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Absolutely Revolting

May 2005, no. 271

Welcome to the May 2005 issue of Australian Book Review.

Judy Armstrong reviews Playing with Water by Kate Llewellyn
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Kate Llewellyn has written sixteen books, which is quite an achievement. They include poetry, fiction and autobiography. One book, The Waterlily (1987), has sold 30,000 copies, a notable accomplishment for any author. The Waterlily was the first book in Llewellyn’s Blue Mountains trilogy; the second was called Dear You (1988). I read it years ago, having borrowed it from a library because I suspected the title might be an indication of the tone. It was not the epistolary format that gave me pause: I have relished many correspondences, ranging from the passionate exchanges of Julie and St Preux in Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) to Robert Dessaix’s grapplings with life-threatening illness in his acclaimed Night Letters (1996). But for my taste, the series of missives beginning ‘Dear You’ betrayed an irritating archness. The author seemed to be caught between the heady excitement of Revealing All and a coy fear of saying Too Much.
Book 1 Title: Playing with Water
Book Author: Kate Llewellyn
Book 1 Biblio: Fourth Estate, $29.95 pb, 424 pp, 0 7322 8131 8
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Kate Llewellyn has written sixteen books, which is quite an achievement. They include poetry, fiction and autobiography. One book, The Waterlily (1987), has sold 30,000 copies, a notable accomplishment for any author. The Waterlily was the first book in Llewellyn’s Blue Mountains trilogy; the second was called Dear You (1988). I read it years ago, having borrowed it from a library because I suspected the title might be an indication of the tone. It was not the epistolary format that gave me pause: I have relished many correspondences, ranging from the passionate exchanges of Julie and St Preux in Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) to Robert Dessaix’s grapplings with life-threatening illness in his acclaimed Night Letters (1996). But for my taste, the series of missives beginning ‘Dear You’ betrayed an irritating archness. The author seemed to be caught between the heady excitement of Revealing All and a coy fear of saying Too Much.

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Read more: Judy Armstrong reviews 'Playing with Water' by Kate Llewellyn

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Lisa Gorton reviews Imagining Australia: Literature and culture in the new new world, edited by Judith Ryan and Chris Wallace-Crabbe
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Contents Category: Cultural Studies
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Imagining Australia collects nineteen essays from a 2002 conference on Australian literature and culture at Harvard University. Of course, as the proceedings of a conference, it is on occasion hard work. There is something about conferences – the dedication of their audiences, perhaps, or the vulnerability of their speakers – that encourages a somewhat defensive formality. That said, almost every essay in this collection repays a reader’s investment with interest: in describing the history of Australian literary journals; offering a new direction for Australian pastoral poetry; providing surprising perspectives on popular Australian myths; or looking at how contemporary poets use form.
Book 1 Title: Imagining Australia
Book 1 Subtitle: Literature and culture in the new new world
Book Author: Judith Ryan and Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Book 1 Biblio: Harvard University Press, $59.95 hb, 399 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Imagining Australia collects nineteen essays from a 2002 conference on Australian literature and culture at Harvard University. Of course, as the proceedings of a conference, it is on occasion hard work. There is something about conferences – the dedication of their audiences, perhaps, or the vulnerability of their speakers – that encourages a somewhat defensive formality. That said, almost every essay in this collection repays a reader’s investment with interest: in describing the history of Australian literary journals; offering a new direction for Australian pastoral poetry; providing surprising perspectives on popular Australian myths; or looking at how contemporary poets use form.

As these examples suggest, Imagining Australia has no overriding theme or approach; this is perhaps why it appeals. It includes broad surveys and detailed studies, academic arguments and genial narratives. With this variety, it complicates and enlivens one’s sense of Australia’s history.

Read more: Lisa Gorton reviews 'Imagining Australia: Literature and culture in the new new world', edited by...

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Contents Category: Theatre
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Article Title: An opera looking for its music
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Patrick White had rather more success than Henry James with his plays – though that is not saying much. James’s attempt in the 1890s to conquer the London stage was a theatrical and personal disaster, but has, remarkably, provoked two recent novels, Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author. The plays were no great loss, and it was to our ultimate benefit that James returned his creative energy to the novel.
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Production Company: Malthouse Theatre

A review of the Malthouse Theatre production of Patrick White’s ‘The Ham Funeral’, playing in repertory with Tom Wright’s ‘Journal of the Plague Year’, April 11 to May 9.

Patrick White had rather more success than Henry James with his plays – though that is not saying much. James’s attempt in the 1890s to conquer the London stage was a theatrical and personal disaster, but has, remarkably, provoked two recent novels, Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author. The plays were no great loss, and it was to our ultimate benefit that James returned his creative energy to the novel.

Read more: John Rickard reviews productions of ‘The Ham Funeral’ and ‘Journal of the Plague Year’

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Lisa Temple reviews ‘Alison Says’ by Suzanne Hawley
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Bridget Jones stripped bare
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First, the good news or the bad news about this novel? Perhaps the bad. Presenting the worst face of a character to the world is not in itself fresh or especially amusing any more. We are overrun with sitcoms reflecting us, warts and all. Bridget Jones was among the first of these types of characters in popular fiction, and I was variously amused and pained by her hapless and heart-warming antics. More recently, the anonymous Bride Stripped Bare startled me for the statutory fifteen minutes, and left me wondering where all the attractive taxi drivers were hiding. In Alison Says, a conflation of the above, I found the central character, Maggs, to be a bit tiresome – and tired. Maggs is a 24-year-old drama teacher who has recently been dumped. Two months later, Jamie, the ex-inamorato, becomes engaged to Lorelei, aka ‘the Rhine slut’. In the wake of these events, Maggs is emotionally vulnerable, but it’s all rather in the manner of someone in an arrested state of adolescence. Suzanne Hawley’s Maggs is a stock characterisation based on the humour of self-absorption and victimhood, narcissism and obsession. Hawley’s novel does not fully realise the key ingredient of chick lit: a central character that the reader either loves or loves to hate.
Book 1 Title: Alison Says
Book Author: Suzanne Hawley
Book 1 Biblio: Random House, $22.95 pb, 220 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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First, the good news or the bad news about this novel? Perhaps the bad. Presenting the worst face of a character to the world is not in itself fresh or especially amusing any more. We are overrun with sitcoms reflecting us, warts and all. Bridget Jones was among the first of these types of characters in popular fiction, and I was variously amused and pained by her hapless and heart-warming antics. More recently, the anonymous Bride Stripped Bare startled me for the statutory fifteen minutes, and left me wondering where all the attractive taxi drivers were hiding. In Alison Says, a conflation of the above, I found the central character, Maggs, to be a bit tiresome – and tired. Maggs is a 24-year-old drama teacher who has recently been dumped. Two months later, Jamie, the ex-inamorato, becomes engaged to Lorelei, aka ‘the Rhine slut’. In the wake of these events, Maggs is emotionally vulnerable, but it’s all rather in the manner of someone in an arrested state of adolescence. Suzanne Hawley’s Maggs is a stock characterisation based on the humour of self-absorption and victimhood, narcissism and obsession. Hawley’s novel does not fully realise the key ingredient of chick lit: a central character that the reader either loves or loves to hate.

Read more: Lisa Temple reviews ‘Alison Says’ by Suzanne Hawley

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Marilyn Lake reviews ‘Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier violence and stolen Indigenous children in Australian history’ edited by A. Dirk Moses
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: Genocidal moments
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Is ‘genocide’ a useful concept for understanding colonialism and, in particular, the destruction of Aboriginal communities during the settlement of Australia? Dirk Moses, the editor of this stimulating collection of essays on Genocide and Settler Society, thinks so, but with qualifications. Many of his contributors agree, but tend to be more comfortable using the concept in its adjectival form: there were genocidal ‘moments’, ‘plans’, ‘processes’, ‘relationships’, ‘tendencies’ and ‘thoughts’ in Australian history, but ‘genocide’ – the crime of deliberately exterminating a people – is another matter. The charge of ‘genocide’ tout court gives historians pause, for it is essential to prove intent and state sanction on the part of the perpetrators.
Book 1 Title: Genocide and Settler Society
Book 1 Subtitle: Frontier violence and stolen Indigenous children in Australian history
Book Author: A. Dirk Moses
Book 1 Biblio: Berghahn Books, $25 pb, 325 pp
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Is ‘genocide’ a useful concept for understanding colonialism and, in particular, the destruction of Aboriginal communities during the settlement of Australia? Dirk Moses, the editor of this stimulating collection of essays on Genocide and Settler Society, thinks so, but with qualifications. Many of his contributors agree, but tend to be more comfortable using the concept in its adjectival form: there were genocidal ‘moments’, ‘plans’, ‘processes’, ‘relationships’, ‘tendencies’ and ‘thoughts’ in Australian history, but ‘genocide’ – the crime of deliberately exterminating a people – is another matter. The charge of ‘genocide’ tout court gives historians pause, for it is essential to prove intent and state sanction on the part of the perpetrators.

Read more: Marilyn Lake reviews ‘Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier violence and stolen Indigenous...

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Contents Category: Education
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Article Title: Repertoire of skills
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‘Most of us have a good bit of ego wrapped up in our children. We want them to do well so that we feel good about ourselves as well as them,’ says the wise and frank Jackie French. Parents walk a fine line between encouragement and pressure. Each of the above books is careful not to let itself fall over that line.
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Most of us have a good bit of ego wrapped up in our children. We want them to do well so that we feel good about ourselves as well as them,’ says the wise and frank Jackie French. Parents walk a fine line between encouragement and pressure. Each of the above books is careful not to let itself fall over that line.

Is Your Child Ready for School? (Sandra Heriot and Ivan Beale, ACER Press, $19.95 pb, 101 pp) is a practical, serious book full of common sense rather than profundity, so that one wonders at the need for it. That said, a book that reinforces our own style and approach is consoling and empowering. In clear language, this book explains how to help children learn, rather than how to teach them. It takes a broad view of learning and addresses not only the cognitive domain, but also the social – such as the importance of making friends and accepting disappointment – and the affective contexts of learning. A range of examples, including the occasional use of a ‘child’s’ voice, supports these understandings. You might know some five-year-olds who would say ‘Ramesh and I’, but most I know would say ‘me and Ramesh’.

Read more: Pam MacIntyre reviews four books

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Peter Menkhorst reviews ‘The Complete Field Guide to Butterflies of Australia’ by Michael F. Braby
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Contents Category: Natural History
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Article Title: Moonbeams and eggflies
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Butterflies are perhaps the most agreeable of insects: harmless, highly visible, diurnal, brightly coloured and almost whimsical in their movements. Because of these qualities, they have attracted considerable attention from naturalists and artists throughout recorded history. Since Victorian times, their diversity and natural history have been documented in great detail – more than for any other group of invertebrate animals. Butterfly collecting was a popular pastime until recent decades; many a colonial home contained a wood cabinet with neat rows of carefully pinned butterfly specimens. More recently, butterflies were the subject of the first nationwide biological atlas scheme: the Atlas of British Butterflies conducted through the 1970s by the British Biological Records Centre. This project drew upon the energy of 2000 butterfly enthusiasts across the British Isles to record the presence of species in ten-kilometre grid cells. The biological atlasing concept has subsequently been applied to other groups, particularly birds and flowering plants.
Book 1 Title: The Complete Field Guide to Butterflies of Australia
Book Author: Michael F. Braby
Book 1 Biblio: CSIRO Publishing, $39.95 pb, 339 pp
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Butterflies are perhaps the most agreeable of insects: harmless, highly visible, diurnal, brightly coloured and almost whimsical in their movements. Because of these qualities, they have attracted considerable attention from naturalists and artists throughout recorded history. Since Victorian times, their diversity and natural history have been documented in great detail – more than for any other group of invertebrate animals. Butterfly collecting was a popular pastime until recent decades; many a colonial home contained a wood cabinet with neat rows of carefully pinned butterfly specimens. More recently, butterflies were the subject of the first nationwide biological atlas scheme: the Atlas of British Butterflies conducted through the 1970s by the British Biological Records Centre. This project drew upon the energy of 2000 butterfly enthusiasts across the British Isles to record the presence of species in ten-kilometre grid cells. The biological atlasing concept has subsequently been applied to other groups, particularly birds and flowering plants.

Read more: Peter Menkhorst reviews ‘The Complete Field Guide to Butterflies of Australia’ by Michael F. Braby

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Peter Pierce reviews ‘Affection’ by Ian Townsend
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Article Title: Grip of the vortex
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Early in 1900, bubonic plague travelled by ship to Sydney, then erratically made its way up the coast. Ian Townsend’s accomplished first novel, Affection, traces the arrival of the plague in Townsville during the autumn of 1900. His story is factually based and is particularly concerned with three of the doctors who treated the outbreak: Linford Row, recently settled in the town as its municipal medical officer; long-term resident Ernest Humphry; and the English bacteriologist and butterfly collector Alfred Jefferis Turner. How they cope, not only with horrible and random deaths, but with politics and prejudice in North Queensland, is the dramatic core of the book.
Book 1 Title: Affection
Book Author: Ian Townsend
Book 1 Biblio: Fourth Estate, $24.95 pb, 420 pp
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Early in 1900, bubonic plague travelled by ship to Sydney, then erratically made its way up the coast. Ian Townsend’s accomplished first novel, Affection, traces the arrival of the plague in Townsville during the autumn of 1900. His story is factually based and is particularly concerned with three of the doctors who treated the outbreak: Linford Row, recently settled in the town as its municipal medical officer; long-term resident Ernest Humphry; and the English bacteriologist and butterfly collector Alfred Jefferis Turner. How they cope, not only with horrible and random deaths, but with politics and prejudice in North Queensland, is the dramatic core of the book.

Read more: Peter Pierce reviews ‘Affection’ by Ian Townsend

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Phil Brown reviews ‘A Month of Sundays’ by James O’Loghlin
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Contents Category: Travel
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Article Title: From Buddha to Ikea
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A good travel book is usually more than the mere chronicle of a journey, and a journey is often, but not always, a metaphor for something else altogether. Meanwhile, the act of departure can be read as an affirmation of life, an act of faith or, as is the case with James O’Loghlin, one of utter desperation.
Book 1 Title: A Month of Sundays
Book Author: James O'Loghlin
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $22.95 pb, 216 pp
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A good travel book is usually more than the mere chronicle of a journey, and a journey is often, but not always, a metaphor for something else altogether. Meanwhile, the act of departure can be read as an affirmation of life, an act of faith or, as is the case with James O’Loghlin, one of utter desperation.

The voyages of discovery around their home city of Sydney undertaken by O’Loghlin, his partner, the actor Lucy Bell, and their baby daughter were prompted by frustration at the noise from building sites abutting their once idyllic North Bondi home. Besieged by workmen and keen to escape the dust, noise and interminable swearing that seem to accompany any construction, this family unit decided life had to be more fun away from the house.

Read more: Phil Brown reviews ‘A Month of Sundays’ by James O’Loghlin

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Philip Clark reviews ‘Absurdistan’ by Eric Campbell
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Contents Category: Journalism
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Article Title: Why me?
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The foreign correspondent Eric Campbell is lucky to be alive. In March 2003 he was filming in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq, with Paul Moran, a freelance cameraman whom he had just met, when a car bomb exploded in front of him. Moran was killed instantly, his body shielding Campbell from the worst of the blast. Both Moran and Campbell were new fathers. Although vastly experienced in covering conflicts, both men had decided at the start of the Iraq war that they would stay at the tail of the media pack when entering dangerous areas. They wanted to see their children grow up; Moran’s daughter was only six weeks old.
Book 1 Title: Absurdistan
Book 1 Subtitle: A bumpy ride through some of the world's scariest, weirdest places
Book Author: Eric Campbell
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins, $29.95 pb, 334 pp
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The foreign correspondent Eric Campbell is lucky to be alive. In March 2003 he was filming in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq, with Paul Moran, a freelance cameraman whom he had just met, when a car bomb exploded in front of him. Moran was killed instantly, his body shielding Campbell from the worst of the blast. Both Moran and Campbell were new fathers. Although vastly experienced in covering conflicts, both men had decided at the start of the Iraq war that they would stay at the tail of the media pack when entering dangerous areas. They wanted to see their children grow up; Moran’s daughter was only six weeks old.

Read more: Philip Clark reviews ‘Absurdistan’ by Eric Campbell

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Rick Hosking reviews ‘The Writing Experiment: Strategies for innovative creative writing’ by Hazel Smith
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Article Title: Word games
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While it is not immediately apparent from the back cover of Hazel Smith’s The Writing Experiment: Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing, the preface and introduction both make it clear that this book is intended as a textbook for tertiary students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Smith’s book is based on experiences gained over more than a decade as a teacher of writing at the Universities of New South Wales and Canberra; such experience enlivens this book, making it the best creative writing book I’ve seen thus far aimed at the Australian university setting. In many English departments, postgraduate creative writing numbers now exceed those undertaking more traditional research degrees. Even at the undergraduate level, some creative writing electives attract more students than is the case with literature courses, so, on the surface at least, there is a real market for such books as The Writing Experiment.
Book 1 Title: The Writing Experiment
Book 1 Subtitle: Strategies for innovative creative writing
Book Author: Hazel Smith
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $39.95 pb, 298 pp
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While it is not immediately apparent from the back cover of Hazel Smith’s The Writing Experiment: Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing, the preface and introduction both make it clear that this book is intended as a textbook for tertiary students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Smith’s book is based on experiences gained over more than a decade as a teacher of writing at the Universities of New South Wales and Canberra; such experience enlivens this book, making it the best creative writing book I’ve seen thus far aimed at the Australian university setting. In many English departments, postgraduate creative writing numbers now exceed those undertaking more traditional research degrees. Even at the undergraduate level, some creative writing electives attract more students than is the case with literature courses, so, on the surface at least, there is a real market for such books as The Writing Experiment.

Read more: Rick Hosking reviews ‘The Writing Experiment: Strategies for innovative creative writing’ by Hazel...

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Robert Manne reviews ‘Washout: On the academic response to the fabrication of Aboriginal history’ by John Dawson
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Contents Category: History
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Article Title: Low and behold!
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In 2003, I edited a book called Whitewash, a critique of Keith Windschuttle’s revisionist account of the destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002). Even before Whitewash was published, Windschuttle told a journalist at The Australian, D.D. McNicoll, that he was preparing a book-length reply. Nothing came of this promise. Rather than answer his critics directly, what Windschuttle seems eventually to have decided to do was to finance, through the Press he owns, Macleay, the publication of John Dawson’s Washout. By its publication, Windschuttle hopes, presumably, to have saved face.
Book 1 Title: Washout
Book 1 Subtitle: On the academic response to the fabrication of Aboriginal history
Book Author: John Dawson
Book 1 Biblio: Macleay Press, $34.95 pb, 260 pp
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In 2003, I edited a book called Whitewash, a critique of Keith Windschuttle’s revisionist account of the destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002). Even before Whitewash was published, Windschuttle told a journalist at The Australian, D.D. McNicoll, that he was preparing a book-length reply. Nothing came of this promise. Rather than answer his critics directly, what Windschuttle seems eventually to have decided to do was to finance, through the Press he owns, Macleay, the publication of John Dawson’s Washout. By its publication, Windschuttle hopes, presumably, to have saved face.

Read more: Robert Manne reviews ‘Washout: On the academic response to the fabrication of Aboriginal history’...

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Robyn Sheahan-Bright reviews three books
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Contents Category: Children's Non-Fiction
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Article Title: Money, money, money
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These days, children’s non-fiction is not as stuffy as it once was. Instead of the encyclopaedic and often boring lists of facts that used to constitute the genre, authors are now encouraged to use fictional techniques in style and voice to produce a collage of ideas; and designers are required to present them as interactively as possible. These three very different books share some of these characteristics.
Book 1 Title: Money Smart Kids
Book Author: Dianne Bates
Book 1 Biblio: Ibis Publishing, $14.95 pb, 160 pp
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Book 2 Title: Hoosh! Camels in Australia
Book 2 Author: Janeen Brian
Book 2 Biblio: ABC Books, $29.95 hb, 62 pp
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Book 3 Title: The Big Picture Book
Book 3 Author: John Long and illustrated by Brian Choo
Book 3 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 hb, 48 pp
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These days, children’s non-fiction is not as stuffy as it once was. Instead of the encyclopaedic and often boring lists of facts that used to constitute the genre, authors are now encouraged to use fictional techniques in style and voice to produce a collage of ideas; and designers are required to present them as interactively as possible. These three very different books share some of these characteristics.

Read more: Robyn Sheahan-Bright reviews three books

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Contents Category: Children's Fiction
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Article Title: The hand of friendship
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Friendship is an integral part of the human condition. As the picture books reviewed here show, it can take many forms: an inanimate object; something you magically concoct; someone you meet in a shelter for the homeless; the firefighters who save your house; or even a well-loved poem. However, which, if any, of these books will become a child’s lifelong friend will depend not only on the needs and tastes of the individual child but also on how effectively the illustrator and author have combined their talents to present an engaging and meaningful narrative.
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Friendship is an integral part of the human condition. As the picture books reviewed here show, it can take many forms: an inanimate object; something you magically concoct; someone you meet in a shelter for the homeless; the firefighters who save your house; or even a well-loved poem. However, which, if any, of these books will become a child’s lifelong friend will depend not only on the needs and tastes of the individual child but also on how effectively the illustrator and author have combined their talents to present an engaging and meaningful narrative.

Read more: Stephanie Owen Reeder reviews five books

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Robert Reynolds reviews ‘Who Says I Can’t? A Memoir’ by Catherine DeVrye
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Steaming on
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With the recent Tony Abbott paternity saga unfolding in spectacular fashion, adoption is back in the news. Not that it ever really went away. Adoption was such a common practice in postwar Australia that there is a ready-made constituency for reunion stories. Many birth parents, especially birth mothers, hunger for details of successful reunions. Adoptees search out familiar patterns in the biographies of other relinquished adults. But more than that, there is something primal about separation, loss and reunion that attracts a wider audience to adoption narratives. It is not simply that almost everyone over thirty knows someone who was adopted. There is something about postwar adoption experiences that sharpens our sense of human relationships as both fragile and resilient.
Book 1 Title: Who Says I Can't?
Book 1 Subtitle: A Memoir
Book Author: Catherine DeVrye
Book 1 Biblio: Bantam, $22.95 pb, 349 pp
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With the recent Tony Abbott paternity saga unfolding in spectacular fashion, adoption is back in the news. Not that it ever really went away. Adoption was such a common practice in postwar Australia that there is a ready-made constituency for reunion stories. Many birth parents, especially birth mothers, hunger for details of successful reunions. Adoptees search out familiar patterns in the biographies of other relinquished adults. But more than that, there is something primal about separation, loss and reunion that attracts a wider audience to adoption narratives. It is not simply that almost everyone over thirty knows someone who was adopted. There is something about postwar adoption experiences that sharpens our sense of human relationships as both fragile and resilient.

Read more: Robert Reynolds reviews ‘Who Says I Can’t? A Memoir’ by Catherine DeVrye

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Samiul Hasan reviews ‘Islam and the West: Reflections from Australia’ edited by Shahram Akbarzadeh and Samina Yasmeen
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: Promoting understanding
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The professed ‘clash of civilisations’, primarily between the West and Islam, makes an understanding among civilisations an imperative. Shahram Akbarzadeh has been promoting this understanding. In the past he has worked on Muslim Communities in Australia (2001) and Islam and Political Legitimacy (2003); this time his venture is with Samina Yasmeen. The UNSW Press has also been promoting interfaith understanding by publishing books such as this one.
Book 1 Title: Islam and the West
Book 1 Subtitle: Reflections from Australia
Book Author: Shahram Akbarzadeh and Samina Yasmeen
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $34.95 pb, 186 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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The professed ‘clash of civilisations’, primarily between the West and Islam, makes an understanding among civilisations an imperative. Shahram Akbarzadeh has been promoting this understanding. In the past he has worked on Muslim Communities in Australia (2001) and Islam and Political Legitimacy (2003); this time his venture is with Samina Yasmeen. The UNSW Press has also been promoting interfaith understanding by publishing books such as this one.

Read more: Samiul Hasan reviews ‘Islam and the West: Reflections from Australia’ edited by Shahram Akbarzadeh...

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Sarah Thomas reviews ‘Degenerates and Perverts: The 1939 herald exhibition of French and British contemporary art’ by Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller (with Judith Pugh)
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Contents Category: Art
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In the 1930s the notorious art critic and gallery director J.S. MacDonald felt it was his patriotic duty to protect Australia from the morally suspect culture of Europe, where, he exclaimed, ‘the pictorial symptoms of the degeneracy of France [is] enfeebled by the rule of functionaries, and … Mittel Europe [is] crushed and torn between Nazi, Bolshevist and Fascist megalomaniacs’. Not a man to mince words, MacDonald also expressed his horror of what was arguably Australia’s first blockbuster exhibition, the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, suggesting that it was the work of ‘degenerates and perverts’. As the then Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, MacDonald was a man of influence, and his outspoken views were transmitted widely.
Book 1 Title: Degenerates and Perverts
Book 1 Subtitle: The 1939 herald exhibition of French and British contemporary art
Book Author: Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller (with Judith Pugh)
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $69.95 hb, 306 pp
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In the 1930s the notorious art critic and gallery director J.S. MacDonald felt it was his patriotic duty to protect Australia from the morally suspect culture of Europe, where, he exclaimed, ‘the pictorial symptoms of the degeneracy of France [is] enfeebled by the rule of functionaries, and … Mittel Europe [is] crushed and torn between Nazi, Bolshevist and Fascist megalomaniacs’. Not a man to mince words, MacDonald also expressed his horror of what was arguably Australia’s first blockbuster exhibition, the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, suggesting that it was the work of ‘degenerates and perverts’. As the then Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, MacDonald was a man of influence, and his outspoken views were transmitted widely.

Read more: Sarah Thomas reviews ‘Degenerates and Perverts: The 1939 herald exhibition of French and British...

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Shahram Akbarzadeh reviews ‘The Tragedy of the Middle East’ by Barry Rubin
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Article Title: Blame it on Uncle Sam
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Why is the Middle East anti-American? That is the core question in Barry Rubin’s flowing account of contemporary politics in that turbulent region of the world. As the director of Global Research in International Affairs in Israel, with a long history of research and publication on the Middle East and US foreign policy towards the region, Rubin is confident of his assessment. He is a prolific writer with some forty books to his name. The present one, The Tragedy of the Middle East, appears to comprise reflections based partly on the collection of media-excerpts and publications by Islamic groups in the wake of the September 11 attacks, published separately as an edited volume, Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East (2002), although there is no acknowledgment in this book of such a link. The theme of anti-Americanism has also provided the material for a more recent book by Rubin titled Hating America: A History (2004).
Book 1 Title: The Tragedy of the Middle East
Book Author: Barry Rubin
Book 1 Biblio: CUP, $49.95 pb, 287 pp
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Why is the Middle East anti-American? That is the core question in Barry Rubin’s flowing account of contemporary politics in that turbulent region of the world. As the director of Global Research in International Affairs in Israel, with a long history of research and publication on the Middle East and US foreign policy towards the region, Rubin is confident of his assessment. He is a prolific writer with some forty books to his name. The present one, The Tragedy of the Middle East, appears to comprise reflections based partly on the collection of media-excerpts and publications by Islamic groups in the wake of the September 11 attacks, published separately as an edited volume, Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East (2002), although there is no acknowledgment in this book of such a link. The theme of anti-Americanism has also provided the material for a more recent book by Rubin titled Hating America: A History (2004).

Read more: Shahram Akbarzadeh reviews ‘The Tragedy of the Middle East’ by Barry Rubin

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Shirley Walker reviews ‘Father and Daughter’ by Muriel Mathers
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Rounding out the father
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This book contains two discrete memoirs: the first by Clifford Norman Button, a Presbyterian minister; the second by his daughter, Muriel Mathers. Despite immense social changes in the period they cover (1888 to the present), there are many similarities between the two personalities and their work in the world.

Dr Button, the first memoirist, was obviously a driven character. His manuscript, entitled The Unknown Londoner, was completed just before his death in 1950 and remained in his daughter’s possession until she included it here, edited and abridged, under the title ‘Murmurings’. As well as a chronological account of his life, ‘Murmurings’ includes enough of Button’s reflections on his interests and beliefs to, in her words, ‘round out the man’.
Book 1 Title: Father and Daughter
Book Author: Muriel Mathers
Book 1 Biblio: Spectrum Publications, $32.95 pb, 270 pp
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This book contains two discrete memoirs: the first by Clifford Norman Button, a Presbyterian minister; the second by his daughter, Muriel Mathers. Despite immense social changes in the period they cover (1888 to the present), there are many similarities between the two personalities and their work in the world.

Read more: Shirley Walker reviews ‘Father and Daughter’ by Muriel Mathers

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Stephanie Trigg reviews ‘Slaughterboy’ by Odo Hirsch
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Contents Category: Children's and Young Adult Fiction
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Article Title: Bleak vision
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Here is a kind of social experiment in fiction. Take the lowest, most abject starting point for a human life. Give the child no advantages, home or family; provide it with no regular food or care; subject it to the privations of a society with no welfare system; deprive it of any educational, emotional or spiritual training; and then, when it finally finds an occupation, make it the lowest, most socially disadvantaged and despised. And then see what kind of person it turns out to be. Oh, and set the whole thing in the Middle Ages, which, as everyone knows, was the most brutal, depraved, disease- and poverty-ridden era in Western history.
Book 1 Title: Slaughterboy
Book Author: Odo Hirsch
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $16.95 pb, 317 pp
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Here is a kind of social experiment in fiction. Take the lowest, most abject starting point for a human life. Give the child no advantages, home or family; provide it with no regular food or care; subject it to the privations of a society with no welfare system; deprive it of any educational, emotional or spiritual training; and then, when it finally finds an occupation, make it the lowest, most socially disadvantaged and despised. And then see what kind of person it turns out to be. Oh, and set the whole thing in the Middle Ages, which, as everyone knows, was the most brutal, depraved, disease- and poverty-ridden era in Western history.

Read more: Stephanie Trigg reviews ‘Slaughterboy’ by Odo Hirsch

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Vivienne Kelly reviews ‘In the Shadow of Swords: On the trail of terror from Afghanistan to Australia’ by Sally Neighbour
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Contents Category: Journalism
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Article Title: Ravine of hate
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Sally Neighbour wrote this book as a direct response to the Bali bombing in October 2002. She was convinced, by that event and its aftermath, that fundamentalist Muslims’ hatred of Westerners was creating an unfamiliar world whose rules she and most Australians did not understand. We are in her debt. In clean prose, informed by meticulous research into a wide range of sources, Neighbour stitches together countless loose strands until they cohere persuasively into a dismaying pattern. Her courage, dispassion and skill present us with conclusions as unpleasant as they are inescapable. Journalism is a term frequently used pejoratively, but this is a thoroughly journalistic book in the best possible sense: it presents evidence, shapes arguments and distils information – a vast amount of information – intelligently and responsibly. Neighbour’s disturbing claims are founded on hard evidence and sober analysis.
Book 1 Title: In the Shadow of Swords
Book 1 Subtitle: On the trail of terror from Afghanistan to Australia
Book Author: Sally Neighbour
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins, $29.95 pb, 374 pp
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Sally Neighbour wrote this book as a direct response to the Bali bombing in October 2002. She was convinced, by that event and its aftermath, that fundamentalist Muslims’ hatred of Westerners was creating an unfamiliar world whose rules she and most Australians did not understand. We are in her debt. In clean prose, informed by meticulous research into a wide range of sources, Neighbour stitches together countless loose strands until they cohere persuasively into a dismaying pattern. Her courage, dispassion and skill present us with conclusions as unpleasant as they are inescapable. Journalism is a term frequently used pejoratively, but this is a thoroughly journalistic book in the best possible sense: it presents evidence, shapes arguments and distils information – a vast amount of information – intelligently and responsibly. Neighbour’s disturbing claims are founded on hard evidence and sober analysis.

Read more: Vivienne Kelly reviews ‘In the Shadow of Swords: On the trail of terror from Afghanistan to...

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Contents Category: Commentary
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Article Title: Travellers' tales
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The Sabi sands reserve borders South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park. I spent a memorable few days in one of Sabi Sands’s private game reserves in January 2002, tracking the ‘big five’ at dawn and dusk, eating fine food, and curling up under my bed’s mosquito net to read J.M. Coetzee. While I was rather discomfited by the obsequiousness of some of the black employees, I knew that tourism was the lifeblood of the community. The events of September 11 had impacted even on Africa, and the lodge was eerily quiet.
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The Sabi sands reserve borders South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park. I spent a memorable few days in one of Sabi Sands’s private game reserves in January 2002, tracking the ‘big five’ at dawn and dusk, eating fine food, and curling up under my bed’s mosquito net to read J.M. Coetzee. While I was rather discomfited by the obsequiousness of some of the black employees, I knew that tourism was the lifeblood of the community. The events of September 11 had impacted even on Africa, and the lodge was eerily quiet.

Read more: Commentary | Travellers' tales by Bridget Griffen-Foley

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: Mulberries and the Death of the Literary Novel
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Torrid noon, I’m high in my mulberry harvest.

 

So, what is it with this tree? Lower branches, I click

quickly left or right – fingers safebreaker light

on the gorged capsules, and they detach,

drop, thuk and whole into my plastic bucket.

Yet from the tree-peak where the fattest fruit

clusters against the sun, O I must pinch

and wrest until the berries burst like bloodspray.
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Torrid noon, I’m high in my mulberry harvest.

 

So, what is it with this tree? Lower branches, I click

quickly left or right – fingers safebreaker light

on the gorged capsules, and they detach,

drop, thuk and whole into my plastic bucket.

Yet from the tree-peak where the fattest fruit

clusters against the sun, O I must pinch

and wrest until the berries burst like bloodspray.

Read more: ‘Mulberries and the Death of the Literary Novel’, a new poem by Alan Gould

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: She Lets Go
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Her hand in mine

she walks looking back

at all the bright colours –

that’s a funny man.

She says what she feels

and teaches me what I thought I used to know.

The warmth of her hand

the sense that she will never let go,

even though her body

is twisting back to examine

a piece of glass with writing on it.
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Her hand in mine

she walks looking back

at all the bright colours –

that’s a funny man.

She says what she feels

and teaches me what I thought I used to know.

The warmth of her hand

the sense that she will never let go,

even though her body

is twisting back to examine

a piece of glass with writing on it.

Read more: ‘She Lets Go’, a new poem by Brendan Ryan

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Article Title: The Last Gruppetti
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There is no such thing as maturity.

Wagner writes stiff Weberian tunes,

stiffer far than Weber’s, but the best

employ those signal little turns,

gruppetti, helping raise his melodies

to some redemptive ecstasy,

genuflecting as they go.
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There is no such thing as maturity.

Wagner writes stiff Weberian tunes,

stiffer far than Weber’s, but the best

employ those signal little turns,

gruppetti, helping raise his melodies

to some redemptive ecstasy,

genuflecting as they go.

Read more: ‘The Last Gruppetti’, a new poem by Peter Porter

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Contents Category: Advances
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Article Title: Advances - May 2005
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Much has been written and muttered about the difficulty of turning scholarship into commercially viable manuscripts and of interesting publishers in academic writing – some of it, indeed, by Tom Griffiths in the March issue of ABR. In his Commentary, Professor Griffiths defended the role of universities in fostering cogent, rigorous writing. (He also produced one of our favourite quotes of the year: ‘Scholarly writers tend to be pathetically grateful to be published.’) Now Picador Australia and the University of Sydney have taken it one step further. In what is claimed to be a ‘world-first commercial non-fiction publishing project’, costing more than $660,000, six writing residencies will be offered for recent doctoral graduates to turn their research dissertations into commercial non-fiction to be published by Picador Australia. The graduates will be mentored by ‘established literary non-fiction writers of the highest calibre’. Drusilla Modjeska, currently an ARC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, will lead the project, which will also fund an Australian Postgraduate Award, a scholarship for doctoral research into aspects of Australian non-fiction publishing.
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From thesis to book

Much has been written and muttered about the difficulty of turning scholarship into commercially viable manuscripts and of interesting publishers in academic writing – some of it, indeed, by Tom Griffiths in the February issue of ABR. In his Commentary, Professor Griffiths defended the role of universities in fostering cogent, rigorous writing. (He also produced one of our favourite quotes of the year: ‘Scholarly writers tend to be pathetically grateful to be published.’) Now Picador Australia and the University of Sydney have taken it one step further. In what is claimed to be a ‘world-first commercial non-fiction publishing project’, costing more than $660,000, six writing residencies will be offered for recent doctoral graduates to turn their research dissertations into commercial non-fiction to be published by Picador Australia. The graduates will be mentored by ‘established literary non-fiction writers of the highest calibre’. Drusilla Modjeska, currently an ARC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, will lead the project, which will also fund an Australian Postgraduate Award, a scholarship for doctoral research into aspects of Australian non-fiction publishing.

Read more: Advances - May 2005

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Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters - May 2005
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ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.
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ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

 

Tyranny of the literal

Dear Editor,

I was delighted to read Sue Thomas’s incisive review of Derek Attridge’s J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading in the April 2005 issue of ABR. Attridge’s renowned analyses of poetic rhythm in English are a fine example of that ethics in practice. Thomas’s review is further extended by the conversation it sparks with James Ley’s essay in the same issue, ‘The Tyranny of the Literal’. I welcome Ley’s reminder that it is impossible to examine ‘the meaning of a novel [or any literary form, for that matter] without considering its aesthetics. After all, it is a rhetorical structure that wants to shape your response.’ Better still, his brisk, exemplary analysis of The Bride Stripped Bare, in which certain of that novel’s narrative structures are sharply revealed. The garish narrative structures raised by publicists around the literary work are too often analysed and debated, precious little of any substance being said about the actual craft exhibited (or otherwise) by the work itself.

Read more: Letters - May 2005

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Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letter from Baltimore
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Last week, escaping the latest blizzard, I went to Miami Beach for some sun. But it was cold and rainy, and they were noisily replacing the carpet in my hotel, so I was reduced to checking my e-mail in an Internet café and getting an expensive facial – truly a case of closing the stable door.

South Beach, as it is known, is widely celebrated for its art deco street and beachscape. This is one of the most colossally successful con jobs of all time. Take an unpretentious tropical beach community, popularised in the 1940s by canny Jewish holidaymakers from the north-east. Throw up a couple of thousand tawdry two- or three-storey shoeboxes with basic amenities: a couple of ceiling fans and no windows. Roll out some chrome cladding and neon. Toss in a bit of applied detail, a few top knots and some frosted glass. Then paint it an improbable pale pink or green or yellow, or some other combination of pastel colours that manage to be both insipid and stubbornly vulgar.
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Last week, escaping the latest blizzard, I went to Miami Beach for some sun. But it was cold and rainy, and they were noisily replacing the carpet in my hotel, so I was reduced to checking my e-mail in an Internet café and getting an expensive facial – truly a case of closing the stable door.

South Beach, as it is known, is widely celebrated for its art deco street and beachscape. This is one of the most colossally successful con jobs of all time. Take an unpretentious tropical beach community, popularised in the 1940s by canny Jewish holidaymakers from the north-east. Throw up a couple of thousand tawdry two- or three-storey shoeboxes with basic amenities: a couple of ceiling fans and no windows. Roll out some chrome cladding and neon. Toss in a bit of applied detail, a few top knots and some frosted glass. Then paint it an improbable pale pink or green or yellow, or some other combination of pastel colours that manage to be both insipid and stubbornly vulgar. Unleash a million twelve-year-old, chain-smoking fashion models; drug-dependent muscle boys of volcanic stupidity (usually active, but at times gigglingly dormant); and a throng of shrunken retirees who would be sleepwalking if they were not in partial control of powerful motorised wheelchairs. Mobilise an army of sullen ex-Cuban midgets. Bring on the smelly Eurotrash photographers and every cheap hustler within a radius of 3000 miles. Sprinkle vomit on the sidewalk, tread in some dog poo, and scatter to the winds your empty soft drink cans and unwanted potato chips, and voila! You have created an art deco Shangri-La.

Read more: ‘Letter from Baltimore’ by Angus Trumble

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Article Title: Spasms of Assertion: The Politics and Aesthetics of Blogging
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Nowadays, we want the truth. Suddenly, it seems, we are no longer content to be sceptical and laconic and sophisticated, or to take the line that there are many kinds of truth and that it all depends on how you look at it, and on who is doing the looking. Politicians and journalists, for example, long assumed by a knowing public to belong to professions that not only display but positively require a flexible approach to the facts, now find themselves being scrutinised and investigated to establish whether or not they have been telling lies. The Blairs – Jayson of The New York Times, and Tony of Her Majesty’s government – cannot, in their recent tribulations, have missed the irony of this dramatic shift. Where once we tolerated, even celebrated, shading and nuance and the need, sometimes, to elaborate and select and even invent in order to arrive at a truth of a kind that told us far more than the mere facts ever would, now we just want to get down to those plain unelaborated facts and to establish what really did happen, or is currently happening, or is about to happen.
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Nowadays, we want the truth. Suddenly, it seems, we are no longer content to be sceptical and laconic and sophisticated, or to take the line that there are many kinds of truth and that it all depends on how you look at it, and on who is doing the looking. Politicians and journalists, for example, long assumed by a knowing public to belong to professions that not only display but positively require a flexible approach to the facts, now find themselves being scrutinised and investigated to establish whether or not they have been telling lies. The Blairs – Jayson of The New York Times, and Tony of Her Majesty’s government – cannot, in their recent tribulations, have missed the irony of this dramatic shift. Where once we tolerated, even celebrated, shading and nuance and the need, sometimes, to elaborate and select and even invent in order to arrive at a truth of a kind that told us far more than the mere facts ever would, now we just want to get down to those plain unelaborated facts and to establish what really did happen, or is currently happening, or is about to happen.

Read more: La Trobe University Essay | ‘Spasms of Assertion: The Politics and Aesthetics of Blogging’ by...

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Article Title: Acquisitive librarians: Kenneth Binns and Harold White
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Harold White joined the staff of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library as a cadet cataloguer in February 1923, a few weeks after leaving school. It was an important year in the history of the Library. In April the Commonwealth Government purchased at auction the personal journal of James Cook, kept during the voyage of the Endeavour in 1768–71. The journal has always been the most famous item in the Library’s collection. Later that year, the Library Committee adopted the term ‘Commonwealth National Library’ to distinguish the national collections and services from those offered to the Parliament. It remained a hybrid institution until the passing of the 1960 National Library of Australia Act and the opening of the Library building in 1968.
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Harold White joined the staff of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library as a cadet cataloguer in February 1923, a few weeks after leaving school. It was an important year in the history of the Library. In April the Commonwealth Government purchased at auction the personal journal of James Cook, kept during the voyage of the Endeavour in 1768–71. The journal has always been the most famous item in the Library’s collection. Later that year, the Library Committee adopted the term ‘Commonwealth National Library’ to distinguish the national collections and services from those offered to the Parliament. It remained a hybrid institution until the passing of the 1960 National Library of Australia Act and the opening of the Library building in 1968.

Read more: ‘National News’ by Graeme Powell

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Brendon OConnor reviews ‘Anti-Americanism’ edited by Andrew Ross and Kristen Ross
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Article Title: I am vast, I contain Bushes
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Anti-Americanism is one of those nonsense words, like anti-globalisation, that has become shorthand for a more complex and contradictory set of arguments and grievances. What is called ‘anti-Americanism’ generally refers to a particular set of criticisms made about aspects of the politics, economics and culture of the US. Few people have what it takes to be truly anti-American (to hate all that emanates from the US); thus anti-Americanism is more of a tendency than an actuality. However, the tendency is undeniably on the rise, with increasing numbers of people in recent times voicing their concerns around the world about US foreign policy and about Americanisation.
Book 1 Title: Anti-Americanism
Book Author: Andrew Ross and Kristen Ross
Book 1 Biblio: New York University Press, $38.95 pb, 344 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Anti-Americanism is one of those nonsense words, like anti-globalisation, that has become shorthand for a more complex and contradictory set of arguments and grievances. What is called ‘anti-Americanism’ generally refers to a particular set of criticisms made about aspects of the politics, economics and culture of the US. Few people have what it takes to be truly anti-American (to hate all that emanates from the US); thus anti-Americanism is more of a tendency than an actuality. However, the tendency is undeniably on the rise, with increasing numbers of people in recent times voicing their concerns around the world about US foreign policy and about Americanisation.

Read more: Brendon O'Connor reviews ‘Anti-Americanism’ edited by Andrew Ross and Kristen Ross

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Carolyn Tétaz reviews ‘The Stone Ship’ by Peter Raftos
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The Stone Ship is Peter Raftos’s first book, and one of the first three books released by Sullivan’s Creek, an imprint of Pandanus Books. The Sullivan’s Creek Series ‘seeks to explore Australia through the work of new writers, with a particular encouragement to authors from Canberra and the region’ and ‘aims to make a lively contribution to scholarship and cultural knowledge’. Raftos, ‘a web developer, an academic-in-training and a journalist’, lives in Canberra and works at the Australian National University. His novel, set in an imagined time and place, doesn’t so much explore Australian universities as the absurdity of all universities. As for ‘a lively contribution to cultural knowledge’, I’m not sure what that looks like, but The Stone Ship reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s wonderful film Brazil (1985). Both are set in a ‘retro-future’ ruled by huge, incomprehensible bureaucracies, whose only work seems to be perpetuating their systems and inflicting arbitrary cruelties on unsuspecting and trusting citizens.
Book 1 Title: The Stone Ship
Book Author: Peter Raftos
Book 1 Biblio: Pandanus, $29.95pb, 217pp
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The Stone Ship is Peter Raftos’s first book, and one of the first three books released by Sullivan’s Creek, an imprint of Pandanus Books. The Sullivan’s Creek Series ‘seeks to explore Australia through the work of new writers, with a particular encouragement to authors from Canberra and the region’ and ‘aims to make a lively contribution to scholarship and cultural knowledge’. Raftos, ‘a web developer, an academic-in-training and a journalist’, lives in Canberra and works at the Australian National University. His novel, set in an imagined time and place, doesn’t so much explore Australian universities as the absurdity of all universities. As for ‘a lively contribution to cultural knowledge’, I’m not sure what that looks like, but The Stone Ship reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s wonderful film Brazil (1985). Both are set in a ‘retro-future’ ruled by huge, incomprehensible bureaucracies, whose only work seems to be perpetuating their systems and inflicting arbitrary cruelties on unsuspecting and trusting citizens.

Read more: Carolyn Tétaz reviews ‘The Stone Ship’ by Peter Raftos

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Ceridwen Spark reviews ‘RENE BAKER FILE #28/E.D.P.’ by Rene Powell and Bernadette Kennedy
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Article Title: Whitefella stuff
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Rene Baker File #28/E.D.P. is written by two women, Rene Powell and Bernadette Kennedy. Powell is an Aboriginal woman who was taken from her mother at the age of four. Kennedy, an ex-nun who is descended from Irish, English and Scottish migrants, has ‘worked with the homeless and disadvantaged in Western Australia’ for more than twenty-five years. The two women met through Kennedy’s religious work and because of Rene’s drinking problem: Rene was the first resident in a homeless women’s shelter that Kennedy helped to run.
Book 1 Title: RENE BAKER FILE #28/E.D.P.
Book Author: Rene Powell and Bernadette Kennedy
Book 1 Biblio: FACP, $24.95 pb, 221 pp
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Rene Baker File #28/E.D.P. is written by two women, Rene Powell and Bernadette Kennedy. Powell is an Aboriginal woman who was taken from her mother at the age of four. Kennedy, an ex-nun who is descended from Irish, English and Scottish migrants, has ‘worked with the homeless and disadvantaged in Western Australia’ for more than twenty-five years. The two women met through Kennedy’s religious work and because of Rene’s drinking problem: Rene was the first resident in a homeless women’s shelter that Kennedy helped to run.

Read more: Ceridwen Spark reviews ‘RENE BAKER FILE #28/E.D.P.’ by Rene Powell and Bernadette Kennedy

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Christina Hill reviews ‘Vincenzo’s Garden’ by John Clanchy
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Contents Category: Short Stories
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Article Title: The larger things in fiction
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John Clanchy’s fictional concerns are with the large things: desire, pain, guilt, innocence, infidelity, sexuality, madness and the cost of making great art. In various guises, the spectre of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh haunts many of the stories: he appears in a biographical portrait, in the recurring echoes of his first name, in a discussion of the use of colour in his pictures and in several reworkings of his mental illness.
Book 1 Title: Vincenzo's Garden
Book Author: John Clanchy
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $22.95 pb, 235 pp
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John Clanchy’s fictional concerns are with the large things: desire, pain, guilt, innocence, infidelity, sexuality, madness and the cost of making great art. In various guises, the spectre of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh haunts many of the stories: he appears in a biographical portrait, in the recurring echoes of his first name, in a discussion of the use of colour in his pictures and in several reworkings of his mental illness.

Read more: Christina Hill reviews ‘Vincenzo’s Garden’ by John Clanchy

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David Gilbey reviews ‘Punch On Punch Off’ by Geoff Goodfellow and ‘Fontanelle’ by Andrew Lansdown
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Article Title: True believers
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These two new collections are both by, and maybe for, believers. They contain passionate and interrogative poems that argue for and celebrate their respective views of the world. Both poets are, to quote Rosemary Sorensen’s term for Goodfellow on the cover blurb, ‘evangelists’ who wear their respective hearts on their sleeves and who urge or invite assent.

Fontanelle, Andrew Lansdown’s seventh collection, is concerned with the almost ineffable immanent design and intricacy of the natural and experienced world, especially of birds, insects and a young family. The role of the poet here is to explore, describe and celebrate the (almost) sacred in the mundane: ‘The words I’ve been working with / are like running water. All afternoon / I’ve been trying to scoop out / a place for them to settle …’ (‘Home’). Lansdown’s voice is earnest, reverent, wonderstruck. These are Romantic imagist poems in which the poetry defers to the empirical and ontological world: ‘Cicadas have left their cuticles / clinging to the daisy stems: / brown shells, burst at the back / of the thorax’ (‘Emergence’).
Book 1 Title: Punch On Punch Off
Book Author: Geoff Goodfellow
Book 1 Biblio: Vulgar Press, $14.95pb, 71pp
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Book 2 Title: Fontanelle
Book 2 Author: Andrew Lansdown
Book 2 Biblio: Five Islands Press, $18.95pb, 112pp
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These two new collections are both by, and maybe for, believers. They contain passionate and interrogative poems that argue for and celebrate their respective views of the world. Both poets are, to quote Rosemary Sorensen’s term for Goodfellow on the cover blurb, ‘evangelists’ who wear their respective hearts on their sleeves and who urge or invite assent.

Fontanelle, Andrew Lansdown’s seventh collection, is concerned with the almost ineffable immanent design and intricacy of the natural and experienced world, especially of birds, insects and a young family. The role of the poet here is to explore, describe and celebrate the (almost) sacred in the mundane: ‘The words I’ve been working with / are like running water. All afternoon / I’ve been trying to scoop out / a place for them to settle …’ (‘Home’). Lansdown’s voice is earnest, reverent, wonderstruck. These are Romantic imagist poems in which the poetry defers to the empirical and ontological world: ‘Cicadas have left their cuticles / clinging to the daisy stems: / brown shells, burst at the back / of the thorax’ (‘Emergence’).

Read more: David Gilbey reviews ‘Punch On Punch Off’ by Geoff Goodfellow and ‘Fontanelle’ by Andrew Lansdown

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Graham Tulloch reviews ‘Dickens and Empire: Discourses of class, race and colonialism in the works of Charles Dickens’ by Grace Moore
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Article Title: Beyond London
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When we think of Charles Dickens, we think of London – not the imagined medieval London of William Morris, ‘small, and white, and clean’, but the contemporary London Morris described as among the ‘six counties overhung with smoke’. For Christopher Koch, in Crossing the Gap (1987), the London of his imagination was full of ‘rooms where great fires blazed in open fireplaces’. He saw it this way because ‘Mr Pickwick had warmed his coat-tails before such fires’. We know, of course, that there are plenty of other English localities in Dickens’s novels, such as the memorable marshes in Great Expectations (1860–61). We even remember that parts of his novels are set in other countries altogether, such as the American scenes of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44) and the Marseilles setting at the beginning of Little Dorrit (1855–57). Yet if we think of the quintessential Dickens setting, it is to London that we turn.
Book 1 Title: Dickens and Empire
Book 1 Subtitle: Discourses of class, race and colonialism in the works of Charles Dickens
Book Author: Grace Moore
Book 1 Biblio: Ashgate, $124.30 hb, 220 pp
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When we think of Charles Dickens, we think of London – not the imagined medieval London of William Morris, ‘small, and white, and clean’, but the contemporary London Morris described as among the ‘six counties overhung with smoke’. For Christopher Koch, in Crossing the Gap (1987), the London of his imagination was full of ‘rooms where great fires blazed in open fireplaces’. He saw it this way because ‘Mr Pickwick had warmed his coat-tails before such fires’. We know, of course, that there are plenty of other English localities in Dickens’s novels, such as the memorable marshes in Great Expectations (1860–61). We even remember that parts of his novels are set in other countries altogether, such as the American scenes of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44) and the Marseilles setting at the beginning of Little Dorrit (1855–57). Yet if we think of the quintessential Dickens setting, it is to London that we turn.

Read more: Graham Tulloch reviews ‘Dickens and Empire: Discourses of class, race and colonialism in the works...

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Grant Bailey reviews ‘The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising’ by Sally Young
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Article Title: Save it for your tombstone
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In a discussion on election advertising, an American political operative was asked whether it is preferable to run a ‘negative’ advertisement (criticising an opponent) or a ‘positive’ message (extolling the client candidate). He replied: ‘If it’s negative, it works. If it’s positive, save it for your tombstone.’ In Australia, the major political parties are similarly inclined: according to Sally Young’s research, sixty per cent of television advertisements in federal election campaigns since 1993 have been in the ‘negative’ category. The public’s general dislike of politicians facilitates this approach. For the same reason, the advertising party usually employs an actor to dish out the dirt. Young, a political scientist, has extensively researched political advertising in Australia. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising covers the evolution of political advertising in this country and the effectiveness (or otherwise) of various campaigns over the last fifty years.
Book 1 Title: The Persuaders
Book 1 Subtitle: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising
Book Author: Sally Young
Book 1 Biblio: Pluto Press, $34.95 pb, 404 pp
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In a discussion on election advertising, an American political operative was asked whether it is preferable to run a ‘negative’ advertisement (criticising an opponent) or a ‘positive’ message (extolling the client candidate). He replied: ‘If it’s negative, it works. If it’s positive, save it for your tombstone.’ In Australia, the major political parties are similarly inclined: according to Sally Young’s research, sixty per cent of television advertisements in federal election campaigns since 1993 have been in the ‘negative’ category. The public’s general dislike of politicians facilitates this approach. For the same reason, the advertising party usually employs an actor to dish out the dirt. Young, a political scientist, has extensively researched political advertising in Australia. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising covers the evolution of political advertising in this country and the effectiveness (or otherwise) of various campaigns over the last fifty years. But the focus of the book is on political advertising in Australia today. The author is interested not only in the advertisements themselves but also in the processes by which they are produced.

Read more: Grant Bailey reviews ‘The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising’ by Sally...

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Ian Britain reviews ‘Bombay to Bloomsbury: A biography of the Strachey family’ by Barbara Caine
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Contents Category: Biography
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Article Title: Calling a sperm a sperm
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A full-blown history of sperm can’t be too long in the coming given the current academic vogue for studies of the body, and the huge spurt of curiosity prompted a few years ago by the appearance of a couple of tell-tale stains on the dress of a White House intern. It is possible the subject (or the object) first came into its own as a more than private matter when, nearly a hundred years ago, Lytton Strachey spotted a similar stain on the dress of his just-married friend Vanessa Bell and dared to name it in the mixed company of his assembled friends, the legendary Bloomsbury group in its embryonic days. ‘Semen?’ he enquired, with forensic candour, and forever after, so the legend goes, the group would never recoil from calling a sperm a sperm. ‘With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down … Sex permeated our conversation. The word bugger was never far from our lips.’ So recalled Vanessa’s sister, Virginia, about a decade and a half later, when she had long since become the wife of Leonard Woolf and was already on the way to becoming one of the twentieth century’s most famous novelists and pin-up feminists.
Book 1 Title: Bombay to Bloomsbury
Book 1 Subtitle: A biography of the Strachey family
Book Author: Barbara Caine
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $69.95 hb, 488 pp
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A full-blown history of sperm can’t be too long in the coming given the current academic vogue for studies of the body, and the huge spurt of curiosity prompted a few years ago by the appearance of a couple of tell-tale stains on the dress of a White House intern. It is possible the subject (or the object) first came into its own as a more than private matter when, nearly a hundred years ago, Lytton Strachey spotted a similar stain on the dress of his just-married friend Vanessa Bell and dared to name it in the mixed company of his assembled friends, the legendary Bloomsbury group in its embryonic days. ‘Semen?’ he enquired, with forensic candour, and forever after, so the legend goes, the group would never recoil from calling a sperm a sperm. ‘With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down … Sex permeated our conversation. The word bugger was never far from our lips.’ So recalled Vanessa’s sister, Virginia, about a decade and a half later, when she had long since become the wife of Leonard Woolf and was already on the way to becoming one of the twentieth century’s most famous novelists and pin-up feminists.

Read more: Ian Britain reviews ‘Bombay to Bloomsbury: A biography of the Strachey family’ by Barbara Caine

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Irene Drumm reviews ‘The Marsh Birds’ by Eva Sallis
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Article Title: Dhurgham's dream
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The Marsh Birds, by Eva Sallis, is a bleak but poignant account of one boy’s consuming loss and bewilderment as war and internal political tension separate him from his family, his home and his country. It is the story of parallel journeys in the life of Dhurgham Mohammad As-Samarra’i as he grows to manhood in an unforgiving world and searches for love and acceptance. Throughout this pilgrimage, Sallis examines concepts of anguish and hopelessness, social hostility and exclusion, fear of difference and the collision of cultures. In the tradition of Sallis’s City of Sea Lions (2002) and Mahjar (2003), themes of self-discovery, escape, constraint, and the obstacles to freedom and solace in other societies are revisited.
Book 1 Title: The Marsh Birds
Book Author: Eva Sallis
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $21.95 pb, 250 pp
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The Marsh Birds, by Eva Sallis, is a bleak but poignant account of one boy’s consuming loss and bewilderment as war and internal political tension separate him from his family, his home and his country. It is the story of parallel journeys in the life of Dhurgham Mohammad As-Samarra’i as he grows to manhood in an unforgiving world and searches for love and acceptance. Throughout this pilgrimage, Sallis examines concepts of anguish and hopelessness, social hostility and exclusion, fear of difference and the collision of cultures. In the tradition of Sallis’s City of Sea Lions (2002) and Mahjar (2003), themes of self-discovery, escape, constraint, and the obstacles to freedom and solace in other societies are revisited.

Read more: Irene Drumm reviews ‘The Marsh Birds’ by Eva Sallis

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John Monfries reviews ‘An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra’ By Anthony Reid
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Contents Category: International Studies
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Article Title: Challenges to the Indonesia project
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Professor Anthony Reid has added this volume on Sumatra, with special attention to Aceh, to his already huge corpus of publications about Indonesia. The book reveals that he remains master of the telling phrase. In this case, the phrase emerges, almost casually, when he tells us that since 1998 the ‘Indonesia project’ has been increasingly challenged. Indonesians might be startled to learn that their country was a project, but Reid presents plenty of evidence here for its incompleteness. Anyone tempted to superficial judgments about the Aceh problem and what it means for Indonesia and the region would do well to read this book.
Book 1 Title: An Indonesian Frontier
Book 1 Subtitle: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra
Book Author: Anthony Reid
Book 1 Biblio: Singapore University Press, $58.50 pb, 439 pp
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Professor Anthony Reid has added this volume on Sumatra, with special attention to Aceh, to his already huge corpus of publications about Indonesia. The book reveals that he remains master of the telling phrase. In this case, the phrase emerges, almost casually, when he tells us that since 1998 the ‘Indonesia project’ has been increasingly challenged. Indonesians might be startled to learn that their country was a project, but Reid presents plenty of evidence here for its incompleteness. Anyone tempted to superficial judgments about the Aceh problem and what it means for Indonesia and the region would do well to read this book.

Read more: John Monfries reviews ‘An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra’ By Anthony...

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Article Title: Collecting the British
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What should an Australian museum collect? How should permanent collections affect exhibition policy? Who should decide what to buy? These are three provocative questions raised by the current survey of English art over several centuries at the Art Gallery of South Australia, an exhibition drawn exclusively from its permanent collection.
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What should an Australian museum collect? How should permanent collections affect exhibition policy? Who should decide what to buy? These are three provocative questions raised by the current survey of English art over several centuries at the Art Gallery of South Australia, an exhibition drawn exclusively from its permanent collection.

From the third decade of the nineteenth century, British art was collected in Adelaide and, with the establishment of the Adelaide gallery in 1881, found its way into the public domain. From 1980, when he became a curator at Adelaide (he was appointed Director in 1991), Ron Radford built on the gallery’s collection. His exhibition opens with a version of Hans Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII and concludes with a lurid but wonderful pastel-coloured painting by Holman Hunt of the Resurrection, Christ and the Two Marys. What is immediately impressive is the range and quality of the collection. Radford’s catalogue is the first serious account of the gallery’s pictures. It is sumptuously illustrated and intensively researched. Instead of the razzmatazz of an expensive loan exhibition from some remote part of the world, here is an exhibition which seriously re-presents the gallery’s own collection. What a welcome novelty to study the permanent collection. So few galleries do this in Australia.

Read more: ‘Gallery Notes’ by Jaynie Anderson

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