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Absolutely Revolting

August 2002, no. 243

Welcome to the August 2002 issue of Australian Book Review!

Neal Blewett reviews Thoughtlines: Reflections of a public man by Bob Carr
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As W.H. Auden observed more than forty years ago: ‘To the man-in-the-street, who, I’m sorry to say, / Is a keen observer of life, / The word ‘Intellectual’ suggests straight away / A man who’s untrue to his wife.’ Perhaps such popular attitudes explain why intellectuals as politicians are rare in the bear pit of modern Australian parliaments ...
Book 1 Title: Thoughtlines
Book 1 Subtitle: Reflections of a public man
Book Author: Bob Carr
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $35 pb, 400 pp, 0670040258
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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As W.H. Auden observed more than forty years ago: ‘To the man-in-the-street, who, I’m sorry to say, / Is a keen observer of life, / The word ‘Intellectual’ suggests straight away / A man who’s untrue to his wife.’ Perhaps such popular attitudes explain why intellectuals as politicians are rare in the bear pit of modern Australian parliaments, and why they have left little imprint on the politics, as distinct from the culture, of their times. Think of the inconsequential passage of Peter Coleman through two legislatures; or the lightweight political impact of that intellectual heavyweight, Barry Jones. Paul Hasluck is perhaps the exception, although the man himself would not agree, seeing himself as ‘an indifferent politician’. There is always Gough Whitlam, but Gough, of course, is sui generis.

Bob Carr, too, is an exception. Provocative in his disdain for competitive sport and in his passion for things intellectual and cultural, he is a formidably successful politician. Should he win his next election – and the prospects appear favourable – and serve out his term, he will be the longest serving premier in the history of New South Wales, eclipsing the record of Sir Henry Parkes.

Thoughtlines is a pot-pourri, with some of the characteristics of the curate’s egg. There are speeches – in and out of parliament – book reviews, newspaper articles and extracts from his political diaries. There are even chapters from a political roman à clef in which a Carr lookalike begins his comic climb up the greasy pole. I must, however, declare a conflict of interest: the diary extracts occur in a generous review of my own A Cabinet Diary. However, as the review reads more like a pre-publication blurb for Carr’s much more indiscreet and uninhibited diaries, I feel the conflict is minimal.

Read more: Neal Blewett reviews 'Thoughtlines: Reflections of a public man' by Bob Carr

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Custom Article Title: Letters - August 2002
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ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Emailed letters must include a telephone number for verification.
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ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Emailed letters must include a telephone number for verification.

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Contents Category: Poetry
Custom Article Title: Old Children
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I

Dad’s new car was that Ford Customline

wide as a bed and hissing with energy.

We’ll drive carefully, we promised

and took turns to burn up the bitumen

right the way to Helidon.

It never hissed after that. It sighed.

Sometimes guilt takes fifty years

before the blister breaks.

The Ford was traded in after only four years.

Dad’s silence was the rub.
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for Ron and Pam Simpson

I

Dad’s new car was that Ford Customline
wide as a bed and hissing with energy.
We’ll drive carefully, we promised
and took turns to burn up the bitumen
right the way to Helidon.
It never hissed after that. It sighed.
Sometimes guilt takes fifty years
before the blister breaks.
The Ford was traded in after only four years.
Dad’s silence was the rub.

Read more: Old Children by Tom Shapcott

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Contents Category: Poetry
Custom Article Title: On the Volcano Trail
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Basalt plains, sheep and beef country
drying off. The light, intense
between showers. I drive

as if my head has been opened up
through paddocks blistered
from lava flows between bare hills.

The roads dependable as elderly bachelors
take me through towns abandoned
after the storekeeper dies.
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Basalt plains, sheep and beef country
drying off. The light, intense
between showers. I drive

as if my head has been opened up
through paddocks blistered
from lava flows between bare hills.

The roads dependable as elderly bachelors
take me through towns abandoned
after the storekeeper dies.

Read more: On the Volcano Trail by Brendan Ryan

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Contents Category: Poetry
Custom Article Title: The New Aesthetics
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You’ve heard this story before –
becoming unravelled in Europe
or assaulted in some roadhouse
but bold as nipples and booted.
Recovering with bourbon and red wine
in a soft room with a German
dissolving somehow at right angles
and falling off the frequent flyers list.
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You’ve heard this story before –
becoming unravelled in Europe
or assaulted in some roadhouse
but bold as nipples and booted.
Recovering with bourbon and red wine
in a soft room with a German
dissolving somehow at right angles
and falling off the frequent flyers list.

Read more: The New Aesthetics by Jill Jones

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Ros Pesman reviews Mussolini by R.J.B. Bosworth
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Custom Article Title: Least of the Dictators?
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An Australian tourist visiting Italy in the mid-1930s wrote home: ‘you may say what you like about Mussolini but you cannot deny that he has done a more amazing thing than anyone else in history.’ Unstinting admiration for Fascist Italy was common in Australian references to Italy in the interwar years; politicians, businessmen, Catholic prelates, Protestant pastors and middle-class tourists all sang his praises. They were also at one with the view expressed by R.G. Menzies, at the 1934 Conference of the Victorian Young Nationalists, that Italy’s transformation was the product not of Fascism but of its charismatic leader and his untrammelled power. In the eyes of the rarely well-informed Australian observers, Mussolini had resurrected Italy, ‘made over his people’, ‘intensified and completed the creation of Italian nationality’, and erected an efficient and effective state. Trains not only ran on time but also at a profit, according to Sir Hal Colebatch, Premier of Western Australia.
Book 1 Title: Mussolini
Book Author: R.J.B. Bosworth
Book 1 Biblio: Edward Arnold, $79.95 hb, 599 pp
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An Australian tourist visiting Italy in the mid-1930s wrote home: ‘you may say what you like about Mussolini but you cannot deny that he has done a more amazing thing than anyone else in history.’ Unstinting admiration for Fascist Italy was common in Australian references to Italy in the interwar years; politicians, businessmen, Catholic prelates, Protestant pastors and middle-class tourists all sang his praises. They were also at one with the view expressed by R.G. Menzies, at the 1934 Conference of the Victorian Young Nationalists, that Italy’s transformation was the product not of Fascism but of its charismatic leader and his untrammelled power. In the eyes of the rarely well-informed Australian observers, Mussolini had resurrected Italy, ‘made over his people’, ‘intensified and completed the creation of Italian nationality’, and erected an efficient and effective state. Trains not only ran on time but also at a profit, according to Sir Hal Colebatch, Premier of Western Australia.

Richard Bosworth, in this superb biography of Italy’s Duce, is critical of ‘the great man in history’ and intentionalist approaches that vest all power, initiative and control in leaders, particularly in the case of Mussolini, a leader more driven by, and adaptive to, events than driven by them. Unlike Hitler, the Duce was impelled by no credo, his Fascism was vague, undefined and opportunistic, his politics governed not by ideology but by compromises and deals, by short-term tactics not long-term strategies and goals. Thus the man whose only consistent position until he came to power may have been virulent and vociferous anti-clericalism signed the Lateran Pact with the papacy in 1929.

Read more: Ros Pesman reviews 'Mussolini' by R.J.B. Bosworth

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Peter Fuller reviews Pompey Elliott by Ross McMullin
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In September 1929 John Monash, ex-commander of the Australian Corps in France, sat down to reply to his former subordinate, Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott, a National Party senator and militia major-general. Elliott had asked why he had been passed over for a division in 1918. What ‘secret offence’ had he committed that General Birdwood, the English chief of Australian forces, had denied him advancement? Monash was disturbed that Elliott’s sense of injury should be so raw a decade after the guns had fallen silent. In a tactful, compassionate reply, he set aside the idea of a secret offence and gently reminded Elliott that others, too, had had complaints, and had left them behind. The affection of their men mattered more than honours: ‘This same affection and confidence you have enjoyed in rich measure, and no one can question that it was well deserved. After all, you commanded a celebrated Brigade during the period of its greatest successes … Then why worry as to the verdict of posterity upon so brilliant and soldierly a career?’
Book 1 Title: Pompey Elliott
Book Author: Ross McMullin
Book 1 Biblio: Scribe, $45 pb, 732 pp
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In September 1929 John Monash, ex-commander of the Australian Corps in France, sat down to reply to his former subordinate, Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott, a National Party senator and militia major-general. Elliott had asked why he had been passed over for a division in 1918. What ‘secret offence’ had he committed that General Birdwood, the English chief of Australian forces, had denied him advancement? Monash was disturbed that Elliott’s sense of injury should be so raw a decade after the guns had fallen silent. In a tactful, compassionate reply, he set aside the idea of a secret offence and gently reminded Elliott that others, too, had had complaints, and had left them behind. The affection of their men mattered more than honours: ‘This same affection and confidence you have enjoyed in rich measure, and no one can question that it was well deserved. After all, you commanded a celebrated Brigade during the period of its greatest successes … Then why worry as to the verdict of posterity upon so brilliant and soldierly a career?’

Any comfort Elliott took from this was fleeting. Grievance continued to gnaw at him. It ‘has actually coloured all my post-war life,’ he confided. He quizzed old comrades and re-fought his campaigns in journals and lecture halls, all the while helping men who had fought under him, a growing burden as the Depression deepened. Economic turmoil and Scullin’s election seemed to imperil everything Elliott believed in. No friend could convince him that he did not face financial ruin. Admitted to a Melbourne private hospital for a nervous disorder, he suicided in March 1931. It was a terrible end for so renowned a soldier.

Read more: Peter Fuller reviews 'Pompey Elliott' by Ross McMullin

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Brenda Niall reviews The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 1 edited by Anne Gray
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'It is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication.’ Oscar Wilde’s Cecily, in The Importance of Being Earnest, expresses the contradictions of many diarists. Whether by chance, or by the diarist’s own wish, this most private form of writing often comes before the public. It may be that in the diary’s purest form the self communes with the solitary self. Yet many of the great diarists have a strong sense of audience. Writing a diary is a means of exploring the self, but it is also a way of testing voices, trying on masks. This element of theatre is very strong in the diaries of Donald Friend.
Book 1 Title: The Diaries of Donald Friend
Book 1 Subtitle: Volume 1
Book Author: Anne Gray
Book 1 Biblio: National Library of Australia, $49.95hb, 541pp, 0 642 10738 6
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‘It is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication.’ Oscar Wilde’s Cecily, in The Importance of Being Earnest, expresses the contradictions of many diarists. Whether by chance, or by the diarist’s own wish, this most private form of writing often comes before the public. It may be that in the diary’s purest form the self communes with the solitary self. Yet many of the great diarists have a strong sense of audience. Writing a diary is a means of exploring the self, but it is also a way of testing voices, trying on masks. This element of theatre is very strong in the diaries of Donald Friend.

Friend, who was born in 1915, gave his diaries to the National Library of Australia a few years before his death in 1989. Well aware of their value as cultural history as well as personal record, he hoped that the NLA might one day publish them. But the sheer bulk of forty-four years of diary entries, and the complex task of editing them for publication, seemed insuperable obstacles until the Morris West Trust Fund came to the rescue. The first volume, which includes Friend’s important wartime diaries, has now been published. Handsomely designed, and edited with impressive scholarly attention by art historian Anne Gray, they deserve to find a wide readership.

Read more: Brenda Niall reviews 'The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 1' edited by Anne Gray

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Anna Goldsworthy reviews The Penguin Book of Etiquette: The complete Australian guide to modern manners by Marion von Adlerstein
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Custom Article Title: Manners in the Mosh Pit
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Smugness is an occupational hazard for the writer on etiquette. The exquisite Miss Manners, in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour, describes the ‘wicked joy’ of her trade: ‘There is that pleasant bubble in the throat, the suppressed giggle at another’s ignorance; the flush of generosity accompanying the resolve to set the poor soul straight; that fever of human kindness when one proclaims, for the benefit of others, one’s superior knowledge.’ Suppressed giggles resound through-out the genre. Surely there’s one coming from the late John Morgan in Debrett’s New Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners when he suggests that ‘when inviting royalty it is important first to decide, as with any guest, if you are on close enough terms to proffer an invitation’; or that ‘it is bad manners to expel any liquid from any orifice in public, and breastfeeding is no different’.
Book 1 Title: The Penguin Book of Etiquette
Book 1 Subtitle: The complete Australian guide to modern manners
Book Author: Marion von Adlerstein
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $49.95 hb, 502 pp
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Smugness is an occupational hazard for the writer on etiquette. The exquisite Miss Manners, in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour, describes the ‘wicked joy’ of her trade: ‘There is that pleasant bubble in the throat, the suppressed giggle at another’s ignorance; the flush of generosity accompanying the resolve to set the poor soul straight; that fever of human kindness when one proclaims, for the benefit of others, one’s superior knowledge.’ Suppressed giggles resound through-out the genre. Surely there’s one coming from the late John Morgan in Debrett’s New Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners when he suggests that ‘when inviting royalty it is important first to decide, as with any guest, if you are on close enough terms to proffer an invitation’; or that ‘it is bad manners to expel any liquid from any orifice in public, and breastfeeding is no different’.

Read more: Anna Goldsworthy reviews 'The Penguin Book of Etiquette: The complete Australian guide to modern...

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Sylvia Marchant reviews ‘White Butterflies’ by Colin McPhedran
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Article Title: A Searing Trail with Butterflies
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Colin McPhedran, the son of a Burmese mother and a Scottish oil company executive father, was living a comfortable middle-class colonial life in Central Burma with his mother, sister and two brothers when the Japanese invaded the country in 1941. He was eleven years old. The invasion spread terror throughout the population, which feared the notorious savagery of the Japanese army. The European and mixed races felt particularly threatened, and Colin’s mother made the fatal decision to flee their comfortable villa and escape to India. The children’s mixed parentage concerned her; she resolved to undertake the journey with her three younger children. She was especially anxious about her fifteen-year-old daughter whose youthful European beauty would, she thought, make her a special target for sexual abuse. Colin’s father did not play any part in this disastrous decision, having escaped to Calcutta when Rangoon fell to the Japanese.
Book 1 Title: White Butterflies
Book Author: Colin McPhedran
Book 1 Biblio: Pandanus, $29.95 pb, 239 pp
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Colin McPhedran, the son of a Burmese mother and a Scottish oil company executive father, was living a comfortable middle-class colonial life in Central Burma with his mother, sister and two brothers when the Japanese invaded the country in 1941. He was eleven years old. The invasion spread terror throughout the population, which feared the notorious savagery of the Japanese army. The European and mixed races felt particularly threatened, and Colin’s mother made the fatal decision to flee their comfortable villa and escape to India. The children’s mixed parentage concerned her; she resolved to undertake the journey with her three younger children. She was especially anxious about her fifteen-year-old daughter whose youthful European beauty would, she thought, make her a special target for sexual abuse. Colin’s father did not play any part in this disastrous decision, having escaped to Calcutta when Rangoon fell to the Japanese.

Read more: Sylvia Marchant reviews ‘White Butterflies’ by Colin McPhedran

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