As I view Writers’ Week from afar, (it’s my bank manager’s inclination not mine that keeps me away – he sees all my books in red), I have one hope and one fear. The hope is that the visiting lionesses and lions are here to learn something about our writers. One of the great values of Writers’ Week is to introduce writers many of us have read little of. In my case, often writers that I have barely heard of. My ignorance of course, not a reflection on their reputation or importance. Writers’ Week breaks down some of our insularity. But we can afford to be pushy about our writers. Indeed, we could take over an English newspaper headline: ‘Fog in the Channel: Europe Isolated’. For my hope remains that overseas writers are coming here to learn as well as to inform. My fear is that some visiting literary tigers (to swap cats) are, while certainly not toothless, equipped with only modestly useful dentures. Take G. Cabrera Infante. But not too seriously. Infante rhymes with Dante, and his most recent book is Infante’s Inferno. This is high art bums and tits, desperately macho. The Inferno is a minor grass fire that the Country Fire Authority could put out during a coffee break and still have time to read a few more pages of Illywhacker. The Inferno (Infante’s) is sometimes funny, but not very often.

Also coming is Mario Vargas Llosa, from Peru. It is lovely to see writers of a Hispanic, Southern hemisphere background visiting us. The Anglo-Saxons of the North are pretty tired. The rather tiresome queen of England (I suppose she does read, she has never given any evidence of thinking) has awarded Graham Greene with the Order of Merit, and I understand that Orders of Merit are as rare as English winners of the Nobel Prize or, in recent decades, writers of great novels. So welcome Infante, welcome Llosa. The War of the End of the World is as exciting a novel as Illywhacker. But it collapses much earlier. Finally it is a novel of a man in love with talking about war and the precise details of killing. Welcome visitors, and I hope we learn from you, open our minds further, and read a lot more of you. I suggest you take home, to make a random selection, Elizabeth Jolley, Amanda Lohrey, Natalie Scott, Peter Carey, Peter Mathers, Helen Garner, Thea Astley, Janine Burke, Randolph Stow (why is Stow so neglected in this country?) These are important writers in anybody’s hemisphere. They are great storytellers. They also reveal that maledom is a failure of mind, imagination, and emotion.

To stay at home. Adding in hasty anxiety that some of my best writers weren’t born under the Southern Cross. I have before me the Higher School Certificate syllabus (Victorian) for 1987. It’s as tiresome and lacking in imagination as the queen of England. There’s not enough literature from Australia, not enough from other places than the deep North. Two Australian poems from thirteen. Two Australian novels from eight. My typed copy has George Johnston crossed out and Randolph Stow written in. That makes good sense, to see Stow getting a guernsey along with White. Jack Hibberd makes it in with Euripides, Brecht, and Beckett. In the English ‘themes’ section, we have Trevor Barr, Ian Reinecke, Barry Jones, and Ron Elisha, on ‘Technology’; Labumore Elsie Roughsey, Bruce Grant, Judith Wright, and David Foster on ‘Tradition and Change’; Henry Lawson and David Malouf on ‘Relationships’; Jessica Anderson, David Malouf, A.B. Facey, and John Romeril on ‘Identity’. Clearly, we score worst on relationships. I am pleased to see E.M. Forster return to fashion. He appears twice. But the Northern Hemisphere sits on top of it all. ‘Relationships’. Edmund Gosse has buried his father so often that it’s becoming ghoulish. It is amazing – or is it? – that Australian women writers are so poorly represented. To my insular mind, Beverley Farmer, Elizabeth Jolley, Elizabeth Harrower, Helen Garner etc. etc. have far more relevant things to say about relationships than does Gosse. Halley’s Comet is here again, and we have gone beyond the sons who agonised about their fathers around the time of its previous appearance this century.

Still at home. I do love travel, but I like to make sure that home is valued for what it is worth. I was recently vigorously challenged for the suggestion that the cultural cringe is still one of our aerobic postures, even if we contort it to either some South American music or weave it into some music from Elgar. I welcome the George Munster Award for Freelance Journalism. George Munster was one of the world’s great reviewers. He was a European Australian, and the world was his succulent oyster. An award has been set up to provide an annual award of $1,000 for freelance journalism. The first of the awards will be made on 3 October 1986, the anniversary of the launching of Munster’s important posthumously published book, Rupert Murdoch: A paper prince. George Munster’s work deserves great recognition. So do freelance journalists. You can still contribute to this award by sending your cheque to PO Box 161, Glebe, NSW, 2037, made out to the George Munster Award.

At home still. Australian Book Review has a new look. Pam Brewster is responsible for this. She has worked patiently and imaginatively with us. I think her innovations are splendid, for the design of the new magazine seems to me an important improvement. We owe lasting gratitude to the many people who support our magazine. To the people who month after month write our book-notes, generous volunteers who love books and are prepared to spend many unpaid hours reading books and providing comments on them. Our thanks also to the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Book Publishers Association who have so generously supported our Reviewers’ Award. We are always anxious to improve ABR. Pam Brewster has given us invaluable help in improving our design. Maybe our readers have comments on how we can improve the journal in other ways. We welcome your comments. We think we do quite well. We know we could do better. We would appreciate your help.