I was only disappointed in one respect. Poetry is at present a marginal art in this country; none of us who practise it could have illusions to the contrary. Still, it stings me to read certain passages in Ley’s otherwise excellent essay in which ‘literature’ and the ‘novel’ are unreflectingly conflated: short story writers, and those who cross genres (Robert Dessaix’s brilliant Twilight of Love springs to mind), may equally bridle.

Tyranny of the literal, indeed.

Judith Bishop, Pakenham, Vic.

Angus Trumble replies to Barry Jones

Dear Editor,

I thank Barry Jones for pointing out the howlers in my article about the ODNB (ABR, March 2005). Fadden and Forde are indeed missing. 1968 was when the estate of Viscount Bruce of Melbourne reached probate, not when he expired in his London flat the previous summer (1967), a childless widower. Sidney Nolan’s other gongs were the CBE (1963), the OM (1983) and, of course, the indigenous AC (1988) – no Companionship of Honour (CH), though I have searched high and low for it because I know I spied it somewhere recently, hanging proudly off the chain of other Nolan postnominals (including his full RA ship – a sell-out?). Maddening, but, in any case, my sincere apologies go to T.G. Rosenthal for suggesting that he got it wrong, when in fact I did.

The most important point in Barry Jones’s letter (ABR, April 2005), however, has to do with my decision to ignore the lively correspondence about the ODNB that continues in the TLS and the LRB (and elsewhere). In most cases, this relates to the quality of individual entries, the identification of particular errors, and certain spots where sometimes, as a result of the inherited biases of the old DNB, facts and interpretation have gone skew-whiff, to the extent that these may be disentangled at all. The debate is clearly at times driven by the frustration felt by some biographers at what they feel is the poor treatment of their subjects by other people, as well as the editorial team’s reluctance (real or perceived?) to put interested parties in touch with one another during the relatively short gestation period. These are obviously important issues, but it seems to me that in a work with so many contributors, spread over such wide historical ground, this sort of kerfuffle is inevitable and healthy. As Barry Jones rightly suggests, there is obviously scope here for a long article about the critical reception of the ODNB that goes far beyond my brief and necessarily personal assessment of the work itself, viz that it is fundamentally great.

Angus Trumble, New Haven, Connecticut

The reviewer’s duty

Dear Editor,

In his reaction to Gisela Kaplan’s book Australian Magpie and to my review of it (ABR, March 2005), Andrew Ley touches on some very interesting points with wide implications for all reviewers (ABR, April 2005). They centre, I feel, on expectations – both of the book itself and the role of the reviewer.

Andrew Ley is interested in birds: he is, among other things, coordinator of Birds Australia, Northern NSW Group, and one of his ornithological papers was cited by Kaplan in her book. I am also interested in birds, as I am sure are many readers of Australian Book Review; but I wrote the review not as an ornithologist but as a writer, and not for ornithologists but for the general reader. My review was slanted towards treating Kaplan’s book – and Sarah Legge’s Kookaburra, which was reviewed in the same piece – as much as literature as biology. Whether or not it is true that the Channel-billed Cuckoo ‘is no longer as common as it once was in its eastern distribution’ was less important to me than whether the book read well. I am also of the opinion that the reviewer has more important things to do than point out typos, though I confess that I do not have an editor’s eye for such things.

The most thorny issue that Andrew Ley raises is the one of honesty in reviewing – or, if you like, duty. The reviewer’s first duty is to his reader. Like many reviewers who are also writers, my own dislike of writing an unfavourable review is undoubtedly affected by imagining its effect on the writer. But if I don’t like a book, I will say so. I reject the implication that either I thought the book was rubbish (as Andrew Ley apparently does) but did not say so, or that, by failing to emphasise the typos, errors of fact, and ‘outstanding level of obfuscation’, I was guilty of sin by omission. I liked the book and I said so.

Now to the state of publishing in Australia. I know few writers or readers who do not bemoan the present situation for publishing both fiction and non-fiction. Writers are sometimes made to feel that they are lucky to see themselves in print, never mind what the quality of that print might be or how much they might be paid for it. As Andrew Ley points out, publishers are not entirely to blame; even in these dark days, writers usually have some control over what is produced under their name. But I reject his implication that there is some kind of unstated pact between publishers and reviewers such as myself to avoid critical comment, and that this is leading to slipping standards in both writing and production. It just ain’t so.

The difference between Andrew Ley’s view of Australian Magpie and mine is partly of expectation and partly of opinion. I enjoyed the book (though not as much as the kookaburra one). I liked the author’s obvious enthusiasm and rather quirky approach to some aspects of magpie behaviour (Professor Kaplan came to the study of birds by a circuitous route).

I look forward to reading Andrew Ley’s review.

Nick Drayson, Ainslie, ACT

Wesley-driven and Wesley-centric

Dear Editor,

Andrew Lemon thinks I have been too literal-minded in my reading of his history of Wesley College, A Great Australian School, and has taken exception to some of my comments (ABR, April 2005). Fair enough – it’s never nice to have one’s work criticised; but after pondering it further, I stand by the substance of my original comments.

There are three main points on which Lemon disputes my review (ABR, March 2005). The first is my characterisation of the book as being ‘of Wesley, by Wesley and for Wesley’. Lemon protests that he had no previous association with Wesley, nor an ongoing one. But it is nonetheless a commissioned work, it satisfies the desire that such schools typically evince for a ‘monumental’ history, and it remains a Wesley-driven and Wesley-centric enterprise from start to finish. The characterisation stands.

If I am wrong, as Lemon protests, in suggesting that one of his motivations was to overthrow heresies raised in previous works – especially the centenary history of 1967 – then I think I can be excused. Lemon writes of the centenary history in unflattering terms, suggesting that its criticisms were somewhat cynical. After outlining criticisms of Adamson, Lemon adopts a narrative position of correction, telling us: ‘The truth is that Wesley College even today owes much, perhaps everything, to Lawrence Arthur Adamson, for he ensured its survival.’ True, this is far from hagiography, but in Lemon’s narrative structure and authorial positioning, he lines up much closer to Adamson than he does to his critics. He has perhaps been fairer in dealing with the question of Adamson’s alleged sexual fondness for boys than I originally gave him credit for, but even here Lemon still appears to me to err on the side of generosity to Adamson.

The point to which Lemon objects most strongly, and my strongest criticism of Lemon, concerns the passage: ‘Felix Meyer says fairly that in the darkest days of the war Adamson grieved earnestly over the lost boys and “died daily”. Owen Lewis on the other hand, died once.’ I have read and reread this passage dozens of times; if it was meant to be ironic, then Lemon was far too subtle. Interestingly, the passage occurs not in the ‘Songs of War’ chapter (which, incidentally, is not nearly so ‘profoundly anti-war’ as Lemon suggests, and which concludes, typically, with the deleterious effect of the war on Adamson – positioning him as a victim rather than a culprit in the jingoism that cost so many lives) but in the ‘Adamson of Wesley’ chapter, where Lemon grants some space to Adamson’s critics before giving his own, vastly more positive assessment. Lemon’s words and his positioning of them can easily be understood as offensive and incongruous; to read them as ironic is much more difficult.

Every time one of these histories appears, I open it in the hope of finding a new, exciting way of writing school history. Are not schools such as Wesley important sites for ideological conflict between generations, classes and ethnicities? Don’t they have certain ruling-class functions? And are they not incredibly rich sources of stories of naïveté, cruelty, inspiration, humour, excitement, boredom, triumph and tragedy? Surely they are; and surely the time has come for an astute author to break the shackles of the chronological, top-down, institution-centric record of achievement form that still predominates. Lemon has written well within this trope, and has occasionally strained at its bonds. I just wish he’d gone the next step and broken them altogether.

Martin Crotty, St Lucia, Qld

Queenscliff or Queenscliffe

Dear Editor,

We have observed with thanks Jo Case’s fine review of Barry Hill’s The Enduring Rip (ABR, March 2005). I write about one of Ms Case’s quibbles. Mr Hill is right to have spelt Queenscliff(e) inconsistently. It is an accurate record of the two spellings that have been used. ‘Queenscliffe’ refers to the Borough of Queenscliffe, including Point Lonsdale, and is so stated on the Borough crest in the Council chambers. On the other hand, ‘Queenscliff’ refers to the town of Queenscliff. The origin of this is not clear, but probably relates to a grand handwritten flourish that many a council officer exhibited during the Victorian era.

This is a town of tradition, albeit a complex one, as Barry Hill consistently and rightly suggests to his readers.

John Bugg, Mayor of Queenscliffe, Vic

Missing images

Dear Editor,

During The Summer of Silver (November 2004–April 2005) in Canberra, four of our major institutions presented a wide spectrum of photography exhibitions. Large crowds evidenced the popularity of this approach. The National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Library of Australia (NLA) and the National Archives of Australia all presented exhibitions indicating their holdings, collecting practices, particular views on the art of photography, and the strategies employed by curators governing our national collections. What can we all learn about photography in Australia and the strategies employed by curators governing our national collections from the publications accompanying these exhibitions?

At the National Archives of Australia, The Policeman’s Eye: The Frontier Photography of Paul Foelsche revealed a collection of photographs by a police inspector in the Northern Territory who had a passion for creating posed, large-format images and landscapes, made from difficult glass-plate negatives. These photographs, with the endorsement of the Larrakia and Woolna peoples, provide us with an entirely new view of cross-cultural relations and of life in Darwin, while ‘in effect, witnessing the arrival of colonialism’. Drawing on the collection of Australian libraries and archives, this innovative and thoughtfully produced exhibition came from the South Australian Museum.

It was pleasing to see this focus on photography echoed in the March 2005 issue of ABR. Isobel Crombie, Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria, reviewed An Eye for Photography, by Alan Davies. Ian North reviewed Crombie’s own book Body Culture, which examines the ideas informing the work of photographer Max Dupain, the creator of so many images that have become cultural icons. Finally, Intersections: Photography, History and The National Library of Australia, by Helen Ennis, which accompanies a two-part exhibition, was reviewed by Julie Robinson, Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of South Australia. What a clutch of curators we have here. But how broad is their commitment to, and understanding of, photography?

Reviewing Intersections, Robinson quotes Ennis’s difficulty in comprehending the large and diverse collection of the NLA. In her introduction, Helen Ennis states: ‘I have often been baffled by what I have come across, by what I have found myself looking at.’ Echoing Martin Parr’s view of photography’s unique ability to catalogue the world visually, Intersections presents works by unnamed photographers, government departments, holiday mementoes, family snapshots, sporting images and advertisements, alongside portfolios by master photographers. Does this eclectic mix tell us something new? Or does this collection result in a dumbing down of our understanding and appreciation of photography?

Most telling is Ennis’s naïve description of the vast genre of documentary photography as ‘describing the real’. In fact, the lack of appreciation of this genre during the last half century is attested to by the dearth in our national collections of images from the major twentieth-century social justice movements: the union movement, the anti-war movement, feminism, the struggle for gay rights, the environmental movement, the struggle for indigenous rights, independence struggles in Timor and Bougainville; all of which are represented by only a few photographs.

While Ennis states that the NLA has some ‘images of social dissent’, such images are rarities in Intersections – this despite the fact that three generations of significant photographers have created large bodies of work and have consistently exhibited both here and overseas on these subjects. Is it the political, activist nature of these bodies of work that has frightened some of our curators into avoiding this poetic, inventive, humanist, visual tradition, so eagerly embraced in the national collections of other countries? If so, when will they cease to be afraid of our complex histories and of art as social critique?

That our visual history has been impoverished by this absence is clearly evidenced in some of these collections. Intersections confirms a visually timid view of our history. Certainly, there are some pleasant surprises in this publication: work by skilful unnamed photographers; and early works from photographers in country areas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Does the inclusion of family snaps and photographs from government departments really tell us something new? Or is this simply another device to camouflage what is absent in this collection? A snapshooter in photography is the same as a finger painter to Matisse. Steiglitz knew that over a century ago.

Ennis admits in her introduction: ‘The conventions of art historiography and photographic connoisseurship seem woefully inadequate.’ What Intersections does reveal is the urgent need for a truly new approach to scholarship in photography, as openly analytical and engaged as in any other area of art scholarship. Many great writers have written about photography in Australia – David Malouf, Rodney Hall, Geoffrey Dutton and Barry Hill among them – but we need so much more insightful writing.

Catherine De Lorenzo has published a number of papers during the last ten years in The History of Photography, discussing works omitted from these publications. Robert McFarlane has also published consistently on this subject in the Sydney Morning Herald. Similarly, a different approach is apparent in the exhibition policies of some of our major institutions, notably the National Portrait Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The work of photographers from any period invariably becomes the visual history of that period. It is essential to have access to a full account of our own history. As Julie Robinson indicates, reaching for a new, courageous and inclusive vision of photography in Australia is exactly what is needed.

Juno Gemes, Hawkesbury River, NSW

Sitting duck time

Dear Editor,

What a shame you did not give Rod Beecham the opportunity to review my book, Hellfire: Australia, Japan and the Prisoners of War (ABR, April 2005). This is an extract of a letter from Sol Henderson, one of the survivors I ‘purported’ to interview: ‘I am glad I have lived long enough to see a book of such fine quality written. It helps relieve me (and others) of the stored-up guilt and anxiety which we should not have had to live with had we the necessary and proper welcome home, along with some real debriefing from our own government.’

Cameron Forbes, Melbourne, Vic.