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Absolutely Revolting

October 2004, no. 265

Welcome to the October 2004 issue of Australian Book Review.

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Larissa Behrendt reviews ‘This Country: A reconciled republic?’ by Mark McKenna
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: Unfinished Business
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Vote ‘No’, some republicans said at the 1999 republican referendum, and then we will work towards a republic that is a better one than the one being put forward. When the referendum failed, many of those republicans disappeared, and the movement lost momentum. Others who campaigned hard for a Yes vote have continued to push the republican agenda along. A similar group of tenacious Australians is undeterred by the federal government’s sidelining of the reconciliation process. Since joining Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation or their local reconciliation groups, they have maintained the commitment to social justice for indigenous people that they demonstrated when they walked across the bridge or signed the ‘Sorry books’.
Book 1 Title: This Country
Book 1 Subtitle: A reconciled republic?
Book Author: Mark McKenna
Book 1 Biblio: University of New South Wales Press, $29.95 pb, 160 pp
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Vote ‘No’, some republicans said at the 1999 republican referendum, and then we will work towards a republic that is a better one than the one being put forward. When the referendum failed, many of those republicans disappeared, and the movement lost momentum. Others who campaigned hard for a Yes vote have continued to push the republican agenda along. A similar group of tenacious Australians is undeterred by the federal government’s sidelining of the reconciliation process. Since joining Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation or their local reconciliation groups, they have maintained the commitment to social justice for indigenous people that they demonstrated when they walked across the bridge or signed the ‘Sorry books’.

Read more: Larissa Behrendt reviews ‘This Country: A reconciled republic?’ by Mark McKenna

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Thuy On reviews ‘The Thompson Gunner’ by Nick Earls
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After nine books, Nick Earls is renowned for his slacker-male novels and his short stories of twenty-somethings in various stage of arrested development. Like his English equivalent Nick Homby, Earls specialises in a particular emotional state of the male psyche: a post-adolescent, pre-adult period usually spent chasing unobtainable women, getting drunk on green alcoholic beverages and behaving badly in amusing ways. Written with self-deprecating wit and dollops of humour, Earls’s previous books are the equivalent of a fizzy soft drink, easily ingested and with a sugary residue.
Book 1 Title: The Thompson Gunner
Book Author: Nick Earls
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $29.95 hb, 290 pp
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After nine books, Nick Earls is renowned for his slacker-male novels and his short stories of twenty-somethings in various stage of arrested development. Like his English equivalent Nick Homby, Earls specialises in a particular emotional state of the male psyche: a post-adolescent, pre-adult period usually spent chasing unobtainable women, getting drunk on green alcoholic beverages and behaving badly in amusing ways. Written with self-deprecating wit and dollops of humour, Earls’s previous books are the equivalent of a fizzy soft drink, easily ingested and with a sugary residue.

Read more: Thuy On reviews ‘The Thompson Gunner’ by Nick Earls

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Sylvia Martin reviews ‘Wildflowering: The life and places of Kathleen McArthur’ by Margaret Somerville
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‘Wildflowering’, a term coined by Judith Wright, describes the activity of searching for wildflowers in the bush. In letters between the poet and her friend, wildflower artist, writer and activist Kathleen McArthur (1915-2001), ‘the language of flowers’ becomes part of the mutual exchange of their friendship and epitomises the interactive and intimate relationship they maintained with landscape. Over the years, these women took the knowledge and love of their places into political campaigns to preserve the fragile ecology of an ancient coastland against the ravages of development and commercial exploitation.
Book 1 Title: Wildflowering
Book 1 Subtitle: The life and places of Kathleen McArthur
Book Author: Margaret Somerville
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $24.95 pb, 250 pp
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‘Wildflowering’, a term coined by Judith Wright, describes the activity of searching for wildflowers in the bush. In letters between the poet and her friend, wildflower artist, writer and activist Kathleen McArthur (1915-2001), ‘the language of flowers’ becomes part of the mutual exchange of their friendship and epitomises the interactive and intimate relationship they maintained with landscape. Over the years, these women took the knowledge and love of their places into political campaigns to preserve the fragile ecology of an ancient coastland against the ravages of development and commercial exploitation.

Read more: Sylvia Martin reviews ‘Wildflowering: The life and places of Kathleen McArthur’ by Margaret...

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Simon Caterson reviews ‘Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1’ by John Birmingham
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One of the most outlandish Hollywood action films, relatively speaking, is The Final Countdown (1980), in which the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is enveloped in a bizarre electrical storm in the Pacific and transported back in time to 1941, conveniently just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The ship’s commander is played by Kirk Douglas, with Martin Sheen in the role of an enigmatic civilian who just happens to be on board. One memorable exchange between the two Hollywood heavyweights occurs just after the crew has realised that something strange has happened. Douglas muses that it could all be a Russian plot, perhaps involving parapsychology. ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ interjects Sheen with an impeccably straight face, ‘we also have to consider one alternative possibility: the possibility that what is happening here is real.’
Book 1 Title: Weapons of Choice
Book 1 Subtitle: World War 2.1
Book Author: John Birmingham
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $30 pb, 520 pp
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One of the most outlandish Hollywood action films, relatively speaking, is The Final Countdown (1980), in which the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is enveloped in a bizarre electrical storm in the Pacific and transported back in time to 1941, conveniently just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The ship’s commander is played by Kirk Douglas, with Martin Sheen in the role of an enigmatic civilian who just happens to be on board. One memorable exchange between the two Hollywood heavyweights occurs just after the crew has realised that something strange has happened. Douglas muses that it could all be a Russian plot, perhaps involving parapsychology. ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ interjects Sheen with an impeccably straight face, ‘we also have to consider one alternative possibility: the possibility that what is happening here is real.’

If such issues can be measured, then John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1 is even more far-fetched than this Reagan/Rambo-era retrospective revenge fantasy. He also has US warships travelling back in time to World War II, but from the future rather than the present. Birmingham thus adds a layer of implausibility to an already incredible scenario. In doing so, he makes fellow techno-thriller writer Matthew Reilly appear a stubborn realist.

Read more: Simon Caterson reviews ‘Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1’ by John Birmingham

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Wayne Reynolds reviews ‘Understanding Peacekeeping’ by Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart Griffin and ‘Other People’s Wars: A history of Australia’s peacekeeping’ by Peter Londey
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The end of the Cold War in 1991 sparked a great debate about the fate of the international order and, in particular, of the so-called Westphalian system in which nation-states were the main actors. Since the end of the bloody Wars of Religion in 1648, there has been, in short, a sort of understanding that the international system should concern itself with wars between states, not wars within states. The problem is, however, that many conflicts today belong in the second category. In its endeavours to keep the peace, the international community has to adjust to this reality. The question is how.
Book 1 Title: Understanding Peacekeeping
Book Author: Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart Griffin
Book 1 Biblio: Polity, $69.30 pb, 342 pp
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Book 2 Title: Other People's Wars
Book 2 Subtitle: A history of Australia's peacekeeping
Book 2 Author: Peter Londey
Book 2 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $35 pb, 334 pp
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The end of the Cold War in 1991 sparked a great debate about the fate of the international order and, in particular, of the so-called Westphalian system in which nation-states were the main actors. Since the end of the bloody Wars of Religion in 1648, there has been, in short, a sort of understanding that the international system should concern itself with wars between states, not wars within states. The problem is, however, that many conflicts today belong in the second category. In its endeavours to keep the peace, the international community has to adjust to this reality. The question is how.

Alex Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart Griffin start with the proposition that modern peacekeeping has to take account of the hegemonic position of the US. The basis for this assertion is, first, that the US as a major power has never accorded the United Nations a major role in global security. Second, that globalisation has challenged the protections afforded by the ‘domestic jurisdiction’ clause on the UN Charter – that certain matters are not the business of global governance. The US, as the main driver of contemporary globalisation, has become much more insistent on establishing a universal set of rules to govern the political and economic order. The problem is that a result of globalisation has been the appearance of ‘new wars’, where there are non-state actors, such as terrorists, or there are conflicts that occur within failed states. The Rwanda genocide, and the anarchy in Somalia that precipitated it, were stark signs of the serious consequences of the collapse of states. The complexity of conflict, then, has to be met by a much more sophisticated response. Peacekeeping cannot be, any longer, a question of simply ‘making space’ between national adversaries – with conflicts such as those in the Middle East, Cyprus and Korea dragging on indefinitely.

Read more: Wayne Reynolds reviews ‘Understanding Peacekeeping’ by Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart...

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Morag Fraser reviews ‘Travellers’ Tales: Stories from the ABC’s foreign correspondents’ compiled by Trevor Bormann, ‘Lost in Transmission’ by Jonathan Harley and ‘Bearing Witness: The lives of war correspondents and photojournalists’ by Denise Leith
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Here is what veteran war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett has to say about American political deliberation in the information age: ‘Government decisions are made by an inside group of Congress and the American public largely doesn’t give a damn. When they vote they don’t vote in terms of international policies; they vote in terms of local issues.’ New Zealand-born Arnett first worked in Vietnam for Associated Press, then in 1981 joined and subsequently became the voice and face of CNN. He has interviewed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. How does he explain the US myopia he diagnoses? By looking at the news sources most Americans use: ‘They get talkback radio, which is skewed to the right usually; they look at a bit of television and maybe some magazine shows, and that is it. They don’t give a shit.’ But does he blame them? No. The controversial journalist (CNN, under pressure from government, dismissed him when he fronted a programme that accused the US of using sarin gas on American defectors in Laos) blames his own profession, or at least that part of the profession with corporate clout. ‘All this is the media’s fault. It is the newspapers’ fault for not including a page or two of international news every day so that people, like it or not, are going to see it.’ Nor does Amell spare the television networks: ‘CNN should be doing more, even though it has limited viewership; it should be doing more than covering celebrity stuff now, which it does domestically. Fox is a joke. There is an ignorance that is growing in America and it is frightening.’
Book 1 Title: Traveller's Tales
Book 1 Subtitle: Stories from the ABC's foreign coresspondents
Book Author: Trevor Bormann
Book 1 Biblio: ABC Books, $24.95 pb, 263 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Lost in Transmission
Book 2 Author: Jonathan Harley
Book 2 Biblio: Bantam, $22.95 pb, 352 pp
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Book 3 Title: Bearing Witness
Book 3 Subtitle: The lives of war correspondents and photojournalists
Book 3 Author: Denise Leith
Book 3 Biblio: Random House, $32.95 pb, 402 pp
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Here is what veteran war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett has to say about American political deliberation in the information age: ‘Government decisions are made by an inside group of Congress and the American public largely doesn’t give a damn. When they vote they don’t vote in terms of international policies; they vote in terms of local issues.’ New Zealand-born Arnett first worked in Vietnam for Associated Press, then in 1981 joined and subsequently became the voice and face of CNN. He has interviewed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. How does he explain the US myopia he diagnoses? By looking at the news sources most Americans use: ‘They get talkback radio, which is skewed to the right usually; they look at a bit of television and maybe some magazine shows, and that is it. They don’t give a shit.’ But does he blame them? No. The controversial journalist (CNN, under pressure from government, dismissed him when he fronted a programme that accused the US of using sarin gas on American defectors in Laos) blames his own profession, or at least that part of the profession with corporate clout. ‘All this is the media’s fault. It is the newspapers’ fault for not including a page or two of international news every day so that people, like it or not, are going to see it.’ Nor does Amell spare the television networks: ‘CNN should be doing more, even though it has limited viewership; it should be doing more than covering celebrity stuff now, which it does domestically. Fox is a joke. There is an ignorance that is growing in America and it is frightening.’

Read more: Morag Fraser reviews ‘Travellers’ Tales: Stories from the ABC’s foreign correspondents’ compiled...

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James Ley reviews ‘The Turning’ by Tim Winton
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Any novelist prepared to name one of his characters ‘Fish Lamb’ and to have that character come back from the dead is obviously interested in Christianity on some level. It is also true that several of the big themes that run through Tim Winton ‘s fiction – guilt atonement, forgiveness – have a religious flavour. Nevertheless, Winton’s symbolism tends to have an open-ended quality. When his characters experience moments of spiritual awareness, moments that Winton has said are meant to be taken literally, these experiences are often depicted as a nonspecific form of mysticism or pantheism.
Book 1 Title: The Turning
Book Author: Tim Winton
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $46 hb, 315 pp
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Any novelist prepared to name one of his characters ‘Fish Lamb’ and to have that character come back from the dead is obviously interested in Christianity on some level. It is also true that several of the big themes that run through Tim Winton ‘s fiction – guilt atonement, forgiveness – have a religious flavour. Nevertheless, Winton’s symbolism tends to have an open-ended quality. When his characters experience moments of spiritual awareness, moments that Winton has said are meant to be taken literally, these experiences are often depicted as a nonspecific form of mysticism or pantheism.

It is thus slightly unusual for Winton to address a religious conversion as explicitly as he does in the title story of his latest collection. ‘The Turning’ describes a battered wife’s epiphany after a period of dissatisfaction and longing, with the instant of revelation taking place as she is being bashed and raped by her husband. The lugubrious symbolism leaves no doubt that this is intended as a beatific moment. It is even suggested that there is something triumphant about her unnecessary, passive submission to this final act of violence; that she has somehow trumped her brutal spouse by becoming a believer – in part simply to spite him.

Read more: James Ley reviews ‘The Turning’ by Tim Winton

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Contents Category: Advances
Custom Article Title: Advances – October 2004
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ABR's inaugural poetry prize

Australia boasts several worthy poetry prizes, but the inaugural ABR Poetry Prize is one of the most lucrative: the author of the winning poem will earn $2000. The other short­listed poems will each receive $200, as well as being published in the March 2005 issue – one month before we announce the winner. Often, in poetry competitions, suites of poems are eligible, and the effect can be to privilege a group of poems over the shorter, discrete poem. Our prize is limited to a single poem of no more than 100 lines. Poets are invited to enter as many works as they like. Once again, ABR subscribers receive a $10 discount off the entry fee. Guidelines and entry form appear on page 17. (You can also download them from our website.) Entries close on December 15, so we know how our three judges will be spending the summer.
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ABR's inaugural poetry prize

Australia boasts several worthy poetry prizes, but the inaugural ABR Poetry Prize is one of the most lucrative: the author of the winning poem will earn $2000. The other short­listed poems will each receive $200, as well as being published in the March 2005 issue – one month before we announce the winner. Often, in poetry competitions, suites of poems are eligible, and the effect can be to privilege a group of poems over the shorter, discrete poem. Our prize is limited to a single poem of no more than 100 lines. Poets are invited to enter as many works as they like. Once again, ABR subscribers receive a $10 discount off the entry fee. Guidelines and entry form appear on page 17. (You can also download them from our website.) Entries close on December 15, so we know how our three judges will be spending the summer.

Read more: Advances – October 2004

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Dirk den Hartog reviews ‘The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism revisited’ by John Carroll
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His handsome and expanded edition of John Carroll’s Humanism (1993) is given added weight by an epilogue about the meaning of September 11. It can now be read alongside his recent The Western Dreaming (2001), which tried to chart a way out of the spiritual atrophy of late modernity in which, as this book argues, the unfolding of humanism from the Renaissance on has left us – with its egoistic individualism, its rationalistic blindness to limits and its rancorous hostility to the sacred.
Book 1 Title: The Wreck of Western Culture
Book 1 Subtitle: Humanism revisited
Book Author: John Carroll
Book 1 Biblio: Scribe, $35 pb, 233 pp
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His handsome and expanded edition of John Carroll’s Humanism (1993) is given added weight by an epilogue about the meaning of September 11. It can now be read alongside his recent The Western Dreaming (2001), which tried to chart a way out of the spiritual atrophy of late modernity in which, as this book argues, the unfolding of humanism from the Renaissance on has left us – with its egoistic individualism, its rationalistic blindness to limits and its rancorous hostility to the sacred.

Carroll is a boldly eccentric thinker; misguided, perhaps, but pointing to real and important things. We have drifted into dangerous waters, and the decline of religious faith and authority has much to do with it. Neither the rudder of moral direction nor the sails of spiritual inspiration are working well or harmoniously. One baulks at Carroll’s assertive generalising, his selectiveness, his wilful misinterpretations. Yet one shouldn’t dwell on the sweeping brushwork of Carroll’s ‘big picture’, a blend of cultural history and polemic, as if Friedrich Nietzsche and Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation were oddly coupled. In our age of academic specialisation, anyone who can write with his range and insight should be respected.

Read more: Dirk den Hartog reviews ‘The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism revisited’ by John Carroll

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Lisa Featherstone reviews ‘The Long Sexual Revolution: English women, sex and contraception 1800-1975’ by Hera Cook
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This is a big, bold book with an enormous scope: almost two centuries of sex, birth control and heterosexual relations. It is an ambitious project, but Hera Cook has produced an intriguing mix of broad survey and close, detailed analysis. The basic premise of The Long Sexual Revolution is that sex and reproduction were intertwined. ln many histories, sexuality and reproduction are discussed as if the two were unrelated, but Cook indicates the ways that contraception and control over reproduction were crucial to both sexual pleasure and sexual change.
Book 1 Title: The Long Sexual Revolution
Book 1 Subtitle: English women, sex and contraception 1800-1975
Book Author: Hera Cook
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Publishing. $110 hb, 412 pp
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This is a big, bold book with an enormous scope: almost two centuries of sex, birth control and heterosexual relations. It is an ambitious project, but Hera Cook has produced an intriguing mix of broad survey and close, detailed analysis. The basic premise of The Long Sexual Revolution is that sex and reproduction were intertwined. ln many histories, sexuality and reproduction are discussed as if the two were unrelated, but Cook indicates the ways that contraception and control over reproduction were crucial to both sexual pleasure and sexual change.

Cook explores many fascinating ideas about birth control, not least the methods. She covers the usual: abstinence, withdrawal, condoms and so on. She also explores some of the more desperate measures: pessaries made from lard and flour; coughing after sex to expel the sperm; refraining from female orgasm to prevent conception. Some of this is familiar, but the conclusions are not. Most important is her assertion that women did not immediately embrace birth control options. Given our contemporary equations of contraception with freedom for women, it might seem surprising that women were not more enthusiastic advocates and users of birth control. Numerous historians have suggested that first wave feminists rejected contraception because they believed continence and self-control were the better options, and Cook indicates the prevalence of this thought beyond educated feminists. If, in the early nineteenth century, it was believed women had strong sexual urges, a century later it was clear that many repudiated sex and desire. For many women, pleasure was less important than safety: as Cook suggests, sex for women involved ‘high risks and little reward’. This is an important and enduring theme throughout the work.

Read more: Lisa Featherstone reviews ‘The Long Sexual Revolution: English women, sex and contraception...

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Geraldine Brooks reviews ‘The Chronicle of Isaac Quirk’ by Michael Read
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For those of us drawn to tell the stories of the past, seventeenth-century England has a great deal to recommend it. It is distant enough to offer the frissons of historical exotica, yet so close that the minds of the time are recognisable to us. In addition, it is hard to think of a period in one country so packed with incident. Where else, in a single lifespan, can a novelist convincingly have his character experience wars – both foreign and domestic – fire, pestilence, regicide and Restoration?
Book 1 Title: The Chronicle of Isaac Quirk
Book Author: Michael Read
Book 1 Biblio: Text, $30 pb, 437 pp
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For those of us drawn to tell the stories of the past, seventeenth-century England has a great deal to recommend it. It is distant enough to offer the frissons of historical exotica, yet so close that the minds of the time are recognisable to us. In addition, it is hard to think of a period in one country so packed with incident. Where else, in a single lifespan, can a novelist convincingly have his character experience wars – both foreign and domestic – fire, pestilence, regicide and Restoration?

By 1666 – John Dryden’s annus mirabilis – the modern sensibility is beginning to emerge from the medieval one: witches are still being tried in rural courtrooms, but Isaac Newton is busy inventing calculus in Oxford. Women are emerging from their long silence – acting on the London stage for the first time, even writing plays. Science is starting to win its battle over superstition, sexual licence over prudish constraint, cynicism over blind obedience. So many certainties have been overturned, so many institutions brought low, that reverence is in short supply. In many ways, the seventeenth-century English are like us. When we read their journals, we get their jokes.

Read more: Geraldine Brooks reviews ‘The Chronicle of Isaac Quirk’ by Michael Read

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Richard Walsh reviews ‘The Best Australian Profiles’ edited by Matthew Ricketson
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This, of course, is literary Archibald Prize and, just like the art competition that annually sets Sydney’s cognoscenti abuzz, it will provide grist for plenty of arguments. Which of these profiles catches a passably good likeness of its subject? In which are the brush-strokes boldest and most compelling?
Book 1 Title: The Best Australian Profiles
Book Author: Matthew Ricketson
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $29.95 pb, 371 pp
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This, of course, is literary Archibald Prize and, just like the art competition that annually sets Sydney’s cognoscenti abuzz, it will provide grist for plenty of arguments. Which of these profiles catches a passably good likeness of its subject? In which are the brush-strokes boldest and most compelling?

Matthew Ricketson has written a rather woolly introduction, in which he variously traces the rise of biography as a literary form since Plutarch, the rise of the journalistic profile from the early days of The New Yorker, and the rise of the specifically Australian profile from John Hetherington’s pioneering book, Australians: Nine Profiles (1960). The untidiness of this introduction is mainly caused by Ricketson’s failure to explain what he means by a profile; and that failure is amplified by the idiosyncratic choices he has subsequently made in his selection.

Read more: Richard Walsh reviews ‘The Best Australian Profiles’ edited by Matthew Ricketson

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Peter Ryan reviews ‘Ruxton: A biography’ by Anne Blair
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For more than twenty years, Bruce Ruxton was Victorian president of the RSL, and one of the best-known names in Australia. ‘Best-known’ does not necessarily mean ‘best-loved’; few public figures cut so clear a chasm between supporters and detractors. Knowing Ruxton well over many years, let me declare that on the day I meet another man who equals him for kindness of heart and dedication to the welfare of others, I’ll take my hat off to the second man, too.
Book 1 Title: Ruxton
Book 1 Subtitle: A biography
Book Author: Anne Blair
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 308 pp
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For more than twenty years, Bruce Ruxton was Victorian president of the RSL, and one of the best-known names in Australia. ‘Best-known’ does not necessarily mean ‘best-loved’; few public figures cut so clear a chasm between supporters and detractors. Knowing Ruxton well over many years, let me declare that on the day I meet another man who equals him for kindness of heart and dedication to the welfare of others, I’ll take my hat off to the second man, too.

Ruxton’s opponents cannot all be simply lumped together as a politically correct commentariat of the chattering classes. They include many who are ‘civilized and kind’, with moral values that may well weigh heavier than mine in the scales of heavenly arbitration. Alas! Living in an earthly democracy, there can be no ignoring the mindset of the mass of our fellow citizens. In recent public life, John Howard, the late B.A. Santamaria and Bruce Ruxton all share an effortless talent to reduce liberal bien pensants to foam-flecked indignation. Yet often, when the argument (whatever it might be) is submitted to public judgment, the views of the three enfants terribles will unaccountably prevail: the republic and the national flag; state aid to church schools; multi­culturalism; Aboriginal separatism.

Read more: Peter Ryan reviews ‘Ruxton: A biography’ by Anne Blair

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John Thompson reviews ‘Race Against Time: The diaries of F.S. Kelly’ edited by Thérèse Radic
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Frederick Septimus Kelly – pianist, composer, Olympic oarsman, gallant officer and Australian – was killed at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre during the final battle of the Somme on 13 November 1916. Only a few weeks before, he had been enjoying ‘the most delightful still bright autumn weather’ and the unexpected loveliness of the French countryside, strangely removed from the booming guns of war. Kelly was then thirty-five. One of the last men to leave the Gallipoli peninsula in January 1916, his bravery in the front trenches before the evacuation had won him the Distinguished Service Cross. As a boy in Sydney, he had demonstrated a precocious musical talent, ‘playing Mozart and early Beethoven piano sonatas before he could stretch the octave’. At the time of his death, this gifted man was moving into what promised to be a new period of fertility and confidence as a composer and performer.
Book 1 Title: Race Against Time
Book 1 Subtitle: The diaries of F.S.Kelly
Book Author: Thérèse Radic
Book 1 Biblio: National Library of Australia, $29.95 pb, 404 pp
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Frederick Septimus Kelly – pianist, composer, Olympic oarsman, gallant officer and Australian – was killed at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre during the final battle of the Somme on 13 November 1916. Only a few weeks before, he had been enjoying ‘the most delightful still bright autumn weather’ and the unexpected loveliness of the French countryside, strangely removed from the booming guns of war. Kelly was then thirty-five. One of the last men to leave the Gallipoli peninsula in January 1916, his bravery in the front trenches before the evacuation had won him the Distinguished Service Cross. As a boy in Sydney, he had demonstrated a precocious musical talent, ‘playing Mozart and early Beethoven piano sonatas before he could stretch the octave’. At the time of his death, this gifted man was moving into what promised to be a new period of fertility and confidence as a composer and performer.

Read more: John Thompson reviews ‘Race Against Time: The diaries of F.S. Kelly’ edited by Thérèse Radic

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: I build a little house where our hearts once lived
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A master bedroom, a stripped mattress
dead centre of the floor.
Plastic dishes in the kitchen sink,
soft toys kicked against the wall.
Ikea furniture flat in boxes,
I assemble you without a key;
no need for Swedish instruction,
these hands know your symmetry.
Finished with bedevilled edges,
hewn from raw blonde pine,
inner suburban by desire,
Scandinavian by design.
I build a little house where our hearts
once lived – remake rooms I cannot find.
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Read more: ‘I build a little house where our hearts once lived’, a poem by Joel Deane

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Contents Category: Commentary
Custom Article Title: PEN: The Castro Paradox
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Article Title: PEN
Article Subtitle: The Castro Paradox
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Living in Shanghai late last year, I found myself one evening around a banquet table with a large group of expats – writers, journos, academics – in one of the city’s pricier Chinese restaurants. I don’t remember how the conversation steered toward Cuba and Castro, but, before long, there were coos of admiration and toasts to the hero of the Cuban revolution.
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Living in Shanghai late last year, I found myself one evening around a banquet table with a large group of expats – writers, journos, academics – in one of the city’s pricier Chinese restaurants. I don’t remember how the conversation steered toward Cuba and Castro, but, before long, there were coos of admiration and toasts to the hero of the Cuban revolution.

Read more: ‘PEN: The Castro Paradox’ by Chip Rolley

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Carolyn Tétaz reviews ‘Ophelia’s Fan’ by Christine Balint and ‘Always East’ by Michael Jacobson
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First novels should be the hardest to write but, among writers, second novels have won that reputation. Second-novel syndrome can be identified by: obsessional mourning for the cocoon of anonymity; consuming self-doubt; chronic false starts; acute self-consciousness; the need for constant reassurance; and a low-level frustration brought on by mandatory participation in literary festivals.
Book 1 Title: Ophelia's Fan
Book Author: Christine Balint
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $22.95 pb, 348 pp
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Book 2 Title: Always East
Book 2 Author: Michael Jacobson
Book 2 Biblio: Hodder, $29.95 pb, 400 pp
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First novels should be the hardest to write but, among writers, second novels have won that reputation. Second-novel syndrome can be identified by: obsessional mourning for the cocoon of anonymity; consuming self-doubt; chronic false starts; acute self-consciousness; the need for constant reassurance; and a low-level frustration brought on by mandatory participation in literary festivals.

If Christine Balint or Michael Jacobson suffered from second­-novel syndrome, the strain isn’t evident in their work. Ophelia’s Fan and Always East are very different books, but they are both strong second novels that continue to develop the themes, interests, voices and styles each author established in their début.

Read more: Carolyn Tétaz reviews ‘Ophelia’s Fan’ by Christine Balint and ‘Always East’ by Michael Jacobson

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John Coates reviews ‘On Shaggy Ridge: The Australian seventh division in the Ramu Valley’ by Phillip Bradley and ‘Kokoda’ by Peter FitzSimons
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Of all the campaigns that took place in the western half of Australian New Guinea during World War II, Shaggy Ridge is among the most neglected. It does not deserve this status. There used to be a graphic, brooding diorama depicting the massiveness of the ridge in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra; unfortunately, it has been removed and replaced by other exhibits.
Book 1 Title: On Shaggy Ridge
Book 1 Subtitle: The Australian seventh division in the Ramu Valley
Book Author: Phillip Bradley
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Press, $55 hb, 284 pp
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Book 2 Title: Kokoda
Book 2 Author: Peter FitzSimons
Book 2 Biblio: Hodder, $49.95 hb, 490 pp
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Of all the campaigns that took place in the western half of Australian New Guinea during World War II, Shaggy Ridge is among the most neglected. It does not deserve this status. There used to be a graphic, brooding diorama depicting the massiveness of the ridge in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra; unfortunately, it has been removed and replaced by other exhibits.

No one who has been to Shaggy Ridge and negotiated its six kilometres can fail to be impressed by the immensity of the task faced by the Australian troops: to overcome the Japanese defences that honeycombed its crest, including artillery pieces that had been carried up there bit by bit, reassembled, then tunnelled into its side, to bring concealed but devastating fire on subsequent groups of Australian attackers. Because its elevation is well over 1000 metres, it is frequently covered in mist that gives it a sinister feel: a peacetime climber almost expects Frankenstein or a Yeti to appear around the next bend in the track. Shaggy Ridge was a bottleneck that barred passage over the mountains from the Markham-Ramu valleys to the coast and the vital Japanese bases at Madang and Wewak.

Read more: John Coates reviews ‘On Shaggy Ridge: The Australian seventh division in the Ramu Valley’ by...

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Josh Wilson reviews ‘Night Thoughts in Time of War’ by Bob Ellis
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Article Title: The Huge Bombard of Sack
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What the hell is Bob Ellis? Discuss. Ellis might put it like this himself. Chances are he’s asked the question of a street window once or twice in wonderment and mock self-mockery. He’s earned it. From the back-cover blurbs down the years, one has got, by way of label, ‘l’enfant terrible of Australian culture’ (The Inessential Ellis, 1992), ‘a kind of dusty national icon’ (Goodbye Babylon, 2002) and now, in a disappointing regression to understatement, ‘a political backroomer’. We can assume, I think, that these are self-descriptions. Another, from the text of Goodbye Babylon, puts it this way:
Book 1 Title: Night Thoughts in Time of War
Book Author: Bob Ellis
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $29.95 pb. 342 pp
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What the hell is Bob Ellis? Discuss. Ellis might put it like this himself. Chances are he’s asked the question of a street window once or twice in wonderment and mock self-mockery. He’s earned it. From the back-cover blurbs down the years, one has got, by way of label, ‘l’enfant terrible of Australian culture’ (The Inessential Ellis, 1992), ‘a kind of dusty national icon’ (Goodbye Babylon, 2002) and now, in a disappointing regression to understatement, ‘a political backroomer’. We can assume, I think, that these are self-descriptions. Another, from the text of Goodbye Babylon, puts it this way:

[…] and me too, dropping in and out, a writer, filmmaker, playwright, actor, speechwriter, going down in Budget week to sweeten Beazley’s mighty diatribes but never caring enough, not really, not plunging into the thick of it, as I so easily could.

Read more: Josh Wilson reviews ‘Night Thoughts in Time of War’ by Bob Ellis

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Christopher Bantick reviews ‘More Than a Game: The real story of the Australian Rules Football’ edited by Rob Hess and Bob Stewart
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In his spirited foreword, well-known football writer Martin Flanagan notes that ‘More Than a Game is in the best traditions of Australian football writing. It is unauthorised, a necessary virtue given the blurring of the Australian media with the corporate interests behind football.’ Flanagan also knows that writing about football in Australia has become a dignified and scholarly pursuit. Still, football as representing the verities of life is a powerful and relatively new symbol. As the editors and contributors amply demonstrate, Australian Rules history has been measured out in tribal rivalries and violence. These two themes, along with many contemporary evaluations, are explored in detail.
Book 1 Title: More Than a Game
Book 1 Subtitle: The real story of the Australian Rules Football
Book Author: Rob Hess and Bob Stewart
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Publishing, $32.95pb, 304pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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In his spirited foreword, well-known football writer Martin Flanagan notes that ‘More Than a Game is in the best traditions of Australian football writing. It is unauthorised, a necessary virtue given the blurring of the Australian media with the corporate interests behind football.’ Flanagan also knows that writing about football in Australia has become a dignified and scholarly pursuit. Still, football as representing the verities of life is a powerful and relatively new symbol. As the editors and contributors amply demonstrate, Australian Rules history has been measured out in tribal rivalries and violence. These two themes, along with many contemporary evaluations, are explored in detail.

Close community association with a local team, and the fanatical territorial support that ensued, is long gone. Changes in class structure and socio-economic circumstances, not to mention the draft, have put paid to tribalism. Football is now a marketing tool for advertisers and a highly profitable product. Without any hint of anachronism, the editors have been careful to show that football was never merely a sport.

Read more: Christopher Bantick reviews ‘More Than a Game: The real story of the Australian Rules Football’...

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Margaret MacNabb reviews ‘Girl Underground’ by Morris Gleitzman, ‘Tiff and the Trout’ by David Metzenthen and ‘Orphans of the Queen’ by Ruth Starke
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Contents Category: Children's and Young Adult Fiction
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Article Title: Separate Hells
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Stories of children in the maelstrom: the horror of mandatory detention; the appalling cruelty of how some orphans are treated by those responsible for them; and youngsters caught in the heartbreak and dislocation of family breakdown – such is the stuff of these three important novels for young people. No coy sensibilities are spared in these reflections of modem life. Here are ordinary adults and children caught up in extraordinary events. All three books show how life can be hard, but that one must meet its sorrows and afflictions with courage, good humour and good friends. Each story is about what happens when a child becomes a victim to events beyond his or her control, be they personal or political, dramatic or mundane.
Book 1 Title: Girl Underground
Book Author: Morris Gleitzman
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $14.95 pb, 186 pp
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Book 2 Title: Tiff and the Trout
Book 2 Author: David Metzenthen
Book 2 Biblio: Penguin, $16.95 pb, 208 pp
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Book 3 Title: Orphans of the Queen
Book 3 Author: Ruth Starke
Book 3 Biblio: Lothian, $14.95 pb, 222 pp
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Stories of children in the maelstrom: the horror of mandatory detention; the appalling cruelty of how some orphans are treated by those responsible for them; and youngsters caught in the heartbreak and dislocation of family breakdown – such is the stuff of these three important novels for young people. No coy sensibilities are spared in these reflections of modem life. Here are ordinary adults and children caught up in extraordinary events. All three books show how life can be hard, but that one must meet its sorrows and afflictions with courage, good humour and good friends. Each story is about what happens when a child becomes a victim to events beyond his or her control, be they personal or political, dramatic or mundane.

Read more: Margaret MacNabb reviews ‘Girl Underground’ by Morris Gleitzman, ‘Tiff and the Trout’ by David...

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Peter McPhee reviews ‘Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, liberty and licence in the eighteenth century’ edited Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell
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As Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell point out in their excellent introduction to this collection of conference papers, ‘The Enlightenment is usually thought of as one of the great capital-letter moments in European history.’ But was its substance confined to the great works of Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant? Central to new readings of the Enlightenment is now the notion of ‘libertinism’. Once understood as the sexually free behaviour and attitudes of élite men, this collection is based instead on a wider, richer notion of, as the editors put it, ‘the vernacular, dissident freedoms of everyday life’. It was through unconventional sexual thought and behaviours, in particular, that the Enlightenment ‘vernacularised and dispersed itself’.
Book 1 Title: Libertine Enlightenment
Book 1 Subtitle: Sex, liberty and licence in the eighteenth century
Book Author: Peter Cryle and Lisa O'Connell
Book 1 Biblio: Palgrave Macmillan, £50 hb, 261 pp
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As Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell point out in their excellent introduction to this collection of conference papers, ‘The Enlightenment is usually thought of as one of the great capital-letter moments in European history.’ But was its substance confined to the great works of Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant? Central to new readings of the Enlightenment is now the notion of ‘libertinism’. Once understood as the sexually free behaviour and attitudes of élite men, this collection is based instead on a wider, richer notion of, as the editors put it, ‘the vernacular, dissident freedoms of everyday life’. It was through unconventional sexual thought and behaviours, in particular, that the Enlightenment ‘vernacularised and dispersed itself’.

Read more: Peter McPhee reviews ‘Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, liberty and licence in the eighteenth century’...

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James Upcher reviews ‘Living by the sword? The ethics of armed intervention’ by Tom Frame
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The end of the Cold War was meant to herald a shift towards a ‘new world order’ of liberal states prepared to use force to prevent political and humanitarian disaster. Morality and self-interest converged: borders were more porous; geopolitical raison d’état no longer reigned; the defence of the oppressed – the improvement of the human condition everywhere – trumped the inviolability of sovereignty. The incantatory phrase ‘humanitarian intervention’ served as the moral fulcrum for those disenchanted by the levelling of economic globalisation and the decay of Communism: a righteous doctrine in a secular world starved of ideology. But the 1990s was a decade of unspeakable slaughter and humanitarian catastrophe, and states capable of stopping the carnage were feckless bystanders, unwilling to translate the nobility of their moral sentiment into the commitment to intervene militarily in defence of a supposed cosmopolitan consciousness. The logic of national interest and universalist morality did not coalesce as neatly as Western policy makers had proclaimed in the Indian summer following Communism’s collapse.
Book 1 Title: Living by the sword?
Book 1 Subtitle: The ethics of armed intervention
Book Author: Tom Frame
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $34.95 pb, 278 pp
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The end of the Cold War was meant to herald a shift towards a ‘new world order’ of liberal states prepared to use force to prevent political and humanitarian disaster. Morality and self-interest converged: borders were more porous; geopolitical raison d’état no longer reigned; the defence of the oppressed – the improvement of the human condition everywhere – trumped the inviolability of sovereignty. The incantatory phrase ‘humanitarian intervention’ served as the moral fulcrum for those disenchanted by the levelling of economic globalisation and the decay of Communism: a righteous doctrine in a secular world starved of ideology. But the 1990s was a decade of unspeakable slaughter and humanitarian catastrophe, and states capable of stopping the carnage were feckless bystanders, unwilling to translate the nobility of their moral sentiment into the commitment to intervene militarily in defence of a supposed cosmopolitan consciousness. The logic of national interest and universalist morality did not coalesce as neatly as Western policy makers had proclaimed in the Indian summer following Communism’s collapse.

Read more: James Upcher reviews ‘Living by the sword? The ethics of armed intervention’ by Tom Frame

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Damien Kingsbury reviews ‘A Certain Maritime Incident: The sinking of SIEV X’ by Tony Kevin
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It is fair to say that ‘truth in government’ has become Australia’s most critical political issue, as it goes to the heart of ministerial responsibility and public accountability, which in turn make possible representative government. In recent years, a number of constituent issues have arisen under the ‘truth in government’ heading, including the Australian government’s cover-up of unfolding events in East Timor in 1999, the ‘children overboard’ affair and Iraq’s alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Alongside these issues is the sinking of the asylum-seeker boat SIEV X, in which 353 people drowned. Yet of these issues, the SIEV X affair is perhaps the least well understood, in large part due to government dissembling and lying. So far as information on SIEV X has come to public attention at all, it has had to be extracted, slowly and painfully, from a government most reluctant to let any part of it go.
Book 1 Title: A Certain Maritime Incident
Book 1 Subtitle: The sinking of SIEV X
Book Author: Tony Kevin
Book 1 Biblio: Scribe, $32.95pb, 319pp
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It is fair to say that ‘truth in government’ has become Australia’s most critical political issue, as it goes to the heart of ministerial responsibility and public accountability, which in turn make possible representative government. In recent years, a number of constituent issues have arisen under the ‘truth in government’ heading, including the Australian government’s cover-up of unfolding events in East Timor in 1999, the ‘children overboard’ affair and Iraq’s alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Alongside these issues is the sinking of the asylum-seeker boat SIEV X, in which 353 people drowned. Yet of these issues, the SIEV X affair is perhaps the least well understood, in large part due to government dissembling and lying. So far as information on SIEV X has come to public attention at all, it has had to be extracted, slowly and painfully, from a government most reluctant to let any part of it go.

Read more: Damien Kingsbury reviews ‘A Certain Maritime Incident: The sinking of SIEV X’ by Tony Kevin

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Frank Bongiorno reviews ‘A New Britannia: Fourth Edition’ by Humphrey McQueen and ‘Social sketches of Australia: Third Edition’ by Humphrey McQueen
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Article Title: Sergeant Humphrey
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There must be few Australian history books that have run to a fourth edition, and it’s hard to think of any that have provoked as much discussion – and rancour – as Humphrey McQueen’s ‘New Left’ classic A New Britannia. It’s the Sergeant Pepper of Australian historiography: racy, emblematic of its time and place, and full of special effects – the impolite may call some of them recording tricks. Does it still have the capacity to shock the first-time reader, as it did me when I encountered it as an under­graduate in the 1980s? Perhaps, having been bred on so many of the legends to which McQueen laid waste, I was just very shockable. Like a lot of readers, I had never imagined Henry Lawson as a fascist.
Book 1 Title: A New Britannia
Book 1 Subtitle: Fourth Edition
Book Author: Humphrey McQueen
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $24.95 pb, 336 pp
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Book 2 Title: Social Sketches of Australia
Book 2 Subtitle: Third Edition
Book 2 Author: Humphrey McQueen
Book 2 Biblio: UQP, $24.95 pb, 430 pp
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There must be few Australian history books that have run to a fourth edition, and it’s hard to think of any that have provoked as much discussion – and rancour – as Humphrey McQueen’s ‘New Left’ classic A New Britannia. It’s the Sergeant Pepper of Australian historiography: racy, emblematic of its time and place, and full of special effects – the impolite may call some of them recording tricks. Does it still have the capacity to shock the first-time reader, as it did me when I encountered it as an under­graduate in the 1980s? Perhaps, having been bred on so many of the legends to which McQueen laid waste, I was just very shockable. Like a lot of readers, I had never imagined Henry Lawson as a fascist.

Read more: Frank Bongiorno reviews ‘A New Britannia: Fourth Edition’ by Humphrey McQueen and ‘Social sketches...

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Christopher Menz review ‘Australian Art Pottery: 1900-1950’ by Kevin Fahy et al.
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Article Title: Pottering Away
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Specialist historical studies of Australian decorative arts have long been the preserve of the dedicated collector, enthusiast or private historian, rather than the museum curator or university academic. In this aspect, detailed studies of Australian decorative arts have followed the trend in the UK, where many historical studies have been written by private scholars and published by the admirable Antique Collectors’ Club. The pioneering studies of Australian furniture (Clifford Craig and Kevin Fahy, 1972), silver (J.B. Hawkins, 1973), and pottery and glass (Marjorie Graham, 1979 and 1981) presented (in volumes that now seem rather slender) modest information and adequate images gleaned from their authors’ research. The style for such publications changed dramatically in the mid-1980s when big books with masses of images and higher price tags hit the market. Commencing with Kevin Fahy’s Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture in 1985, hefty volumes on Australian silver, furniture, jewellery and pottery have provided invaluable reference books for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian decorative arts. Many of these more recent publications were also co-authored by the industrious Fahy.
Book 1 Title: Australian Art Pottery
Book 1 Subtitle: 1900-1950
Book Author: Kevin Fahy et al.
Book 1 Biblio: Casuarina Press, $295 hb, 372 pp
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Specialist historical studies of Australian decorative arts have long been the preserve of the dedicated collector, enthusiast or private historian, rather than the museum curator or university academic. In this aspect, detailed studies of Australian decorative arts have followed the trend in the UK, where many historical studies have been written by private scholars and published by the admirable Antique Collectors’ Club. The pioneering studies of Australian furniture (Clifford Craig and Kevin Fahy, 1972), silver (J.B. Hawkins, 1973), and pottery and glass (Marjorie Graham, 1979 and 1981) presented (in volumes that now seem rather slender) modest information and adequate images gleaned from their authors’ research. The style for such publications changed dramatically in the mid-1980s when big books with masses of images and higher price tags hit the market. Commencing with Kevin Fahy’s Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture in 1985, hefty volumes on Australian silver, furniture, jewellery and pottery have provided invaluable reference books for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian decorative arts. Many of these more recent publications were also co-authored by the industrious Fahy.

Read more: Christopher Menz review ‘Australian Art Pottery: 1900-1950’ by Kevin Fahy et al.

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Richard Johnstone reviews ‘Bypass: The story of a road’ by Michael McGirr
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Michael McGirr has an eye for coincidence. ‘The first bypass,’ he notes, ‘was performed on the Hume [Highway] in 1967, the year the world’s first coronary bypass was successfully performed in Cleveland. Though he does not press the point, the comparison is more than a mere curiosity. The conversion of highway to freeway - the steady accumulation of bypasses over the last forty years that has produced by accretion what is now a straight and soulless run between capitals - has also had the effect of preserving and even revitalising the towns along the way. These towns, no longer on the main drag, have to varying degrees weathered the impact of the surgery, recovering iden­tities that had once been obscured by the clogged-up road that ran right through the middle.
Book 1 Title: Bypass
Book 1 Subtitle: The story of a road
Book Author: Michael McGirr
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $30 pb, 313 pp
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Michael McGirr has an eye for coincidence. ‘The first bypass,’ he notes, ‘was performed on the Hume [Highway] in 1967, the year the world’s first coronary bypass was successfully performed in Cleveland. Though he does not press the point, the comparison is more than a mere curiosity. The conversion of highway to freeway - the steady accumulation of bypasses over the last forty years that has produced by accretion what is now a straight and soulless run between capitals - has also had the effect of preserving and even revitalising the towns along the way. These towns, no longer on the main drag, have to varying degrees weathered the impact of the surgery, recovering iden­tities that had once been obscured by the clogged-up road that ran right through the middle.

Read more: Richard Johnstone reviews ‘Bypass: The story of a road’ by Michael McGirr

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Paul de Serville reviews ‘Clearings: Six colonial gardens and their landscapes’ by Paul Fox
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Contents Category: Natural History
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In this well-designed volume of essays, Paul Fox introduces the reader to the world of nineteenth-century botanist, nurseryman and collector (professional, commercial and amateur) and to the ways in which six men, their patrons and rivals reworked the Australian landscape. Settlement changed the landscape at a time when the boundaries of the botanical world were constantly enlarged by the discovery of plants from Asia, the Pacific, the Americas and Australasia. Botanists followed the imperial flag, British botanists (led by Sir William Hooker) eagerly incorporated the new finds, and the appetite of a growing race of collectors was met by energetic nurserymen who combed the world for exotic plants.
Book 1 Title: Clearings
Book 1 Subtitle: Six colonial gardens and their landscapes
Book Author: Paul Fox
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $59.95 hb, 286 pp
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In this well-designed volume of essays, Paul Fox introduces the reader to the world of nineteenth-century botanist, nurseryman and collector (professional, commercial and amateur) and to the ways in which six men, their patrons and rivals reworked the Australian landscape. Settlement changed the landscape at a time when the boundaries of the botanical world were constantly enlarged by the discovery of plants from Asia, the Pacific, the Americas and Australasia. Botanists followed the imperial flag, British botanists (led by Sir William Hooker) eagerly incorporated the new finds, and the appetite of a growing race of collectors was met by energetic nurserymen who combed the world for exotic plants.

Read more: Paul de Serville reviews ‘Clearings: Six colonial gardens and their landscapes’ by Paul Fox

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David Gilbey reviews ‘Collected Poems’ by Andrew Taylor
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: A Different Sugar Bag
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Andrew Taylor’s Collected Poems is framed by the weather. Indeed, the first poem is entitled ‘The Mere Repetition of Weather’. Weather runs from the ‘Prologue’, to The Cool Change (1971), in which ‘the weather like an alchemist / turns into gold the matter of my arm’, to the last poem in New Poems 2000-2003, ‘The Answer’, in which the poet has ‘come back to the swamp.../ after three years of drought the drenching rain/...flushing green clots of algae’. In another century, this might indicate a Romantic poet, attuned like an Aeolian harp to the motions and stirrings of nature. But this is a poet in whose work can be seen influences of Wallace Stevens, Jonathon Culler, Vincent Buckley, Chris Wallace-Crabbe and John Tranter – an entirely different sugar bag of marsupials.
Book 1 Title: Collected Poems
Book Author: Andrew Taylor
Book 1 Biblio: Salt, US$24.95 pb, 716 pp
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Andrew Taylor’s Collected Poems is framed by the weather. Indeed, the first poem is entitled ‘The Mere Repetition of Weather’. Weather runs from the ‘Prologue’, to The Cool Change (1971), in which ‘the weather like an alchemist / turns into gold the matter of my arm’, to the last poem in New Poems 2000-2003, ‘The Answer’, in which the poet has ‘come back to the swamp.../ after three years of drought the drenching rain/...flushing green clots of algae’. In another century, this might indicate a Romantic poet, attuned like an Aeolian harp to the motions and stirrings of nature. But this is a poet in whose work can be seen influences of Wallace Stevens, Jonathon Culler, Vincent Buckley, Chris Wallace-Crabbe and John Tranter – an entirely different sugar bag of marsupials.

Read more: David Gilbey reviews ‘Collected Poems’ by Andrew Taylor

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Sonya Hartnett reviews ‘Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories by young writers aged 11-20 years’ by Sonja Dechian, Heather Millar and Eva Sallis
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In 2002 Eva Sallis – activist and author of, among others, the 1997 Vogel winner Hiam, – launched ‘Australia IS Refugees’, a writing competition for young people aged between eleven and twenty years old. The competition – a project of the humanitarian organisation Australians against Racism, of which Sallis is present – swiftly gained the support of a wide range of high-profile companies and individuals, many doubtless contributing as a means to show disapproval of this country’s hardline, ethically dubious treatment of refugees.
Book 1 Title: Dark Dreams
Book 1 Subtitle: Australian Refugee Stories by young writers aged 11-20 years
Book Author: Sonja Deichan, Heather Milar and Eva Sallis
Book 1 Biblio: Wakefield Press, $19.95 pb, 213 pp
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In 2002 Eva Sallis – activist and author of, among others, the 1997 Vogel winner Hiam, – launched ‘Australia IS Refugees’, a writing competition for young people aged between eleven and twenty years old. The competition – a project of the humanitarian organisation Australians against Racism, of which Sallis is present – swiftly gained the support of a wide range of high-profile companies and individuals, many doubtless contributing as a means to show disapproval of this country’s hardline, ethically dubious treatment of refugees.

Read more: Sonya Hartnett reviews ‘Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories by young writers aged 11-20...

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Article Title: A Haunted Land No Longer?
Article Subtitle: Changing Relationships to a Spiritualised Australia
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In 1989 John Mulvaney proposed that ‘the greatest gift of Aboriginal society to multicultural Australia’ was ‘a spiritual concept of place’. It was a momentous pronouncement, but two decades later both the statement and the gift itself need reassessment. If Mulvaney was right, then non-Aboriginal Australians enunciated their most precise and passionate concepts of place in the two decades after 1980. Yet ‘multicultural Australia’, that is, non-Anglo-Celtic Australians, didn’t really share the gift at all. Maybe they didn’t want it. Nor did the great gift of a spiritual concept of place come without cost to the indigenous people themselves. Today, newer forms of belonging are sometimes not concerned with Australia-specific land at all. Mulvaney’s observation, I conclude, is losing some of its force.
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In 1989 John Mulvaney proposed that ‘the greatest gift of Aboriginal society to multicultural Australia’ was ‘a spiritual concept of place’. It was a momentous pronouncement, but two decades later both the statement and the gift itself need reassessment. If Mulvaney was right, then non-Aboriginal Australians enunciated their most precise and passionate concepts of place in the two decades after 1980. Yet ‘multicultural Australia’, that is, non-Anglo-Celtic Australians, didn’t really share the gift at all. Maybe they didn’t want it. Nor did the great gift of a spiritual concept of place come without cost to the indigenous people themselves. Today, newer forms of belonging are sometimes not concerned with Australia-specific land at all. Mulvaney’s observation, I conclude, is losing some of its force.

Read more: La Trobe University Essay | ‘A Haunted Land No Longer? Changing Relationships to a Spiritualised...

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Sherryl Clark reviews 5 Childrens Books
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Article Title: Animals, Boats and Shacks
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Stories from the past have not enjoyed great popularity with Australian children or publishers in recent years. Historical fiction has been limited to the ‘My Story’ kind of book, and we rarely see historical non­fiction picture books such as those published in the US. It is interesting, therefore, to look at a range of Australian picture books that tackle stories from past eras, and to consider the ways in which their authors choose to bring them alive.
Book 1 Title: Yardil
Book Author: Rosanne Hawke and illustrated by Elizabeth Stanley
Book 1 Biblio: Benchmark, $27.95 hb, 32 pp
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Book 2 Title: The Call of the Osprey
Book 2 Author: Normal Jorgensen and illustrated by Brian Harrison-Lever
Book 2 Biblio: FACP, $24.95 hb, 32 pp
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Book 3 Title: Refugees
Book 3 Author: David Miller
Book 3 Biblio: Lothian, $26.95 hb, 32 pp
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Stories from the past have not enjoyed great popularity with Australian children or publishers in recent years. Historical fiction has been limited to the ‘My Story’ kind of book, and we rarely see historical non­fiction picture books such as those published in the US. It is interesting, therefore, to look at a range of Australian picture books that tackle stories from past eras, and to consider the ways in which their authors choose to bring them alive.

Read more: Sherryl Clark reviews 5 Children's Books

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Maria Takolander reviews 4 Literary Journals
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Article Title: The Dogs of Literature
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In ‘Ouah, Ouah’, a poem in the current issue of Island, Chris Wallace-Crabbe writes: ‘Dogs go shadowing our lives like history, / furbags of the quotidian.’ Literary journals are like that in some ways. Island, Heat, Conversations and Overland undoubtedly aspire to being more than alley mutts or underarm accessories. Indeed, they attest to the increased seriousness and politicisation of Australian literature. Like dogs, these journals shadow history. Like dogs, they also live in the shadows, lingering at the sliding door, waiting to be asked in; and they’ve evolved in different ways to achieve that aim.
Book 1 Title: Heat 7
Book 1 Subtitle: Bedtime Stories
Book Author: Ivor Indyk
Book 1 Biblio: $24.95 pb, 256 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Overland
Book 2 Subtitle: UnAustralian behaviour, no. 175
Book 2 Author: Nathan Hollier and Kath Wilson
Book 2 Biblio: $12.50 pb, 112 pp
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Book 3 Title: Winter Conversations
Book 3 Subtitle: Volume 5, number 1
Book 3 Author: Brij Lal and Duncan Beard
Book 3 Biblio: $18 pb, 79 pp
Book 3 Author Type: Editor
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In ‘Ouah, Ouah’, a poem in the current issue of Island, Chris Wallace-Crabbe writes: ‘Dogs go shadowing our lives like history, / furbags of the quotidian.’ Literary journals are like that in some ways. Island, Heat, Conversations and Overland undoubtedly aspire to being more than alley mutts or underarm accessories. Indeed, they attest to the increased seriousness and politicisation of Australian literature. Like dogs, these journals shadow history. Like dogs, they also live in the shadows, lingering at the sliding door, waiting to be asked in; and they’ve evolved in different ways to achieve that aim.

Read more: Maria Takolander reviews 4 Literary Journals

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Article Title: Gallery Notes
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It was the last day of the Giorgione exhibition in Vienna. The Kunsthistorisches Museum had organised a colloquium to coincide with it. Art historians – in this case the Giorgione brotherhood or amici in studi giorgioneschi. – had arrived for a final interrogation. Confrontations between individual work. of art, hanging adjacent to one another in the context of an exhibition, allowed for unique comparisons of some paintings by Giorgione, some attributed to him, some inspired by him. All were connected to the most enigmatic artist in the history of art.
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It was the last day of the Giorgione exhibition in Vienna. The Kunsthistorisches Museum had organised a colloquium to coincide with it. Art historians – in this case the Giorgione brotherhood or amici in studi giorgioneschi. – had arrived for a final interrogation. Confrontations between individual work. of art, hanging adjacent to one another in the context of an exhibition, allowed for unique comparisons of some paintings by Giorgione, some attributed to him, some inspired by him. All were connected to the most enigmatic artist in the history of art.

Read more: ‘Gallery Notes’ by Jaynie Anderson

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Mark McKenna reviews ‘Honour Among Nations? Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People’ by Marcia Langton et al.
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Article Title: Honour is Wanting
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The word ‘honour’ is rarely heard in contemporary Australian English. It belongs to a time when the public behaviour of individuals and governments was judged by standards found in a moral code with its roots in medieval chivalry. To be ‘honourable’ was to be known for doing right. When honour was lost, disgrace followed. With the disappearance of ‘honour’ from our public language, perhaps we have also lost the possibility of disgrace.
Book 1 Title: Honour Among Nations?
Book 1 Subtitle: Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People
Book Author: Marcia Langton et al.
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $39.95 pb, 354 pp
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The word ‘honour’ is rarely heard in contemporary Australian English. It belongs to a time when the public behaviour of individuals and governments was judged by standards found in a moral code with its roots in medieval chivalry. To be ‘honourable’ was to be known for doing right. When honour was lost, disgrace followed. With the disappearance of ‘honour’ from our public language, perhaps we have also lost the possibility of disgrace.

Read more: Mark McKenna reviews ‘Honour Among Nations? Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People’ by...

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Bronwyn Rivers reviews ‘I Have Kissed Your Lips’ by Gerard Windsor
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Article Title: Rites of Taboo
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Gerard Windsor has worn various literary hats – as reviewer, biographer and literary commentator – and in one of them does he shrink from controversy. Indeed, this provocative identity is mentioned as a matter of pride in various publicity blurbs. The history of his old school that he was commissioned to write was deemed too negative and was never printed, and he has come under fire for views expressed at both Adelaide and Sydney writers’ festivals. So it was unsurprising that with his latest novel, he has also chosen a controversial subject matter: the sexual life of a Catholic priest.
Book 1 Title: I Have Kissed Your Lips
Book Author: Gerard Windsor
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $24.95 pb, 290 pp
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Gerard Windsor has worn various literary hats – as reviewer, biographer and literary commentator – and in one of them does he shrink from controversy. Indeed, this provocative identity is mentioned as a matter of pride in various publicity blurbs. The history of his old school that he was commissioned to write was deemed too negative and was never printed, and he has come under fire for views expressed at both Adelaide and Sydney writers’ festivals. So it was unsurprising that with his latest novel, he has also chosen a controversial subject matter: the sexual life of a Catholic priest.

Read more: Bronwyn Rivers reviews ‘I Have Kissed Your Lips’ by Gerard Windsor

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Rob Watts reviews ‘Imagining Australia’ by Macgregor Duncan et al., ‘Restructuring Australia’ edited by Wayne Hudson and A.J. Brown and ‘Australia’s Welfare Habit’ by Peter Saunders
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Though reviewing books is a humble enough task, it frequently leads to elevated thinking. As I read these books, it occurred to me that, perhaps, unwittingly, they pointed to the ambiguous legacies of the Enlightenment. One of those legacies is found in the conventional political distinction drawn between ‘left’ and ‘right’; the other concerns the role of the expert.
Book 1 Title: Imagining Australia
Book 1 Subtitle: Ideas for our future
Book Author: Macgregor Duncan et al.
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $24.95 pb, 324 pp
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Book 2 Title: Restructuring Australia
Book 2 Subtitle: Regionalism, Rebuplicanism and Reform of the Nation-State
Book 2 Author: Wayne Hudson and A.J Brown
Book 2 Biblio: Federation Press, $39.95 pb, 241 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Editor
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Book 3 Title: Australia's Welfare Habit
Book 3 Subtitle: And how to kick it
Book 3 Author: Peter Saunders
Book 3 Biblio: Duffy & Snellgrove, $33 pb, 267 pp
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Though reviewing books is a humble enough task, it frequently leads to elevated thinking. As I read these books, it occurred to me that, perhaps, unwittingly, they pointed to the ambiguous legacies of the Enlightenment. One of those legacies is found in the conventional political distinction drawn between ‘left’ and ‘right’; the other concerns the role of the expert.

For most of the twentieth century, politics was structured as a contest between left and right. On the left, liberals and socialists alike claimed to be heirs of an Enlightenment belief that ‘modern society’ was a distinctive social form going somewhere. On the right, nationalist and fascist movements offered a conservative Enlightenment idea. This was embodied in Vico’s account of the organic history of communities and their evolving traditions of faith, myth or language. Framed in this way, what became the left made the running early in the twentieth century. If history was understood as a railway line heading towards an ever-glorious future, Marxists and socialists claimed variously a role as train driver or switchman. For at least three-quarters of the twentieth century, the left assumed the vanguard position. The train on the Long March to Progress was derailed in December 1991 when the Red Flag was torn down from the Kremlin. History, understood as the contest between ‘actually existing state socialism’ and American style liberal democracy, was over.

Read more: Rob Watts reviews ‘Imagining Australia’ by Macgregor Duncan et al., ‘Restructuring Australia’...

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Travis Cutler reviews ‘Indigenous Australia and Alcohol Policy: Meeting difference with indifference’ by Maggie Brady and ‘From Hunting to Drinking: The devastating effects of alcohol on an Australian Aboriginal community’ by David McKnight
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Article Title: Bottom of the Bottle
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In 2002, during the scandal and scrambling caused by Keith Windschuttle’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, an unassuming paperback made its way onto the shelf without much fanfare. No radio specials, opinion pieces or public debates followed its publication. Instead, David McKnight and his book From Hunting to Drinking: The Devastating Effects of Alcohol 011 an Australian Aboriginal Community slipped past Australian historians and intellectu­als while they focused their attention elsewhere.
Book 1 Title: Indigenous Australia and Alcohol Policy
Book 1 Subtitle: Meeting difference with indifference
Book Author: Maggie Brady
Book 1 Biblio: UNSW Press, $39.95 pb, 168 pp
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Book 2 Title: From Hunting to Drinking
Book 2 Subtitle: The devastating effects of alcohol on an Australian Aboriginal community
Book 2 Author: David McKnight
Book 2 Biblio: Routledge, $59 pb, 251 pp
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In 2002, during the scandal and scrambling caused by Keith Windschuttle’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, an unassuming paperback made its way onto the shelf without much fanfare. No radio specials, opinion pieces or public debates followed its publication. Instead, David McKnight and his book From Hunting to Drinking: The Devastating Effects of Alcohol 011 an Australian Aboriginal Community slipped past Australian historians and intellectu­als while they focused their attention elsewhere.

Read more: Travis Cutler reviews ‘Indigenous Australia and Alcohol Policy: Meeting difference with...

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Richard Fotheringham reviews ‘Inventing ANZAC: The digger and national mythology’ by Graham Seal
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Article Title: It's Worse Further Up
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‘Select arresting quotes. Let your characters speak if the evidence is there,’ A.J.P. Taylor told his Oxford history students. In his own best-selling The First World War: An Illustrated History, struggling to convey something of the enormity of the disaster of the third battle of Ypres, Taylor wrote: ‘On 8 November Haig’s Chief-of-Staff visited the fighting zone for the first time. As his car struggled through the mud, he burst into tears and cried: “Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?” His companion replied: “It’s worse further up.”’
Book 1 Title: Inventing ANZAC
Book 1 Subtitle: The digger and national mythology
Book Author: Graham Seal
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $32.95 pb, 232 pp
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‘Select arresting quotes. Let your characters speak if the evidence is there,’ A.J.P. Taylor told his Oxford history students. In his own best-selling The First World War: An Illustrated History, struggling to convey something of the enormity of the disaster of the third battle of Ypres, Taylor wrote: ‘On 8 November Haig’s Chief-of-Staff visited the fighting zone for the first time. As his car struggled through the mud, he burst into tears and cried: “Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?” His companion replied: “It’s worse further up.”’

Read more: Richard Fotheringham reviews ‘Inventing ANZAC: The digger and national mythology’ by Graham Seal

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Shirley Walker reviews ‘The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney’ edited by Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney and ‘Birds: Poems’ by Judith Wright
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Article Title: Hearts with One Purpose Alone
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These two volumes are a credit to their publishers. The format of The Equal Heart and Mind, a new departure for UQP, is slightly smaller than the usual paperback. The pages are deckle-edged, and the cover, in brilliant tones of magenta and purple, has its edges folded in on themselves as if to enclose and protect the contents. Very effective! In the National Library production of Birds: Poems by Judith Wright, the poems are accompanied by pictures from the National Library of Australia’s Pictures Collection, many by colonial artists. Paintings such as J.W. Levin’s ‘Rainbow Bee-Eater’ (1838) and E.E. Gostclow’s ‘Black Cockatoo’ (1929) are rarely seen masterpieces. This edition is a collector’s piece, worth buying for the pictures alone. Let’s hope that these two books herald a renewal of interest in Wright and her work.
Book 1 Title: The Equal Heart and Mind
Book 1 Subtitle: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney
Book Author: Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $24.95 pb, 202 pp
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Book 2 Title: Birds
Book 2 Subtitle: Poems
Book 2 Author: Judith Wright
Book 2 Biblio: National Library of Australia, $24.95 pb, 80 pp
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These two volumes are a credit to their publishers. The format of The Equal Heart and Mind, a new departure for UQP, is slightly smaller than the usual paperback. The pages are deckle-edged, and the cover, in brilliant tones of magenta and purple, has its edges folded in on themselves as if to enclose and protect the contents. Very effective! In the National Library production of Birds: Poems by Judith Wright, the poems are accompanied by pictures from the National Library of Australia’s Pictures Collection, many by colonial artists. Paintings such as J.W. Levin’s ‘Rainbow Bee-Eater’ (1838) and E.E. Gostclow’s ‘Black Cockatoo’ (1929) are rarely seen masterpieces. This edition is a collector’s piece, worth buying for the pictures alone. Let’s hope that these two books herald a renewal of interest in Wright and her work.

Read more: Shirley Walker reviews ‘The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney’...

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters – October 2004
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National wealth

Dear Editor,

Jenny Darling states in her letter of September 2004: ‘it is very difficult to place Australian writers in front of Australian readers.’ This is exactly what the Books Alive campaign has done for two years. All fourteen of the books included in our two campaigns so far are from great Australian authors: Belinda Alexandra, Duncan Ball, Geraldine Brooks, Bryce Courtenay with Roy Kyle, Robert Drewe, Anna Fienberg, Nikki Gemmell, Morris Gleitzman, Gabrielle Lord, Mary Moody, Sally Morgan, Matthew Reilly and Shane Weaver. Two of the Books Alive titles have been brand new and all of the Books Alive titles have appeared in the bestseller lists during the campaigns. More than 500,000 of these fourteen specially printed books by Australian writers have been purchased nationally as a result of the Books Alive promotion.
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National wealth

Dear Editor,

Jenny Darling states in her letter of September 2004: ‘it is very difficult to place Australian writers in front of Australian readers.’ This is exactly what the Books Alive campaign has done for two years. All fourteen of the books included in our two campaigns so far are from great Australian authors: Belinda Alexandra, Duncan Ball, Geraldine Brooks, Bryce Courtenay with Roy Kyle, Robert Drewe, Anna Fienberg, Nikki Gemmell, Morris Gleitzman, Gabrielle Lord, Mary Moody, Sally Morgan, Matthew Reilly and Shane Weaver. Two of the Books Alive titles have been brand new and all of the Books Alive titles have appeared in the bestseller lists during the campaigns. More than 500,000 of these fourteen specially printed books by Australian writers have been purchased nationally as a result of the Books Alive promotion.

Read more: Letters – October 2004

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Jennifer Strauss reviews ‘More or Less Than: 1-100’ by M.T.C. Cronin
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In striving to describe the overall effect of M.T.C. Cronin’s bravura performance in <More or Less Than> 1-100, it is difficult to trump Peter Porter’s ‘precipitously oracular’, quoted on the back cover. There is indeed a sense in which the poetry offers, as is the habit of oracular utterance, a distinctly slippery slope of meaning to be negotiated in following its 100 numbered poems as they increase in numerical sequence from an initial single line to fifty and then, in mirror reversal, decrease to the single line of poem 100. Not that there is anything slippery about Cronin’s technical control in this example of an exuberantly free verse poet embracing the otherness of formal, even arbitrary, patterning. She is sufficiently confident that, in a work with so categorical a design of beginning and ending, she can write mockingly:
Book 1 Title: More or Less Than
Book 1 Subtitle: 1-100
Book Author: M.T.C. Cronin
Book 1 Biblio: Shearsman Books, $24.95 pb, 136 pp
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In striving to describe the overall effect of M.T.C. Cronin’s bravura performance in <More or Less Than> 1-100, it is difficult to trump Peter Porter’s ‘precipitously oracular’, quoted on the back cover. There is indeed a sense in which the poetry offers, as is the habit of oracular utterance, a distinctly slippery slope of meaning to be negotiated in following its 100 numbered poems as they increase in numerical sequence from an initial single line to fifty and then, in mirror reversal, decrease to the single line of poem 100. Not that there is anything slippery about Cronin’s technical control in this example of an exuberantly free verse poet embracing the otherness of formal, even arbitrary, patterning. She is sufficiently confident that, in a work with so categorical a design of beginning and ending, she can write mockingly:

Read more: Jennifer Strauss reviews ‘More or Less Than: 1-100’ by M.T.C. Cronin

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