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Absolutely Revolting

February–March 1986, no. 78

Welcome to the February–March 1986 issue of Australian Book Review. 
Helen Garner reviews That Eye The Sky by Tim Winton
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Custom Article Title: Helen Garner reviews <em>That Eye The Sky</em> by Tim Winton
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This book is about a twelve-year-old boy called Ort Flack, into whose life, at a moment of drastic need, bursts none other than God, in the form of a silvery white cloud. The cloud has been there all along, hanging over the house, a personal vision of Ort’s, as mysterious and troubling and comforting to ...
Book 1 Title: That Eye The Sky
Book Author: Tim Winton
Book 1 Biblio: McPhee Gribble, 150 pp, $14.95 pb, 086914 0302
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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This book is about a twelve-year-old boy called Ort Flack, into whose life, at a moment of drastic need, bursts none other than God, in the form of a silvery white cloud. The cloud has been there all along, hanging over the house, a personal vision of Ort’s, as mysterious and troubling and comforting to him as certain other strange things that he alone notices – the way the contents of his mother’s kitchen jars turn into jewels, and the bell that he hears ringing in the forest outside the house – bong, it goes, bong. But God, as a cloud? This is not your ordinary Australian realism! Whatever our attitudes might be towards this God business, whether or not we acknowledge the existence of Mighty Forces, we can’t fail to be struck by the originality, the skill, the nerve of this novel.

It flaunts its Southern US influences. Flannery O’Connor is in there, gliding from tree to tree just outside our field of vision. But it’s thoroughly Australian in idiom and setting.

Ort (short for Morton: ‘Ort is also a name for bum in our family’) tells his story in the present tense, first person, urgently, clumsily, just as it happens – no emotion recollected in tranquillity, but all in the heat of the moment, slangy and ignorant, full of anxiety and dogged hope.

Read more: Helen Garner reviews 'That Eye The Sky' by Tim Winton

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Starters & Writers by Mark Rubbo
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Contents Category: Advances
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Many Australian publishers question the ability of overseas publishers to market and distribute a London published book by an Australian writer in Australia. The emotional and commercial commitment to a book by a distributor, they argue, is not the same as that of a publisher. An Australian publisher also has a better perception of the market and the quantities required. In the case of the market being underestimated, reprints of sufficient quantity can be supplied relatively quickly. In general my experience as a bookseller would confirm these comments.
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Many Australian publishers question the ability of overseas publishers to market and distribute a London published book by an Australian writer in Australia. The emotional and commercial commitment to a book by a distributor, they argue, is not the same as that of a publisher. An Australian publisher also has a better perception of the market and the quantities required. In the case of the market being underestimated, reprints of sufficient quantity can be supplied relatively quickly. In general my experience as a bookseller would confirm these comments.

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Abbreviations by John Hanrahan
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Melbourne has Moomba and Melbourne Cup week. Sydney and Perth have cultural festivals. And so, pre-eminently, does Adelaide. Even from the backblocks of Melbourne, Adelaide Writers’ Week stirs up a real thrill.
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Melbourne has Moomba and Melbourne Cup week. Sydney and Perth have cultural festivals. And so, pre-eminently, does Adelaide. Even from the backblocks of Melbourne, Adelaide Writers’ Week stirs up a real thrill. In this issue, Andrew Taylor has written an informative and extremely interesting account of the experiences of Writers’ Week, to which he has contributed so much over the years. Writers and publishers and booklovers get together. Writers even get some media attention. For a week, at least, books are important and this is one of the great achievements of the Adelaide Festival.

Read more: 'Abbreviations' by John Hanrahan

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Laurie Clancy reviews 12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf
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Contents Category: Memoir
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The opening word of this collection of stylish essays in autobiography by David Malouf is ‘memory’; it is a word that recurs regularly throughout the text and a faculty that is central to most of Malouf’s work. Malouf is a writer perpetually in exile, forever dispossessed and these essays, like most of his fiction, are an attempt to recapture and retain a sense of the past; they repeat and reformulate themes that run through his creative writing. In particular, his most recent book, the collection of short stories Antipodes, can be seen to throw a good deal of light on this memoir. The author’s intimate relationship with his grandfather rather than his parents, the tension between the Old World and the New, the powers of language and narrative and the relationship between art and experience, the notion of, as one character puts it, ‘pushing ourselves to the limits of our young courage in outrageous dares’, and finally the paradoxically nostalgic rejection of the Brisbane of his boyhood to which he returns so often in his fiction – all these themes recur from the previous book and are elaborated on.
Book 1 Title: 12 Edmondstone Street
Book Author: David Malouf
Book 1 Biblio: The Australasian Publishing Company, $19.95, 134 pp, 0 7011 39706
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The opening word of this collection of stylish essays in autobiography by David Malouf is ‘memory’; it is a word that recurs regularly throughout the text and a faculty that is central to most of Malouf’s work. Malouf is a writer perpetually in exile, forever dispossessed and these essays, like most of his fiction, are an attempt to recapture and retain a sense of the past; they repeat and reformulate themes that run through his creative writing. In particular, his most recent book, the collection of short stories Antipodes, can be seen to throw a good deal of light on this memoir. The author’s intimate relationship with his grandfather rather than his parents, the tension between the Old World and the New, the powers of language and narrative and the relationship between art and experience, the notion of, as one character puts it, ‘pushing ourselves to the limits of our young courage in outrageous dares’, and finally the paradoxically nostalgic rejection of the Brisbane of his boyhood to which he returns so often in his fiction – all these themes recur from the previous book and are elaborated on.

Read more: Laurie Clancy reviews '12 Edmondstone Street' by David Malouf

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Michael Heyward reviews Travelling by Andrew Taylor
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Contents Category: Poetry
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The immediate virtues of this book are not difficult to see: Andrew Taylor is a skilled poet who understands the workings of syntax and rhythm, and who knows how to shape his poems into unified patterns with an apparent minimum of fuss. The poems tend to have a regular and easy pace; their fluency is considerable. Taylor writes with a genuine confidence and a literary awareness which is for the most part sophisticated and supple. His diction is uniform and he is careful not to overreach himself. There is no visible strain in the whole performance.
Book 1 Title: Travelling
Book Author: Andrew Taylor
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, 94 pp, $14.95 pb
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The immediate virtues of this book are not difficult to see: Andrew Taylor is a skilled poet who understands the workings of syntax and rhythm, and who knows how to shape his poems into unified patterns with an apparent minimum of fuss. The poems tend to have a regular and easy pace; their fluency is considerable. Taylor writes with a genuine confidence and a literary awareness which is for the most part sophisticated and supple. His diction is uniform and he is careful not to overreach himself. There is no visible strain in the whole performance.

All this may sound like a recipe for success, and perhaps it is. But I should say I found Travelling a disappointing and often frustrating read. In his quest for the polished and well-made poem, Taylor runs the risk not just of etiolating the particular experiences which inform the writing but (what in fact adds up to the same thing) of producing a brand of writing whose art is not vibrant or varied enough to communicate ideas and experiences in any primary way. Poetry is of course a skilled activity, but at this level of expression skill becomes an abstraction: it is a necessary but not in itself sufficient quality, and durable poetry will always be greater than the sum of its technical parts.

Read more: Michael Heyward reviews 'Travelling' by Andrew Taylor

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Chris Wallace-Crabbe reviews Boy with A Telescope by Jan Owen and The Twofold Place by Alan Gould
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The ways of poetry are many but sometimes, as it turns out, they are simply oppositional. These two new volumes of poetry from Angus & Robertson could easily have been produced as the occasion for some compare-and-contrast parlour game. The first, and continuing, thing to be said about them is that Gould is strong on artistic form whereas Owen is strong on life. The harder question to ask about any writer is whether it is better to be good at forms or to be full of life. Both, you will say, of course; but then we can’t have everything.
Book 1 Title: Boy with A Telescope
Book Author: Jan Owen
Book 1 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, p. 71, $9.95
Book 2 Title: The Twofold Place
Book 2 Author: Alan Gould
Book 2 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, 65p., $9.95 pb.
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The ways of poetry are many but sometimes, as it turns out, they are simply oppositional. These two new volumes of poetry from Angus & Robertson could easily have been produced as the occasion for some compare-and-contrast parlour game. The first, and continuing, thing to be said about them is that Gould is strong on artistic form whereas Owen is strong on life. The harder question to ask about any writer is whether it is better to be good at forms or to be full of life. Both, you will say, of course; but then we can’t have everything.

To the books, then. Jan Owen is a poet who has been looking extremely interesting for several years. Her first book, Boy with a Telescope buoyantly confirms this impression, though it also suggests that she is not as self-critical as she might be. But then who of us is? What it does suggest further, as several other recent titles have done, is that Angus & Robertson could well give its editors more teeth, in order to show its poets off to best advantage. But enough of this general speculation.

Read more: Chris Wallace-Crabbe reviews 'Boy with A Telescope' by Jan Owen and 'The Twofold Place' by Alan...

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Writers’ Week, Adelaide Festival - When writers sit down together by Andrew Taylor
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Article Title: When Writers Sit Down Together
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Have you ever noticed how otherwise intelligent journalists find it almost impossible to write seriously about Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week? Predictably, they seem compelled to joke about the prodigious quantity of booze consumed – but perhaps they have never attended a business or an academic convention. Then well-known visiting writers apparently must be called ‘literary lions’ – an alliterative cliché suggesting that these writers are somehow not really human. There is usually some marvelling at the miracle that for once the big names (the lions) haven’t dropped out – as though there have been no Writers’ Weeks since 1976, the last time they did drop out. And inevitably there is an awkward, giggly tone to their articles, suggesting acute discomfort or embarrassment.
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Have you ever noticed how otherwise intelligent journalists find it almost impossible to write seriously about Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week? Predictably, they seem compelled to joke about the prodigious quantity of booze consumed – but perhaps they have never attended a business or an academic convention. Then well-known visiting writers apparently must be called ‘literary lions’ – an alliterative cliché suggesting that these writers are somehow not really human. There is usually some marvelling at the miracle that for once the big names (the lions) haven’t dropped out – as though there have been no Writers’ Weeks since 1976, the last time they did drop out. And inevitably there is an awkward, giggly tone to their articles, suggesting acute discomfort or embarrassment.

Read more: 'Writers’ Week, Adelaide Festival - When writers sit down together' by Andrew Taylor

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Beverley Farmer reviews Ikons by George Papaellinas
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Contents Category: Short Stories
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On the stage or off, Peter Mavromatis is the unswerving centre of these stories. Unswerving as a focus, that is – in himself he swerves all over the place. Who and what is Peter Mavromatis? That’s what he’d like to know. His Cypriot parents and grandmother know who he should be. Sydney-born, he has grown up saddled with Greekness as a birthright and an unpayable debt. Peter Blackaeye: is he ‘Grik’? No, the Greeks at GMH decide, and drive him off the job. Australian? Not to his family, nor to many Australians.
Book 1 Title: Ikons
Book Author: George Papaellinas
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, 198 p, $5.95 pb
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On the stage or off, Peter Mavromatis is the unswerving centre of these stories. Unswerving as a focus, that is – in himself he swerves all over the place. Who and what is Peter Mavromatis? That’s what he’d like to know. His Cypriot parents and grandmother know who he should be. Sydney-born, he has grown up saddled with Greekness as a birthright and an unpayable debt. Peter Blackaeye: is he ‘Grik’? No, the Greeks at GMH decide, and drive him off the job. Australian? Not to his family, nor to many Australians.

‘Good. We can do this. It’s timely. There’s a bit of interest up now in … ah … in … um … multi-culturalism,’ muses the trendy gallery owner who puts on Peter’s sell-out (yes) – exhibition of photos – black-and-white faces mostly, from his trip to Greece. Perhaps they’re as good as the cover photo of the book: a scarved head, a marble goddess or madonna, ‘seen dim as through waterfall’. An ikon? Eikones in Greek just means ‘pictures’ or ‘images.’ Peter is an image-maker; an ikonoclast too in his (typically Australian) way. He bristles with truculent bad faith. He calls his exhibition ‘No Apologies’ …

Read more: Beverley Farmer reviews 'Ikons' by George Papaellinas

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J.C. Doyle reviews Culture and History Essays Presented to Jack Lindsay edited by Bernard Smith
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Contents Category: History
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From his first venture into print in 1923 Jack Lindsay has produced well over 150 books covering subjects as wide ranging as alchemy, ballistics, anthropology, philosophy, literary and art history, biography, and politics, as well as his own creative writings. His ‘astounding creative energy’ has deserved a large and generous book and he is well served by this collection of twenty-two essays and he is magnificently served by Bernard Smith’s editing, which, by placing the essays in illuminating sequences and juxtapositions, maps out the complexity and quality of Lindsay’s life and work. Smith’s Preface argues for the need in a volume such as this to redress the neglect in this country of Lindsay’s voluminous and wide-ranging work. The attempt deserves success.
Book 1 Title: Culture and History Essays Presented to Jack Lindsay
Book Author: Bernard Smith
Book 1 Biblio: Hale & Iremonger, 455pp, index, $24.95pb
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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From his first venture into print in 1923 Jack Lindsay has produced well over 150 books covering subjects as wide ranging as alchemy, ballistics, anthropology, philosophy, literary and art history, biography, and politics, as well as his own creative writings. His ‘astounding creative energy’ has deserved a large and generous book and he is well served by this collection of twenty-two essays and he is magnificently served by Bernard Smith’s editing, which, by placing the essays in illuminating sequences and juxtapositions, maps out the complexity and quality of Lindsay’s life and work. Smith’s Preface argues for the need in a volume such as this to redress the neglect in this country of Lindsay’s voluminous and wide-ranging work. The attempt deserves success.

Read more: J.C. Doyle reviews 'Culture and History Essays Presented to Jack Lindsay' edited by Bernard Smith

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A.F. Davies reviews Guilt by John Carroll
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Contents Category: Cultural Studies
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This odd little book could be a worthy antipodean entry in the Bead Game, the semi-religious competitive ritual that Herman Hesse in his Magister Ludi (1945) saw steadily engrossing the high intellects of the West as we neared the year 2000 CE. Players were challenged to confront the full breadth of human culture and compose a personal Hand, a sequence of allusions to past high moments of faith, science or art, whose novel juxtaposition and hidden correspondences would both deeply inform and spiritually enrich. Because they lived impotent and dejected amid the rubble of an exhausted civilisation, Hesse’s players had no more gratifying occupation, and, of course, the introduction of new beads treating of the culture of the recent past or anything faintly contemporary was severely discouraged.
Book 1 Title: Guilt
Book Author: John Carroll
Book 1 Biblio: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 264pp, $35pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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This odd little book could be a worthy antipodean entry in the Bead Game, the semi-religious competitive ritual that Herman Hesse in his Magister Ludi (1945) saw steadily engrossing the high intellects of the West as we neared the year 2000 CE. Players were challenged to confront the full breadth of human culture and compose a personal Hand, a sequence of allusions to past high moments of faith, science or art, whose novel juxtaposition and hidden correspondences would both deeply inform and spiritually enrich. Because they lived impotent and dejected amid the rubble of an exhausted civilisation, Hesse’s players had no more gratifying occupation, and, of course, the introduction of new beads treating of the culture of the recent past or anything faintly contemporary was severely discouraged.

Read more: A.F. Davies reviews 'Guilt' by John Carroll

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Dear Sir,

Laurie Muller’s reported comments on the obligations (sic) of libraries and librarians, and the state of Australian publishing (ABR, December 1985–Jan 1986) must surely invite some responses!
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Dear Sir,

Laurie Muller’s reported comments on the obligations (sic) of libraries and librarians, and the state of Australian publishing (ABR, December 1985–Jan 1986) must surely invite some responses!

I think it would be fair to say that school as well as public librarians who are responsible for book selection are more than aware of the works of Australian authors. Personally, as a librarian in charge of a private secondary school library, I make a conscious effort, using the ABR as well as other selection aids, to buy Australian works, both fiction and non-fiction. But surely Laurie Muller and Mark Rubbo are aware that there are many factors involved in book selection. These include relevance (especially for school libraries), acceptability, currency of the material, and cost, of course. The comments allegedly made by Muller about libraries ‘having to buy just one copy of every Australian book published’ is neither practical nor realistic! Those of us responsible for managing book budgets have to apportion our resources very carefully, being mindful of the factors referred to above, plus others unique to one’s institution. Criteria for book selection can and always will be debated – and are debated and discussed by professional librarians. But, speaking personally, my users’ needs must always come first.

Read more: Letters to the Editor - Feb March 1986

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Contents Category: Commentary
Custom Article Title: New lands, new literature
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Dhvanyaloka, the Literary Criterion Centre at Mysore, derives its names from a classic Indian work of literary criticism and, by way of Cambridge, from T.S. Eliot’s journal of the 1920s. The Indian work saw literature as a spreading of the light, Eliot saw it as the maintenance and renewal of tradition. Mysore, Professor C.D. Narasimhaiah applies these two principles to the study of Commonwealth literature.
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Dhvanyaloka, the Literary Criterion Centre at Mysore, derives its names from a classic Indian work of literary criticism and, by way of Cambridge, from T.S. Eliot’s journal of the 1920s. The Indian work saw literature as a spreading of the light, Eliot saw it as the maintenance and renewal of tradition. Mysore, Professor C.D. Narasimhaiah applies these two principles to the study of Commonwealth literature.

Read more: 'New lands, new literature' by John McLaren

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John Hanrahan reviews The Best of Max Harris: 21 years of browsing by Max Harris
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Contents Category: Selected Writing
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Max Harris must be an important cultural figure. Max Harris keeps saying he is. He also notes that Rupert Murdoch thinks he is. Now Harris has published just over two hundred pages of ‘The Best of Max Harris’, subtitled ‘21 Years of Browsing’, thirty six pieces from the Australian. I pass over in almost-silence the implication that Max is only at his best when writing for Rupert. And maybe the best one can say is that they deserve each other and wish them a happy anniversary.
Book 1 Title: The Best of Max Harris
Book 1 Subtitle: 21 years of browsing
Book Author: Max Harris
Book 1 Biblio: Unwin Paperbacks, 209 pp., $8.95 pb
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Max Harris must be an important cultural figure. Max Harris keeps saying he is. He also notes that Rupert Murdoch thinks he is. Now Harris has published just over two hundred pages of ‘The Best of Max Harris’, subtitled ‘21 Years of Browsing’, thirty six pieces from the Australian. I pass over in almost-silence the implication that Max is only at his best when writing for Rupert. And maybe the best one can say is that they deserve each other and wish them a happy anniversary.

Read more: John Hanrahan reviews 'The Best of Max Harris: 21 years of browsing' by Max Harris

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Barbara Giles reviews The Orange Tree: South Australian poetry to the present day edited by K.F. Pearson and Christine Churches
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Anthologists face more than one dilemma of choice, beside that of personal preference. Is it better to show more of fewer poets, and give a true picture of their qualities and scope, to range widely across the landscape of the art, or reach a compromise between these methods? There are excellent anthologies in each genre.
Book 1 Title: The Orange Tree
Book 1 Subtitle: South Australian poetry to the present day
Book Author: K.F. Pearson and Christine Churches
Book 1 Biblio: Wakefield Press, $14.95 pb, 220 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Anthologists face more than one dilemma of choice, beside that of personal preference. Is it better to show more of fewer poets, and give a true picture of their qualities and scope, to range widely across the landscape of the art, or reach a compromise between these methods? There are excellent anthologies in each genre.

Read more: Barbara Giles reviews 'The Orange Tree: South Australian poetry to the present day' edited by K.F....

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Article Title: Our Newspapers’ Literary Pages
Article Subtitle: From the full to the demanding – and back
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There must be something horribly deformed about a society in which the lowest paid work is often the most demanding and the least dispensable. Why, for instance, is the wellbeing of our elderly not worthwhile enough for people to be paid to deliver Meals on Wheels? Who doesn’t believe that the nurture of children is an enormously responsible job? Does a rubbish tip attendant get better paid than a clerk? Course not.
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There must be something horribly deformed about a society in which the lowest paid work is often the most demanding and the least dispensable. Why, for instance, is the wellbeing of our elderly not worthwhile enough for people to be paid to deliver Meals on Wheels? Who doesn’t believe that the nurture of children is an enormously responsible job? Does a rubbish tip attendant get better paid than a clerk? Course not.

Read more: 'Our Newspapers’ Literary Page: From the full to the demanding – and back' by Kate Ahearne

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Don Watson reviews The Scots Abroad: Labour, capital, enterprise, 1750–1914 edited by R.A. Cage
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The editor of The Scots Abroad took one big hoary fact, stuffed it in a cannon and fired it. Indeed he fired it to several parts of the world. Then he wrote letters to the provincial experts, asking them to survey the effects his missile had on landing. The results of course were fairly predictable and roughly the same in each case – it was the same fact after all. A lot of gravel and some larger stones thrown up, several casualties among the native population, little damage to public buildings, though in more than one case banks were reported collapsed and men in grey suits were seen running away. At the bottom of the crater lay the fact, quite unexploded, still as hoary and unyielding as when it was fired. This was a Scottish fact, or, rather, the fact was a Scot, or a Scottish ‘national type’, so we shouldn’t wonder that it was quite intact.
Book 1 Title: The Scots Abroad
Book 1 Subtitle: Labour, capital, enterprise 1750–1914
Book Author: R.A. Cage
Book 1 Biblio: Croom Helm, $35.95, 287 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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The editor of The Scots Abroad took one big hoary fact, stuffed it in a cannon and fired it. Indeed he fired it to several parts of the world. Then he wrote letters to the provincial experts, asking them to survey the effects his missile had on landing. The results of course were fairly predictable and roughly the same in each case – it was the same fact after all. A lot of gravel and some larger stones thrown up, several casualties among the native population, little damage to public buildings, though in more than one case banks were reported collapsed and men in grey suits were seen running away. At the bottom of the crater lay the fact, quite unexploded, still as hoary and unyielding as when it was fired. This was a Scottish fact, or, rather, the fact was a Scot, or a Scottish ‘national type’, so we shouldn’t wonder that it was quite intact.

Read more: Don Watson reviews 'The Scots Abroad: Labour, capital, enterprise, 1750–1914' edited by R.A. Cage

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Sandra Moore reviews Unsettled Areas: Recent South Australian short fiction edited by Andrew Taylor
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A reviewer is bound to behave as a different kind of reader from others, especially when dealing with a mixed collection like Unsettled Areas. Other readers can pick and choose, skip the duller bits, and take as long as they like, whereas I’ve read closely every story, at least twice, in the space of two days. Then I’ve let them settle into my imagination for another day or so to see what impressions have lasted, before taking another look. I looked especially hard at the ones I found unsatisfactory, in case my mind had changed. I’ll leave these until later.
Book 1 Title: Unsettled Areas
Book 1 Subtitle: Recent South Australian short fiction
Book Author: Andrew Taylor
Book 1 Biblio: Wakefield Press, $9.95, 165 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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A reviewer is bound to behave as a different kind of reader from others, especially when dealing with a mixed collection like Unsettled Areas. Other readers can pick and choose, skip the duller bits, and take as long as they like, whereas I’ve read closely every story, at least twice, in the space of two days. Then I’ve let them settle into my imagination for another day or so to see what impressions have lasted, before taking another look. I looked especially hard at the ones I found unsatisfactory, in case my mind had changed. I’ll leave these until later.

Read more: Sandra Moore reviews 'Unsettled Areas: Recent South Australian short fiction' edited by Andrew...

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Article Title: US Reporting
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New York snow storms may blow outside his window, but Sumner Locke Elliott is feverishly busy indoors writing a novel set in Australia between the wars. He hopes to complete it by late spring.
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New York snow storms may blow outside his window, but Sumner Locke Elliott is feverishly busy indoors writing a novel set in Australia between the wars. He hopes to complete it by late spring.

Read more: 'US Reporting' by Diana Smouha

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Contents Category: Self Portrait
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In the small hours of Saturday, 31 August, after the wind-up dinner of the Association for the Study of Australian literature in Armidale, John Hanrahan told the writer not to forget the self-portrait he had promised for Australian Book Review. The writer, at that stage somewhere between exhaustion and tranquillity, assured him it would be done soon. Later he regretted what he’d said, because, at fifty-four, he didn’t like looking at himself in mirrors. Perhaps though, if he softened the lights just a little ...
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In the small hours of Saturday, 31 August, after the wind-up dinner of the Association for the Study of Australian literature in Armidale, John Hanrahan told the writer not to forget the self-portrait he had promised for Australian Book Review. The writer, at that stage somewhere between exhaustion and tranquillity, assured him it would be done soon. Later he regretted what he’d said, because, at fifty-four, he didn’t like looking at himself in mirrors. Perhaps though, if he softened the lights just a little ...

Read more: 'Self Portrait' by Barry Oakley

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Article Title: Trading Posts
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Are we in Sydney or Singapore this January? Tinsel Town gives off the same driving ram, the same steamy conditions as the city-state shaking on its financial foundations. Some days of course the sun shines, the beaches are bright with bikinied or semi-bikinied naiads and the surf patrols strut. However, it is Tinsel Town as described by its literati that has kicked the year off with a bang.
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Are we in Sydney or Singapore this January? Tinsel Town gives off the same driving ram, the same steamy conditions as the city-state shaking on its financial foundations. Some days of course the sun shines, the beaches are bright with bikinied or semi-bikinied naiads and the surf patrols strut. However, it is Tinsel Town as described by its literati that has kicked the year off with a bang.

Read more: 'Trading Posts' by Michael Johnson

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Vane Lindesay reviews The Loser Will be Later to Win by Frank Hardy
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Article Title: Kismet Hardy
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When nobody is blown any good, it is indeed an ill wind. Much that was good blew my way as a soldier during the stormy years of World War II – but I was one of the lucky ones, although I did not think so during the Japanese bombing of the Darwin area in 1942. I say lucky because I not only survived the many bombings in a place where others did not, but was later posted to join the staff of Salt, a magazine that was a unique exercise in adult education, and entertainment, and one of the many available facilities offered to the armed forces by the Australian Army Education Service. Among these incidentally, was the circulating libraries division, a service patiently built up by Staff Sergeant Andrew Fabinyi appointed by the Army as national book purchasing officer. Andrew, bless him, in the immediate post-war years was, as Frank Cheshire’s publishing director, to seek out, encourage and launch me into, what has been so far, a wonderful thirty-three years developing with Australia’s book publishing industry.
Book 1 Title: The Loser Now Will be Later to Win
Book Author: Frank Hardy
Book 1 Biblio: Pascoe Publishing. 230p., $14.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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When nobody is blown any good, it is indeed an ill wind. Much that was good blew my way as a soldier during the stormy years of World War II – but I was one of the lucky ones, although I did not think so during the Japanese bombing of the Darwin area in 1942. I say lucky because I not only survived the many bombings in a place where others did not, but was later posted to join the staff of Salt, a magazine that was a unique exercise in adult education, and entertainment, and one of the many available facilities offered to the armed forces by the Australian Army Education Service. Among these incidentally, was the circulating libraries division, a service patiently built up by Staff Sergeant Andrew Fabinyi appointed by the Army as national book purchasing officer. Andrew, bless him, in the immediate post-war years was, as Frank Cheshire’s publishing director, to seek out, encourage and launch me into, what has been so far, a wonderful thirty-three years developing with Australia’s book publishing industry.

Read more: Vane Lindesay reviews 'The Loser Will be Later to Win' by Frank Hardy

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Ludmilla Forsyth reviews Pillbox by Gary Langford
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Article Title: Doctor Knows Worst
Article Subtitle: Of pills and pain
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At times I was delighted by this novel and at others was absolutely irritated. It is a novel which swerves between metaphors of wit and wisdom and crass punning. It is interesting structurally and it is crudely constructed. It is a novel of commitment, keen observation and loving sympathy. In some ways it is a novel of simple faith reminiscent of the Christian novels I was given as Sunday School awards which emphasised salvation through acceptance of a life of no smoking, no drinking, no dancing and certainly no going out with those who did them. But I’m putting this too strongly, for Gary Langford is not as simple minded as to attack modern medicine as the invention of the devil and doctors as the devil’s disciples. But the central thesis is that the protagonist, Mary Stewart, is the victim of our faith that the doctor knows best.
Book 1 Title: Pillbox
Book Author: Gary Langford
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $19.95, 228 pp
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At times I was delighted by this novel and at others was absolutely irritated. It is a novel which swerves between metaphors of wit and wisdom and crass punning. It is interesting structurally and it is crudely constructed. It is a novel of commitment, keen observation and loving sympathy. In some ways it is a novel of simple faith reminiscent of the Christian novels I was given as Sunday School awards which emphasised salvation through acceptance of a life of no smoking, no drinking, no dancing and certainly no going out with those who did them. But I’m putting this too strongly, for Gary Langford is not as simple minded as to attack modern medicine as the invention of the devil and doctors as the devil’s disciples. But the central thesis is that the protagonist, Mary Stewart, is the victim of our faith that the doctor knows best.

Read more: Ludmilla Forsyth reviews 'Pillbox' by Gary Langford

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Article Title: Welcome diversity
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No Collars No Cuffs, plenty of fisticuffs, and you’ll probably get K.O.’d by all this, after a round or two of three or four poems each. You may need someone in your corner to bolster you, for as Geoff Good­fellow writes in ‘Skin Deep’, a women’s prison poem:
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No Collars No Cuffs, plenty of fisticuffs, and you’ll probably get K.O.’d by all this, after a round or two of three or four poems each. You may need someone in your corner to bolster you, for as Geoff Good­fellow writes in ‘Skin Deep’, a women’s prison poem:

Prison lawns are manicured
            rose bushes pruned
a photographer’s dream
            but inside
plaster & lives{all apart
& the women know
            even cosmetics
need foundations

Read more: Mal Morgan reviews 'No Collars No Cuffs' by Geoff Goodfellow and 'The Bay of Salamis and Other...

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Article Title: Friendly Poets: Skill and unevenness
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A reviewer’s judgement should never be taken as the definitive one, nor should they be seen as such. I am aware that my own opinions are just that, a ‘bad review’ has many uses, perhaps· to improve one’s dart throwing, or to supplement the tissue in the small room of contemplation. In the manner of a judge however, opinion can only be formed on the basis of the evidence presented, in the reviewer’s without benefit of a jury’s verdict.
Book 1 Title: Beware the Bougainvillea
Book Author: Donna McSkimming
Book 1 Biblio: Friendly Street Poets, 52p., $8.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: the bitumen rhino
Book 2 Author: Neil Paech
Book 2 Biblio: Friendly Street Poets, 67p., $8.95
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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A reviewer’s judgement should never be taken as the definitive one, nor should they be seen as such. I am aware that my own opinions are just that, a ‘bad review’ has many uses, perhaps· to improve one’s dart throwing, or to supplement the tissue in the small room of contemplation. In the manner of a judge however, opinion can only be formed on the basis of the evidence presented, in the reviewer’s without benefit of a jury’s verdict.

Read more: John Irving reviews ‘Beware the Bougainvillea’ by Donna McSkimming and ‘the bitumen rhino’ by Neil...

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This month’s widely varying collection has a common denominator, a lively creative energy, the willingness to experiment and innovate that has earned for Australian picture books a world-wide reputation. Although as different as possible in themes, attitudes and even expertise, each of these authors and artists has something genuine and interesting to say: there are no potboilers, no tired time-servers, no books published merely to churn out a new title for the market. Praise is due not only to their creators, but to the publishers willing to take a punt.
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Ship Rock
by Ted Greenwood
Hutchinson Publishing Group
$12.95

Clive Eats Alligators
by Alison Lester
Oxford University Press, $11.99

Felix & Alexander
by Terry Denton
Oxford University Press, $11.99

Prisoner Of The Mulligrubs
by Nan Hunt, Noe/a Hills (lllus.)
Collins, for children, $11.95

1 Is For One: A Counting Book
by Nadia Wheatley
Oxford Uni Press, $6.99 pb, 20p

Mouse’s Marriage
by Junko Morimoto
Thomas C. Lothian, for children, $10.95

Tatty
by Eleanor Nilsson, Leanne Argent Illustrator
Omnibus Books, $11.95

Flying Man
by Terry Denton
Penguin, cartoons, $4.95 pb

Lola
by Susanne Ferrier
Collins, for children, $11.95

The Boy Who Painted The Sun
by Jill Morris
Penguin Books, ii/us., $3.95, 32p

An Eye Full Of Soot And An Ear Full Of Steam
by Nan Hunt, .Craig Smith (lllus.)
Collins (Fontana Picture Lions), $4.95 pb

This month’s widely varying collection has a common denominator, a lively creative energy, the willingness to experiment and innovate that has earned for Australian picture books a world-wide reputation. Although as different as possible in themes, attitudes and even expertise, each of these authors and artists has something genuine and interesting to say: there are no potboilers, no tired time-servers, no books published merely to churn out a new title for the market. Praise is due not only to their creators, but to the publishers willing to take a punt.

Read more: Margaret Dunkle reviews 11 Picture Books

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Article Title: ABR Reviewers’ Award
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With many thanks to the judges Julie Copeland, Michael Costigan and Val Kent. And to the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Book Publishers Association for their generous support.

As all reviewers know, reviews are ephemera; except, of course those able to pack a punch which rebounds on the reviewer or knocks out the writer. So it is that A. D. Hope’s comment on Patrick White’s style as ‘pretentious and il­literate verbal sludge’ is remembered as his judgement on The Tree of Man, while his sensitive assessment of the novel disappears from immediate recall. Some reviewers try to protect their reviews from literary waste-baskets by making them scholarly articles. Our judges had to decide which particular nominations received had those qualities which made them memorable reviews rather than distinguished essays.
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With many thanks to the judges Julie Copeland, Michael Costigan and Val Kent. And to the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Book Publishers Association for their generous support.

As all reviewers know, reviews are ephemera; except, of course those able to pack a punch which rebounds on the reviewer or knocks out the writer. So it is that A. D. Hope’s comment on Patrick White’s style as ‘pretentious and il­literate verbal sludge’ is remembered as his judgement on The Tree of Man, while his sensitive assessment of the novel disappears from immediate recall. Some reviewers try to protect their reviews from literary waste-baskets by making them scholarly articles. Our judges had to decide which particular nominations received had those qualities which made them memorable reviews rather than distinguished essays.

Read more: ABR Reviewers’ Award

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Susan Hosking reviews ‘Caricatures’ by Noel Counihan, introduced by Vane Lindesay
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Noel Counihan’s Caricatures is a splendidly designed book: in this respect another success for Vane Lindesay who has received several national awards for book design. The succinct and pertinent introduction is followed by eighty Counihan caricatures, each of which is effectively isolated in the stark white space of a separate page, while facing pages carry the emboldened name of the personality depicted and the bare essentials of explanation. Lindesay has chosen caricatures which reproduce well (hence the exclusion of the Argus caricatures, most - of which were originally reproduced in half-tone and are unsuitable for further reproduction). Apart from just looking good, Lindesay’s book design is intelligently helpful, encouraging as it does an aesthetic response to the works reproduced.
Book 1 Title: Caricatures
Book Author: Noel Counihan, introduced by Vane Lindesay
Book 1 Biblio: Hutchinson, illus., 175p.
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Noel Counihan’s Caricatures is a splendidly designed book: in this respect another success for Vane Lindesay who has received several national awards for book design. The succinct and pertinent introduction is followed by eighty Counihan caricatures, each of which is effectively isolated in the stark white space of a separate page, while facing pages carry the emboldened name of the personality depicted and the bare essentials of explanation. Lindesay has chosen caricatures which reproduce well (hence the exclusion of the Argus caricatures, most - of which were originally reproduced in half-tone and are unsuitable for further reproduction). Apart from just looking good, Lindesay’s book design is intelligently helpful, encouraging as it does an aesthetic response to the works reproduced.

Read more: Susan Hosking reviews ‘Caricatures’ by Noel Counihan, introduced by Vane Lindesay

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Judy Smart reviews ‘In Our Time’ by Verity Burgmann
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Article Title: Socialism in Our Time: And the Labor Party is born
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Although this book is written of a period in Australian history beginning exactly one century ago, a verse from a poem written in the 1890’s which Burgmann quotes on the last page of her book has poignancy for labor idealists today:

No wonder that the people turn, they are so oft betrayed
By men of mighty promises whom danger makes afraid.
O what’s the use of choosing chiefs to smash the Evil down,
If when they get into the van they end by ‘backing down’

Yet this is not a tale of betrayal and woe. It is the story of men and a few women who were in the vanguard of organised labor as it became politically influential; frustrated and frequently exhausted they may have been, and not a few succumbed to the ease of parliamentary privilege, but in this chronicle of their activities it is remarkable how rarely the canker of cynicism appears.
Book 1 Title: In Our Time
Book 1 Subtitle: Socialism and the rise of Labor 1885 – 1905
Book Author: Verity Burgmann
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, 240p., $19.95, $9.95 pb
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Although this book is written of a period in Australian history beginning exactly one century ago, a verse from a poem written in the 1890’s which Burgmann quotes on the last page of her book has poignancy for labor idealists today:

No wonder that the people turn, they are so oft betrayed
By men of mighty promises whom danger makes afraid.
O what’s the use of choosing chiefs to smash the Evil down,
If when they get into the van they end by ‘backing down’

Read more: Judy Smart reviews ‘In Our Time’ by Verity Burgmann

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Darren Tofts reviews ‘Lie of the Land’ by John Clanchy
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Article Title: A New Writer of Stories: Clanchy’s fine and varied collection
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The blurb on the back of Lie of the Land informs us that the collection ‘reeks of Australia’. Apart from being an unfortunate phrase, the offer of a specifically Australian effluvium is too limiting a promise for this wonderful collection of stories. Clanchy’s world is more expansive, and the lie of the land is in no way circumscribed or even. Set in India and Ireland, as well as in different parts of Australia, Clanchy’s stories are vital and restless, and they offer us undisguised accounts of people in conflict with their environment, with others, and with themselves.
Book 1 Title: Lie of the Land
Book Author: John Clanchy
Book 1 Biblio: Pascoe Publishing, 243p, $8.95
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The blurb on the back of Lie of the Land informs us that the collection ‘reeks of Australia’. Apart from being an unfortunate phrase, the offer of a specifically Australian effluvium is too limiting a promise for this wonderful collection of stories. Clanchy’s world is more expansive, and the lie of the land is in no way circumscribed or even. Set in India and Ireland, as well as in different parts of Australia, Clanchy’s stories are vital and restless, and they offer us undisguised accounts of people in conflict with their environment, with others, and with themselves.

Read more: Darren Tofts reviews ‘Lie of the Land’ by John Clanchy

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B. Milech reviews ‘Marx’s Lost Aesthetic’ by Margaret Rose
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Article Title: Lost Aesthetic: And did Marx have one?
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The title Marx’s Lost Aesthetic makes two claims - that Marx had an aesthetic, and that it was lost. Here is the stuff of a good narrative here: What was Marx’s aesthetic? How did he come to have it? Why, when and how was it lost? This in the story Margaret Rose sets out to tell from the perspective indicated in the subtitle, Marx’s relation to the visual arts.
Book 1 Title: Marx’s Lost Aesthetic: Karl Marx & the visual arts
Book Author: Margaret Rose
Book 1 Biblio: Cambridge University Press, 216p, biblio., index $49.5
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The title Marx’s Lost Aesthetic makes two claims - that Marx had an aesthetic, and that it was lost. Here is the stuff of a good narrative here: What was Marx’s aesthetic? How did he come to have it? Why, when and how was it lost? This in the story Margaret Rose sets out to tell from the perspective indicated in the subtitle, Marx’s relation to the visual arts.

She begins, therefore, with the Nazareens - a school of Romantic painting that dominated early nineteenth-century Germany and was prominent in England. Influenced by Heine, the story goes, the young Marx rejected the idealism and spiritualism of the Nazareens, and the system of state patronage that supported it. He then went on to develop a rationalistic and materialistic aesthetic - one that rejected the idealism of Hegel and Kant and owed much to Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity as alienating of human consciousness and to Saint-Simon’s notion of the artist as an avant-garde producer/administrator/educator. Having told us this about how Marx arrived at his theory of art, Rose then moves on to the ‘what’ of his aesthetic.

Read more: B. Milech reviews ‘Marx’s Lost Aesthetic’ by Margaret Rose

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Helen Marshall reviews ‘Subordination Feminism and Social Theory’ by Clare Burton
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Article Title: Marxist and Feminist Theory: The struggle of gender and class
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There are three subtypes in the rapidly growing genre of ‘feminist social theory books’. One is the book which talks about ‘women and’ or ‘women in’ a specific area - the ‘herstory’ book designed to fill in gaps left in his official accounts of society. There were lots of these in the early seventies, but they’re getting rarer now as it becomes clear that we need a whole new narrative rather than a story with patches of interest to women it. Another type is the book of theory per se, which sets out to depict and explain gender­based inequality. There are many of these, from. a variety of perspectives, and some of them have had a lasting impact on many academic disciplines and on individual lives. And finally, there are books - on the whole recent arrivals - which are concerned with collating the results of the researchers and theorists who produce types one and two. This third type introduces and explicates theoretical debates and empirical findings, and functions as a guide, gloss and summary of a particular area of scholarship.
Book 1 Title: Subordination Feminism and Social Theory
Book Author: Clare Burton
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, 168p., $8.95pb
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There are three subtypes in the rapidly growing genre of ‘feminist social theory books’. One is the book which talks about ‘women and’ or ‘women in’ a specific area - the ‘herstory’ book designed to fill in gaps left in his official accounts of society. There were lots of these in the early seventies, but they’re getting rarer now as it becomes clear that we need a whole new narrative rather than a story with patches of interest to women it. Another type is the book of theory per se, which sets out to depict and explain gender­based inequality. There are many of these, from. a variety of perspectives, and some of them have had a lasting impact on many academic disciplines and on individual lives. And finally, there are books - on the whole recent arrivals - which are concerned with collating the results of the researchers and theorists who produce types one and two. This third type introduces and explicates theoretical debates and empirical findings, and functions as a guide, gloss and summary of a particular area of scholarship.

Read more: Helen Marshall reviews ‘Subordination Feminism and Social Theory’ by Clare Burton

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This collection comprises eight essays, all written before Lange’s anti-nuclear declaration on the Australian-New Zealand defence connection. The authors agree that it is a connection of very long standing and immutable strength, despite potential differences of strategic interest in the future. From the mouths of babes!
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The Anzac Connection
Edited by Desmond Ball
George Allen and Unwin, $9.95 pb, 170 pp
086861503 X

This collection comprises eight essays, all written before Lange’s anti-nuclear declaration on the Australian-New Zealand defence connection. The authors agree that it is a connection of very long standing and immutable strength, despite potential differences of strategic interest in the future. From the mouths of babes!

Hardly had this volume been as­sembled than such an eventuality occurred, and this is duly noted on the blurb. This book is thus extremely useful for explaining the unobvious part of the ANZUS triangle – the unbreakable Anzac bond. The Minister for Defence, Kim Beazley, has been at pains to protect this relationship while dealing desperately with the Americans. This book (though printed in an awful typeface, difficult to read) is essential to that part of the debate.
by Robert Pascoe

From Me To You Making & Giving Memorable Gifts
by Elspeth Renshaw & Stephanie King
Williams Collins, illus., index,
$24.95 hb, 166 p,
000217 4812

Are you giving handmade gifts this Christmas? From Me To You will stimulate ideas for gifts. Most of the book is devoted to those which are edible – pates, preserves, sauces, breads, sweets, icecream – there are also lovely smelly things too, sachets, potpourri, hand cream herb bouquets. Present packaging and wrapping, if you carefully read the text, are presented in original ways. Easier still is to gives the book to someone who likes doing things – if you can afford it.
by S. M. Stewart

How Did It Begin?: Customs & superstitions and their romantic origins
by R. Brasch
Fontana, $7.95, 352 p,
000 6368980

So you want to know the origin of the crossword puzzle, the sailors bib, or the word ‘quiz’? Brasch has 350 pages explaining our superstitions, customs of civil and military life, and religious, sporting and business practices. Amongst the sixteen pages of illustrations can be found photos of swagman carrying his matilda and of pre-Christian hot cross pubs excavated at Herculaneum. This is a re-printing of a 1965 publications, with new material added. This is a readable, compact compendium for the curious.
by John Anwyl

Herbal Delights
by Judi McKee
Leisure Press $3.95 pb, 40 p,. illus,.
094959805 4

This is a most valuable work. Its small size belies the mass of valuable information in it. The fourteen herbs are concisely described. Some may question the ones chosen – oregano for example is not there. However general gardeners and cooks will probably be satisfied. The growing notes are for Australian conditions, and are easy to follow. The section on using herbs contains excellent ideas on beauty and a small number of recipes. McKee has written an ideal work especially for those setting out to discover the joys of herb growing.
by Graham Dudley

The Working Class And Welfare: Reflections on the political development of the welfare state in Australia And New Zealand. 1890-1980
By Francis G. Castles
Allen and Unwin, $11.95 pb, $24.95 hb, 128 p, index,
0 86861 661 3 pb 0 86861 669 9 hb

Two provocative texts on aspects of the history of social welfare in Australia. Kennedy contends that social work began as a ruling-class strategy to disorganise a mobilizing working class in the 1890s. Castles argues that organised labour in Australia and New Zealand succeeded in making these societies more nurturant of the poor but oscillated between economist and incon1e­maintenance strategies. Neither historian seems to have con­sulted the work of the other. to the detriment of both arguments. Private charity and social welfare are not discontinuous phenomena: rather. the transition from one to the other occurs in an irregular and incomplete fashion. Thus. as Kennedy admits. working-class responses to the depression of the 1890s usually ameliorated the local effects of poverty. Or. pace Castles, not all social welfare initiatives came directly from social democratic pressures.

Both books deserve a place on library shelves and in the curricula of welfare history courses. and are in themselves an interesting contrast of styles. Castles is measured and highly organized in his style and form of argument. Kennedy speaks as one who came from a battler’s childhood: the experience of having an alcoholic father. he tells us in a frank foreword. got him interested in this field. He unites with genuine if eclectic conviction. and the book will worthily provoke good seminar debates.
by Robert Pascoe

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