again encourage an assumption of autobiography.

Read more: Stathis Gauntlett reviews ‘Summer Visit: Three novellas’ by Antigone Kefala and ‘The...

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Prue Torney-Parlicki reviews ‘Turning off the Television: Broadcasting’s uncertain future’ by Jock Given and ‘Media mania: Why our fear of modern media is misplaced’ by Hugh Mackay
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Contents Category: Media
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Article Title: Screen Tests and Digital Dead-ends
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At a recent Australian Broadcasting Authority conference, federal communications minister Senator Richard Alston conceded that the early adoption of digital television in Australia had been ‘modest’. More impartial observers of the transition to digital broadcasting in Australia have been less restrained. ‘A digital dead-end’ and ‘dismal failure’ are representative of recent media commentary on the subject.
Book 1 Title: Turning off the Television
Book 1 Subtitle: Broadcasting’s uncertain future
Book Author: Jock Given
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $44.95pb, 342pp
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Book 2 Title: Media mania
Book 2 Subtitle: Why our fear of modern media is misplaced
Book 2 Author: Hugh Mackay
Book 2 Biblio: UNSW Press, $24.95pb, 96pp
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At a recent Australian Broadcasting Authority conference, federal communications minister Senator Richard Alston conceded that the early adoption of digital television in Australia had been ‘modest’. More impartial observers of the transition to digital broadcasting in Australia have been less restrained. ‘A digital dead-end’ and ‘dismal failure’ are representative of recent media commentary on the subject.

Read more: Prue Torney-Parlicki reviews ‘Turning off the Television: Broadcasting’s uncertain future’ by Jock...

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Contents Category: Commentary
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Article Title: Gallery Notes
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Art is a strange posing of discoveries, a display of what was no more possible. For it is the task of the creative artist to come up with ideas which are ours, but which we haven’t thought yet. In some cases, it is also the artist’s role to slice Australia open and show it bizarrely different, quite new in its antiquity.

Half a century ago, Sidney Nolan did just this with his desert paintings and those of drought animal carcasses. I recall seeing some of these at the Peter Bray Gallery in 1953 and being bewildered by their aridity: a cruel dryness which made the familiar Ned Kelly paintings seem quite pastoral. Nor could I get a grip on his Durack Range, which the NGV had bought three years earlier. Its lack of human signs affronted my responses.

The furthest our littoral imaginations had gone toward what used to be called the Dead Heart was then to be found in Russell Drysdale’s inland New South Wales, Hans Heysen’s Flinders Ranges, and Albert Namatjira’s delicately picturesque MacDonnells. Nolan’s own vision was vastly different: different and vast. It offered new meanings and posed big new questions.
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Art is a strange posing of discoveries, a display of what was no more possible. For it is the task of the creative artist to come up with ideas which are ours, but which we haven’t thought yet. In some cases, it is also the artist’s role to slice Australia open and show it bizarrely different, quite new in its antiquity.

Half a century ago, Sidney Nolan did just this with his desert paintings and those of drought animal carcasses. I recall seeing some of these at the Peter Bray Gallery in 1953 and being bewildered by their aridity: a cruel dryness which made the familiar Ned Kelly paintings seem quite pastoral. Nor could I get a grip on his Durack Range, which the NGV had bought three years earlier. Its lack of human signs affronted my responses.

Read more: ‘Gallery Notes’ by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

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Contents Category: Commentary
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Article Title: University of Queensland Address
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At the outset, I acknowledge the traditional custodians on whose ancestral land Queensland’s first university stands.

It is now approaching eight years since I retired from the Bench. In the time since then, I have effectively ceased to be a lawyer. Consequently, I do not feel qualified to offer any really worthwhile professional advice to those of you who are setting out on legal careers.

The most I can do is to urge you to be true to your own personal principles and to the ethical standards which are essential to the proper practice and administration of law in this country. That having been said, I venture to share a few thoughts with you about the nation, which will be increasingly reliant on the leadership of people like yourselves as it passes through its third half-century.
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At the outset, I acknowledge the traditional custodians on whose ancestral land Queensland’s first university stands.

It is now approaching eight years since I retired from the Bench. In the time since then, I have effectively ceased to be a lawyer. Consequently, I do not feel qualified to offer any really worthwhile professional advice to those of you who are setting out on legal careers.

Read more: ‘University of Queensland Address’ by Sir William Deane

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Warwick Hadfield reviews Lillee: An autobiography by Dennis Lillee
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Oh Dennis, Dennis! For four decades, we’ve had to forgive your indiscretions and blemishes. We’ve done so willingly, because you were not only the fast bowler of a generation, but of that generation’s milestones. For many Australians, their national cricket team of the Lillee, Chappell, Marsh era was as important a cultural statement as the Beatles to the English in the 1960s. The stovepipe creams, the body-shirts, the massive crops of hair and the noses thumbed at the old Establishment, English and local, either drove or represented significant change in Australia. Lillee, ultra-competitive and irreverent (he said gidday to the Queen and asked for her autograph), stood at the forefront of all this. So we forgave him for the aluminium bat, for betting on England, for kicking Javed Miandad, for pulling out of a tour of England to help establish World Series Cricket – for so many things. And here we are again in 2003, still having to forgive him.
Book 1 Title: Lillee
Book 1 Subtitle: An autobiography
Book Author: Dennis Lillee
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder, $49.95hb, 343pp
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Oh Dennis, Dennis! For four decades, we’ve had to forgive your indiscretions and blemishes. We’ve done so willingly, because you were not only the fast bowler of a generation, but of that generation’s milestones. For many Australians, their national cricket team of the Lillee, Chappell, Marsh era was as important a cultural statement as the Beatles to the English in the 1960s. The stovepipe creams, the body-shirts, the massive crops of hair and the noses thumbed at the old Establishment, English and local, either drove or represented significant change in Australia. Lillee, ultra-competitive and irreverent (he said gidday to the Queen and asked for her autograph), stood at the forefront of all this. So we forgave him for the aluminium bat, for betting on England, for kicking Javed Miandad, for pulling out of a tour of England to help establish World Series Cricket – for so many things. And here we are again in 2003, still having to forgive him.

Read more: Warwick Hadfield reviews 'Lillee: An autobiography' by Dennis Lillee

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Warwick Hadfield reviews Lillee: An Autobiography by Dennis Lillee
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Oh Dennis, Dennis! For four decades, we’ve had to forgive your indiscretions and blemishes. We’ve done so willingly, because you were not only the fast bowler of a generation, but of that generation’s milestones. For many Australians, their national cricket team of the Lillee, Chappell, Marsh era was as important a cultural statement as the Beatles to the English in the 1960s. The stovepipe creams, the body-shirts, the massive crops of hair and the noses thumbed at the old Establishment, English and local, either drove or represented significant change in Australia. Lillee, ultra-competitive and irreverent (he said gidday to the Queen and asked for her autograph), stood at the forefront of all this. So we forgave him for the aluminium bat, for betting on England, for kicking Javed Miandad, for pulling out of a tour of England to help establish World Series Cricket – for so many things. And here we are again in 2003, still having to forgive him.
Book 1 Title: Lillee
Book 1 Subtitle: An autobiography
Book Author: Dennis Lillee
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder, $49.95hb, 343pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Oh Dennis, Dennis! For four decades, we’ve had to forgive your indiscretions and blemishes. We’ve done so willingly, because you were not only the fast bowler of a generation, but of that generation’s milestones. For many Australians, their national cricket team of the Lillee, Chappell, Marsh era was as important a cultural statement as the Beatles to the English in the 1960s. The stovepipe creams, the body-shirts, the massive crops of hair and the noses thumbed at the old Establishment, English and local, either drove or represented significant change in Australia. Lillee, ultra-competitive and irreverent (he said gidday to the Queen and asked for her autograph), stood at the forefront of all this. So we forgave him for the aluminium bat, for betting on England, for kicking Javed Miandad, for pulling out of a tour of England to help establish World Series Cricket – for so many things. And here we are again in 2003, still having to forgive him.

Read more: Warwick Hadfield reviews 'Lillee: An Autobiography' by Dennis Lillee

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters - August 2003
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ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Ali Ismail Abbas

Dear Editor,

There is a terrible irony in the title of Raimond Gaita’s La Trobe University Essay, ‘Only As a Last Resort’ (ABR, May 2003). His title should surely have been the phrase that guided the choice of accompanying stills. Gaita’s admirable piece contained much to ponder and praise. The Reuters photograph (by Faleh Kheiber) of Ali Ismail Abbas diminished those reflections.
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ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Ali Ismail Abbas

Dear Editor,

There is a terrible irony in the title of Raimond Gaita’s La Trobe University Essay, ‘Only As a Last Resort’ (ABR, May 2003). His title should surely have been the phrase that guided the choice of accompanying stills. Gaita’s admirable piece contained much to ponder and praise. The Reuters photograph (by Faleh Kheiber) of Ali Ismail Abbas diminished those reflections. 

Read more: Letters - August 2003

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Alan Atkinson reviews ‘Man of Honour: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father’ by Michael Duffy
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Contents Category: Biography
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Article Title: Honour Games
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As I read this book, serious questions were being asked about the honour of three governments: the British, the US and our own. Did they all lie so as to justify war against Iraq? Honour still matters, even at a time when the word is not used as often as it once was. Michael Duffy’s book about John Macarthur, one of the best-known inhabitants of colonial Australia, constructs him as a ‘man of honour’. It ought to be topical.
Book 1 Title: Man of Honour
Book 1 Subtitle: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father
Book Author: Michael Duffy
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $35 pb, 376 pp
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As I read this book, serious questions were being asked about the honour of three governments: the British, the US and our own. Did they all lie so as to justify war against Iraq? Honour still matters, even at a time when the word is not used as often as it once was. Michael Duffy’s book about John Macarthur, one of the best-known inhabitants of colonial Australia, constructs him as a ‘man of honour’. It ought to be topical.

Read more: Alan Atkinson reviews ‘Man of Honour: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father’ by...

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Partridge Wings reviews ‘North of Nowhere, South of Loss’ by Janette Turner Hospital
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Contents Category: Short Stories
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Janette Turner Hospital fans, possibly reminded of their affection for her by the recent publication of her latest novel, Due Preparations for the Plague (reviewed in the June/July issue of ABR), will find this anthology an interesting exercise in retrospection. Collected here are fourteen stories published between 1991 and 2002 in various periodicals and anthologies from around the globe.
Book 1 Title: North of Nowhere, South of Loss
Book Author: Janette Turner Hospital
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $24 pb, 286 pp
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Janette Turner Hospital fans, possibly reminded of their affection for her by the recent publication of her latest novel, Due Preparations for the Plague will find this anthology an interesting exercise in retrospection. Collected here are fourteen stories published between 1991 and 2002 in various periodicals and anthologies from around the globe.

Read more: Partridge Wings reviews ‘North of Nowhere, South of Loss’ by Janette Turner Hospital

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Damian Grace reviews ‘Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience’ by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker
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Contents Category: Neuroscience
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Article Title: Marriage of Minds
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Custom Highlight Text: This book is a joy to read. It is the fruit of collaboration across disciplines and continents between a neurophysiologist and a philosopher. They have written a polemical work that is a model of clarity and directness. Distinguished neurophysiologist M.R. Bennett, of the University of Sydney, and eminent Oxford philosopher P.M.S. Hacker have produced that rarity of scholarship, a genuinely interdisciplinary work that succeeds.
Book 1 Title: Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
Book Author: M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker
Book 1 Biblio: Blackwell Publishing, $69.95 pb, 477 pp
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This book is a joy to read. It is the fruit of collaboration across disciplines and continents between a neurophysiologist and a philosopher. They have written a polemical work that is a model of clarity and directness. Distinguished neurophysiologist M.R. Bennett, of the University of Sydney, and eminent Oxford philosopher P.M.S. Hacker have produced that rarity of scholarship, a genuinely interdisciplinary work that succeeds.

Read more: Damian Grace reviews ‘Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience’ by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: A Burning Fiery Furnace
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Born to a seamless ordinance of heat,
Small wonder I remember best Indoors,
The too-small carpets slipping round the floors
And ‘Under the house’, a region to retreat
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Born to a seamless ordinance of heat,
Small wonder I remember best Indoors,
The too-small carpets slipping round the floors
And ‘Under the house’, a region to retreat

Read more: ‘A Burning Fiery Furnace’ by Peter Porter

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: An Artist Speaks to His Model
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Custom Highlight Text: What can I ask of your lips
that they haven’t already given
my colourless signature; of your
hands other than to shade
your eyes as the sun burnishes
the windows, then carries on
to the grey porticos of the square.
I see pigeons on the gold-lit roof
of the Cathedral of St Christopher,
and as I stir my brush about
my palette – scarlet is what
I pray for; scarlet that flows under
a vanquished bridge; that lives
with finches in the tops of trees
because, desire, you said,
should always live on the wing.
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What can I ask of your lips
that they haven’t already given
my colourless signature; of your
hands other than to shade
your eyes as the sun burnishes
the windows, then carries on
to the grey porticos of the square.
I see pigeons on the gold-lit roof
of the Cathedral of St Christopher,
and as I stir my brush about
my palette – scarlet is what
I pray for; scarlet that flows under
a vanquished bridge; that lives
with finches in the tops of trees
because, desire, you said,
should always live on the wing.

Read more: ‘An Artist Speaks to His Model’ by Judith Beveridge

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Article Title: Apprentice
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It’ll be dawn before the sawing’s done; all night
cutting it up, yet by dark’s end, a pine,
or cypress moon, fragrant, awaiting finish. I watch
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It’ll be dawn before the sawing’s done; all night
cutting it up, yet by dark’s end, a pine,
or cypress moon, fragrant, awaiting finish. I watch

Read more: ‘Apprentice’ by Judith Beveridge

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Tony Barta reviews ‘Rights for Aborigines’ by Bain Attwood
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Contents Category: Indigenous Studies
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Article Title: Touching the Sides
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John Howard, someone has remarked, deserves to be remembered for his shabby key to political success: he gave Australians permission to leave their consciences in the cupboard. Paul Keating, who knew what was coming with Howard, said that, if you have to pick a horse in any political race, back self-interest because at least you’ll know he’ll be trying. Bain Attwood’s important new book is about the struggle to right the nation’s greatest wrong in the hundred years before Keating and Howard began their political careers. It is an inspiring story about a tiny minority of fighters and a depressing reminder of how long self-interest and indifference kept consciences safely locked away.
Book 1 Title: Rights for Aborigines
Book Author: Bain Attwood
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $39.95pb, 424pp
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John Howard, someone has remarked, deserves to be remembered for his shabby key to political success: he gave Australians permission to leave their consciences in the cupboard. Paul Keating, who knew what was coming with Howard, said that, if you have to pick a horse in any political race, back self-interest because at least you’ll know he’ll be trying. Bain Attwood’s important new book is about the struggle to right the nation’s greatest wrong in the hundred years before Keating and Howard began their political careers. It is an inspiring story about a tiny minority of fighters and a depressing reminder of how long self-interest and indifference kept consciences safely locked away.

Read more: Tony Barta reviews ‘Rights for Aborigines’ by Bain Attwood

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Clare Wright reviews ‘The Complete Book of Great Australian Women: Thirty-six women who changed the course of Australia’ by Susanna de Vries
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If it is inadvisable to judge a book by its cover, perhaps it is equally unreliable to judge one by its title. But The Complete Book of Great Australian Women set my teeth on edge before I’d turned the first page. What qualifies a woman for greatness? Great deeds? Great courage? Great neighbours? And wasn’t the point of feminist history not only to open up the list of historical actors but also to challenge the very principles of historical gatekeeping: professional merit, political influence, public stature? The subtitle certainly doesn’t contribute to more inclusive notions of historical agency and achievement. Like a human hydroelectric scheme, de Vries’s women struggle to overcome the many ‘natural’ barriers to female success, and, like the nation itself, emerge triumphant.
Book 1 Title: The Complete Book of Great Australian Women
Book 1 Subtitle: Thirty-six women who changed the course of Australia
Book Author: Susanna de Vries
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins, $35 pb, 670 pp
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If it is inadvisable to judge a book by its cover, perhaps it is equally unreliable to judge one by its title. But The Complete Book of Great Australian Women set my teeth on edge before I’d turned the first page. What qualifies a woman for greatness? Great deeds? Great courage? Great neighbours? And wasn’t the point of feminist history not only to open up the list of historical actors but also to challenge the very principles of historical gatekeeping: professional merit, political influence, public stature? The subtitle certainly doesn’t contribute to more inclusive notions of historical agency and achievement. Like a human hydroelectric scheme, de Vries’s women struggle to overcome the many ‘natural’ barriers to female success, and, like the nation itself, emerge triumphant.

Read more: Clare Wright reviews ‘The Complete Book of Great Australian Women: Thirty-six women who changed...

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Gillian Dooley reviews ‘The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ by Robert Holden
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Article Title: The Missing Captain
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The perils of a certain kind of historical writing are painfully demonstrated in The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, billed as ‘the life of Australian whaling captain, William Chamberlain: a tale of abduction, adventure and murder’.

According to the limited information available about Chamberlain, he had an exciting life. Born in Australia in 1803, he was for some reason taken away from his hometown of Port Jackson in 1811 on the Frederick. The French captured this whaling ship on its way back to England, and killed the captain. Chamberlain was taken prisoner with the rest of the crew, and was rescued by the British navy. He was cared for by a naval surgeon, who eventually sent him to school in Scotland for a couple of years. Later, he was on board one of the battleships that participated in the Battle of Algiers in 1816, where he was wounded. It was only then that it occurred to anyone to return the boy, now thirteen, to his family in Australia. After a few years, Chamberlain went to sea again, first on a sealing ship and then on a whaler. He worked his way up to become captain of a whaling vessel, married and had several children. He and his family settled in Hobart, where in 1856 his youngest son was raped and murdered by a ticket-of-leave convict. Chamberlain died in Hobart in 1870.
Book 1 Title: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Book Author: Robert Holden
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins, $29.95 pb, 254 pp
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The perils of a certain kind of historical writing are painfully demonstrated in The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, billed as ‘the life of Australian whaling captain, William Chamberlain: a tale of abduction, adventure and murder’.

According to the limited information available about Chamberlain, he had an exciting life. Born in Australia in 1803, he was for some reason taken away from his hometown of Port Jackson in 1811 on the Frederick. The French captured this whaling ship on its way back to England, and killed the captain. Chamberlain was taken prisoner with the rest of the crew, and was rescued by the British navy. He was cared for by a naval surgeon, who eventually sent him to school in Scotland for a couple of years. Later, he was on board one of the battleships that participated in the Battle of Algiers in 1816, where he was wounded. It was only then that it occurred to anyone to return the boy, now thirteen, to his family in Australia. After a few years, Chamberlain went to sea again, first on a sealing ship and then on a whaler. He worked his way up to become captain of a whaling vessel, married and had several children. He and his family settled in Hobart, where in 1856 his youngest son was raped and murdered by a ticket-of-leave convict. Chamberlain died in Hobart in 1870.

Read more: Gillian Dooley reviews ‘The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ by Robert Holden

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Lisa Gorton reviews ‘The Fall’ by Jordie Albiston
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: Perpetual Fall
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Jordie Albiston’s latest collection opens with a remarkable poem about a woman falling from the Empire State Building and falling, at the same time, through the story of her life:

In the air, a moment can take on the time centuries span.
She falls through former selves above a thousand heads.
No one looks up. No one looks towards the bright sedan.
Within a handful of time, it will be her crumpled bed.
Book 1 Title: The Fall
Book Author: Jordie Albiston
Book 1 Biblio: White Crane Press, $19.95 pb 86 pp
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Jordie Albiston’s latest collection opens with a remarkable poem about a woman falling from the Empire State Building and falling, at the same time, through the story of her life:

In the air, a moment can take on the time centuries span.
She falls through former selves above a thousand heads.
No one looks up. No one looks towards the bright sedan.Within a handful of time, it will be her crumpled bed.

Read more: Lisa Gorton reviews ‘The Fall’ by Jordie Albiston

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Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews ‘The Man Who Saw Too Much: David Brill, Combat Cameraman’ by John Little
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Despite Jeff McMullen’s assertion in the foreword to The Man Who Saw Too Much that books like this are rare, this is in fact the latest in a long line of books about Australian war and foreign correspondents, by which I mean photographers, cameramen and women, and cinematographers (the term preferred by David Brill), as well as journalists. In recent times, books by, or about, the adventurous boys – Damien Parer and Neil Davis (both role models for Brill), Richard Hughes (whom Brill met in later life), Wilfred Burchett and Hugh Lunn – have, thankfully, been joined by autobiographies of women journalists such as Irris Makler.
Book 1 Title: The Man Who Saw Too Much
Book 1 Subtitle: David Brill, Combat Cameraman
Book Author: John Little
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder, $34.95 pb, 324 pp
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Despite Jeff McMullen’s assertion in the foreword to The Man Who Saw Too Much that books like this are rare, this is in fact the latest in a long line of books about Australian war and foreign correspondents, by which I mean photographers, cameramen and women, and cinematographers (the term preferred by David Brill), as well as journalists. In recent times, books by, or about, the adventurous boys – Damien Parer and Neil Davis (both role models for Brill), Richard Hughes (whom Brill met in later life), Wilfred Burchett and Hugh Lunn – have, thankfully, been joined by autobiographies of women journalists such as Irris Makler.

Read more: Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews ‘The Man Who Saw Too Much: David Brill, Combat Cameraman’ by John...

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Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews ‘The Meeting Of The Waters: The Hindmarsh Island Affair’ by Margaret Simons
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Reading this new book in the cold midwinter of 2003, I stopped one night to watch the news; the lead  story was about the newly resumed dredging operations at the Murray Mouth, an hour or two south-east of Adelaide. The dredging is a temporary measure, a kind of emergency surgery to stop the river mouth silting up and closing altogether.
Book 1 Title: The Meeting Of The Waters
Book 1 Subtitle: The Hindmarsh Island Affair
Book Author: Margaret Simons
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder, $39.95 pb, 528pp
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Reading this new book in the cold midwinter of 2003, I stopped one night to watch the news; the lead  story was about the newly resumed dredging operations at the Murray Mouth, an hour or two south-east of Adelaide. The dredging is a temporary measure, a kind of emergency surgery to stop the river mouth silting up and closing altogether.

Read more: Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews ‘The Meeting Of The Waters: The Hindmarsh Island Affair’ by Margaret...

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‘The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and The Labor Split’ by Ross Fitzgerald
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Ross Fitzgerald’s book is timely, for two reasons. Five years having passed since the death of  B.A. Santamaria, an appropriate distance stands between the immediate obituaries and a better perspective on his impact on Australian politics. It is also nearly fifty years since the great Labor schism. A new generation of Australians has grown up for whom ‘The Split’ is not part of the political lexicon. The Pope’s Battalions reminds one of a time when this term required no explanation, just as ‘The Dismissal’ needs no explanation to Australians over a certain age.
Book 1 Title: The Pope’s Battalions
Book 1 Subtitle: Santamaria, Catholicism and The Labor Split
Book Author: Ross Fitzgerald
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $35 pb, 353pp
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Ross Fitzgerald’s book is timely, for two reasons. Five years having passed since the death of  B.A. Santamaria, an appropriate distance stands between the immediate obituaries and a better perspective on his impact on Australian politics. It is also nearly fifty years since the great Labor schism. A new generation of Australians has grown up for whom ‘The Split’ is not part of the political lexicon. The Pope’s Battalions reminds one of a time when this term required no explanation, just as ‘The Dismissal’ needs no explanation to Australians over a certain age.

Read more: ‘The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and The Labor Split’ by Ross Fitzgerald

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Martin Crotty reviews ‘The Premiers Of Queensland’ edited by Denis Murphy et al.
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Queensland’s history is different in many respects from the older states, and similar only to Western Australia in features such as its vastness, its relative emptiness and its history as the last of the ‘frontier’ states. It is easy to caricature Queensland as historically and naturally conservative, even reactionary, by comparison to its more cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant counterparts in the south-eastern corner of Australia. This is the state in which, if Henry Reynolds’s estimates are accepted (as they still generally are, despite the notorious efforts of Keith Windschuttle), half of the 20,000 Aborigines killed in violent conflicts with European settlers in Australia met their deaths. This is the state that gave us Joh Bjelke-Petersen and all the corruption that went with his government. And this is the state that was home to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and that gave it twenty-three per cent of the vote and ten seats in the 1998 state election.
Book 1 Title: The Premiers Of Queensland
Book Author: Denis Murphy et al.
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $35 pb, 482pp
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Queensland’s history is different in many respects from the older states, and similar only to Western Australia in features such as its vastness, its relative emptiness and its history as the last of the ‘frontier’ states. It is easy to caricature Queensland as historically and naturally conservative, even reactionary, by comparison to its more cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant counterparts in the south-eastern corner of Australia. This is the state in which, if Henry Reynolds’s estimates are accepted (as they still generally are, despite the notorious efforts of Keith Windschuttle), half of the 20,000 Aborigines killed in violent conflicts with European settlers in Australia met their deaths. This is the state that gave us Joh Bjelke-Petersen and all the corruption that went with his government. And this is the state that was home to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and that gave it twenty-three per cent of the vote and ten seats in the 1998 state election.

Read more: Martin Crotty reviews ‘The Premiers Of Queensland’ edited by Denis Murphy et al.

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If we are to believe Aristotle, or the Chicago neo-Aristotelians (R.S. Crane, Richard McKeown, et al.), or even bluff old Squire Henry Fielding, then plot is the mainstay of drama, as of the novel. This has often been held to be particularly so of detective fiction. On the other hand, Raymond Chandler was notoriously cavalier about the ‘what, who, and why’ of narrative causation, and Edmund Wilson famously asked, ‘Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?’

It would seem that voice and character (Peter Corris’s Cliff Hardy, Gary Disher’s Detective Inspector Hal Challis, Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan, MP) are as important as plot, if not on occasion more so. Milieu is crucial: think of Hardy’s Sydney, Peter Temple’s Melbourne, Carl Hiassen’s Florida, Elmore Leonard’s Detroit and Miami. Plot Rules, OK? Not! Voice is everything. Here’s quintessential Corris:
Book 1 Title: Master's Mates
Book Author: Peter Corris
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $19.95 pb, 232 pp
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Book 2 Title: Kittyhawk Down
Book 2 Author: Garry Disher
Book 2 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $19.95 pb, 275 pp
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Book 3 Title: Something Fishy
Book 3 Author: Shane Maloney
Book 3 Biblio: Text, $28 pb, 242 pp
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If we are to believe Aristotle, or the Chicago neo-Aristotelians (R.S. Crane, Richard McKeown, et al.), or even bluff old Squire Henry Fielding, then plot is the mainstay of drama, as of the novel. This has often been held to be particularly so of detective fiction. On the other hand, Raymond Chandler was notoriously cavalier about the ‘what, who, and why’ of narrative causation, and Edmund Wilson famously asked, ‘Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?’

It would seem that voice and character (Peter Corris’s Cliff Hardy, Gary Disher’s Detective Inspector Hal Challis, Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan, MP) are as important as plot, if not on occasion more so. Milieu is crucial: think of Hardy’s Sydney, Peter Temple’s Melbourne, Carl Hiassen’s Florida, Elmore Leonard’s Detroit and Miami. Plot Rules, OK? Not! Voice is everything. Here’s quintessential Corris:

Read more: Don Anderson reviews ‘Master’s Mates’ by Peter Corris, ‘Kittyhawk Down’ by Garry Disher, and...

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John Monfries reviews ‘A Short History Of Indonesia: The Unlikely Nation?’ by Colin Brown
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This is a welcome addition to the historical literature about Indonesia. Aimed at new readers with limited or no knowledge of Indonesia, and written in an informal and accessible style, it makes an interesting contrast with the other well-known history in this field, Merle Ricklefs’s History of Modern Indonesia. When Ricklefs produced his second edition about ten years ago (he published a third expanded edition in 2001), the very existence of the Indonesian state was not as problematic as it now seems. Scholars could still talk without hesitation of a ‘history of Indonesia’. These days, the future of the country as a single state is more contested than at any time since the 1950s. Hence Brown’s subtitle, ‘The Unlikely Nation?’ He explains in the foreword that, since the idea of a united archipelago is so recent, ‘in a sense the book has been written backwards, using the Indonesian state and nation at the end of the twentieth century as its starting or defining point’.
Book 1 Title: A Short History Of Indonesia
Book 1 Subtitle: The Unlikely Nation?
Book Author: Colin Brown
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 288pp, 1 86508 838 2
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This is a welcome addition to the historical literature about Indonesia. Aimed at new readers with limited or no knowledge of Indonesia, and written in an informal and accessible style, it makes an interesting contrast with the other well-known history in this field, Merle Ricklefs’s History of Modern Indonesia. When Ricklefs produced his second edition about ten years ago (he published a third expanded edition in 2001), the very existence of the Indonesian state was not as problematic as it now seems. Scholars could still talk without hesitation of a ‘history of Indonesia’. These days, the future of the country as a single state is more contested than at any time since the 1950s. Hence Brown’s subtitle, ‘The Unlikely Nation?’ He explains in the foreword that, since the idea of a united archipelago is so recent, ‘in a sense the book has been written backwards, using the Indonesian state and nation at the end of the twentieth century as its starting or defining point’.

Read more: John Monfries reviews ‘A Short History Of Indonesia: The Unlikely Nation?’ by Colin Brown

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Contents Category: Advances
Custom Article Title: Advances – August 2003
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Vale Glen Tomasetti
Glen Tomasetti (born in 1929) – author, poet and folksinger – died on June 25. Tomasetti’s 1976 novel, Thoroughly Decent People, was the first book published by McPhee Gribble (the second was Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip). Her novel Man of Letters was adapted for the ABC by Alma de Groen. Tomasetti continued to write poetry into her last months. Her uncompleted biography of Hepzibah Menuhin was almost twenty years in the making.
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Vale Glen Tomasetti

Glen Tomasetti (born in 1929) – author, poet and folksinger – died on June 25. Tomasetti’s 1976 novel, Thoroughly Decent People, was the first book published by McPhee Gribble (the second was Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip). Her novel Man of Letters was adapted for the ABC by Alma de Groen. Tomasetti continued to write poetry into her last months. Her uncompleted biography of Hepzibah Menuhin was almost twenty years in the making.

… and Clem Christesen

C.B. (‘Clem’) Christesen – founding Editor of Meanjin – died on June 28, aged ninety-two. Christesen established the journal in Brisbane at the end of 1940, and relocated it to Melbourne in 1945. Ever since, it has been based at the University of Melbourne. Bimonthly at first, it has been quarterly since 1943.

… and Oriel Gray

Oriel Gray, a pioneer and stalwart of Australian theatre, died on June 30, aged eighty-three. In 1955 Gray’s The Torrents was voted the best play by the Playwrights’ Advisory Board, sharing this award with Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Gray also wrote for radio and television, and published a memoir, Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman (1985), and a novel, The Animal Shop (1990).

A Second Salt-lick

The second issue (‘Winter 2003’) of this bright new poetry quarterly looks every bit as impressive as the first, with poems by Thomas Shapcott, Anthony Lawrence, Jill Jones and Judith Beveridge (one of our two featured poets this month), among many others. Now all Salt-lick needs to do is to clear that notorious third-issue hurdle. Help it over by subscribing: 104 Rennie Street, East Coburg, or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 Good Works

Australian author–illustrator Bob Graham has won this year’s Kate Greenaway Medal for his illustrations in the picture book Jethro Bryde, Fairy Child. This is the UK’s leading award for illustrators. Laudably, Graham has donated his prize money (£5000) to groups assisting asylum seekers and refugees in Australia and the UK.

Off to Shep

Readers in northern Victoria and southern New South Wales will be interested in the 2003 Country Festival of Writing, which will be held at the Goulbourn-Ovens Institute of TAFE, Shepparton, from September 5 to 7. Presenters will include Morag Fraser, Michael McGirr and Aileen Kelly. Contact Pat or Bev Crudden on (03) 5821 8217 or write to PO Box 2155, Shepparton 3632.

National Australian Maritime Museum

Oceans of Stories: Illustrations from Australian Children’s Books is a new exhibition assembled by the National Australian Maritime Museum and the Children’s Book Council. The theme, Oceans of Stories, will apply to Children’s Book Week in August this year. The exhibition, featuring more than 100 works by nineteen leading Australian children’s book illustrators, runs until November 2.

My Life As a Celebrity Author

Andreas Gaile reviews Peter Carey’s new novel on page 10. The author will discuss My Life As a Fake at the Seymour Centre on August 18, at 7 pm On August 25, at the same time, but this time at its bookshop, Gleebooks will also feature Annie Proulx, back in Australia to take part in the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.

This issue has been produced at a time of some difficulty. I am indebted to Anne-Marie Thomas (working on her first issue as Assistant Editor) and Dianne Schallmeiner for all their support in recent weeks. Ed.

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Jennifer Strauss reviews ‘Bluestocking in Patagonia’ by Anne Whitehead
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In Paradise Mislaid, Anne Whitehead captivated readers with a nicely judged blend of elements. Here was a documentary that interwove two travellers’ tales, each with the resonance of quest narratives. Those ‘peculiar people’ who went off to Paraguay as part of William Lane’s experimental Utopian settlement were seeking a just community where the labourer would not only be worthy of his hire, but actually receive it; while Whitehead was pursuing the historian’s endless quest to bring back into present memory the always receding reality of the past. But Whitehead’s journey was not made only in the mind or in the archives: it had a literal dimension, involving following physically ‘in the steps of’ her subject. This led to an interesting relationship between past and present in her work, a layered intercutting, sometimes positing connection, sometimes disjunction. The effect was analogous to the intercutting techniques of documentaries, and it’s not surprising to find that Whitehead has worked extensively as television producer, film director and scriptwriter. It also offered, in a way, a gentle rebuff to any undeconstructed readerly yearning for the complete and logically sequential narrative that we might once have thought history could give us.
Book 1 Title: Bluestocking in Patagonia
Book Author: Anne Whitehead
Book 1 Biblio: Profile, $35 hb, 312pp, 1 86197 504 X
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In Paradise Mislaid, Anne Whitehead captivated readers with a nicely judged blend of elements. Here was a documentary that interwove two travellers’ tales, each with the resonance of quest narratives. Those ‘peculiar people’ who went off to Paraguay as part of William Lane’s experimental Utopian settlement were seeking a just community where the labourer would not only be worthy of his hire, but actually receive it; while Whitehead was pursuing the historian’s endless quest to bring back into present memory the always receding reality of the past. But Whitehead’s journey was not made only in the mind or in the archives: it had a literal dimension, involving following physically ‘in the steps of’ her subject. This led to an interesting relationship between past and present in her work, a layered intercutting, sometimes positing connection, sometimes disjunction. The effect was analogous to the intercutting techniques of documentaries, and it’s not surprising to find that Whitehead has worked extensively as television producer, film director and scriptwriter. It also offered, in a way, a gentle rebuff to any undeconstructed readerly yearning for the complete and logically sequential narrative that we might once have thought history could give us.

Read more: Jennifer Strauss reviews ‘Bluestocking in Patagonia’ by Anne Whitehead

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Neal Blewett reviews ‘Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader’ by Marilyn Dodkin
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Over the past few years, Bob Carr has been tweaking the veils that shroud his inner self. In essays, speeches and book reviews, he has teased and titillated us with glimpses of his diary and extracts from his unpublished autobiographical novel, Titanic Forces. Now, with Marilyn Dodkin’s Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader, built around Carr’s personal diary, we have a grand disrobing. Although she has used Hansard reports, newspaper files and interviews, there would be no publishable work without the diary, quotations from which average two per page. Indeed Carr’s words constitute some thirty per cent of the book. The diary provides the work’s narrative structure, and, when the diarist flags, so does the book. A result of this approach is that the author’s rather pedestrian prose is often outshone by the diarist’s vivid and sardonic style.
Book 1 Title: Bob Carr
Book 1 Subtitle: The Reluctant Leader
Book Author: Marilyn Dodkin
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $29.95 pb, 301 pp
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Over the past few years, Bob Carr has been tweaking the veils that shroud his inner self. In essays, speeches and book reviews, he has teased and titillated us with glimpses of his diary and extracts from his unpublished autobiographical novel, Titanic Forces. Now, with Marilyn Dodkin’s Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader, built around Carr’s personal diary, we have a grand disrobing. Although she has used Hansard reports, newspaper files and interviews, there would be no publishable work without the diary, quotations from which average two per page. Indeed Carr’s words constitute some thirty per cent of the book. The diary provides the work’s narrative structure, and, when the diarist flags, so does the book. A result of this approach is that the author’s rather pedestrian prose is often outshone by the diarist’s vivid and sardonic style.

Read more: Neal Blewett reviews ‘Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader’ by Marilyn Dodkin

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Alice Spigelman reviews ‘Dream Home’ by Mark Wakely
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A fascination with the kinds of abodes we humans inhabit, and dream about, is the central theme around which Mark Wakely has spun his wide-ranging observations, anecdotes and personal stories. The topic lends itself to as many possibilities as you wish to make it. In order to narrow the focus, the author could have gone several ways. One approach would have been to write for a specific audience, perhaps for people interested in building a home. Or the book could have become a memoir of observations and people around their favoured homes. The author has instead decided to present stories, facts and observations that seemed relevant to specific periods of life, from childhood to old age, even death (what kind of mausoleum would you like as your final resting place, baroque or minimalist?). Although a valid approach, the book’s form presents particular problems.
Book 1 Title: Dream Home
Book Author: Mark Wakely
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 236 pp
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A fascination with the kinds of abodes we humans inhabit, and dream about, is the central theme around which Mark Wakely has spun his wide-ranging observations, anecdotes and personal stories. The topic lends itself to as many possibilities as you wish to make it. In order to narrow the focus, the author could have gone several ways. One approach would have been to write for a specific audience, perhaps for people interested in building a home. Or the book could have become a memoir of observations and people around their favoured homes. The author has instead decided to present stories, facts and observations that seemed relevant to specific periods of life, from childhood to old age, even death (what kind of mausoleum would you like as your final resting place, baroque or minimalist?). Although a valid approach, the book’s form presents particular problems.

Read more: Alice Spigelman reviews ‘Dream Home’ by Mark Wakely

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Sarah Thomas reviews ‘Lina Bryans: Rare Modern 1909–2000’
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Lina Bryans’s painting The Babe is Wise captures the ‘insouciant chic’ of the New Woman in 1940: independent and self-assured, the subject stares at the viewer from beneath a sharply angled hat. A portrait of the artist’s close friend, author Jean Campbell (whose novel inspired the painting’s title), The Babe is Wise became Bryans’s most famous painting, and its subject captures the artist’s own attitude to life.

Gillian Forwood’s handsome new book, Lina Bryans: Rare Modern 1909–2000, recalls the life and work of a brave, unconventional and generous woman who single-mindedly pursued a career as an artist from the late 1930s until her death three years ago. This lavish Miegunyah Press publication serves both author and artist well, reproducing numerous images in colour, many for the first time.
Book 1 Title: Lina Bryans
Book 1 Subtitle: Rare Modern 1909-2000
Book Author: Gillian Forwood
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $89.95 hb, 214pp, 0 522 85037 5
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Lina Bryans’s painting The Babe is Wise captures the ‘insouciant chic’ of the New Woman in 1940: independent and self-assured, the subject stares at the viewer from beneath a sharply angled hat. A portrait of the artist’s close friend, author Jean Campbell (whose novel inspired the painting’s title), The Babe is Wise became Bryans’s most famous painting, and its subject captures the artist’s own attitude to life.

Gillian Forwood’s handsome new book, Lina Bryans: Rare Modern 1909–2000, recalls the life and work of a brave, unconventional and generous woman who single-mindedly pursued a career as an artist from the late 1930s until her death three years ago. This lavish Miegunyah Press publication serves both author and artist well, reproducing numerous images in colour, many for the first time.

Read more: Sarah Thomas reviews ‘Lina Bryans: Rare Modern 1909–2000’

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Marion J. Campbell reviews ‘Literary Culture in Jacobean England: Reading 1621’ by Paul Salzman
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Like celebrities in Daniel Boorstin’s celebrated definition, some years – 1066, 1492, 1914 – are famous for being famous. Just published is Christopher Lee’s 1603: A Turning Point in British History, which follows John Wills’s Global History of 1688. James Chandler’s magisterial ‘commentary on a moment in the history of a literary culture’, England in 1819, repeats for its title that of a Shelley sonnet reflecting on the state of the nation in the year of the Peterloo massacre. Freezing the chronological progression of ‘history’ at an arbitrarily constructed ‘moment of time’, date-based literary histories allow a detailed consideration of how texts relate to their contexts.
Book 1 Title: Literary Culture in Jacobean England
Book 1 Subtitle: Reading 1621
Book Author: Paul Salzman
Book 1 Biblio: Palgrave Macmillan, $158 hb, 268 pp
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Like celebrities in Daniel Boorstin’s celebrated definition, some years – 1066, 1492, 1914 – are famous for being famous. Just published is Christopher Lee’s 1603: A Turning Point in British History, which follows John Wills’s Global History of 1688. James Chandler’s magisterial ‘commentary on a moment in the history of a literary culture’, England in 1819, repeats for its title that of a Shelley sonnet reflecting on the state of the nation in the year of the Peterloo massacre. Freezing the chronological progression of ‘history’ at an arbitrarily constructed ‘moment of time’, date-based literary histories allow a detailed consideration of how texts relate to their contexts.

Read more: Marion J. Campbell reviews ‘Literary Culture in Jacobean England: Reading 1621’ by Paul Salzman

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Stuart Macintyre reviews ‘Cultural History in Australia’ by Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White (eds)
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The editors of this book declare that cultural history is fashionable, so fashionable that it stands in for what might otherwise be known as ‘general history’ or even just ‘history’. ‘When historians set out to write the history of everything,’ they claim, ‘these days they are most likely to imagine themselves writing cultural history.’

Why, then, is it necessary to assemble a collection of essays on the subject? It cannot be simply to celebrate the triumph of this form of history, since many of the contributors are still urging its attractions. The purpose might be to demonstrate the range and accomplishment of cultural history in Australia, since the collection includes some distinguished local practitioners – except that their contributions to the genre are well established and readily available. Alternatively, such collections can provide the opportunity to consider the theory and method of cultural history, and quite a few of the contributors do so – but mostly with reference to their own practice.
Book 1 Title: Cultural History in Australia
Book Author: Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $39.95 pb, 284 pp
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The editors of this book declare that cultural history is fashionable, so fashionable that it stands in for what might otherwise be known as ‘general history’ or even just ‘history’. ‘When historians set out to write the history of everything,’ they claim, ‘these days they are most likely to imagine themselves writing cultural history.’

Why, then, is it necessary to assemble a collection of essays on the subject? It cannot be simply to celebrate the triumph of this form of history, since many of the contributors are still urging its attractions. The purpose might be to demonstrate the range and accomplishment of cultural history in Australia, since the collection includes some distinguished local practitioners – except that their contributions to the genre are well established and readily available. Alternatively, such collections can provide the opportunity to consider the theory and method of cultural history, and quite a few of the contributors do so – but mostly with reference to their own practice.

Read more: Stuart Macintyre reviews ‘Cultural History in Australia’ by Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White (eds)

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Michael McGirr reviews ‘The Trickster’ by Jane Downing
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This story is told from a number of points of view. One of them is that of Joy, a woman with impeccable light Green political credentials, a job in a suburban library in Canberra and a mother who seems to have a clearer idea of what Joy should be doing than Joy does herself. Joy’s partner, Geoff, takes a job at the Office of Planning in the Marshall Islands. His motives are good. He’d like to help. That’s his problem. He has walked into a culture where much happens but nobody ever seems to do anything. Jane Downing creates both this world and its visitors with a wry sense of humour. She notes that Geoff finds the move to a stress-free environment very stressful. He sets about drafting a plan for improving the local fishing industry. After a while, he discovers an almost identical plan, completed five years earlier. Nothing had been done about it.
Book 1 Title: The Trickster
Book Author: Jane Downing
Book 1 Biblio: Pandanus, $29.95 pb, 144pp
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This story is told from a number of points of view. One of them is that of Joy, a woman with impeccable light Green political credentials, a job in a suburban library in Canberra and a mother who seems to have a clearer idea of what Joy should be doing than Joy does herself. Joy’s partner, Geoff, takes a job at the Office of Planning in the Marshall Islands. His motives are good. He’d like to help. That’s his problem. He has walked into a culture where much happens but nobody ever seems to do anything. Jane Downing creates both this world and its visitors with a wry sense of humour. She notes that Geoff finds the move to a stress-free environment very stressful. He sets about drafting a plan for improving the local fishing industry. After a while, he discovers an almost identical plan, completed five years earlier. Nothing had been done about it.

Read more: Michael McGirr reviews ‘The Trickster’ by Jane Downing

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Peter Pierce reviews ‘The Tyrant’s Novel’ by Tom Keneally
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: The War against Others
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The Tyrant’s Novel is Tom Keneally’s twenty-fifth novel (if you don’t count the revision of The Fear as By the Line, or the two that he wrote as William Coyle of World War II). It is also one of his most unusual – satirical in purpose, sombre in tone. What is not different is the author’s willingness to take risks and freshly to venture.
Book 1 Title: The Tyrant’s Novel
Book Author: Tom Keneally
Book 1 Biblio: Doubleday, $35 hb, 294pp
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The Tyrant’s Novel is Tom Keneally’s twenty-fifth novel (if you don’t count the revision of The Fear as By the Line, or the two that he wrote as William Coyle of World War II). It is also one of his most unusual – satirical in purpose, sombre in tone. What is not different is the author’s willingness to take risks and freshly to venture.

Read more: Peter Pierce reviews ‘The Tyrant’s Novel’ by Tom Keneally

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Libby Robin reviews ‘Wool: The Australian Story’ by Richard Woldendorp, Roger McDonald and Amanda Burdon
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Contents Category: Fashion
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Article Title: Hard Hooves on an Old Soil
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The extraordinary photographer Richard Woldendorp joins writers Roger McDonald and Amanda Burdon in Wool, a sumptuous presentation that celebrates with every glossy page. But is Wool a celebration or a wake? Why publish such a book in 2003? Who is it for?
Book 1 Title: Wool
Book 1 Subtitle: The Australian Story
Book Author: Richard Woldendorp, Roger McDonald and Amanda Burdon
Book 1 Biblio: Fremantle Press, $59.95 hb, 232pp
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The extraordinary photographer Richard Woldendorp joins writers Roger McDonald and Amanda Burdon in Wool, a sumptuous presentation that celebrates with every glossy page. But is Wool a celebration or a wake? Why publish such a book in 2003? Who is it for?

Read more: Libby Robin reviews ‘Wool: The Australian Story’ by Richard Woldendorp, Roger McDonald and Amanda...

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Hugh Dillon reviews ‘A History Of Criminal Law In New South Wales: The Colonial Period 1788¬1900’ by G.D. Woods
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: Peculiar Mercy
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If economics is a ‘dismal science’, criminology may be considered a hopeful one. Its deepest roots are to be found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly the belief in progress and the improvement of human nature. It probably occurred to very few of those sweating aboard the twelve filthy transports that sailed into Sydney Harbour in January 1788 that they were the first participants in an extraordinary social experiment in which viciousness, legal principle and mercy were to be held in constant tension.
Book 1 Title: A History Of Criminal Law In New South Wales
Book 1 Subtitle: The Colonial Period 1788-1900
Book Author: Hugh Dillon
Book 1 Biblio: Federation Press, $69.50 hb, 480pp
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If economics is a ‘dismal science’, criminology may be considered a hopeful one. Its deepest roots are to be found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly the belief in progress and the improvement of human nature. It probably occurred to very few of those sweating aboard the twelve filthy transports that sailed into Sydney Harbour in January 1788 that they were the first participants in an extraordinary social experiment in which viciousness, legal principle and mercy were to be held in constant tension.

Read more: Hugh Dillon reviews ‘A History Of Criminal Law In New South Wales: The Colonial Period 1788¬1900’...

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Allan Patience reviews ‘Continental Drift: Australia’s search for a regional identity’ by Rawdon Dalrymple and ‘Making Australian Foreign Policy’ by Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: Tensions in the Neighbourhood
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John Burton, Walter Crocker, Paul Hasluck, Gregory Clark, Burce Grant, James Dunn, Alan Renouf, Stuart Harris, Richard Woolcott, and Alison and Richard Broinowski are all former diplomats who have written (or are writing) about foreign policy and Australia’s regional and global engagements. Two of the authors reviewed here – Rawdon Dalrymple and Allan Gyngell – can be included in the list. Dalrymple had a distinguished career as an Australian ambassador in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Japan and the US. He spent his immediate post-retirement years as a visiting professor in the University of Sydney. Gyngell has worked at the coalface of Australian foreign affairs for many years. He was recently appointed founding Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, the most positive sign on the foreign policy analysis horizon for a long time.
Book 1 Title: Continental Drift
Book 1 Subtitle: Australia's search for a regional identity
Book Author: Rawdon Dalrymple
Book 1 Biblio: Ashgate, $138 hb, 243 pp
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Book 2 Title: Making Australian Foreign Policy
Book 2 Author: Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley
Book 2 Biblio: Cambridge University Press, $46.95 hb, 289 pp
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John Burton, Walter Crocker, Paul Hasluck, Gregory Clark, Burce Grant, James Dunn, Alan Renouf, Stuart Harris, Richard Woolcott, and Alison and Richard Broinowski are all former diplomats who have written (or are writing) about foreign policy and Australia’s regional and global engagements. Two of the authors reviewed here – Rawdon Dalrymple and Allan Gyngell – can be included in the list. Dalrymple had a distinguished career as an Australian ambassador in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Japan and the US. He spent his immediate post-retirement years as a visiting professor in the University of Sydney. Gyngell has worked at the coalface of Australian foreign affairs for many years. He was recently appointed founding Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, the most positive sign on the foreign policy analysis horizon for a long time.

Read more: Allan Patience reviews ‘Continental Drift: Australia’s search for a regional identity’ by Rawdon...

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Christina Hill reviews ‘The Secret Burial’ by Penelope Sell and ‘The Alphabet of Light and Dark’ by Danielle Wood
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: A Social Pulse
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The bush gothic of Barbara Baynton shapes the world of this promising first novel from Penelope Sell. The Secret Burial deals with the brutal coming of age of fifteen-year-old Elise. The setting is a harsh, drought-stricken rural environment where people, fauna and the environment are barely surviving. Elise is catapulted into adulthood by the accidental death of her alcoholic mother, Lizzie, who electrocutes herself when drunkenly trying to repair the washing machine. Afraid that she and her younger brother, Jeremy, will be separated, Elise asks her old neigh-bour, Isaac, to help her bury her mother and tell no one.
Book 1 Title: The Secret Burial
Book Author: Penelope Sell
Book 1 Biblio: Flamingo, $21.95 pb, 251 pp
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Book 2 Title: The Alphabet of Light and Dark
Book 2 Author: Danielle Wood
Book 2 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $21.95 pb, 359 pp
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The bush gothic of Barbara Baynton shapes the world of this promising first novel from Penelope Sell. The Secret Burial deals with the brutal coming of age of fifteen-year-old Elise. The setting is a harsh, drought-stricken rural environment where people, fauna and the environment are barely surviving. Elise is catapulted into adulthood by the accidental death of her alcoholic mother, Lizzie, who electrocutes herself when drunkenly trying to repair the washing machine. Afraid that she and her younger brother, Jeremy, will be separated, Elise asks her old neigh-bour, Isaac, to help her bury her mother and tell no one.

Read more: Christina Hill reviews ‘The Secret Burial’ by Penelope Sell and ‘The Alphabet of Light and Dark’...

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Christopher Bantick reviews ‘Thylacine: The tragic tale of the Tasmanian tiger’ by David Owen and ‘The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The history and the extinction of the thylacine’ by Robert Paddle
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Contents Category: Natural History
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Article Title: Tenacious Tiger
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The Tasmanian Tiger or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) continues to stalk the Tasmanian imagination. Miasmas resembling it figure in reports from tourists and bushwalkers, who happen upon the slinking apparition in the wilderness. Fanciful meanderings of wishful hearts and minds? Perhaps. Tantalising suspicions that the thylacine may still exist will not go away. No matter that the last thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. With it died a species, but not the legend
Book 1 Title: Thylacine
Book 1 Subtitle: The tragic tale of the Tasmanian tiger
Book Author: David Owen
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 hb, 228 pp
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Book 2 Title: The Last Tasmanian Tiger
Book 2 Subtitle: The history and the extinction of the thylacine
Book 2 Author: Robert Paddle
Book 2 Biblio: Cambridge University Publishing, $29.95 pb, 283 pp
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The Tasmanian Tiger or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) continues to stalk the Tasmanian imagination. Miasmas resembling it figure in reports from tourists and bushwalkers, who happen upon the slinking apparition in the wilderness. Fanciful meanderings of wishful hearts and minds? Perhaps. Tantalising suspicions that the thylacine may still exist will not go away. No matter that the last thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. With it died a species, but not the legend

Perhaps the interest in the thylacine suggests something more than an insistent sense that a small community may have thwarted nineteenth-century eradication. The parochial and national, even international, desire to find the thylacine may be associated with the mysteries of the Tasmanian wilderness. Then there is the sense of guilt that it was deliberately hunted to extinction and that stuttering attempts at preservation were belated. By the 1930s the survival of a population in the wild was untenable.

Read more: Christopher Bantick reviews ‘Thylacine: The tragic tale of the Tasmanian tiger’ by David Owen and...

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Ian Morrison reviews ‘A Short History of the University of Melbourne’ by Stuart Macintyre and R.J.W. Selleck and ‘The Shop: The University of Melbourne’ by R.J.W. Selleck
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Contents Category: Education
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Article Title: The Good Old School
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I have a dreadful confession to make: I chose not to study at the University of Melbourne. Got the marks, went elsewhere. My family and teachers attributed this bizarre behaviour to the perversity of adolescence. It is true that I knew little about myself, and even less about the world, but I could see that I would not last a week at the University of Melbourne. One look at the place had put me right off. Coming from a provincial high school, you could feel it in the air – the automatic, often unconscious, snobbery of rich private schools. You can find them today weighing into current debates with their personal testimony, citing the private benefits that their University of Melbourne degree brought them, asserting that they could have paid a lot more for it than they did, attacking compulsory amenities fees in the same breath, and (noblesse oblige!) finding ingenious ways to create safely limited opportunities for the ‘genuinely disadvantaged’.
Book 1 Title: A Short History of the University of Melbourne
Book Author: Stuart Macintyre and R.J.W. Selleck
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $24.95 pb, 193 pp
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Book 2 Title: The Shop
Book 2 Subtitle: The University of Melbourne
Book 2 Author: R.J.W. Selleck
Book 2 Biblio: MUP, $80 hb, 875 pp
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I have a dreadful confession to make: I chose not to study at the University of Melbourne. Got the marks, went elsewhere. My family and teachers attributed this bizarre behaviour to the perversity of adolescence. It is true that I knew little about myself, and even less about the world, but I could see that I would not last a week at the University of Melbourne. One look at the place had put me right off. Coming from a provincial high school, you could feel it in the air – the automatic, often unconscious, snobbery of rich private schools. You can find them today weighing into current debates with their personal testimony, citing the private benefits that their University of Melbourne degree brought them, asserting that they could have paid a lot more for it than they did, attacking compulsory amenities fees in the same breath, and (noblesse oblige!) finding ingenious ways to create safely limited opportunities for the ‘genuinely disadvantaged’.

Read more: Ian Morrison reviews ‘A Short History of the University of Melbourne’ by Stuart Macintyre and...

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Chong Weng-Ho reviews ‘Art Deco: 1910–1939’ edited Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton, and Ghislaine Wood
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Contents Category: Art
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Article Title: Dressed for Deco
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A thirty-ish Peter O’Toole becoming an aged schoolmaster with powdered apple cheeks. I was a child when I saw the remake of Goodbye Mr Chips in 1970, but even then I could see that wrinkly make-up will never wash. More fascinating than the film was watching it in Walter Burley Griffin’s Capitol Theatre in Melbourne. The ceiling’s cunningly layered pleats of multi-faceted fittings were a million triangles softened in an illuminated cloud of pink and rose and yellow hues. It was my first knockout encounter with the style known as Art Deco.
Book 1 Title: Art Deco
Book 1 Subtitle: 1910-1939
Book Author: Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton and Ghislaine Wood
Book 1 Biblio: V&A Publications, $120 hb, 464 pp,
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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A thirty-ish Peter O’Toole becoming an aged schoolmaster with powdered apple cheeks. I was a child when I saw the remake of Goodbye Mr Chips in 1970, but even then I could see that wrinkly make-up will never wash. More fascinating than the film was watching it in Walter Burley Griffin’s Capitol Theatre in Melbourne. The ceiling’s cunningly layered pleats of multi-faceted fittings were a million triangles softened in an illuminated cloud of pink and rose and yellow hues. It was my first knockout encounter with the style known as Art Deco.

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is currently hosting a ‘sumptuous’ survey of the period. Quoting curator Ghislaine Wood that the central themes are ‘fashion, glamour, commerce’, Time magazine’s review presses the buttons: Top Hat, ocean liners, Cartier (the scarab brooch), streamlined cocktail shakers and radios, and stepped pyramid skyscrapers …The list evokes a suspension of glittering objects in amber.

Read more: Chong Weng-Ho reviews ‘Art Deco: 1910–1939’ edited Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton, and Ghislaine Wood

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