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Absolutely Revolting

February 2006, no. 278

Welcome to the February 2006 issue of Australian Book Review.

Michael Williams reviews The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald
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How much do you care about sheep? I mean really care about sheep. Because The Ballad of Desmond Kale is up to its woolly neck in them. It’s an unusual and inspired variation on the classic Australian colonial novel of hunters for fortune, for identity and for redemption ...
Book 1 Title: The Ballad of Desmond Kale
Book Author: Roger McDonald
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $32.95 pb, 638 pp, 1741661145
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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How much do you care about sheep? I mean really care about sheep. Because The Ballad of Desmond Kale is up to its woolly neck in them. It’s an unusual and inspired variation on the classic Australian colonial novel of hunters for fortune, for identity and for redemption. The historical record is filled with accounts of early settlers grappling with the hostile and unpleasant environment. The battle to tame the distinctly un-European landscape has been a recurring theme in Australian literature ever since. As a consequence, the physical landscape has been mythologised. Here, the rhetoric goes, we might find ourselves. The bush and the outback are awarded a spiritual quality. If we can understand this, be at one with the space that was formerly so hostile to us, then maybe we can understand what it means to be Australian.

The Ballad of Desmond Kale concerns itself with that crucial turning point where the possibilities of the colony became apparent, where the land changed from being a punishment in itself and became a source of fertility, of growth and of hope. In early nineteenth-century New South Wales, a new social order is establishing itself. Desmond Kale, Irish rebel and convict, works alongside his master, parson and magistrate Matthew Stanton. Together they prove a formidable force in the farming of sheep. But Kale is notoriously proud, Stanton notoriously cruel. Inevitably, the partnership turns to rivalry and sours. Given their differing social status, that should be the end of it, with Kale in irons being flogged regularly and Stanton enjoying tea with the governor afterwards.

Read more: Michael Williams reviews 'The Ballad of Desmond Kale' by Roger McDonald

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Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
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If you can say immediately what you think a novel is ‘about’, then the chances are that it may not be a very good novel. Fiction as a genre gives writers and readers imaginative room to move, to work on a vertical axis of layers of meaning as well as along the horizontal forward movement of narrative development ...
Book 1 Title: Dreams of Speaking
Book Author: Gail Jones
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $32.95 pb, 240 pp, 1741665221
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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If you can say immediately what you think a novel is ‘about’, then the chances are that it may not be a very good novel. Fiction as a genre gives writers and readers imaginative room to move, to work on a vertical axis of layers of meaning as well as along the horizontal forward movement of narrative development.

But when hesitating over the question ‘what is this novel about?’, one good way to cut through the hesitation is to think what, if you were a designer, you would put on the cover, disregarding issues of marketability and thinking, for the moment, strictly about meaning. For me, the ideal cover of Dreams of Speaking would show a photograph or drawing of a traditional raked Japanese garden. When Mr Sakamoto, one of this book’s two main characters, is explaining to Alice, the other, about the way that a telephone works, he remarks: ‘It’s about ripples in the air, patterns of ripples, as in a Japanese raked garden … [which] always looks to me like an image of sound waves. Gardens, ocean, the beauty of energy transmission.’ 

Read more: Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews 'Dreams of Speaking' by Gail Jones

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Peter Goldsworthy reviews The Wreck of the Batavia and Prosper by Simon Leys
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In reviewing the first half of Simon Leys’s new book, The Wreck of the Batavia, I’m tempted to regurgitate my review from these pages (ABR, June–July 2002) of Mike Dash’s history of the Batavia shipwreck Batavia’s Graveyard (2002) – especially since Leys also holds that book in high regard, rendering all other histories, his own included ...
Book 1 Title: The Wreck of the Batavia and Prosper
Book Author: Simon Leys
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $29.95 pb, 129 pp, 1863951504
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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In reviewing the first half of Simon Leys’s new book, The Wreck of the Batavia, I’m tempted to regurgitate my review from these pages (ABR, June–July 2002) of Mike Dash’s history of the Batavia shipwreck Batavia’s Graveyard (2002) – especially since Leys also holds that book in high regard, rendering all other histories, his own included, to the status of footnotes. Dash’s book, with its wealth of new material and its ability to bring the terrible events of the voyage so stinkingly alive, was a revelation to all Old Batavia Hands – but for those without the time, Leys offers a concise and pungently written summary of those terrible events.

Simon Leys (the pen-name, as is well known, of Pierre Ryckmanns) writes primarily in French, but his work always seems to translate into English with the exactness and economy of an Orwell. Since he does the translating himself, with a little help from friends, I imagine his French possesses a similar clarity. In fact, in content as well as in style, Leys has been something of a latter-day Orwell; his exposures of Maoist China, and its various genocidal Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions, were a fierce and astringent antidote to the sentimental romanticism of the adolescent left of my generation (mea culpa, me among it).

The Batavia story has fascinated him for many years. No surprises there: its archetypal story elements have gripped the heads and hearts of many. Before I persuaded the composer Richard Mills to set the story to music, I tried hard to interest various film directors in the project. Some of the story coincidences, as Leys points out, are so improbable that they could only occur in a film. Leys understandably has a suspicion of such filmic possibilities, but this short book could well serve as a ‘treatment’ to tempt a director. And since history, for better or (mostly) for worse, is largely written by the Oscar winners in our time, a film of ‘Batavia’ will surely happen, although preferably not with Paul ‘Robocop’ Verhoeven, who is rumoured to be interested, at the helm.

Read more: Peter Goldsworthy reviews 'The Wreck of the Batavia and Prosper' by Simon Leys

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Colin Nettelbeck reviews Tête-À-Tête: The lives and loves of Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley
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Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are both mythical figures. They are also a mythical couple, a symbol of lifelong intellectual and personal commitment to each other and to commonly espoused causes. Of the two, Beauvoir is probably the more widely read today, because of her foundational role in the development of feminism, and the relative accessibility of her writing. In comparison, Sartre’s work, with the exception of his elegantly self-mocking autobiography, Les Mots (1966), is more difficult. His opus is as eclectic as it is voluminous – covering philosophy, prose fiction, theatre, political essays and literary criticism – and it is often dense. With Beauvoir, the reader is always in the presence of a person; with Sartre, we witness above all a mind at work, a brilliant intelligence grappling with whatever problem or issue it has decided to take on. In both cases, their work had a profound impact, mirroring and inspiring fundamental changes in thought and mores. Sartre and Beauvoir shared a philosophy – which went, somewhat loosely, under the name of existentialism – that held that human individuals and societies had the capacity to determine their own destiny, free of the weight of history and tradition. In the wake of World War II, and in the context of the ideological stalemate and nuclear threats of the Cold War, this philosophy of possibility and freedom offered an alternative to the ambient pessimism. It promised not passive resistance but transformative action by and for a humanity willing to create its own future.
Book 1 Title: Tête-À-Tête
Book 1 Subtitle: The lives and loves of Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
Book Author: Hazel Rowley
Book 1 Biblio: Chatto & Windus, $55.95 hb, 444 pp, 0701175087
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are both mythical figures. They are also a mythical couple, a symbol of lifelong intellectual and personal commitment to each other and to commonly espoused causes. Of the two, Beauvoir is probably the more widely read today, because of her foundational role in the development of feminism, and the relative accessibility of her writing. In comparison, Sartre’s work, with the exception of his elegantly self-mocking autobiography, Les Mots (1966), is more difficult. His opus is as eclectic as it is voluminous – covering philosophy, prose fiction, theatre, political essays and literary criticism – and it is often dense. With Beauvoir, the reader is always in the presence of a person; with Sartre, we witness above all a mind at work, a brilliant intelligence grappling with whatever problem or issue it has decided to take on. In both cases, their work had a profound impact, mirroring and inspiring fundamental changes in thought and mores. Sartre and Beauvoir shared a philosophy – which went, somewhat loosely, under the name of existentialism – that held that human individuals and societies had the capacity to determine their own destiny, free of the weight of history and tradition. In the wake of World War II, and in the context of the ideological stalemate and nuclear threats of the Cold War, this philosophy of possibility and freedom offered an alternative to the ambient pessimism. It promised not passive resistance but transformative action by and for a humanity willing to create its own future.

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Read more: Colin Nettelbeck reviews 'Tête-À-Tête: The lives and loves of Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul...

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Paul Hetherington reviews ‘The Poet: A novella’ by Alex Skovron
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The Poet is an unusual book. Dispensing with many of the conventions that underpin most extended works of prose fiction, such as significant characterisation, it presents a central protagonist, Manfred, who is ‘honest’ – as the author repeatedly states. Manfred is also a poet. The novella is written in formal and refined prose, as if the narrative style is designed to reflect Manfred’s obsessional nature and estranged condition: he has never been ‘in love’, is ‘something of a loner’ and is highly anxious.
Book 1 Title: The Poet
Book 1 Subtitle: A novella
Book Author: Alex Skovron
Book 1 Biblio: Hybrid Publishers, $19.95 pb, 125 pp, 1876462310
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The Poet is an unusual book. Dispensing with many of the conventions that underpin most extended works of prose fiction, such as significant characterisation, it presents a central protagonist, Manfred, who is ‘honest’ – as the author repeatedly states. Manfred is also a poet.

The novella is written in formal and refined prose, as if the narrative style is designed to reflect Manfred’s obsessional nature and estranged condition: he has never been ‘in love’, is ‘something of a loner’ and is highly anxious. It follows the vicissitudes of his life after he decides to take the only copies of his more than 3,000 poems to a publisher for advice on the possible publication of a poetry collection. Manfred is ‘naïve about such procedures’, as he is about almost everything else, even though his poems range over ‘nature, myth, music and art, history, personality, desire, faith, destiny, death … a universe of concerns that encompassed the gamut of human experience’ – with the exception of love. These poems are supposedly good, perhaps even very good, according to ‘a young teacher of literature named Hugo’. It is no surprise when Manfred’s manuscript goes missing, and thereby hangs this tale.

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Read more: Paul Hetherington reviews ‘The Poet: A novella’ by Alex Skovron

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W.H. Chong reviews The Summons by David Whish-Wilson
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The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past; it keeps coming back as different novels, and writers do things differently there. Nazi Germany remains history’s prime hothouse from which to procure blooms for fiction’s bouquet. All those darkly perfumed spikes – drama and tragedy intrinsic, memory within recall.
Book 1 Title: The Summons
Book Author: David Whish-Wilson
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $23.95 pb, 288 pp, 1740523886
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past; it keeps coming back as different novels, and writers do things differently there. Nazi Germany remains history’s prime hothouse from which to procure blooms for fiction’s bouquet. All those darkly perfumed spikes – drama and tragedy intrinsic, memory within recall.

David Whish-Wilson’s début novel opens in Berlin, 1934. Our hero is the war-damaged veteran and historian Dr Mobius, who ekes out his days in the library. Returning from lunch one afternoon, Mobius sees at his desk a tall man in black, the black of an SS officer. It is his old friend Flade, come to persuade him to join his work. Flade shares a tricky past with Mobius, having introduced him to his first broken heart and provided him with hand-me-downs of expensive clothing.

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Read more: W.H. Chong reviews 'The Summons' by David Whish-Wilson

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Against Religion by Tamas Pataki
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Shortly before the federal elections of October 2004, Treasurer Peter Costello delivered an address entitled ‘The Moral Decay of Australia’ to 16,000 members of the Assemblies of God at the Sydney Hillsong Church. For his main theme, Costello invoked ‘the Judeo-Christian-Western tradition’, the core of which, according to him, was the Ten Commandments. He lamented that few people could recite the Commandments today, despite the fact that ‘they are the foundation of our law and our society’. He listed the legacy of that tradition as the rule of law, respect for life, respect for others and private property rights. ‘Tolerance under the law,’ he added, is also, ‘a great part of this tradition.’
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Shortly before the federal elections of October 2004, Treasurer Peter Costello delivered an address entitled ‘The Moral Decay of Australia’ to 16,000 members of the Assemblies of God at the Sydney Hillsong Church. For his main theme, Costello invoked ‘the Judeo-Christian-Western tradition’, the core of which, according to him, was the Ten Commandments. He lamented that few people could recite the Commandments today, despite the fact that ‘they are the foundation of our law and our society’. He listed the legacy of that tradition as the rule of law, respect for life, respect for others and private property rights. ‘Tolerance under the law,’ he added, is also, ‘a great part of this tradition.’ Then, after a few backhanders to the Islamic Council, the Victorian government, rap music, prostitution, and drug barons, he reiterated the importance of mutual respect and tolerance, and went on to urge a return to ‘genuine faith’, an affirmation of the ‘historic Christian faith’ and the values ‘set out in the Ten Commandments about how to order society’. Finally, he told the audience how good and important it was. Devout Christians were the ballast of society: it is ‘their inner faith that gives them strength. Our society won’t work without them.’ Post-election analyses suggested that the audience liked what they heard; yet almost every word was gammon.

In July 2005 Costello returned to speak at the Hillsong Church and was given a ‘rapturous welcome’ by an audience of 20,000. This time the NSW premier and several federal and state ministers were also present. Costello noted the ‘massive growth’ of Hillsong Church. ‘There’s a definite movement, and it’s having a wonderful effect on the lives of our young people and of our society’, he said. Within days of this event, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley revealed his delicate religiosity (‘I’m also careful what I pray for. I don’t pray for victory. I don’t assume that God necessarily wills a Labor or Liberal victory’). Kevin Rudd and some other politicians from both sides outed themselves as Christians, and the economist heading the new Fair Pay Commission informed the public that he would endeavour to do God’s will in the discharge of his new duties. Of course, on the world stage, more august figures have declared themselves to be doing God’s will. George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden and many of their associates believe themselves to be doing that, but, according to reports, only the first of these mass murderers thinks that he is receiving instructions directly from the Almighty.

Read more: 'Against Religion' by Tamas Pataki

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Michael Williams reviews ‘The Ballad Of Desmond Kale’ by Roger McDonald
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How much do you care about sheep? I mean really care about sheep. Because The Ballad of Desmond Kale is up to its woolly neck in them. It’s an unusual and inspired variation on the classic Australian colonial novel of hunters for fortune, for identity and for redemption. The historical record is filled with accounts of early settlers grappling with the hostile and unpleasant environment. The battle to tame the distinctly un-European landscape has been a recurring theme in Australian literature ever since. As a consequence, the physical landscape has been mythologised. Here, the rhetoric goes, we might find ourselves. The bush and the outback are awarded a spiritual quality. If we can understand this, be at one with the space that was formerly so hostile to us, then maybe we can understand what it means to be Australian.
Book 1 Title: The Ballad Of Desmond Kale
Book Author: Roger McDonald
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $32.95 pb, 638 pp, 1741661145
Book 1 Cover Small (400 x 600):
Book 1 Cover (800 x 1200):
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How much do you care about sheep? I mean really care about sheep. Because The Ballad of Desmond Kale is up to its woolly neck in them. It’s an unusual and inspired variation on the classic Australian colonial novel of hunters for fortune, for identity and for redemption. The historical record is filled with accounts of early settlers grappling with the hostile and unpleasant environment. The battle to tame the distinctly un-European landscape has been a recurring theme in Australian literature ever since. As a consequence, the physical landscape has been mythologised. Here, the rhetoric goes, we might find ourselves. The bush and the outback are awarded a spiritual quality. If we can understand this, be at one with the space that was formerly so hostile to us, then maybe we can understand what it means to be Australian.

The Ballad of Desmond Kale concerns itself with that crucial turning point where the possibilities of the colony became apparent, where the land changed from being a punishment in itself and became a source of fertility, of growth and of hope. In early nineteenth-century New South Wales, a new social order is establishing itself. Desmond Kale, Irish rebel and convict, works alongside his master, parson and magistrate Matthew Stanton. Together they prove a formidable force in the farming of sheep. But Kale is notoriously proud, Stanton notoriously cruel. Inevitably, the partnership turns to rivalry and sours. Given their differing social status, that should be the end of it, with Kale in irons being flogged regularly and Stanton enjoying tea with the governor afterwards.

Read more: Michael Williams reviews ‘The Ballad Of Desmond Kale’ by Roger McDonald

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Vivian Smith reviews ‘The Collected Verse Of Mary Gilmore, Volume 1: 1887–1929’ edited by Jennifer Strauss
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Mary Gilmore is one of the most acclaimed figures in Australian writing. A cultural icon, she appears in important paintings and sculptures and on postage stamps, not to mention the ten-dollar note. Her biography has been published, her letters collected, and now the first volume of her complete poems, edited by Jennifer Strauss, has appeared in the prestigious Academy Editions of Australian Literature. No other Australian poet except Henry Lawson has received quite the degree of attention that Gilmore has been accorded. Longevity certainly had something to do with her fame: she was a living link between the colonial Australia she was born into and the Australia of the 1960s that saw her passing. Like Lawson’s, her life and work are written into Australian history; and she too is inextricably associated with the legend of the 1890s. She never quite achieved Lawson’s popularity as a writer, but this edition makes it clear that her fame was truly earned, not merely accrued. No literary reputation is ever finally fixed, or immune to criticism, but this book will help us to understand why Gilmore, Australia’s foremost woman poet during the first half of the twentieth century, came to be considered a national treasure.
Book 1 Title: The Collected Verse Of Mary Gilmore
Book 1 Subtitle: Volume 1 1887–1929
Book Author: Jennifer Strauss
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $80 pb, 819 pp, 0702234869, $175 hb, 0702238450
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Mary Gilmore is one of the most acclaimed figures in Australian writing. A cultural icon, she appears in important paintings and sculptures and on postage stamps, not to mention the ten-dollar note. Her biography has been published, her letters collected, and now the first volume of her complete poems, edited by Jennifer Strauss, has appeared in the prestigious Academy Editions of Australian Literature. No other Australian poet except Henry Lawson has received quite the degree of attention that Gilmore has been accorded. Longevity certainly had something to do with her fame: she was a living link between the colonial Australia she was born into and the Australia of the 1960s that saw her passing. Like Lawson’s, her life and work are written into Australian history; and she too is inextricably associated with the legend of the 1890s. She never quite achieved Lawson’s popularity as a writer, but this edition makes it clear that her fame was truly earned, not merely accrued. No literary reputation is ever finally fixed, or immune to criticism, but this book will help us to understand why Gilmore, Australia’s foremost woman poet during the first half of the twentieth century, came to be considered a national treasure.

Read more: Vivian Smith reviews ‘The Collected Verse Of Mary Gilmore, Volume 1: 1887–1929’ edited by Jennifer...

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Elizabeth Webby reviews ‘Ever Yours, C.H. Spence: Catherine Helen Spence’s an autobiography (1825–1910), diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894–1910)’ edited by Susan Magarey
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As Nicholas Jose observed in the November 2005 issue of ABR, the face of South Australian novelist Catherine Spence, currently featured on our $5 note, circulates much more widely than any of her books. Like those of several other nineteenth-century Australian women writers, Spence’s novels were revived in the 1980s but are now once again out of print. So this new edition of her autobiography, extensively annotated and accompanied by letters and a diary never before published, is especially welcome.
Book 1 Title: Ever Yours, C.H. Spence
Book 1 Subtitle: Catherine Helen Spence’s an autobiography (1825–1910), diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894–1910)
Book Author: Susan Magarey
Book 1 Biblio: Wakefield, $39.95 hb, 392 pp, 1862546568
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As Nicholas Jose observed in the November 2005 issue of ABR, the face of South Australian novelist Catherine Spence, currently featured on our $5 note, circulates much more widely than any of her books. Like those of several other nineteenth-century Australian women writers, Spence’s novels were revived in the 1980s but are now once again out of print. So this new edition of her autobiography, extensively annotated and accompanied by letters and a diary never before published, is especially welcome. 

Read more: Elizabeth Webby reviews ‘Ever Yours, C.H. Spence: Catherine Helen Spence’s an autobiography...

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Custom Article Title: Redneck radio?
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On Saturday, 3 December 2005, the day after Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged in Singapore, David Marr contributed a major article, ‘Death of compassion’, to the Sydney Morning Herald’s News Review section. A year earlier, Marr had made a welcome return to the SMH following his spell as host of Media Watch. He is always worth reading: informed by broad interests in the arts, politics and religion, an ongoing commitment to investigative journalism following his years at the National Times, and sometimes by moral outrage, Marr’s writings are some of the most elegant and insightful to grace Australia’s daily press.

This particular Saturday, I finished reading his piece feeling curiously frustrated. Marr explored public reaction to the execution, from the deliberately low-key strategy of the convicted drug runner’s legal team and supporters to the public campaign they ran to save him following his failed appeal for clemency. The article was based on a central premise: ‘roughly half the nation was happy to see him [Nguyen] swing.’ The evidence for this claim? ‘Talkback.’ 
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On Saturday, 3 December 2005, the day after Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged in Singapore, David Marr contributed a major article, ‘Death of compassion’, to the Sydney Morning Herald’s News Review section. A year earlier, Marr had made a welcome return to the SMH following his spell as host of Media Watch. He is always worth reading: informed by broad interests in the arts, politics and religion, an ongoing commitment to investigative journalism following his years at the National Times, and sometimes by moral outrage, Marr’s writings are some of the most elegant and insightful to grace Australia’s daily press.

This particular Saturday, I finished reading his piece feeling curiously frustrated. Marr explored public reaction to the execution, from the deliberately low-key strategy of the convicted drug runner’s legal team and supporters to the public campaign they ran to save him following his failed appeal for clemency. The article was based on a central premise: ‘roughly half the nation was happy to see him [Nguyen] swing.’ The evidence for this claim? ‘Talkback.’ 

Read more: Commentary | Redneck radio? by Bridget Griffen-Foley

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Michelle Griffin reviews ‘The Bone House: Essays’ by Beverley Farmer
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Slow in the writing and slow in the reading: it is so easy to drift on the tides of Beverley Farmer’s book, and also to lose your bearings. The three long essays that make up The Bone House are prose poems organised by biorhythms, it seems, rather than by any architectural design. They carry all sorts of startling images in on their tides, like the fragments the writer finds washed up on the shores: ‘A figleaf burning in a patch of sun on the path, a ribbed shell like a boat, balanced on its stalk, a crumple of brown on one side, all its freckles and veins clear in a green pool of light.’
Book 1 Title: The Bone House
Book 1 Subtitle: Essays
Book Author: Beverley Farmer
Book 1 Biblio: Giramondo, $29.95 pb, 336 pp
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Slow in the writing and slow in the reading: it is so easy to drift on the tides of Beverley Farmer’s book, and also to lose your bearings. The three long essays that make up The Bone House are prose poems organised by biorhythms, it seems, rather than by any architectural design. They carry all sorts of startling images in on their tides, like the fragments the writer finds washed up on the shores: ‘A figleaf burning in a patch of sun on the path, a ribbed shell like a boat, balanced on its stalk, a crumple of brown on one side, all its freckles and veins clear in a green pool of light.’ 

Read more: Michelle Griffin reviews ‘The Bone House: Essays’ by Beverley Farmer

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Greg Kratzmann reviews ‘The Universe Looks Down’ and ‘Read It Again’ by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
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Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s essay ‘Poetry and the Common Language’, in his collection Read It Again, begins: ‘If there is one thing we can say about poetry, it is this: like it or not, poetry turns out to be something special, an intensified bag of tricks with certain rules of its own.’ The deceptively casual style of the writing underscores its argument about the centrality of ‘voice’ in any poem (or essay) worth its salt: ‘interest, in poetry, is not only interesting, to put it very mildly; it also adds value. It lifts the game; often because it artistically combines an air of untidy casualness with lightly strategic effects which displace or realign us as we read.’
Book 1 Title: The Universe Looks Down
Book Author: Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Book 1 Biblio: Brandl & Schlesinger, $26.95 pb, 67 pp
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Book 2 Title: Read It Again
Book 2 Author: Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Book 2 Biblio: Salt, $45 pb, 142 pp
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Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s essay ‘Poetry and the Common Language’, in his collection Read It Again, begins: ‘If there is one thing we can say about poetry, it is this: like it or not, poetry turns out to be something special, an intensified bag of tricks with certain rules of its own.’ The deceptively casual style of the writing underscores its argument about the centrality of ‘voice’ in any poem (or essay) worth its salt: ‘interest, in poetry, is not only interesting, to put it very mildly; it also adds value. It lifts the game; often because it artistically combines an air of untidy casualness with lightly strategic effects which displace or realign us as we read.’ 

Read more: Greg Kratzmann reviews ‘The Universe Looks Down’ and ‘Read It Again’ by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

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James Ley reviews ‘The Best Australian Stories 2005’ edited by Frank Moorhouse
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When Frank Moorhouse took over the editorship of The Best Australian Stories in 2004, he promptly announced that he would be accepting submissions from anyone, regardless of whether they had a publishing history or not. He received and read, by his own estimate, about 1000 stories and gave six unknown writers the chance to be published for the first time. To his credit, he also took it upon himself not only to talk up the edition, but to make the case for the importance of the short story as a distinct literary form – one that is often underappreciated. There was no doubting Moorhouse’s enthusiasm for his new role. Having read the work of around 600 writers, he could claim with some authority that short fiction was thriving, despite limited opportunities for publication. Indeed, the 2004 edition, he boasted, ‘set a new benchmark in the standard of the short story’. Now steady on, Frank.
Book 1 Title: The Best Australian Stories 2005
Book Author: Frank Moorhouse
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $24.95 pb, 235 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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When Frank Moorhouse took over the editorship of The Best Australian Stories in 2004, he promptly announced that he would be accepting submissions from anyone, regardless of whether they had a publishing history or not. He received and read, by his own estimate, about 1000 stories and gave six unknown writers the chance to be published for the first time. To his credit, he also took it upon himself not only to talk up the edition, but to make the case for the importance of the short story as a distinct literary form – one that is often underappreciated. There was no doubting Moorhouse’s enthusiasm for his new role. Having read the work of around 600 writers, he could claim with some authority that short fiction was thriving, despite limited opportunities for publication. Indeed, the 2004 edition, he boasted, ‘set a new benchmark in the standard of the short story’. Now steady on, Frank.

Read more: James Ley reviews ‘The Best Australian Stories 2005’ edited by Frank Moorhouse

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Brian Matthews reviews ‘My Spin On Cricket’ by Richie Benaud and ‘Out Of My Comfort Zone: The autobiography’ by Steve Waugh
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Like most professional sports men and women, Steve Waugh and his brother Mark were supported enthusiastically from the start by their parents. To begin with, enthusiasm was about all that Bev and Roger Waugh brought to the cricketing aspirations of their twin sons, with the result that their ‘very first official game of cricket [for Panania-East Hills Under 10s] was in many ways a disaster’. Mark and Stephen having made first and second ball ducks respectively, ‘wearing our only pad on the wrong leg and the placement (by our parents) of our protectors on our kneecaps’, was an embarrassment that was much harder to disown than zeros in the scorebook.
Book 1 Title: My Spin On Cricket
Book Author: Richie Benaud
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder and Haughton, $45 hb, 279 pp, 0340833939
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Book 2 Title: Out Of My Comfort Zone
Book 2 Subtitle: The autobiography
Book 2 Author: Steve Waugh
Book 2 Biblio: Viking, $49.95 hb, 764 pp, 067004198X
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Like most professional sports men and women, Steve Waugh and his brother Mark were supported enthusiastically from the start by their parents. To begin with, enthusiasm was about all that Bev and Roger Waugh brought to the cricketing aspirations of their twin sons, with the result that their ‘very first official game of cricket [for Panania-East Hills Under 10s] was in many ways a disaster’. Mark and Stephen having made first and second ball ducks respectively, ‘wearing our only pad on the wrong leg and the placement (by our parents) of our protectors on our kneecaps’, was an embarrassment that was much harder to disown than zeros in the scorebook.

Read more: Brian Matthews reviews ‘My Spin On Cricket’ by Richie Benaud and ‘Out Of My Comfort Zone: The...

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Geoffrey Miller reviews ‘In Hollow Lands’ by Sophie Masson
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The forest of Broceliande is a place of magic and mystery. Legend has it that Arthur and his knights roamed the forest and had many of their adventures there, and that deep within the remnant of the forest Merlin still sleeps his enchanted sleep, for the Arthurian tales are as much Breton as British. The forest also holds relics and places of worship of the pre-Christian peoples of this north-west corner of Europe, and who knows what fragments of these beliefs may still lurk there.
Book 1 Title: In Hollow Lands
Book Author: Sophie Masson
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder Children’s Books, $17.95 pb, 304 pp
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The forest of Broceliande is a place of magic and mystery. Legend has it that Arthur and his knights roamed the forest and had many of their adventures there, and that deep within the remnant of the forest Merlin still sleeps his enchanted sleep, for the Arthurian tales are as much Breton as British. The forest also holds relics and places of worship of the pre-Christian peoples of this north-west corner of Europe, and who knows what fragments of these beliefs may still lurk there.

Read more: Geoffrey Miller reviews ‘In Hollow Lands’ by Sophie Masson

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Heather Neilson reviews ‘Gore Vidal’s America’ by Dennis Altman
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Article Title: A less common form of malady
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The editors of Conversations with Gore Vidal – a recently published selection of interviews conducted with Vidal over the course of his long career – introduce the volume by quoting a comment made in the New Yorker in 1960: ‘Nothing’s easier nowadays than to get the feeling of being surrounded by Gore Vidal.’ They go on to remark that, today: ‘Gore Vidal is again seemingly everywhere.’ Although this is something of an exaggeration, it is true that Vidal and his diverse oeuvre appear to have received more serious attention in the past few years than previously. Now eighty years old, this unique and often controversial figure in American culture has lived long enough to see accepted into the mainstream several of his ideas once regarded as outrageous or ‘unpatriotic’. Indeed, as a Publisher’s Weekly reviewer, quoted by Altman, remarked in 2004: ‘Vidal may be in tune with the zeitgeist again …’
Book 1 Title: Gore Vidal’s America
Book Author: Dennis Altman
Book 1 Biblio: Polity Press, $41.95 pb, 216 pp
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The editors of Conversations with Gore Vidal – a recently published selection of interviews conducted with Vidal over the course of his long career – introduce the volume by quoting a comment made in the New Yorker in 1960: ‘Nothing’s easier nowadays than to get the feeling of being surrounded by Gore Vidal.’ They go on to remark that, today: ‘Gore Vidal is again seemingly everywhere.’ Although this is something of an exaggeration, it is true that Vidal and his diverse oeuvre appear to have received more serious attention in the past few years than previously. Now eighty years old, this unique and often controversial figure in American culture has lived long enough to see accepted into the mainstream several of his ideas once regarded as outrageous or ‘unpatriotic’. Indeed, as a Publisher’s Weekly reviewer, quoted by Altman, remarked in 2004: ‘Vidal may be in tune with the zeitgeist again …’

Read more: Heather Neilson reviews ‘Gore Vidal’s America’ by Dennis Altman

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Denise O’Dea reviews ‘The Spruiker’s Tale’ by Catherine Rey (translated by Andrew Riemer)
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Here is a rich vein of strange rococo fantasy in recent Australian fiction. Tom Gilling (The Sooterkin, 1999), Andrew Lindsay (The Breadmaker’s Carnival, 1998, and The Slapping Man, 2003) and Gregory Day (The Patron Saint of Eels, 2005) have all imagined tragicomic country towns in which miracles and monsters infiltrate the sleepy lives of unsuspecting villagers. The genre can be a trap for inattentive authors: the lines between quirky and cute, touching and twee, are perilously easy to cross. With this comic apocalyptic fantasy, Catherine Rey – who writes in French but lives in Perth – avoids this trap and achieves something more. In an idiom that is part Rabelais, part Old Testament and part Ocker Pub, she creates an hilarious, troubling fable with a distinctly Australian taste.
Book 1 Title: The Spruiker’s Tale
Book Author: Catherine Rey (translated by Andrew Riemer)
Book 1 Biblio: Giramondo, $24.95 pb, 262 pp, 1920882073
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Here is a rich vein of strange rococo fantasy in recent Australian fiction. Tom Gilling (The Sooterkin, 1999), Andrew Lindsay (The Breadmaker’s Carnival, 1998, and The Slapping Man, 2003) and Gregory Day (The Patron Saint of Eels, 2005) have all imagined tragicomic country towns in which miracles and monsters infiltrate the sleepy lives of unsuspecting villagers. The genre can be a trap for inattentive authors: the lines between quirky and cute, touching and twee, are perilously easy to cross. With this comic apocalyptic fantasy, Catherine Rey – who writes in French but lives in Perth – avoids this trap and achieves something more. In an idiom that is part Rabelais, part Old Testament and part Ocker Pub, she creates an hilarious, troubling fable with a distinctly Australian taste.

Read more: Denise O’Dea reviews ‘The Spruiker’s Tale’ by Catherine Rey (translated by Andrew Riemer)

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Ros Pesman reviews ‘Lorenzo De’ Medici And The Art Of Magnificence’ by F.W. Kent
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In October 2005, Monash University hosted a workshop on Australians in Italy at its Centre in the Palazzo Vaj in Prato. Australians in Italy were certainly visible in the week of the conference. Wall posters in Rome advertised the Macquarie Bank and an exhibition, Viaggio nella Provincia di Roma di una pittrice australiana, the paintings of the expatriate artist Janet Venn-Brown. In Florence, the invitation to the opening of an international exhibition of Women’s Art bore the image of Tracey Moffatt’s photograph Something More 1 (1989). The workshop in Prato included papers on artists, writers, returned migrants, the Catholic clergy – and a vignette on the best-known Australian in contemporary Italy, the supermodel Megan Gale. Also on the programme was the contribution of Australian scholars to Italian Renaissance studies. Now extending to three generations, their work is no longer subsumed under ‘British’, and references are to ‘American–British–Australian’ approaches and research. A member of the first generation, Bill Kent, through his own writing and his training of PhD students, is the crucial figure in the ‘piccola scuola australiana’ (‘piccola’ only when confronted with the North American Renaissance industry), just as he was in the establishment of the Monash Centre in Prato.
Book 1 Title: Lorenzo De’ Medici And The Art Of Magnificence
Book Author: F.W. Kent
Book 1 Biblio: Johns Hopkins University Press, US$36.95 hb, 230 pp
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In October 2005, Monash University hosted a workshop on Australians in Italy at its Centre in the Palazzo Vaj in Prato. Australians in Italy were certainly visible in the week of the conference. Wall posters in Rome advertised the Macquarie Bank and an exhibition, Viaggio nella Provincia di Roma di una pittrice australiana, the paintings of the expatriate artist Janet Venn-Brown. In Florence, the invitation to the opening of an international exhibition of Women’s Art bore the image of Tracey Moffatt’s photograph Something More 1 (1989). The workshop in Prato included papers on artists, writers, returned migrants, the Catholic clergy – and a vignette on the best-known Australian in contemporary Italy, the supermodel Megan Gale. Also on the programme was the contribution of Australian scholars to Italian Renaissance studies. Now extending to three generations, their work is no longer subsumed under ‘British’, and references are to ‘American–British–Australian’ approaches and research. A member of the first generation, Bill Kent, through his own writing and his training of PhD students, is the crucial figure in the ‘piccola scuola australiana’ (‘piccola’ only when confronted with the North American Renaissance industry), just as he was in the establishment of the Monash Centre in Prato.

Read more: Ros Pesman reviews ‘Lorenzo De’ Medici And The Art Of Magnificence’ by F.W. Kent

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Ann-Marie Priest reviews ‘Henry Handel Richardson: A Life’ by Michael Ackland
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Contents Category: Biography
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Article Title: The mystery of HHR
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Henry Handel Richardson, author of iconic Australian novels The Getting of Wisdom (1910) and The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney (1917–29), has not fared well at the hands of her biographers. Axel Clark’s account of her early life, though kindly and well intentioned, could not seem to avoid the unfortunate conclusion that Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (1870–1946) was a rather unpleasant person. At the age of four, Clark tells us, she was ‘unusually showy and forward’, and it was all downhill from there. As a girl, she was ‘overly insistent and overbearing’; as she grew older, she became self-aggrandising and embittered.
Book 1 Title: Henry Handel Richardson
Book 1 Subtitle: A life
Book Author: Michael Ackland
Book 1 Biblio: Cambridge University Press, $59.95 hb, 326 pp
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Henry Handel Richardson, author of iconic Australian novels The Getting of Wisdom (1910) and The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney (1917–29), has not fared well at the hands of her biographers. Axel Clark’s account of her early life, though kindly and well intentioned, could not seem to avoid the unfortunate conclusion that Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (1870–1946) was a rather unpleasant person. At the age of four, Clark tells us, she was ‘unusually showy and forward’, and it was all downhill from there. As a girl, she was ‘overly insistent and overbearing’; as she grew older, she became self-aggrandising and embittered.

Read more: Ann-Marie Priest reviews ‘Henry Handel Richardson: A Life’ by Michael Ackland

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Tim Rowse reviews ‘Mixed Relations: Histories and stories of Asian–Aboriginal contact in north Australia’ by Regina Ganter (with Julia Martinez and Gary Lee)
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: Imperfect execution
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In recent years, ‘White Australia’ has become an episode in Australian history whose inception, imperfect execution and demise must be explained. Regina Ganter and her coauthors dwell on its spatial, as well as temporal, limits. ‘In the far northern townships, the dominant lived experience was not of a white Australia but of a polyethnic one.’ In northern coastal towns – particularly Broome, Wyndham, Darwin, Normanton, Cooktown and Cairns – people from Asia flourished and whites were marginal. Indeed, the Asian presence in Australia preceded that of whites. The first two chapters of this vividly illustrated book show a long and intimate association between Macassans and Yolngu (Arnhem Land Aborigines). Yolngu now recognise some citizens of Indonesia as ‘family’, referring to actual lines of descent.
Book 1 Title: Mixed Relations
Book 1 Subtitle: Histories and stories of Asian–Aboriginal contact in north Australia
Book Author: Regina Ganter (with Julia Martinez and Gary Lee)
Book 1 Biblio: UWAP, $54.95 hb, 384 pp
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In recent years, ‘White Australia’ has become an episode in Australian history whose inception, imperfect execution and demise must be explained. Regina Ganter and her coauthors dwell on its spatial, as well as temporal, limits. ‘In the far northern townships, the dominant lived experience was not of a white Australia but of a polyethnic one.’ In northern coastal towns – particularly Broome, Wyndham, Darwin, Normanton, Cooktown and Cairns – people from Asia flourished and whites were marginal. Indeed, the Asian presence in Australia preceded that of whites. The first two chapters of this vividly illustrated book show a long and intimate association between Macassans and Yolngu (Arnhem Land Aborigines). Yolngu now recognise some citizens of Indonesia as ‘family’, referring to actual lines of descent.

Read more: Tim Rowse reviews ‘Mixed Relations: Histories and stories of Asian–Aboriginal contact in north...

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John Slavin reviews ‘Timing Is Everything: A life backstage at the opera’ by Moffatt Oxenbould
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Contents Category: Music
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Article Title: The lacquer of virtue
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To state the case bluntly, is there in fact any place for opera in the twenty-first century? What is the use of opera? Many would say that it is a moribund art form, traditional and arthritic, class-ridden, a minority and élitist pursuit of an arcane society harbouring secret rituals in the mode of cabbalists with their adherence to vision and the genealogy of seers. My questions suggest some kind of crisis. Yet they are unanswerable because, like all art at a profound level, opera is useless.
Book 1 Title: Timing Is Everything
Book 1 Subtitle: A life backstage at the opera
Book Author: Moffatt Oxenbould
Book 1 Biblio: ABC Books, $55 hb, 728 pp
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To state the case bluntly, is there in fact any place for opera in the twenty-first century? What is the use of opera? Many would say that it is a moribund art form, traditional and arthritic, class-ridden, a minority and élitist pursuit of an arcane society harbouring secret rituals in the mode of cabbalists with their adherence to vision and the genealogy of seers. My questions suggest some kind of crisis. Yet they are unanswerable because, like all art at a profound level, opera is useless.

Read more: John Slavin reviews ‘Timing Is Everything: A life backstage at the opera’ by Moffatt Oxenbould

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Dennis Altman reviews ‘What Was It All For?: The reshaping of Australia’ by Don Aitkin and ‘Australia Fair’ by Hugh Stretton
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Don Aitken was born in 1937, Hugh Stretton in 1924. They have both had distinguished academic careers, making important contributions to the development of Australian social science, and at various points have been prominent in public debate. Both of these books might be seen as reflections on the current state of Australia, about which the younger Aitken is clearly more optimistic than is Stretton.
Book 1 Title: What Was It All For?
Book 1 Subtitle: The reshaping of Australia
Book Author: Don Aitken
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $24.95 pb, 286 pp
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Book 2 Title: Australia Fair
Book 2 Author: Hugh Stretton
Book 2 Biblio: UNSW Press, $39.95 pb, 302 pp
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Don Aitken was born in 1937, Hugh Stretton in 1924. They have both had distinguished academic careers, making important contributions to the development of Australian social science, and at various points have been prominent in public debate. Both of these books might be seen as reflections on the current state of Australia, about which the younger Aitken is clearly more optimistic than is Stretton.

Read more: Dennis Altman reviews ‘What Was It All For?: The reshaping of Australia’ by Don Aitkin and...

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Martin Ball reviews ‘Eyewitness: Australians write from the front-line’ edited by Garrie Hutchinson
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: Memory is not enough
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It is one of life’s ironies that war can bring out the best in people, and writers are no exception. Picture Australian seaman Ray Parkin as he toiled like a slave for the Japanese on the Thai–Burma railway during World War II. Despite the brutality and privations, Parkin felt that the experience would ‘not be entirely wasted’ if he could somehow get his diary and drawings home when it was all over. These were crucial, for, as he wrote, ‘Memory is not enough’. Parkin’s reflections go to the kernel of oral versus written memory, and why humans write in the first place: to make a record that can speak by itself, even when the writer is dead. His words could also serve as an appropriate epigraph to Eyewitness, a collection of diaries, memoirs, correspondents’ reports and analysis, all composed by Australians at ‘the front-line’ of wars and conflicts.
Book 1 Title: Eyewitness
Book 1 Subtitle: Australians write from the front-line
Book Author: Garrie Hutchinson
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $34.95 pb, 442 pp
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It is one of life’s ironies that war can bring out the best in people, and writers are no exception. Picture Australian seaman Ray Parkin as he toiled like a slave for the Japanese on the Thai–Burma railway during World War II. Despite the brutality and privations, Parkin felt that the experience would ‘not be entirely wasted’ if he could somehow get his diary and drawings home when it was all over. These were crucial, for, as he wrote, ‘Memory is not enough’. Parkin’s reflections go to the kernel of oral versus written memory, and why humans write in the first place: to make a record that can speak by itself, even when the writer is dead. His words could also serve as an appropriate epigraph to Eyewitness, a collection of diaries, memoirs, correspondents’ reports and analysis, all composed by Australians at ‘the front-line’ of wars and conflicts.

Read more: Martin Ball reviews ‘Eyewitness: Australians write from the front-line’ edited by Garrie Hutchinson

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: What It Feels Like
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It is two fathers punching each other in the footy sheds
shadows extending over the river flats,

over the bachelor nursing a long neck on his porch
over the epileptic twisting on the mechanic’s floor.
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It is two fathers punching each other in the footy sheds
shadows extending over the river flats,

over the bachelor nursing a long neck on his porch
over the epileptic twisting on the mechanic’s floor.

Read more: 'What It Feels Like', a new poem by Brendan Ryan

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Paul Brunton reviews ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography: Supplement, 1580–1980’ edited by Christopher Cunneen
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Article Title: Mysterious quotas
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The first volume of the Australian Dictionary of Biography appeared in 1966, the sixteenth in 2002, by which stage the series included persons who had died prior to 1981. This one-volume Supplement includes those who were for one reason or another omitted from the main volumes. It is an impressive achievement. There are 504 biographies, written by 399 authors. Almost all are well written and carefully researched, with up-to-date lists of sources. The editor and his associates have had the Herculean task of melding all these biographies into a work of reference in which the entries have a consistency in the type of information presented, while at the same time allowing for the individuality of each subject and author. In this, they have succeeded admirably. The volume has the air of authority.
Book 1 Title: Australian Dictionary of Biography
Book 1 Subtitle: Supplement, 1580–1980
Book Author: Christopher Cunneen
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $74.95 hb, 552 pp
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The first volume of the Australian Dictionary of Biography appeared in 1966, the sixteenth in 2002, by which stage the series included persons who had died prior to 1981. This one-volume Supplement includes those who were for one reason or another omitted from the main volumes. It is an impressive achievement. There are 504 biographies, written by 399 authors. Almost all are well written and carefully researched, with up-to-date lists of sources. The editor and his associates have had the Herculean task of melding all these biographies into a work of reference in which the entries have a consistency in the type of information presented, while at the same time allowing for the individuality of each subject and author. In this, they have succeeded admirably. The volume has the air of authority.

Read more: Paul Brunton reviews ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography: Supplement, 1580–1980’ edited by...

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John Button reviews ‘One Brief Interval: A memoir’ by Edward Woodward
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This is a book for people interested in the law, politics and the institutions of public life, areas in which Sir Edward Woodward was actively involved for the last half century. It is a record of achievement and provides an interesting and clear-eyed perspective on many of the important issues of that period.
Book 1 Title: One Brief Interval
Book 1 Subtitle: A memoir
Book Author: Edward Woodward
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah, $49.95 hb, 310 pp
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This is a book for people interested in the law, politics and the institutions of public life, areas in which Sir Edward Woodward was actively involved for the last half century. It is a record of achievement and provides an interesting and clear-eyed perspective on many of the important issues of that period.

Read more: John Button reviews ‘One Brief Interval: A memoir’ by Edward Woodward

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David Carter reviews ‘Australia Imagined: Views from the British periodical press, 1800–1900’ edited by Judith Johnston and Monica Anderson
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Judith Johnston and Monica Anderson have assembled a book full of quotable quotes for future scholars: ‘The typical Australian is an Englishman with a dash of sunshine in him’; or ‘Why has God given to England nearly all the waste places of the earth, unless she is to fill them?’ (1899). Perhaps even more chilling: ‘the acknowledgement of sin amongst a good many blacks proves the working of the Spirit of God’ (1861). Australasia might be ‘the Paradise of the working man’, but it was ‘the Sahara of the scholar’ (1895). The book reminds us how commonly ‘Australia’ was imagined as ‘Australasia’. The idea of a ‘Federated Australasia’ embraced the Australian colonies, Fiji, British New Guinea, and ‘any other British territories in the South and West Pacific’ – not least, of course, ‘the Britain of the South, New Zealand’ (1896). On the other hand, ‘of all the disunited states of Greater Britain, Australasia appears to be the most disunited’ (1890).
Book 1 Title: Australia Imagined
Book 1 Subtitle: Views from the British periodical press, 1800–1900
Book Author: Judith Johnston and Monica Anderson
Book 1 Biblio: UWA Press, $38.95 pb, 244 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Judith Johnston and Monica Anderson have assembled a book full of quotable quotes for future scholars: ‘The typical Australian is an Englishman with a dash of sunshine in him’; or ‘Why has God given to England nearly all the waste places of the earth, unless she is to fill them?’ (1899). Perhaps even more chilling: ‘the acknowledgement of sin amongst a good many blacks proves the working of the Spirit of God’ (1861). Australasia might be ‘the Paradise of the working man’, but it was ‘the Sahara of the scholar’ (1895). The book reminds us how commonly ‘Australia’ was imagined as ‘Australasia’. The idea of a ‘Federated Australasia’ embraced the Australian colonies, Fiji, British New Guinea, and ‘any other British territories in the South and West Pacific’ – not least, of course, ‘the Britain of the South, New Zealand’ (1896). On the other hand, ‘of all the disunited states of Greater Britain, Australasia appears to be the most disunited’ (1890).

Read more: David Carter reviews ‘Australia Imagined: Views from the British periodical press, 1800–1900’...

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Anna Clark reviews ‘Is History Fiction?’ by Ann Curthoys and John Docker
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Contents Category: History
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Article Title: Doubleness of history
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In recent years, there has been significant public anxiety over Australia’s past, and historians have found themselves in the middle of a contest over increasingly urgent issues of historical narrative and approach. It has been a heated debate, encapsulated by a series of graphic and divisive metaphors proclaiming history’s ‘murder’, ‘fabrication’ and even the ‘killing of history’. While these so-called ‘history wars’ have come to dominate discussion of Australia’s past, the limitations of such debate are telling: history has been forced into opposing camps (left–right, black–white etc.); and examining contrasting readings of the past without falling into its prescribed lines of division now seems more difficult than ever.
Book 1 Title: Is History Fiction?
Book Author: Ann Curthoys and John Docker
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $39.95 pb, 304 pp
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In recent years, there has been significant public anxiety over Australia’s past, and historians have found themselves in the middle of a contest over increasingly urgent issues of historical narrative and approach. It has been a heated debate, encapsulated by a series of graphic and divisive metaphors proclaiming history’s ‘murder’, ‘fabrication’ and even the ‘killing of history’. While these so-called ‘history wars’ have come to dominate discussion of Australia’s past, the limitations of such debate are telling: history has been forced into opposing camps (left–right, black–white etc.); and examining contrasting readings of the past without falling into its prescribed lines of division now seems more difficult than ever.

Read more: Anna Clark reviews ‘Is History Fiction?’ by Ann Curthoys and John Docker

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Christina Hill reviews ‘Frank Hardy: Politics, literature, life’ by Jenny Hocking
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Article Title: A good salesman
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In reading a biography of Frank Hardy, it is almost impossible to separate the man, as subject, from the work for which he is famous, the novel Power Without Glory (1950) based on the life of John Wren. If I did not want to reach for my gun every time I hear the word ‘icon’ these days, I would say that this novel still has iconic status in Australian culture. The title is a pithy reworking of Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory (1940), about the ethics of a Catholic priest in southern Mexico. Like Greene, Hardy was driven by a quasi-religious commitment, but for him it was a lifelong commitment to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) rather than to Catholicism.
Book 1 Title: Frank Hardy
Book 1 Subtitle: Politics, literature, life
Book Author: Jenny Hocking
Book 1 Biblio: Lothian, $39.95 hb, 310 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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In reading a biography of Frank Hardy, it is almost impossible to separate the man, as subject, from the work for which he is famous, the novel Power Without Glory (1950) based on the life of John Wren. If I did not want to reach for my gun every time I hear the word ‘icon’ these days, I would say that this novel still has iconic status in Australian culture. The title is a pithy reworking of Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory (1940), about the ethics of a Catholic priest in southern Mexico. Like Greene, Hardy was driven by a quasi-religious commitment, but for him it was a lifelong commitment to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) rather than to Catholicism.

Read more: Christina Hill reviews ‘Frank Hardy: Politics, literature, life’ by Jenny Hocking

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John Jenkins reviews ‘Subterranean Radio Songs’ by Joel Deane and ‘Suburban Anatomy’ by Penelope Layland
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: At home and on the road
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Good writing can take many forms, and I have often wished for a greater mutual appreciation, between poets and journalists, of the fine things with words that both are able to do. Joel Deane and Penelope Layland, former journalists, bring well-honed skills to their first volumes. (Deane is currently the speechwriter for the premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks.) In their work we find much clarity and a strong facility for description. Take, for example, Layland’s ‘Muttonbird Island’: ‘In the dark soil chicks incubate / camouflaged by a silence / they instinctively keep.’ Deane, meanwhile, is flexing his descriptive muscles in ‘Freckle’, a poem about childhood and memories of a long-drowned man: ‘… how, last summer, / when the river bed fell, / they found tissue paper, / once the muscle of a man, / stretched over sunken branches.’
Book 1 Title: Subterranean Radio Songs
Book Author: Joel Deane
Book 1 Biblio: Interactive Press, $23 pb, 80 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Book 2 Title: Suburban Anatomy
Book 2 Author: Penelope Layland
Book 2 Biblio: Pandanus, $19.80 pb, 50 pp
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Good writing can take many forms, and I have often wished for a greater mutual appreciation, between poets and journalists, of the fine things with words that both are able to do. Joel Deane and Penelope Layland, former journalists, bring well-honed skills to their first volumes. (Deane is currently the speechwriter for the premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks.) In their work we find much clarity and a strong facility for description. Take, for example, Layland’s ‘Muttonbird Island’: ‘In the dark soil chicks incubate / camouflaged by a silence / they instinctively keep.’ Deane, meanwhile, is flexing his descriptive muscles in ‘Freckle’, a poem about childhood and memories of a long-drowned man: ‘… how, last summer, / when the river bed fell, / they found tissue paper, / once the muscle of a man, / stretched over sunken branches.’

Read more: John Jenkins reviews ‘Subterranean Radio Songs’ by Joel Deane and ‘Suburban Anatomy’ by Penelope...

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Richard Johnstone ‘Noeline: Longterm memoir’ by Noeline Brown and ‘Much Love, Jac X’ by Jacki Weaver
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Lots of characters
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In 1961 a young Noeline Brown was playing in Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince (1954) at the Pocket Playhouse in Sydenham – ‘just across the Princes Highway from Tempe Tip’, as she characteristically locates it – when Vivien Leigh, on tour with the Old Vic, came to see a specially arranged Sunday evening performance. From the moment she emerged from the chauffeured limousine, Leigh was the star of the show. She was, Brown recalls, ‘wearing a gorgeous, waist-length mink jacket’, and ‘there were strands of lustrous pearls and sparkling diamonds on her delicate throat and hands’. Brown, on the other hand, ‘was in a dress my Mum had made’. That contrast, between theatrical elegance and put-upon pathos, has been the essence of Brown’s own style ever since, and the key to her success as a comedian and an actor. She hid under a large picture hat to introduce Mavis Bramston, a parody of English self-assurance, to a bemused public in 1964. At the other end of the register, her world-weary, ‘You’re not wrong, Narelle’, delivered in a way that was both funny and sad, outlived its many iterations on the televised version of The Naked Vicar Show (1977) to become part of the Australian lexicon.
Book 1 Title: Noeline
Book 1 Subtitle: Longterm memoir
Book Author: Noeline Brown
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 291 pp
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Book 2 Title: Much Love, Jac X
Book 2 Author: Jacki Weaver
Book 2 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $45 hb, 280 pp
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In 1961 a young Noeline Brown was playing in Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince (1954) at the Pocket Playhouse in Sydenham – ‘just across the Princes Highway from Tempe Tip’, as she characteristically locates it – when Vivien Leigh, on tour with the Old Vic, came to see a specially arranged Sunday evening performance. From the moment she emerged from the chauffeured limousine, Leigh was the star of the show. She was, Brown recalls, ‘wearing a gorgeous, waist-length mink jacket’, and ‘there were strands of lustrous pearls and sparkling diamonds on her delicate throat and hands’. Brown, on the other hand, ‘was in a dress my Mum had made’. That contrast, between theatrical elegance and put-upon pathos, has been the essence of Brown’s own style ever since, and the key to her success as a comedian and an actor. She hid under a large picture hat to introduce Mavis Bramston, a parody of English self-assurance, to a bemused public in 1964. At the other end of the register, her world-weary, ‘You’re not wrong, Narelle’, delivered in a way that was both funny and sad, outlived its many iterations on the televised version of The Naked Vicar Show (1977) to become part of the Australian lexicon.

Read more: Richard Johnstone ‘Noeline: Longterm memoir’ by Noeline Brown and ‘Much Love, Jac X’ by Jacki Weaver

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Barry Jones reviews ‘A Short History of the 20th Century’ by Geoffrey Blainey
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Contents Category: History
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Article Title: Blainey’s way
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Geoffrey Blainey made his reputation as a prolific and accomplished economic historian, then turned to broader themes and wrote important analytical works, including The Tyranny of Distance (1966), The Causes of War (1973), The Triumph of the Nomads (1975), and The Great Seesaw (1988). When the so-called ‘history wars’ began in the 1980s, Blainey was characterised as an optimistic conservative, critical of ‘the black armband’ view of Australian history attributed to the more radical Manning Clark. I thought the differences between Clark and Blainey were grossly exaggerated. Paradoxically, Blainey took a serious interest in Aborigines and women’s issues long before Clark did.
Book 1 Title: A Short History of the 20th Century
Book Author: Geoffrey Blainey
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $49.95 hb, 561 pp
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Geoffrey Blainey made his reputation as a prolific and accomplished economic historian, then turned to broader themes and wrote important analytical works, including The Tyranny of Distance (1966), The Causes of War (1973), The Triumph of the Nomads (1975), and The Great Seesaw (1988). When the so-called ‘history wars’ began in the 1980s, Blainey was characterised as an optimistic conservative, critical of ‘the black armband’ view of Australian history attributed to the more radical Manning Clark. I thought the differences between Clark and Blainey were grossly exaggerated. Paradoxically, Blainey took a serious interest in Aborigines and women’s issues long before Clark did.

Read more: Barry Jones reviews ‘A Short History of the 20th Century’ by Geoffrey Blainey

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters - February 2006
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ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.
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The greengrocer’s strategy

Dear Editor,

Nicholas Jose’s elegant essay ‘A Shelf of Our Own: Creative Writing and Australian Literature’ (ABR, November 2005) makes some astute points about the difficulties of keeping an anthology of Australian literature in print. Basically, the problem is that publishers worldwide have adopted the greengrocer’s marketing strategy. The idea is to sell as much of the product in the shortest possible time and then think about discounting or remaindering. Trying to buy a book published six months ago is like trying to buy a Bowen mango out of season. It is thought to be bad business to publish in the hope of meeting a steady or a seasonal demand. And publishers have lost their nerve about meeting any overseas demand for Australian literature.

Read more: Letters - February 2006

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Contents Category: Advances
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Article Title: Advances - February 2006
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Join us on March 6 during the Adelaide Writers’ Week when the Editor of ABR will announce details of a major new sponsorship and prize to be offered this year. We can’t go into details yet, but this is an event that no common or uncommon reader, least of all Australian writers, will want to miss. We will also be launching our March issue, which is largely devoted to Art and Architecture. Luke Morgan of Monash University is co-editing the issue with Peter Rose. A highlight of this annual thematic issue is Dr Morgan’s long article on the state of art criticism in Oz, which seems likely to provoke a few Cubist expressions in the art world! This launch (a free event) will take place at 12.30 p.m. on Monday, March 6, in the West Tent, Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens.
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Join us on March 6 during the Adelaide Writers’ Week when the Editor of ABR will announce details of a major new sponsorship and prize to be offered this year. We can’t go into details yet, but this is an event that no common or uncommon reader, least of all Australian writers, will want to miss. We will also be launching our March issue, which is largely devoted to Art and Architecture. Luke Morgan of Monash University is co-editing the issue with Peter Rose. A highlight of this annual thematic issue is Dr Morgan’s long article on the state of art criticism in Oz, which seems likely to provoke a few Cubist expressions in the art world! This launch (a free event) will take place at 12.30 p.m. on Monday, March 6, in the West Tent, Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens.

A hard business

Read more: Advances - February 2006

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Lisa Gorton reviews ‘Agenda: Australian Issue’ edited by Patricia McCarthy and ‘Jacket 28, October 2005’ edited by John Tranter
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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Article Title: Retrospectives
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William Cookson was eighteen. He had been writing to Ezra Pound for three years. At last he spent a week in Italy with the great man. ‘Does he ever speak?’ Pound asked his mother. Nonetheless, or as a consequence, Pound encouraged Cookson to start a literary magazine. Cookson founded Agenda in 1959 and edited it until his death in 2003.
Book 1 Title: Agenda
Book 1 Subtitle: Australian Issue
Book Author: Patricia McCarthy
Book 1 Biblio: Agenda, Volume 41, Nos 1–2, Spring/Summer 2005, $35 pb, 222 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Jacket 28, October 2005
Book 2 Author: John Tranter
Book 2 Biblio: http://jacketmagazine.com/28/
Book 2 Author Type: Editor
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William Cookson was eighteen. He had been writing to Ezra Pound for three years. At last he spent a week in Italy with the great man. ‘Does he ever speak?’ Pound asked his mother. Nonetheless, or as a consequence, Pound encouraged Cookson to start a literary magazine. Cookson founded Agenda in 1959 and edited it until his death in 2003.

This is Agenda’s first Australian issue, a double issue crammed with good things. Agenda typically publishes established and new poets, and long sequences. This issue includes two young Australian poets whose poems you can read online (www.agendapoetry.co.uk), as well as striking poems from Judith Bishop, Michael Brennan, M.T.C. Cronin, Rosemary Dobson, Emma Lew, Les Murray, Peter Porter, Andrew Sant, Vivian Smith, Maria Takolander and John Tranter; as well as long poems from Peter Boyle, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Alison Croggon and Kevin Hart.

Read more: Lisa Gorton reviews ‘Agenda: Australian Issue’ edited by Patricia McCarthy and ‘Jacket 28, October...

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