Welcome to the March 2010 issue of Australian Book Review.
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Contents Category: Short Story
Custom Article Title: She brings the light in
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Article Title: She brings the light in
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Just the slightest movement of the curtain as she stands by the window. Just a touch. That’s how she brings the light in, Jacqui does. Just before dawn, with only the smallest movement of her finger, and in comes the light. I see it reach the Golden Cane Palm, highlighting the larger fronds, their dark becoming green. Jacqui looks at those fronds, as I do, while the light begins to fill the room. She turns her head to me as if in a studied pose, rehearsed.
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Just the slightest movement of the curtain as she stands by the window. Just a touch. That’s how she brings the light in, Jacqui does. Just before dawn, with only the smallest movement of her finger, and in comes the light. I see it reach the Golden Cane Palm, highlighting the larger fronds, their dark becoming green. Jacqui looks at those fronds, as I do, while the light begins to fill the room. She turns her head to me as if in a studied pose, rehearsed.
It is time to raise our glasses: Australia’s oldest literary magazine is now a sprightly septuagenarian. The latest number of Southerly marks the occasion by encasing itself in what appears to be a reproduction of one of its covers from the middle of the last century, complete with foxing and a pencil notation of its pre-decimal price. This retro jacket should serve as a reminder of the journal’s longevity. It arrived on the scene at a time that was hardly auspicious for any new literary venture – Hitler invaded Poland the same month. Thankfully, Southerly outlasted the Third Reich (and a few other empires, too).
It is time to raise our glasses: Australia’s oldest literary magazine is now a sprightly septuagenarian. The latest number of Southerly marks the occasion by encasing itself in what appears to be a reproduction of one of its covers from the middle of the last century, complete with foxing and a pencil notation of its pre-decimal price. This retro jacket should serve as a reminder of the journal’s longevity. It arrived on the scene at a time that was hardly auspicious for any new literary venture – Hitler invaded Poland the same month. Thankfully, Southerly outlasted the Third Reich (and a few other empires, too).
Stealing Picasso is an art heist caper based on the sensational theft in 1986 of Picasso’s Weeping woman from the National Gallery of Victoria. The crime, attributed to a nebulous gang of militant aesthetes calling themselves the Australian Cultural Terrorists, remains unsolved. Anson Cameron, a Melbourne writer best known for the novel Tin Toys (2000), takes this historical loose end and runs with it, discarding all but the most cursory details of the source story.
Book 1 Title: Stealing Picasso
Book Author: Anson Cameron
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $32.95 pb, 256 pp
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Stealing Picasso is an art heist caper based on the sensational theft in 1986 of Picasso’s Weeping woman from the National Gallery of Victoria. The crime, attributed to a nebulous gang of militant aesthetes calling themselves the Australian Cultural Terrorists, remains unsolved. Anson Cameron, a Melbourne writer best known for the novel Tin Toys (2000), takes this historical loose end and runs with it, discarding all but the most cursory details of the source story.
Cameron’s disdain for the quasi-academic rigour of the ‘based on a true story’ genre is admirable. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with heavily researched historical novels, yet such works can feel like research in fictional dress, as if the factual trumps the imagination. The risk Cameron runs in Stealing Picasso is dispensing with historical authenticity and giving his imagination free rein.
Anthony Blanche stands on the high balcony with a megaphone. With practised stammer he recites The Waste Land to puzzled undergraduates walking below in Christ Church Meadow. ‘How I have surprised them!’ he assures the other Old Etonians gathered for languid lunch in Lord Sebastian Flyte’s rooms. In this single image, Evelyn Waugh fixes Blanche in our memories – privilege, aesthetes, the creeping arrival of bewildering new art to the Oxford of 1923.
Book 1 Title: Mad World
Book 1 Subtitle: Evelyn Waugh and the secrets of Brideshead
Book Author: Paula Byrne
Book 1 Biblio: HarperPress, $49.99 hb, 384 pp
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Anthony Blanche stands on the high balcony with a megaphone. With practised stammer he recites The Waste Land to puzzled undergraduates walking below in Christ Church Meadow. ‘How I have surprised them!’ he assures the other Old Etonians gathered for languid lunch in Lord Sebastian Flyte’s rooms. In this single image, Evelyn Waugh fixes Blanche in our memories – privilege, aesthetes, the creeping arrival of bewildering new art to the Oxford of 1923.
In Paula Byrne’s Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, we learn that Waugh drew on a real incident involving Harold Acton. The mysterious Anthony Blanche has been at various times identified with Acton, Brian Howard and the spy Anthony Blunt. Yet whatever his inspiration, Blanche is neither caricature nor type, but fully formed. Like the poems he declaims, Blanche is commentary personified, appearing throughout the novel to convey unwelcome truths.
Last year marked the centenary of Robert Helpmann’s birth. Apart from a tribute at the Helpmann Awards ceremony – the ‘Bobbies’ – in July 2009, no Australian performing arts company celebrated the anniversary of this polymorphous artist and early advocate for a national artistic life created by Australians, not by northern-hemisphere exporters. Two new books and a vibrant touring exhibition went part of the way towards providing a fitting tribute.
Last year marked the centenary of Robert Helpmann’s birth. Apart from a tribute at the Helpmann Awards ceremony – the ‘Bobbies’ – in July 2009, no Australian performing arts company celebrated the anniversary of this polymorphous artist and early advocate for a national artistic life created by Australians, not by northern-hemisphere exporters. Two new books and a vibrant touring exhibition went part of the way towards providing a fitting tribute.
It seems to be the only way I can make sense of things. I am often surprised that everybody doesn’t feel like this. It is such a profound thrill to work with fiction and to see the patterns emerge, to feel the rhythm of the story as it develops.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
There’s a thing that happens – I am asleep, but I seem to be awake watching a full colour dramatisation on a kind of screen. If I shut my eyes the scene disappears, but when I open them, it resumes and does not stop.
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Why do you write?
It seems to be the only way I can make sense of things. I am often surprised that everybody doesn’t feel like this. It is such a profound thrill to work with fiction and to see the patterns emerge, to feel the rhythm of the story as it develops.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
There’s a thing that happens – I am asleep, but I seem to be awake watching a full colour dramatisation on a kind of screen. If I shut my eyes the scene disappears, but when I open them, it resumes and does not stop.
The first poem in Angela Gardner’s 2007 début collection, Parts of Speech, impressed me with its emotional power. I found the subsequent poems less driven but, at the same time, animated by an unusual poetic style. Gardner is a visual artist as well as a poet, and these practices seem interrelated. Her new book, Views of the Hudson, affirms my first impression of her style: her poetry is a montage of image, emotion, thought and speech.
Book 1 Title: Views of the Hudson
Book 1 Subtitle: A New York Book of Psalms
Book Author: Angela Gardner
Book 1 Biblio: Shearsman Books, US$26 pb, 68 pp
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The first poem in Angela Gardner’s 2007 début collection, Parts of Speech, impressed me with its emotional power. I found the subsequent poems less driven but, at the same time, animated by an unusual poetic style. Gardner is a visual artist as well as a poet, and these practices seem interrelated. Her new book, Views of the Hudson, affirms my first impression of her style: her poetry is a montage of image, emotion, thought and speech.
Keeping Faith, Roger Averill’s first novel after his non-fiction début, Boy He Cry: An island odyssey (2009), is a quiet and resonant piece of work. Befitting a novel set partly in a labour ward and beginning with a description of a stillborn baby, it proceeds with the knowledge that finding the right words can be difficult. It speaks carefully and tactfully, in a spare language of great focus.
Book 1 Title: Keeping Faith
Book Author: Roger Averill
Book 1 Biblio: Transit Lounge $29.95 pb, 233 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Keeping Faith, Roger Averill’s first novel after his non-fiction début, Boy He Cry: An island odyssey (2009), is a quiet and resonant piece of work. Befitting a novel set partly in a labour ward and beginning with a description of a stillborn baby, it proceeds with the knowledge that finding the right words can be difficult. It speaks carefully and tactfully, in a spare language of great focus.
Soon after the end of World War II, Robert Booker, husband of Catherine, returns from service in New Guinea to their home in Sydney. It is immediately apparent that their relationship has deteriorated. With Catherine’s hasty disposal of a telegram from an American soldier named Lewis, we learn that she has had an affair, and also a child, in Robert’s absence. The story then moves back to 1944, when the liaison began. Eventually it returns to the present, and Catherine has a hard time concealing her affair and child from her husband.
Book 1 Title: In the Mood
Book Author: Laura Bloom
Book 1 Biblio: Viking $32.95 pb, 336 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Soon after the end of World War II, Robert Booker, husband of Catherine, returns from service in New Guinea to their home in Sydney. It is immediately apparent that their relationship has deteriorated. With Catherine’s hasty disposal of a telegram from an American soldier named Lewis, we learn that she has had an affair, and also a child, in Robert’s absence. The story then moves back to 1944, when the liaison began. Eventually it returns to the present, and Catherine has a hard time concealing her affair and child from her husband.
German commentators have often asserted – not without some justification – that passages of the established Schlegel-Tieck translation of Shakespeare are superior to the original. A contentious proposition, perhaps. But in the case of the volume under review, which first appeared in German in 2004, there is no doubt that although, as the publisher’s note points out, ‘a section devoted to a discussion on the debate … about the initial republication and publication of Walter Benjamin’s work in Germany from the mid fifties’ has been omitted, the resulting book is clearer and more user-friendly than the original, with its arguments shown to better advantage. A chronology of the Benjamin-Brecht relationship (relocated more sensibly at the front of the book), plus a map and time chart of the two writers, make it easier to refer back to the stages and dates of the relationship, along with – so crucial to an understanding of the course of the friendship and temper of the debates between the two principal participants, as well other involved contemporaries – the stations of the exile years between 1933, 1941 (Benjamin’s death), and 1947 (Brecht’s return to Europe).
Book 1 Title: Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht
Book 1 Subtitle: The Story of a Friendship
Book Author: Erdmut Wizisla, translated by Christine Shuttleworth
Book 1 Biblio: Libris, £30 hb, 269 pp
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German commentators have often asserted – not without some justification – that passages of the established Schlegel-Tieck translation of Shakespeare are superior to the original. A contentious proposition, perhaps. But in the case of the volume under review, which first appeared in German in 2004, there is no doubt that although, as the publisher’s note points out, ‘a section devoted to a discussion on the debate … about the initial republication and publication of Walter Benjamin’s work in Germany from the mid fifties’ has been omitted, the resulting book is clearer and more user-friendly than the original, with its arguments shown to better advantage. A chronology of the Benjamin-Brecht relationship (relocated more sensibly at the front of the book), plus a map and time chart of the two writers, make it easier to refer back to the stages and dates of the relationship, along with – so crucial to an understanding of the course of the friendship and temper of the debates between the two principal participants, as well other involved contemporaries – the stations of the exile years between 1933, 1941 (Benjamin’s death), and 1947 (Brecht’s return to Europe).
Article Subtitle: Changing the tenets of a just war
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One of the most productive and interesting areas of research in applied philosophy is concerned with moral issues around warfare. Although there had been important contributions previously, Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars (1977) was immensely influential in philosophy and well beyond its confines, reinstating ‘just war’ thinking as a mainstream intellectual position. It became, for instance, a standard text in Western military academies.
Book 1 Title: Killing in War
Book Author: Jeff McMahan
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Press, $64.95 hb, 255 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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One of the most productive and interesting areas of research in applied philosophy is concerned with moral issues around warfare. Although there had been important contributions previously, Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars (1977) was immensely influential in philosophy and well beyond its confines, reinstating ‘just war’ thinking as a mainstream intellectual position. It became, for instance, a standard text in Western military academies.
Set in Sydney, Wendy James’s third novel, Where Have You Been?, an intriguing story of family, loss, memory and identity, is just as compelling as her previous ones, Out of the Silence (2005) and The Steele Diaries (2008).
Book 1 Title: Where Have You Been?
Book Author: Wendy James
Book 1 Biblio: UWA Publishing, $32.95 pb, 250 pp
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Set in Sydney, Wendy James’s third novel, Where Have You Been?, an intriguing story of family, loss, memory and identity, is just as compelling as her previous ones, Out of the Silence (2005) and The Steele Diaries (2008).
A couple of anniversaries explain the occasion of this collection: one hundred and fifty years of responsible government in New South Wales, and the bicentenary of Lachlan Macquarie’s arrival as the governor who, Brian Fletcher argues, has had the most ‘persistent hold over public consciousness’ in reflecting the ambiguities of a convict colony. The volume is framed by Rod Cavalier’s foreword, which encourages a sequential reading of these thirty-seven essays, each part-biographical study of a governor and part-analysis of the evolving office. Such a course, Cavalier suggests, will show the position to be no sinecure but a ‘constant’ in the flux of politics. Even so, as civics tests regularly show, it is a position in need of rehabilitation if it is to rise above being a misunderstood curiosity.
Book 1 Title: The Governors of New South Wales 1788–2010
Book Author: David Clune and Ken Turner
Book 1 Biblio: Federation Press, $55 hb, 688 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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A couple of anniversaries explain the occasion of this collection: one hundred and fifty years of responsible government in New South Wales, and the bicentenary of Lachlan Macquarie’s arrival as the governor who, Brian Fletcher argues, has had the most ‘persistent hold over public consciousness’ in reflecting the ambiguities of a convict colony. The volume is framed by Rod Cavalier’s foreword, which encourages a sequential reading of these thirty-seven essays, each part-biographical study of a governor and part-analysis of the evolving office. Such a course, Cavalier suggests, will show the position to be no sinecure but a ‘constant’ in the flux of politics. Even so, as civics tests regularly show, it is a position in need of rehabilitation if it is to rise above being a misunderstood curiosity.
Wait. Sometimes the waiting seems interminable But that is the trick with water. The dark Gathers up your apprehension and you seek ...
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After the painting by Rick Amor
Wait. Sometimes the waiting seems interminable But that is the trick with water. The dark Gathers up your apprehension and you seek Some other way of confronting, if you are able, The idea of storm. It is not possible To think of wind and rain without every black Possibility of destruction. The bleak Sea ensures that. This always was fate’s timetable.
Sometimes the storm passes out to sea, The real ocean, and you are left with ragged clouds And perhaps scuffed sand. There are no words For either relief or regret. You have to be Content with failure. The posts of the old pier Have withstood storms and hot dry winds before.
The sticker on the cover assured me that if I had enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society I would ‘love’ Stillwater Creek. Had I been browsing the bookshop shelves, this would have been fair warning not to part with my money. Myriad readers obviously did love Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s international bestseller. Alexander McCall Smith certainly did: he chaired the committee that recently voted it The Times WHSmith Paperback of the Year. TGLAPPPS bored me so much that I failed to finish it, but I can see why McCall Smith, who writes novels in a similar vein and with similarly whimsical titles, championed it.
Book 1 Title: Stillwater Creek
Book Author: Alison Booth
Book 1 Biblio: Random House, $32.95 pb, 338 pp
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The sticker on the cover assured me that if I had enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society I would ‘love’ Stillwater Creek. Had I been browsing the bookshop shelves, this would have been fair warning not to part with my money. Myriad readers obviously did love Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s international bestseller. Alexander McCall Smith certainly did: he chaired the committee that recently voted it The Times WHSmith Paperback of the Year. TGLAPPPS bored me so much that I failed to finish it, but I can see why McCall Smith, who writes novels in a similar vein and with similarly whimsical titles, championed it.
Article Subtitle: Radical inclusiveness in a new literary history of the USA
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Cynthia Ozick’s most recent collection of criticism, The Din in the Head (2006), contains a brief but engaging essay called ‘Highbrow Blues’. It begins with her musing about a gaffe made by Jonathan Franzen following the publication of The Corrections (2002). Oprah Winfrey had selected Franzen’s novel for her televised book club, which was popular enough to turn any work she chose into a bestseller, but Franzen was uncomfortable with her program’s folksiness. He felt that the club’s reputation for featuring works of middlebrow fiction did not fit with his literary ambitions and that an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show was not likely to enhance his credibility. ‘I feel,’ he explained, ‘like I’m solidly in the high-art literary tradition.’ Brickbats flew from all directions. But why, wonders Ozick, did Franzen’s remark seem so jejune?
Book 1 Title: A New Literary History of America
Book Author: Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors
Book 1 Biblio: Harvard University Press, $95 hb, 1,122 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Cynthia Ozick’s most recent collection of criticism, The Din in the Head (2006), contains a brief but engaging essay called ‘Highbrow Blues’. It begins with her musing about a gaffe made by Jonathan Franzen following the publication of The Corrections (2002). Oprah Winfrey had selected Franzen’s novel for her televised book club, which was popular enough to turn any work she chose into a bestseller, but Franzen was uncomfortable with her program’s folksiness. He felt that the club’s reputation for featuring works of middlebrow fiction did not fit with his literary ambitions and that an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show was not likely to enhance his credibility. ‘I feel,’ he explained, ‘like I’m solidly in the high-art literary tradition.’ Brickbats flew from all directions. But why, wonders Ozick, did Franzen’s remark seem so jejune?
Custom Article Title: Don Anderson reviews 'Below the Styx' by Michael Meehan
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Article Title: Mysteries of the epergne
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'What’s in a name?’ as C.J. Dennis and Shakespeare asked. Maybe much, as in nomen: omen – maybe naught, as in the case of the narrator Michael Meehan’s fourth novel, Below the Styx. For this chap’s name is Martin Frobisher, a distinctive name that rings several bells. Sir Martin Frobisher (c.1535–94) was an English navigator who made three attempts from 1576 to 1578 to discover the North-West Passage, giving his name to a bay on Baffin Island and bringing back to England ‘black earth’, which was mistakenly thought to contain gold. He later served against the Spanish Armada and raided Spanish treasure ships.
Meehan’s protagonist would appear to have nothing whatsoever in common with his Tudor namesake, and his name may be a subspecies of that great Australian comic trope, the furphy. From the first page of the book, it is all but impossible to shake the conviction that ‘Martin Frobisher’ has a weighty significance, while it may in fact be empty, a linguistic terra nullius. It may be a Shaggy Dog, happily at home in this benignly witty and whimsical novel, which is also a murder mystery.
Book 1 Title: Below the Styx
Book 1 Subtitle: A novel
Book Author: Michael Meehan
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin $29.99 pb, 277 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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'What’s in a name?’ as C.J. Dennis and Shakespeare asked. Maybe much, as in nomen: omen – maybe naught, as in the case of the narrator Michael Meehan’s fourth novel, Below the Styx. For this chap’s name is Martin Frobisher, a distinctive name that rings several bells. Sir Martin Frobisher (c.1535–94) was an English navigator who made three attempts from 1576 to 1578 to discover the North-West Passage, giving his name to a bay on Baffin Island and bringing back to England ‘black earth’, which was mistakenly thought to contain gold. He later served against the Spanish Armada and raided Spanish treasure ships.
Meehan’s protagonist would appear to have nothing whatsoever in common with his Tudor namesake, and his name may be a subspecies of that great Australian comic trope, the furphy. From the first page of the book, it is all but impossible to shake the conviction that ‘Martin Frobisher’ has a weighty significance, while it may in fact be empty, a linguistic terra nullius. It may be a Shaggy Dog, happily at home in this benignly witty and whimsical novel, which is also a murder mystery.
Custom Article Title: Gillian Dooley reviews 'Child of the Twilight' by Carmel Bird
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Article Title: Pagan charm
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The mystique of the Roman Catholic Church has been thoroughly exploited by the likes of Dan Brown and writers of the medieval monastic murder mysteries that gained a certain popularity following the English publication of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in 1983. Carmel Bird’s latest book contains a mystery, though not a murder. It is set mostly in 2001, but monks, convents, rosaries, black madonnas, and miracles fill the pages of The Child of Twilight, along with artificial insemination and air travel.
Sydney Peony Kent, the narrator, is the product of assisted reproductive technology, both of her genetic forbears being anonymous donors; her parents, habitually and oddly bundled together as ‘Avila/Barnaby’, are infertile. Sydney has a couple of imaginary friends, a Mexican nanny, and a collection of snow globes containing black virgins. And she writes novels.
Book 1 Title: Child of the Twilight
Book Author: Carmel Bird
Book 1 Biblio: Fourth Estate, $27.99 pb, 258 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The mystique of the Roman Catholic Church has been thoroughly exploited by the likes of Dan Brown and writers of the medieval monastic murder mysteries that gained a certain popularity following the English publication of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in 1983. Carmel Bird’s latest book contains a mystery, though not a murder. It is set mostly in 2001, but monks, convents, rosaries, black madonnas, and miracles fill the pages of The Child of Twilight, along with artificial insemination and air travel.
Sydney Peony Kent, the narrator, is the product of assisted reproductive technology, both of her genetic forbears being anonymous donors; her parents, habitually and oddly bundled together as ‘Avila/Barnaby’, are infertile. Sydney has a couple of imaginary friends, a Mexican nanny, and a collection of snow globes containing black virgins. And she writes novels.
Custom Article Title: Judith Loriente reviews 'In the Mood' by Laura Bloom
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Article Title: In the mood
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Soon after the end of World War II, Robert Booker, husband of Catherine, returns from service in New Guinea to their home in Sydney. It is immediately apparent that their relationship has deteriorated. With Catherine’s hasty disposal of a telegram from an American soldier named Lewis, we learn that she has had an affair, and also a child, in Robert’s absence. The story then moves back to 1944, when the liaison began. Eventually it returns to the present, and Catherine has a hard time concealing her affair and child from her husband.
Book 1 Title: In the Mood
Book Author: Laura Bloom
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $32.95 pb, 336 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Soon after the end of World War II, Robert Booker, husband of Catherine, returns from service in New Guinea to their home in Sydney. It is immediately apparent that their relationship has deteriorated. With Catherine’s hasty disposal of a telegram from an American soldier named Lewis, we learn that she has had an affair, and also a child, in Robert’s absence. The story then moves back to 1944, when the liaison began. Eventually it returns to the present, and Catherine has a hard time concealing her affair and child from her husband.
Custom Article Title: Kirsten Law reviews 'Come Back to Me' by Sarah Foster
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Article Title: Come back to me
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Suspenseful, heartrending, and transcontinental, Come Back to Me’s dynamic scenes extend from debauchery at an office part to a shocking outback crime. A complex psychological tale, Sara Foster’s début novel – forged from her years as an editor and a life lived in Britain and Australia – throws us head first into marital distress.
Book 1 Title: Come Back to Me
Book Author: Sara Foster
Book 1 Biblio: Random House Australia, $32.95 pb, 462 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Suspenseful, heartrending, and transcontinental, Come Back to Me’s dynamic scenes extend from debauchery at an office part to a shocking outback crime. A complex psychological tale, Sara Foster’s début novel – forged from her years as an editor and a life lived in Britain and Australia – throws us head first into marital distress.
Set in a middle-class world of city lawyers and designers, Come Back to Me is essentially a story of consequences. Chloe is a rising star at her law firm. When she finds herself pregnant, her husband faces an untimely quandary that has her questioning their relationship. When Chloe’s colleague Mark confronts his own demons, she is further burdened with difficult choices. Come Back to Me elucidates vulnerability as a dominant human trait and makes fate a demanding bedfellow.
Custom Article Title: Adam Rivett reviews 'Keeping Faith' by Roger Averill
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Article Title: Keeping faith
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Keeping Faith, Roger Averill’s first novel after his non-fiction debut, Boy He Cry: An island Odyssey (2009), is a quiet and resonant piece of work. Befitting a novel set partly in a labour ward and beginning with a description of a stillborn baby, it proceeds with the knowledge that finding the right words can be difficult. It speaks carefully and tactfully, in a spare language of great focus.
Book 1 Title: Keeping Faith
Book Author: Roger Averill
Book 1 Biblio: Transit Lounge $29.95 pb, 233 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Keeping Faith, Roger Averill’s first novel after his non-fiction debut, Boy He Cry: An island Odyssey (2009), is a quiet and resonant piece of work. Befitting a novel set partly in a labour ward and beginning with a description of a stillborn baby, it proceeds with the knowledge that finding the right words can be difficult. It speaks carefully and tactfully, in a spare language of great focus.
Custom Article Title: Susan Steggall reviews 'A Singular Voice' edited by Candice Bruce, Dinah Dysart and Jo Holder
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Article Title: Comfortable chaos
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Although it is regrettable that A Singular Voice: Essays on Australian art and architecture by Joan Kerr, first proposed in 2003, when Kerr was still alive, has taken so long to appear, it has been worth the wait. The handsomely produced book displays Kerr’s writings to advantage, and the sparing but judicious use of images enhances and reinforces the egalitarian kind of art history that Kerr espoused.
Book 1 Title: A Singular Voice
Book 1 Subtitle: Essays on Australian art and architecture by Joan Kerr
Book Author: Candice Bruce, Dinah Dysart, Jo Holder
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Although it is regrettable that A Singular Voice: Essays on Australian art and architecture by Joan Kerr, first proposed in 2003, when Kerr was still alive, has taken so long to appear, it has been worth the wait. The handsomely produced book displays Kerr’s writings to advantage, and the sparing but judicious use of images enhances and reinforces the egalitarian kind of art history that Kerr espoused.
The book begins with a foreword by Roger Benjamin, Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney, where Joan Kerr (1938–2004) spent most of her working life. This is followed by a selection of twenty-nine essays, divided into three parts – ‘Art and Life’, ‘Art and Artists’, and ‘Art and Architecture’ – although there is considerable crossover between them, which attests to the difficulties involved in trying to categorise Kerr’s work. The anthology ends with a brief biography of milestones in Kerr’s private life and public career.
Custom Article Title: Manfred B. Steger reviews 'Aesthetics and World Politics' by Roland Bleiker
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Article Title: Engaged Poets’ Society
Article Subtitle: The idea of an aesthetic world politics
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Ever since Plato famously proposed to banish poets and their ‘embellished tales’ from his ideal Republic, the relationship between art and politics has been strained. On the negative end of the spectrum hovers the warning example of a failed Austrian landscape painter who proceeded to push the world into total war. What makes things even worse is that the remarkable appeal of Hitler’s ghastly vision in 1930s Germany owed much to the efforts of sympathetic artists such as Leni Riefenstahl or Gottfried Benn. But even more inspiring figures on the positive end of the spectrum – Václav Havel and Melina Mercouri come to mind here – usually fall from popular grace once they accept political office.
Book 1 Title: Aesthetics and World Politics
Book Author: Roland Bleiker
Book 1 Biblio: Palgrave Macmillan, $84.95 hb, 271 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Ever since Plato famously proposed to banish poets and their ‘embellished tales’ from his ideal Republic, the relationship between art and politics has been strained. On the negative end of the spectrum hovers the warning example of a failed Austrian landscape painter who proceeded to push the world into total war. What makes things even worse is that the remarkable appeal of Hitler’s ghastly vision in 1930s Germany owed much to the efforts of sympathetic artists such as Leni Riefenstahl or Gottfried Benn. But even more inspiring figures on the positive end of the spectrum – Václav Havel and Melina Mercouri come to mind here – usually fall from popular grace once they accept political office.
For this reason, prominent artists often abjure political engagement, fearing, like Nobel Laureates Gao Xingjian and Orhan Pamuk, that art loses its essence when conscripted into the service of politics. Many politicos, too, shudder at the thought of ‘aesthetic politics’, seeing it as a Frankenstein-like hybrid born of irrational impulses and the utopian pipedream of establishing societal models based on beauty, harmony or, worst of all, the ‘sublime’. The same goes for the guardians of ‘value-free’ political science dedicated to the pursuit of objective, ‘law-like’ knowledge in the social realm. In fact, even those international relations experts who recognise the pivotal role of language and symbols in the construction of political ‘reality’ ultimately insist that poetry, literature, and other forms of aesthetic expression are incapable of solving today’s global problems such as worldwide financial crises, transnational terrorism, North-South inequality, and global climate change. As Alexander Wendt, an academic superstar of world politics, recently put it, ‘If we want to solve those problems our best hope, slim as it may be, is social science’.
Custom Article Title: Patrick Allington reviews 'Boyer Lectures: A very Australian conversation' by Peter Cosgrove
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Each year, the board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission invites a prominent Australian to present the Boyer Lectures. The chosen expert offers his or her (mostly his) ‘ideas on major social, scientific or cultural issues’ to a radio audience and, a little later, to readers.
Unsurprisingly, a review of the Boyers’ fifty-year history reveals undulations in quality and significance. While the concept has produced plenty of thought-provoking and prescient moments, often the interest is of a transient or an introductory nature. Certainly, few lecturers have matched the resonant and seminal contribution of W.E.H. Stanner’s After the Dreaming (1968), one of the finest pieces of writing produced about indigenous relations in Australia. Sometimes the choice of lecturer has been perplexing. In 2008, Rupert Murdoch’s A Golden Age of Freedom mixed rapacious optimism about technology, globalisation, and the future of the news media with a tetchy plea for Australia to shrug off its complacency. It would be hard to think of a person who needs the resources of a public broadcaster to disseminate his vision of the world less than Murdoch does.
Book 1 Title: Boyer Lectures
Book 1 Subtitle: A very Australian conversation
Book Author: Peter Cosgrove
Book 1 Biblio: ABC Books, $24.99 pb, 112 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Each year, the board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission invites a prominent Australian to present the Boyer Lectures. The chosen expert offers his or her (mostly his) ‘ideas on major social, scientific or cultural issues’ to a radio audience and, a little later, to readers.
Unsurprisingly, a review of the Boyers’ fifty-year history reveals undulations in quality and significance. While the concept has produced plenty of thought-provoking and prescient moments, often the interest is of a transient or an introductory nature. Certainly, few lecturers have matched the resonant and seminal contribution of W.E.H. Stanner’s After the Dreaming (1968), one of the finest pieces of writing produced about indigenous relations in Australia. Sometimes the choice of lecturer has been perplexing. In 2008, Rupert Murdoch’s A Golden Age of Freedom mixed rapacious optimism about technology, globalisation, and the future of the news media with a tetchy plea for Australia to shrug off its complacency. It would be hard to think of a person who needs the resources of a public broadcaster to disseminate his vision of the world less than Murdoch does.
Custom Article Title: David Callahan reviews 'Brian Castro's Fiction' by Bernadette Brennan
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Article Title: Castro's adventure
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Brian Castro has been leading his readers on an exhilarating chase since Birds of Passage in 1983, and his allusive, melancholy but sensual work leads Bernadette Brennan to being confidently: ‘Brian Castro is one of the most innovative and challenging novelists writing in English today.’ In her attempt to prove the justice of this assertion, Brennan is far too attuned to the richness of Castro’s work to try to establish any sort of total explanatory grid, and her book is less an attempt to tidy Castro up than a guide to some of the places where we might most profitably enjoy him.
One of the principal characteristics of Castro’s work, after all, is the ambition with which he calls out to his readers, inviting us to rise to the challenge and participate in the enjoyment of the dazzling multiplicity of issues, references, allusions, plays on words, and theoretical gambits that rub shoulders (and other parts) throughout his books.
Book 1 Title: Brian Castro's Fiction
Book 1 Subtitle: The seductive play of language
Book Author: Bernadette Brennan
Book 1 Biblio: Cambria Press, $99.95 hb, 220 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Brian Castro has been leading his readers on an exhilarating chase since Birds of Passage in 1983, and his allusive, melancholy but sensual work leads Bernadette Brennan to being confidently: ‘Brian Castro is one of the most innovative and challenging novelists writing in English today.’ In her attempt to prove the justice of this assertion, Brennan is far too attuned to the richness of Castro’s work to try to establish any sort of total explanatory grid, and her book is less an attempt to tidy Castro up than a guide to some of the places where we might most profitably enjoy him.
One of the principal characteristics of Castro’s work, after all, is the ambition with which he calls out to his readers, inviting us to rise to the challenge and participate in the enjoyment of the dazzling multiplicity of issues, references, allusions, plays on words, and theoretical gambits that rub shoulders (and other parts) throughout his books.
Custom Article Title: Paul Genoni reviews 'Cultural Seeds' edited by Karen Welberry and Tanya Dalziell
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Nick Cave, against the odds, is one of the great survivors of Australian music. Cave, who made his first recording in 1978 and established his international reputation after moving to London in 1982, has experienced critical and popular success with a variety of musical ventures including The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Grinderman and, most notably, The Bad Seeds. It is a measure of Cave’s durability that it is difficult to think of any other Australian rock act, with the exception of AC/DC, that has maintained an international profile for such an extended period. It is also salutary to consider how few of the international acts that emerged from the punk and post-punk moment of the late 1970s are still making high-profile and critically acclaimed music.
Cave’s ambitions have not been limited to music. As the dust jacket to Cultural Seeds proclaims, he is ‘now widely recognized as a songwriter, musician, novelist, screenwriter, curator, critic, actor and performer’. With the years, Cave has won a larger audience as the range and scope of his talent have been manifest in various forms of cultural production. His oeuvre includes works of fiction (And the Ass Saw the Angel, 1989; The Death of Bunny Munro, 2009) and a film script (The Proposition, 2005).
Book 1 Title: Cultural Seeds
Book 1 Subtitle: Essays on the work of Nick Cave
Book Author: Karen Welberry and Tanya Dalziell
Book 1 Biblio: Ashgate, $50 hb, 216 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Nick Cave, against the odds, is one of the great survivors of Australian music. Cave, who made his first recording in 1978 and established his international reputation after moving to London in 1982, has experienced critical and popular success with a variety of musical ventures including The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Grinderman and, most notably, The Bad Seeds. It is a measure of Cave’s durability that it is difficult to think of any other Australian rock act, with the exception of AC/DC, that has maintained an international profile for such an extended period. It is also salutary to consider how few of the international acts that emerged from the punk and post-punk moment of the late 1970s are still making high-profile and critically acclaimed music.
Cave’s ambitions have not been limited to music. As the dust jacket to Cultural Seeds proclaims, he is ‘now widely recognized as a songwriter, musician, novelist, screenwriter, curator, critic, actor and performer’. With the years, Cave has won a larger audience as the range and scope of his talent have been manifest in various forms of cultural production. His oeuvre includes works of fiction (And the Ass Saw the Angel, 1989; The Death of Bunny Munro, 2009) and a film script (The Proposition, 2005).
Custom Article Title: Murray Waldren reviews 'Gravel' by Peter Goldsworthy
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Article Title: Prickles of Disquiet
Article Subtitle: Tales from the prolific Peter Goldsworthy
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Peter Goldsworthy justly commands a seat at the big table of the Australian hall of literary achievement. This was underlined on Australia Day with his gonging as a Member of the Order of Australia for service as an author and poet. It is a prize that should glitter comfortably on the mantelpiece alongside the likes of his South Australian Premier’s Award, his Commonwealth Poetry Prize, his Bicentennial Literary Prize for Poetry, and his FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction.
For someone who has practised half-time as a writer and half-time as a GP for the past thirty-five years, his output is admirably prolific: eight novels, including one co-written with Brian Matthews, five collections of short stories, half a dozen poetry collections, two novels adapted as plays, two opera libretti, and a spot of essayistic Navel Gazing (1998). He has also done time on literature’s administrative front line, his committee stints including four and a half years as chairman of the Australia Council’s Literature Board. All of which mark him out as a littérateur of the first order.
Book 1 Title: Gravel
Book Author: Peter Goldsworthy
Book 1 Biblio: Hamish Hamilton, $29.95 pb, 264 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Peter Goldsworthy justly commands a seat at the big table of the Australian hall of literary achievement. This was underlined on Australia Day with his gonging as a Member of the Order of Australia for service as an author and poet. It is a prize that should glitter comfortably on the mantelpiece alongside the likes of his South Australian Premier’s Award, his Commonwealth Poetry Prize, his Bicentennial Literary Prize for Poetry, and his FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction.
For someone who has practised half-time as a writer and half-time as a GP for the past thirty-five years, his output is admirably prolific: eight novels, including one co-written with Brian Matthews, five collections of short stories, half a dozen poetry collections, two novels adapted as plays, two opera libretti, and a spot of essayistic Navel Gazing (1998). He has also done time on literature’s administrative front line, his committee stints including four and a half years as chairman of the Australia Council’s Literature Board. All of which mark him out as a littérateur of the first order.
Custom Article Title: Dan Rule reviews 'How to Make Trouble and Influence People' by Iain McIntyre
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Article Title: Cheek Politics
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Poor communication has long been activism’s Achilles heel. Engaging the wider populace and influencing opinion rely as much on the effective, reliable delivery of a message as on well-organised ideas and events. We may be loath to admit it, but intelligent public relations can aid any pursuit – advocatory, activist, or otherwise.
It is from this perspective that the expansive new publication How to Make Trouble and Influence People: Pranks, hoaxes, graffiti & mischief-making takes its cue. Compiled and written by Melbourne writer, zine-maker, and community radio presenter Iain McIntyre, this vividly illustrated volume documents not only an unofficial history of Australian protest, activism, and all-round cheek, but the connections between political trouble-making and its ability to influence popular opinion. It succeeds, for the most part.
Book 1 Title: How to Make Trouble and Influence People
Book 1 Subtitle: Pranks, hoaxes, graffiti & political mischief-making
Book Author: Iain McIntyre
Book 1 Biblio: Breakdown Press, $29.95 pb, 276 pp
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Poor communication has long been activism’s Achilles heel. Engaging the wider populace and influencing opinion rely as much on the effective, reliable delivery of a message as on well-organised ideas and events. We may be loath to admit it, but intelligent public relations can aid any pursuit – advocatory, activist, or otherwise.
It is from this perspective that the expansive new publication How to Make Trouble and Influence People: Pranks, hoaxes, graffiti & mischief-making takes its cue. Compiled and written by Melbourne writer, zine-maker, and community radio presenter Iain McIntyre, this vividly illustrated volume documents not only an unofficial history of Australian protest, activism, and all-round cheek, but the connections between political trouble-making and its ability to influence popular opinion. It succeeds, for the most part.
Custom Article Title: Jane Goodall on 'The hypnotic voice of J.D. Salinger'
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Article Title: Phoneys and the dash man
Article Subtitle: The hypnotic voice of J. D. Salinger
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Holden Caulfield is a garrulous bore. Seymour Glass is a phoney. Franny and Zooey are spoiled brats. And J.D. Salinger is a media tart. All these things are partly true. To take the last first: there is surely a ring of truth about Imre Salusinzsky’s recent spoof obituary in which Jay Leno and David Letterman are quoted expressing their sadness at the loss of a favourite regular guest who was always ready to front up and sparkle as he promoted an endless succession of Catcher in the Rye merchandise. Salinger, who died on January 27, aged ninety-one, may not have done such things, but at least one of his alter egos might.
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Holden Caulfield is a garrulous bore. Seymour Glass is a phoney. Franny and Zooey are spoiled brats. And J.D. Salinger is a media tart. All these things are partly true. To take the last first: there is surely a ring of truth about Imre Salusinzsky’s recent spoof obituary in which Jay Leno and David Letterman are quoted expressing their sadness at the loss of a favourite regular guest who was always ready to front up and sparkle as he promoted an endless succession of Catcher in the Rye merchandise. Salinger, who died on January 27, aged ninety-one, may not have done such things, but at least one of his alter egos might.
Custom Article Title: Claudia Hyles reviews 'The Listener' by Shira Nayman
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Article Title: Staunching waste
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Shira Nayman’s first novel is full of echoes and resonances. There may even be an echo of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. Set at more or less the same time, The Listener has the same immediate backdrop: World War II, its atrocities and aftermath.
Two years after the end of the war, Dr Henry Harrison – the narrator and listener of the piece – encounters a man who will become his most memorable case. Dr Harrison is the director and chief psychiatrist of Shadowlands, a private mental hospital located at White Plains, not far from New York. The exclusive institution is grand, more of a country club than an asylum, with beautiful buildings, extensive woods and formal gardens. Inmates, though voluntarily committed, are known as ‘patients’, not the more egalitarian ‘clients’ or euphemistic ‘guests’ of the present day. Many of them are suffering from war neurosis, a condition that Dr Harrison has been treating for many years. During the war he was required to treat mentally disturbed or shell-shocked officers and to send them back, supposedly cured, to the front. This was to ‘staunch the wastage’, according to the army. Over time he has come to doubt the efficacy of this treatment. By researching complex cases such as that of Bertram Reiner, he seeks to refine his methods.
Book 1 Title: The Listener
Book Author: Shira Nayman
Book 1 Biblio: Simon & Schuster, $26.99pb, 308 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Shira Nayman’s first novel is full of echoes and resonances. There may even be an echo of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. Set at more or less the same time, The Listener has the same immediate backdrop: World War II, its atrocities and aftermath.
Two years after the end of the war, Dr Henry Harrison – the narrator and listener of the piece – encounters a man who will become his most memorable case. Dr Harrison is the director and chief psychiatrist of Shadowlands, a private mental hospital located at White Plains, not far from New York. The exclusive institution is grand, more of a country club than an asylum, with beautiful buildings, extensive woods and formal gardens. Inmates, though voluntarily committed, are known as ‘patients’, not the more egalitarian ‘clients’ or euphemistic ‘guests’ of the present day. Many of them are suffering from war neurosis, a condition that Dr Harrison has been treating for many years. During the war he was required to treat mentally disturbed or shell-shocked officers and to send them back, supposedly cured, to the front. This was to ‘staunch the wastage’, according to the army. Over time he has come to doubt the efficacy of this treatment. By researching complex cases such as that of Bertram Reiner, he seeks to refine his methods.
Custom Article Title: Judith Armstrong reviews 'The President's Wife' by Thea Welsh
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Article Title: Republican plot
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It is surprising how many people seem to think that reviewers read only the first and last chapters of books to which they will devote several hundred words of critique. They look sceptical when informed that critics read every word of, and often go beyond, the featured book, searching out earlier works by the same author or books on the same subject by other writers. Thea Welsh being previously unknown to me, I have now read one of her earlier novels, and a memoir, but not her prize-winning first novel, The Story of the Year 1912 in the Village of Elza Darzins (1990).
The memoir, The Cat Who Looked at the Sky: A memoir (2003), was about ‘three cats, two households and the great truths of life’, according to the blurb. It does not appear to have much in common with Welsh’s new novel, The President’s Wife: Welcome Back (1995), however, was very relevant. Briefly, the novel is about Janey, an upwardly mobile Sydney woman who harnesses fierce ambition to more than one stroke of luck in her pursuit of a cherished goal. This is to become president of the charity committee that puts on Sydney’s social event of the year, the élite and glamorous Goldfish Ball. Although Janey is considered ‘too young’ and inexperienced, she is nevertheless successful. Her apotheosis occurs on the night to which all her efforts have been bent: seated on an elevated ‘throne-like chair’, she is ‘happily aware that she looked quite imperial in her emerald-and-pearl necklace and her green taffeta evening-gown’.
Book 1 Title: The President's Wife
Book Author: Thea Welsh
Book 1 Biblio: Fourth Estate, $32.99 pb, 432 pp
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It is surprising how many people seem to think that reviewers read only the first and last chapters of books to which they will devote several hundred words of critique. They look sceptical when informed that critics read every word of, and often go beyond, the featured book, searching out earlier works by the same author or books on the same subject by other writers. Thea Welsh being previously unknown to me, I have now read one of her earlier novels, and a memoir, but not her prize-winning first novel, The Story of the Year 1912 in the Village of Elza Darzins (1990).
The memoir, The Cat Who Looked at the Sky: A memoir (2003), was about ‘three cats, two households and the great truths of life’, according to the blurb. It does not appear to have much in common with Welsh’s new novel, The President’s Wife: Welcome Back (1995), however, was very relevant. Briefly, the novel is about Janey, an upwardly mobile Sydney woman who harnesses fierce ambition to more than one stroke of luck in her pursuit of a cherished goal. This is to become president of the charity committee that puts on Sydney’s social event of the year, the élite and glamorous Goldfish Ball. Although Janey is considered ‘too young’ and inexperienced, she is nevertheless successful. Her apotheosis occurs on the night to which all her efforts have been bent: seated on an elevated ‘throne-like chair’, she is ‘happily aware that she looked quite imperial in her emerald-and-pearl necklace and her green taffeta evening-gown’.
Custom Article Title: Brian McFarlane reviews 'The Spoken Word: British Writers'
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Article Title: Favourite Children
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Reviewing is normally a pleasurable activity, but it’s not often so absurdly enjoyable as listening to the three CDs at issue here. These are a treasure house of British writers whose lives span 150 years. Authors from Arthur Conan Doyle to Muriel Spark, to name the first and last interviewees (1930 and 1989), can be heard talking about the art and craft of their profession. Perhaps because we now live in such a celebrity-conscious age, I kept marvelling to myself: that’s G.K. Chesterton’s or Graham Greene’s actual voice I’m hearing.
Noël Coward is caught for a few questions on the run at Heathrow; Virginia Woolf reads from a prepared script. The approach for most of the rest lies somewhere in between, as the big names are encouraged by interviewers of varying degrees of intrusiveness and deference. So Kenneth Tynan fields Harold Pinter almost as a mate, the somewhat hectoring Walter Allen addresses C.P. Snow as ‘Charles’, while Frank Kermode calls the author of Lord of the Flies ‘Golding’. Some just introduce their subjects and leave it up to them; others, most notably George MacBeth when interviewing J.G. Ballard, see themselves as co-stars.
Book 1 Title: The Spoken Word
Book 1 Subtitle: British Writers
Book 1 Biblio: The British Library and BBC, $45 3-CD set, 214 minutes
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Reviewing is normally a pleasurable activity, but it’s not often so absurdly enjoyable as listening to the three CDs at issue here. These are a treasure house of British writers whose lives span 150 years. Authors from Arthur Conan Doyle to Muriel Spark, to name the first and last interviewees (1930 and 1989), can be heard talking about the art and craft of their profession. Perhaps because we now live in such a celebrity-conscious age, I kept marvelling to myself: that’s G.K. Chesterton’s or Graham Greene’s actual voice I’m hearing.
Noël Coward is caught for a few questions on the run at Heathrow; Virginia Woolf reads from a prepared script. The approach for most of the rest lies somewhere in between, as the big names are encouraged by interviewers of varying degrees of intrusiveness and deference. So Kenneth Tynan fields Harold Pinter almost as a mate, the somewhat hectoring Walter Allen addresses C.P. Snow as ‘Charles’, while Frank Kermode calls the author of Lord of the Flies ‘Golding’. Some just introduce their subjects and leave it up to them; others, most notably George MacBeth when interviewing J.G. Ballard, see themselves as co-stars.
Custom Article Title: Richard Harding reviews 'The Unforgiving Rope' by Simon Adams
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Article Title: 'If I English, I not be hung'
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Simon Adams’s thesis is that capital punishment was crucial in how the West was won: ‘The gallows were a potent symbol of an unforgiving social order that was determined to stamp its moral authority over one-third of the Australian continent.’ But hanging was discriminatory; it ‘was never applied fairly or impartially in Western Australia’. Adams points to the fact that ‘there were 17 men hanged between 1889 and 1904, all of whom were “foreigners”: two Afghans, six Chinese, one Malay, two Indians, one Greek, one Frenchman and four Manilamen’, but not a single ‘Britisher’. Capital punishment was racist, reflecting the ‘distortions and prejudices of the British colonial legal system’.
Book 1 Title: The Unforgiving Rope
Book 1 Subtitle: Murder and hanging on Australia's western frontier
Book Author: Simon Adams
Book 1 Biblio: UWA Publishing, $32.95 pb, 310 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Simon Adams’s thesis is that capital punishment was crucial in how the West was won: ‘The gallows were a potent symbol of an unforgiving social order that was determined to stamp its moral authority over one-third of the Australian continent.’ But hanging was discriminatory; it ‘was never applied fairly or impartially in Western Australia’. Adams points to the fact that ‘there were 17 men hanged between 1889 and 1904, all of whom were “foreigners”: two Afghans, six Chinese, one Malay, two Indians, one Greek, one Frenchman and four Manilamen’, but not a single ‘Britisher’. Capital punishment was racist, reflecting the ‘distortions and prejudices of the British colonial legal system’.
Custom Article Title: Lyndon Megarrity reviews 'They Called Him Old Smoothie' by Peter Golding
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Article Title: The discreet charm of Old Smoothie
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John Joseph Cahill (1891–1959) rose from humble beginnings as a railway worker to become the premier of New South Wales during the 1950s. Although more interested in listening to band music on the wireless than in anything approaching High Culture, he was nonetheless instrumental in championing the cause of the Sydney Opera House. Ordinary working people, he believed, were entitled to more than just the essentials of life. Peter Golding’s intriguing biography will introduce many people to the life and career of this rough, politically hardened but fundamentally decent Labor politician.
Book 1 Title: They Called Him Old Smoothie
Book 1 Subtitle: John Joseph Cahill
Book Author: Peter Golding
Book 1 Biblio: Australian Scholarly Publishing, $49.95 pb, 484 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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John Joseph Cahill (1891–1959) rose from humble beginnings as a railway worker to become the premier of New South Wales during the 1950s. Although more interested in listening to band music on the wireless than in anything approaching High Culture, he was nonetheless instrumental in championing the cause of the Sydney Opera House. Ordinary working people, he believed, were entitled to more than just the essentials of life. Peter Golding’s intriguing biography will introduce many people to the life and career of this rough, politically hardened but fundamentally decent Labor politician.
Article Subtitle: Seven new children’s picture books
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In the 1970s and 1980s many Australian children’s picture books had a distinctly Australian look. The local landscape, flora, and fauna predominated, and unique Australian characters abounded. Today, it is much harder to pick an Australian picture book. Globalisation and market imperatives have led authors to broaden their subject matter, and illustrators have adapted their styles so that a more universal sensibility imbues their work.
Book 1 Title: Baby Wombat's Week
Book Author: Jackie French & Bruce Whatley
Book 1 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, $24.99 hb, 32 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Jasper & Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle
Book 2 Author: Kevin Rudd & Rhys Muldoon
Book 2 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $24.99 hb, 24 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
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In the 1970s and 1980s many Australian children’s picture books had a distinctly Australian look. The local landscape, flora, and fauna predominated, and unique Australian characters abounded. Today, it is much harder to pick an Australian picture book. Globalisation and market imperatives have led authors to broaden their subject matter, and illustrators have adapted their styles so that a more universal sensibility imbues their work.
Unashamedly Australian books do still make an appearance, however. In Baby Wombat’s Week, Jackie French and Bruce Whatley reprise the format of their hugely popular Diary of a Wombat (2002). Mothball is now a mum, and this gorgeous book details a week in the life of her baby, who is joined by a human child. Whatley entertainingly animates and interprets French’s minimalist yet enthusiastic text. The totally endearing baby wombat trundles self-assuredly through the pages, leaving disasters in his wake. The interactions between the two babies – human and wombat – are particularly appealing, and the final image is an absolute delight. There is no doubt that this hilarious sequel will be as popular as the original.
It seems that many celebrities think that writing a children’s book is child’s play. Actor Rhys Muldoon and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who have co-written Jasper & Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle, have fallen into this trap, unaware that, while it may be easy to come up with a story for children, crafting a good picture-book text is far more complex.
All in all, though, Rudd and Muldoon have not done a bad job. The story moves along snappily, with some nice alliterative flourishes, like the knitting ‘nannas from Nambour’. Muldoon, a former Playschool presenter who obviously knows what appeals to children, has included plenty of food, animals, and slapstick humour. However, the text tends to be overwritten and should have been pruned to allow more room for the illustrations to tell their story.
Carla Zapel’s loose-lined watercolour illustrations, though sometimes cluttered, are full of movement and visual interest. She is at her best depicting Jasper and Abby, the prime minister’s cat and dog. They are the stars of this simple tale about Australia Day celebrations at The Lodge that are sabotaged by an overenthusiastic pooch. The idea is nice, the story fun, but the overall presentation is somewhat lacklustre. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital, in Melbourne.
Custom Article Title: Baby Dante and the Apocalypse
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Article Title: Baby Dante and the Apocalypse
Article Subtitle: Filming Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
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My heart sank when I heard that John Hillcoat was to direct a film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006), one of the more terminally grim performances in recent modern fiction. It is the story of a little boy who roams the post-nuclear devastated earth in the company of his father, while the world draws to an end amid murder, rape, cannibalism, and abysses of corruption – an inferno of a world, one of the war of all against all.
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My heart sank when I heard that John Hillcoat was to direct a film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006), one of the more terminally grim performances in recent modern fiction. It is the story of a little boy who roams the post-nuclear devastated earth in the company of his father, while the world draws to an end amid murder, rape, cannibalism, and abysses of corruption – an inferno of a world, one of the war of all against all.
The Road is the kind of book parents might prefer not to read. It depicts the ultimate nightmare: a child – mother dead, father destined to follow her – approaching his doom in a universe where he can be torn apart, with nothing but a suicidal bullet to protect him against starvation or being devoured as some human marauder’s prey.
In reviewing my biography of Clifton Pugh, Brenda Niall, a distinguished biographer herself, arrives at this puzzling last sentence: ‘Whether or not Morrison intended it … the Clifton Pugh of these pages emerges more as opportunist than true believer’ (ABR, February 2010). She states earlier that it surprises her that a large number of women were attracted to Pugh, and that I myself retained a measure of love for him until the end of his life.
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Dear Editor,
In reviewing my biography of Clifton Pugh, Brenda Niall, a distinguished biographer herself, arrives at this puzzling last sentence: ‘Whether or not Morrison intended it … the Clifton Pugh of these pages emerges more as opportunist than true believer’ (ABR, February 2010). She states earlier that it surprises her that a large number of women were attracted to Pugh, and that I myself retained a measure of love for him until the end of his life.
