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Absolutely Revolting

December 1997–January 1998, no. 197

Welcome to the December 1997–January 1998 issue of Australian Book Review.

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Literary culture in Australia seems to me to be in state of some disorder, not least because of the state of reviewing. Many reviews are banal, slipshod, dull and as if written in a cultural vacuum.
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Literary culture in Australia seems to me to be in state of some disorder, not least because of the state of reviewing. Many reviews are banal, slipshod, dull and as if written in a cultural vacuum.

Too many reviews pay no heed to context and little heed to the reader. Too many are dull and predictable reading, with opinions played out safely – so safely there is little to focus the reader’s attention. Too many are written with a private agenda in mind, sometimes amounting to a misrepresentation of the book and at the very least a disservice to the book. And yes, it is sometimes true of ABR’s reviews too.

In part some of this disorder arises from the commissioning system. Once commissioned a review is difficult to decline and it is expensive to use the option of paying a ‘kill fee’ (whereby the reviewer is paid but the review not published). Occasionally at ABR I have had to make use of the kill fee because the writing simply was not up to standard, but I avoid it wherever possible for financial reasons. I also avoid using the poor reviewers again, sometimes despite their persistence.

Every day I receive letters requesting an opportunity to review for ABR, sometimes from people who have reviewed for the magazine in the past and so feel entitled to review for it again. Mainly, however, such letters are from people wanting some reviewing experience and assuming that it is easier to find reviewing opportunities at ABR than it is in the newspaper world. To a degree, that is a reasonable assumption, but ABR also wants the best reviewers possible. It is difficult to juggle the need for younger or new reviewers to gain some experience with the wish to make each issue of the magazine as lively and informative as possible.

Like any literary editor, I have a list of experienced and reliable reviewers who recognise that the review is first and foremost a form of literary news – the announcement of a new book or a new argument or a new idea – and who believe that the review is a literary genre of its own. For the most part, many of the experienced reviewers I regularly call upon are adept at receiving the new book into the existing context of Australian writing, whether it be through familiarity with the previous work of a given novelist or through familiarity with, for example, current feminist theories or current Aboriginal studies. To review, say, a new David Ireland novel should encompass some sense of his earlier work and preoccupations and, ideally, some sense of the location of his work within Australian fiction generally. Certainly the best reviewers do not treat the book in isolation as though it fell from the sky.

I suggested that weaker reviewers pay little heed to the reader. By this I mean that they fail to make the review an interesting piece of writing in itself. Many readers of reviews in newspapers or magazines, quite properly, use the review pages to keep informed on what is happening in publishing and literary culture generally. Experienced reviewers tend to address the needs of the reader of the review by making the review a good piece of writing in itself, likely to appeal to the casual reader as well as the already committed reader. Reviews operate across a cultural chasm, between the committed reader who regularly reads reviews and follows the work of a number of Australian writers and the casual reader. It is not easy to satisfy the needs of both readers in a single review. Perhaps I make good reviewing sound intimidating. I believe it is not easy to write a good review – whether favourable or not is not the point. Certainly not every reader makes a good reviewer.

The role of literary editor is somewhat like that of literary matchmaking. The editor is a procurer or procuress, seeking to bring about a happy alliance between book and reviewer. The happier the alliance the more vital and energetic the writing becomes. Not all alliances prove to be happy. Some become a source of anger and fierce dispute. The right to dispute seems to me vital to our literary culture. So too good reviewing is vital.

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Jenna Mead reviews Greer, Untamed Shrew by Christine Wallace
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Contents Category: Biography
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Christine Wallace’s book, in twelve chapters, is actually two books. Chapters 1-7 deal with Greer’s childhood and family, secondary and university education including MA and PhD theses, her sexual history and engagement with the counterculture in Britain which pivots around writing for Oz, her career as a groupie and membership of the Suck editorial team. Events are arranged chronologically but it’s often hard to work out the date (and thus Greer’s age), whether she’s in Melbourne or Sydney and, since the chapters are of very different lengths, how much has been included or omitted.
Book 1 Title: Greer, Untamed Shrew
Book Author: Christine Wallace
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $35 hb, 386 pp
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Christine Wallace’s book, in twelve chapters, is actually two books. Chapters 1-7 deal with Greer’s childhood and family, secondary and university education including MA and PhD theses, her sexual history and engagement with the counterculture in Britain which pivots around writing for Oz, her career as a groupie and membership of the Suck editorial team. Events are arranged chronologically but it’s often hard to work out the date (and thus Greer’s age), whether she’s in Melbourne or Sydney and, since the chapters are of very different lengths, how much has been included or omitted.

At page 78 the genesis of The Female Eunuch is set out and the book shifts in style and orientation. The remaining five chapters deal with the first famous book and a number, but not all, of Greer’s subsequent output as a polemical and academic writer counterpointed against her realisation of her own infertility, the onset of menopause, recurrent depression and a truly consummate ability to deal with the media. These chapters return to The Female Eunuch as though returning to the scene of the crime.

Read more: Jenna Mead reviews 'Greer, Untamed Shrew' by Christine Wallace

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Cathrine Harboe-Ree reviews Fellow Passengers: Collected stories by Elizabeth Jolley
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Contents Category: Short Stories
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Elizabeth Jolley is quoted in this volume saying that ‘Writing for me is a ragged and restless activity with scattered fragments to be pieced together rather like a patchwork quilt.’ To a degree this is an apt metaphor, suggesting as it does careful attention to the particular and the gradual accumulation of the discrete parts into a whole. It also suggests the contrast between light and dark that is the feature of many quilts and of Jolley’s writing. However, patchwork is altogether too domestic an activity to contain the driving intelligence and iconoclasm that are dominant elements in Jolley’ s work.
Book 1 Title: Fellow Passengers
Book 1 Subtitle: Collected stories
Book Author: Elizabeth Jolley
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $16.95 pb, 371 pp
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Elizabeth Jolley is quoted in this volume saying that ‘Writing for me is a ragged and restless activity with scattered fragments to be pieced together rather like a patchwork quilt.’ To a degree this is an apt metaphor, suggesting as it does careful attention to the particular and the gradual accumulation of the discrete parts into a whole. It also suggests the contrast between light and dark that is the feature of many quilts and of Jolley’s writing. However, patchwork is altogether too domestic an activity to contain the driving intelligence and iconoclasm that are dominant elements in Jolley’ s work.

A more helpful metaphor, which was suggested by Helen Daniel in Liars, is that of Jolley’s literary offering being one extended fugue, made up of constant and varying parts, a collection of contrapuntal treatments of the fundamental themes, and accommodating the parody and humour that this form of music allows.

Read more: Cathrine Harboe-Ree reviews 'Fellow Passengers: Collected stories' by Elizabeth Jolley

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Carmel Bird reviews Collected Stories by Thea Astley
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One of the principal characters in much of Thea Astley’s writing is Queensland. ‘An intransigent fecundity dominated two shacks which were cringing beneath banana clumps, passion-vines, granadillas.’ There’s a lot of sad poetry about the place; and the distances that separate us, I mean the physical distances, are like verse-breaks in a ballad; and once, once we believed the ballad might never end but go on accumulating its chapters of epic while the refrain, the almost unwordable quality that mortises us together, retained its singular soul. How express the tears of search?
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One of the principal characters in much of Thea Astley’s writing is Queensland. ‘An intransigent fecundity dominated two shacks which were cringing beneath banana clumps, passion-vines, granadillas.’

There’s a lot of sad poetry about the place; and the distances that separate us, I mean the physical distances, are like verse-breaks in a ballad; and once, once we believed the ballad might never end but go on accumulating its chapters of epic while the refrain, the almost unwordable quality that mortises us together, retained its singular soul. How express the tears of search?

Read more: Carmel Bird reviews 'Collected Stories' by Thea Astley

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Michael Cathcart reviews Speaking Out of Turn: Lectures and speeches, 1940–1991 by Manning Clark
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: A Moment of Decision
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I heard Manning Clark lecture just once. It was in 1981. He was addressing a hall packed with school students who were attending a history camp at the Australian National University. That night, Clark demonstrated two qualities which distinguish most good lecturers: he played a character who was an enlarged version of himself, and he convinced the gathering that his topic was central to any understanding of the human condition. He told his young audience that they were faced with a great choice. With their help, Australia might one day become millennial Eden – a land where men and women were blessed with riches of the body and of the spirit. But if they were neglectful, he warned, their country would remain oppressed by a great dullness: Australia would continue to languish as a Kingdom of Nothingness. (This speech, it should be noted, was delivered in the middle of that bitter decade which followed the dismissal.)
Book 1 Title: Speaking Out of Turn
Book 1 Subtitle: Lectures and speeches, 1940–1991
Book Author: Manning Clark
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $29.95 pb, 263 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/speaking-out-of-turn-manning-clark/book/9780522847703.html
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I heard Manning Clark lecture just once. It was in 1981. He was addressing a hall packed with school students who were attending a history camp at the Australian National University. That night, Clark demonstrated two qualities which distinguish most good lecturers: he played a character who was an enlarged version of himself, and he convinced the gathering that his topic was central to any understanding of the human condition. He told his young audience that they were faced with a great choice. With their help, Australia might one day become millennial Eden – a land where men and women were blessed with riches of the body and of the spirit. But if they were neglectful, he warned, their country would remain oppressed by a great dullness: Australia would continue to languish as a Kingdom of Nothingness. (This speech, it should be noted, was delivered in the middle of that bitter decade which followed the dismissal.)

Read more: Michael Cathcart reviews 'Speaking Out of Turn: Lectures and speeches, 1940–1991' by Manning Clark

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Robert Adamson reviews The Gatekeeper’s Wife by Fay Zwicky
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Contents Category: Poetry
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It’s been four years since Fay Zwicky’s Selected Poems 1970–1992 was published by the University of Queensland Press in their long-running poetry series with the infamous pencil portrait covers. The Gatekeeper’s Wife is one of two books in a poetry series by a relatively new publisher. The design is reminiscent of the wonderful Cape Editions edited by Nathaniel Tarn in the sixties. Brandl & Schlesinger have established this series with Fay Zwicky and Rhyll McMaster, two of this country’s major poets. They have done well by them with these fine looking books.
Book 1 Title: The Gatekeeper’s Wife
Book Author: Fay Zwicky
Book 1 Biblio: Brandl & Schlesinger, $16.95 pb, 71 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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It’s been four years since Fay Zwicky’s Selected Poems 1970–1992 was published by the University of Queensland Press in their long-running poetry series with the infamous pencil portrait covers. The Gatekeeper’s Wife is one of two books in a poetry series by a relatively new publisher. The design is reminiscent of the wonderful Cape Editions edited by Nathaniel Tarn in the sixties. Brandl & Schlesinger have established this series with Fay Zwicky and Rhyll McMaster, two of this country’s major poets. They have done well by them with these fine looking books.

Read more: Robert Adamson reviews 'The Gatekeeper’s Wife' by Fay Zwicky

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Stephanie Trigg reviews Tierra del Fuego: New and selected poems by Jennifer Strauss
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Article Title: Uncanny Silence
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‘Academic poet’ signifies, primarily, male academic poet. So, does the adjective ‘female’ in ‘female academic poet’ more intensely qualify ‘academic’ or ‘poet’? And what happens when that female academic poet is a teacher and student of feminist theory and women’s writing? Predictably enough, her work tempts the taboo-laden conjunction of politics and poetry.

It must be said that the poems in Tierra def Fuego, the new and selected poems of Jennifer Strauss, exhibit little anxiety about either of these issues: the role of women in academia or the threat politics might offer to the lyric, Strauss’ poetic home base. The trademarks of the academic poet have an established place in Strauss’ work: the new poem ‘Life 301 – Birthday Tutorial’, for example, picks up a theme from ‘Life 101 – Lecture’ from her first collection, Children and Other Strangers, of 1975, using the classroom as a metaphor for other kinds of learning.
Book 1 Title: Tierra del Fuego
Book 1 Subtitle: New and selected poems
Book Author: Jennifer Strauss
Book 1 Biblio: Pariah Press, $14pb, 100 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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‘Academic poet’ signifies, primarily, male academic poet. So, does the adjective ‘female’ in ‘female academic poet’ more intensely qualify ‘academic’ or ‘poet’? And what happens when that female academic poet is a teacher and student of feminist theory and women’s writing? Predictably enough, her work tempts the taboo-laden conjunction of politics and poetry.

It must be said that the poems in Tierra def Fuego, the new and selected poems of Jennifer Strauss, exhibit little anxiety about either of these issues: the role of women in academia or the threat politics might offer to the lyric, Strauss’ poetic home base. The trademarks of the academic poet have an established place in Strauss’ work: the new poem ‘Life 301 – Birthday Tutorial’, for example, picks up a theme from ‘Life 101 – Lecture’ from her first collection, Children and Other Strangers, of 1975, using the classroom as a metaphor for other kinds of learning.

Read more: Stephanie Trigg reviews 'Tierra del Fuego: New and selected poems' by Jennifer Strauss

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Don Anderson reviews Nightpictures by Rod Jones, including an author interview with Ramona Koval
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Article Title: Life-in-Death in Venice
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A new novel from the author of Julia Paradise, of Prince of the Lilies, and most especially of Billy Sunday, aroused in this reader an excited sense of eager anticipation. Yet I was pulled up brutally short by Nightpictures’ opening sentence: ‘When we look at other people we either want to fuck them or kill them.’ It is not merely that the sententia of this sentence is demonstrably untrue, or that ‘either’ might be more elegantly placed after ‘want’, but that the sentence is, aesthetically speaking, brutal and ugly. Perhaps it is those ‘k’ sounds. This is, however, a novel narrated in the first person, and the qualities which distressed me may be those of its narrator, ‘Sailor’, who fulfils in his individual career his universal generalisation, and my reaction may be intended.
Book 1 Title: Nightpictures
Book Author: Rod Jones
Book 1 Biblio: Knopf, $24.95 pb, 252 pp
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‘Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo … the young Venetian says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions [yet] only in Marco Polo’s accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites’ gnawing.’

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

A new novel from the author of Julia Paradise, of Prince of the Lilies, and most especially of Billy Sunday, aroused in this reader an excited sense of eager anticipation. Yet I was pulled up brutally short by Nightpictures’ opening sentence: ‘When we look at other people we either want to fuck them or kill them.’ It is not merely that the sententia of this sentence is demonstrably untrue, or that ‘either’ might be more elegantly placed after ‘want’, but that the sentence is, aesthetically speaking, brutal and ugly. Perhaps it is those ‘k’ sounds. This is, however, a novel narrated in the first person, and the qualities which distressed me may be those of its narrator, ‘Sailor’, who fulfils in his individual career his universal generalisation, and my reaction may be intended.

Read more: Don Anderson reviews 'Nightpictures' by Rod Jones, including an author interview with Ramona Koval

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David Tacey reviews Morris West: A writer and a spirituality by Maryanne Confoy
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Contents Category: Religion
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Article Title: Spiritual Quest
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‘Until the last decade or so,’ writes Maryanne Confoy, ‘most people thought of spirituality, if they thought of it at all, as something for other people.’ It is certainly true that there is a new and quite sudden interest in spirituality in this country, and this book on the spirituality of Morris West is a timely addition to the growing tradition of – what can we call it? – ‘wisdom writing’ in contemporary Australia. It might be a symptom of the turn of the millennium, it might be a reaction to the craziness and fragmentation of the modern world, it might be a sign of cultural disorientation and the search for roots – however we attempt to account for it, spirituality and the quest for meaning is back on the public agenda and is in great demand. Just ask your local bookseller.
Book 1 Title: Morris West
Book 1 Subtitle: A writer and a spirituality
Book Author: Maryanne Confoy
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins Religious, $22.95 pb, 173 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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‘Until the last decade or so,’ writes Maryanne Confoy, ‘most people thought of spirituality, if they thought of it at all, as something for other people.’ It is certainly true that there is a new and quite sudden interest in spirituality in this country, and this book on the spirituality of Morris West is a timely addition to the growing tradition of – what can we call it? – ‘wisdom writing’ in contemporary Australia. It might be a symptom of the turn of the millennium, it might be a reaction to the craziness and fragmentation of the modern world, it might be a sign of cultural disorientation and the search for roots – however we attempt to account for it, spirituality and the quest for meaning is back on the public agenda and is in great demand. Just ask your local bookseller.

This is a grass-roots movement, without too many leaders. Certainly the upsurge of interest in spirituality has taken academics, politicians, and social commentators by surprise. A great many of our cultural leaders have decided that Australia is a down-to-earth country, secular, pragmatic, and sceptical. Intellectuals are busy promoting a ‘postmodern’ view of the world, in which the search for meaning looks old-hat and out of step. But now, the intellectuals who thought they were leading us discover that they are out of step with the genuine spiritual hunger of our time.

Read more: David Tacey reviews 'Morris West: A writer and a spirituality' by Maryanne Confoy

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Barry Hill reviews My Dear Spencer: The letters of F. J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer edited by John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy, and Alison Petch
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When Baldwin Spencer, the eminent Professor of Biology at Melbourne University, arrived in Alice Springs in 1894 as a member of the Horn party, the first scientific expedition to Central Australia, he knew very little anthropology. Edward Stirling, South Australia’s Museum Director who would write their chapter on anthropology, was not much better off. The man who was in the know was the man on the ground: Frank Gillen, the local Telegraph Officer, Magistrate, and sub-Protector of Aborigines. A genial, curious, open-minded fellow of Irish Catholic faith, Gillen had been in the region for nearly twenty years.
Book 1 Title: My Dear Spencer
Book 1 Subtitle: The letters of F. J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer
Book Author: John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy, and Alison Petch
Book 1 Biblio: Hyland House, $49.95 hb, 554 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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When Baldwin Spencer, the eminent Professor of Biology at Melbourne University, arrived in Alice Springs in 1894 as a member of the Horn party, the first scientific expedition to Central Australia, he knew very little anthropology. Edward Stirling, South Australia’s Museum Director who would write their chapter on anthropology, was not much better off. The man who was in the know was the man on the ground: Frank Gillen, the local Telegraph Officer, Magistrate, and sub-Protector of Aborigines. A genial, curious, open-minded fellow of Irish Catholic faith, Gillen had been in the region for nearly twenty years.

From the start he’d been a bushman with a real interest in the Aborigines. He liked to make lists of Aboriginal words, and go over into ‘the Nigger camp and have a yabber’. As the scholarly editors of this volume point out, we have to drop some of our prejudices about prejudices and place a man like Gillen in his times in order to appreciate him today. His colonialist diction pales into insignificance when we realise that, by 1891, he was sufficiently a friend of the Aborigines to have brought the notorious Constable Willshire to court for the murder of native peoples. Willshire was acquitted in a now infamous trial in Adelaide, where his legal council was backed by pastoralist money and a public campaign against the gall of a man like Gillen. But what Gillen lost in terms of white kudos he gained in respect and affection from the Aborigines who knew him.

Read more: Barry Hill reviews 'My Dear Spencer: The letters of F. J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer' edited by...

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Geoff Page reviews Poems: Seven ages by Barbara Giles
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Article Title: In Disguise
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It is a truism that poets don’t need to write their autobiography. Roland Barthes, with his ‘death of the author’, may have thought otherwise but in Barbara Giles’ new book, Poems: Seven Ages, published in her eighty-seventh year, there is no mistaking the autobiographical core.

Though neither the title nor the blurb suggests it, Poems: Seven Ages is really a ‘selected’. Giles has gone back over her four earlier books, chosen what she (or perhaps her editor, Judith Rodriguez) thinks are the best poems and arranged them in chronological order according to subject, rather than date of composition or publication. Thus we have sections corresponding with her childhood in England, her earlier married life, her mid-life preoccupations, and the poems on women’s ageing from which she has been most anthologised.
Book 1 Title: Poems
Book 1 Subtitle: Seven Ages
Book Author: Barbara Giles
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $19.99 pb, 177 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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It is a truism that poets don’t need to write their autobiography. Roland Barthes, with his ‘death of the author’, may have thought otherwise but in Barbara Giles’ new book, Poems: Seven Ages, published in her eighty-seventh year, there is no mistaking the autobiographical core.

Though neither the title nor the blurb suggests it, Poems: Seven Ages is really a ‘selected’. Giles has gone back over her four earlier books, chosen what she (or perhaps her editor, Judith Rodriguez) thinks are the best poems and arranged them in chronological order according to subject, rather than date of composition or publication. Thus we have sections corresponding with her childhood in England, her earlier married life, her mid-life preoccupations, and the poems on women’s ageing from which she has been most anthologised.

Read more: Geoff Page reviews 'Poems: Seven ages' by Barbara Giles

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Lisa Kerrigan reviews Tasting Salt by Stephanie Dowrick
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Article Title: The Taste of Freedom
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This quote from Buddha opens Tasting Salt, Dowrick’s second novel, and freedom is its main theme. But the freedom in question is of the quiet domestic kind rather than the revolutionary clenched-fist-and-anthem kind. Cordelia, preparing a cocktail party for her seventy-third birthday, suddenly finds herself a widow after fifty years of marriage to George. George’s departure precipitates a crisis of self. No longer able to define herself simply as ‘George’s wife’ or even ‘George’s widow’ she finds herself confronted by the past and unresolved questions of identity, sexuality, and gender. Cordelia’s odyssey, frequently confusing and sometimes painful ultimately brings her a modicum of joy and renewed faith.
Book 1 Title: Tasting Salt
Book Author: Stephanie Dowrick
Book 1 Biblio: Viking $19.95 pb, 342 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Just as the great oceans have but one taste.
the taste of salt,
so too there is but one taste
fundamental to all true teachings of the Way
and this is the taste of freedom.

This quote from Buddha opens Tasting Salt, Dowrick’s second novel, and freedom is its main theme. But the freedom in question is of the quiet domestic kind rather than the revolutionary clenched-fist-and-anthem kind. Cordelia, preparing a cocktail party for her seventy-third birthday, suddenly finds herself a widow after fifty years of marriage to George. George’s departure precipitates a crisis of self. No longer able to define herself simply as ‘George’s wife’ or even ‘George’s widow’ she finds herself confronted by the past and unresolved questions of identity, sexuality, and gender. Cordelia’s odyssey, frequently confusing and sometimes painful ultimately brings her a modicum of joy and renewed faith.

Offering solace and friendship during her time of grief is a younger woman, Laurie who, like Cordelia herself, is a talented potter. Unlike Cordelia, however, Laurie has a hectic lifestyle. She is the mother of two rambunctious children, the ex-wife of Gregory (now in a relationship with Winston), and a lesbian. Tentatively at first and then with increasing confidence Cordelia accepts Laurie’s overtures of friendship, a friendship that finally blossoms into the possibility of a real and loving relationship. Laurie also offers Cordelia the chance to inhabit her body in a way that it was not possible for her to do during her marriage to George and acts as an anodyne to the slumbering ennui of Cordelia’s past life. She forces Cordelia back into the world of people, a world that Cordelia had let slip away under the shadow of George’s natural gregariousness, his erudition, and charm and his almost indefatigable appetite for causes and charities.

Read more: Lisa Kerrigan reviews 'Tasting Salt' by Stephanie Dowrick

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Peter Pierce reviews Lines of Fire: Manning Clark and Other Writings by Peter Ryan
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This collection of Peter Ryan’s writings, Lines of Fire, is no grab-bag of oddments. The pieces included here are given an impressive unity by the author’s imposition of his presence, by his trenchancy, elegance of expression, a desire to honour the men and women of his younger days and to excoriate a present Australia in which too many people wallow in ‘an unwholesome masochistic guilt’. The finely designed cover shows a wry, ageing, wrinkled Ryan smiling benignly over his own shoulder, or rather that of his younger self, in uniform, in late teenage, during the Second World War. What happened in between is richly revealed in the elements of Lines of Fire.
Book 1 Title: Lines of Fire
Book 1 Subtitle: Manning Clark and Other Writings
Book Author: Peter Ryan
Book 1 Biblio: Clarion Editions, $19.95 pb, 256 pp
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This collection of Peter Ryan’s writings, Lines of Fire, is no grab-bag of oddments. The pieces included here are given an impressive unity by the author’s imposition of his presence, by his trenchancy, elegance of expression, a desire to honour the men and women of his younger days and to excoriate a present Australia in which too many people wallow in ‘an unwholesome masochistic guilt’. The finely designed cover shows a wry, ageing, wrinkled Ryan smiling benignly over his own shoulder, or rather that of his younger self, in uniform, in late teenage, during the Second World War. What happened in between is richly revealed in the elements of Lines of Fire.

Read more: Peter Pierce reviews 'Lines of Fire: Manning Clark and Other Writings' by Peter Ryan

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Bev Braune reviews Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems by David P. Reiter
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David Reiter’s fourth book, Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems, opens with the selected work followed by poems that may prove difficult for those who find the sparing endnotes insufficient to enlighten them on Reiter’s subtleties, but often exciting for Hemingway aficionados.
Book 1 Title: Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems
Book Author: David P. Reiter
Book 1 Biblio: Interactive Press $17.95 pb, 182 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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David Reiter’s fourth book, Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems, opens with the selected work followed by poems that may prove difficult for those who find the sparing endnotes insufficient to enlighten them on Reiter’s subtleties, but often exciting for Hemingway aficionados.

I was eager to read this volume, remembering my 1981 trip to Key West while doing a brief stint at Miami University. I went looking for Hemingway’s hang-out, Sloppy Joe’s, hoping for a great find like John Tranter’s Egypt ‘sunning itself’. What stayed with me was another little bar populated by some of Hemingway’s men ‘try[ing] to kill the sun’, or waiting ‘to decipher’ some ‘undisturbed grave’ (‘Ghosts of the Castle at Calahorra’).

Read more: Bev Braune reviews 'Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems' by David P. Reiter

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Joy Damousi reviews ‘Barmaids: A history of women’s work in pubs’ by Diane Kirkby
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Article Title: Called to the bar
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No icon better encapsulates the ethos of male culture than the pub. Sharing a beer in this bastion of male conviviality has been a defining experience in shaping Australian male identity. The pub as a cultural and social institution has attracted the attention of many historians, but none have considered the ubiquitous and yet mysteriously anonymous figure of the barmaid. Although represented in fiction and film, and up until recently, a part of the very fabric of pub culture, the barmaid remains an elusive figure in Australian history.
Book 1 Title: Barmaids
Book 1 Subtitle: A history of women’s work in pubs
Book Author: Diane Kirkby
Book 1 Biblio: Cambridge University Press $90 hb, $29.95 pb, 256 pp
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No icon better encapsulates the ethos of male culture than the pub. Sharing a beer in this bastion of male conviviality has been a defining experience in shaping Australian male identity. The pub as a cultural and social institution has attracted the attention of many historians, but none have considered the ubiquitous and yet mysteriously anonymous figure of the barmaid. Although represented in fiction and film, and up until recently, a part of the very fabric of pub culture, the barmaid remains an elusive figure in Australian history.

Diane Kirkby’s meticulously researched and visually arresting cultural history seeks to redress this absence. Barmaids takes us through the beginnings of the pub houses, which were modelled on the English, although they quickly assumed their own character and particular style. As Kirkby notes, hotel keeping was commonly associated with hospitality, so it was perceived as an appropriate occupation for women. Throughout the nineteenth century, many women ran rural pubs either in partnership with husbands, lovers, friends, or on their own as single women. Inextricably tied to colonialism, the pub also served to exclude Aborigines and service those who sought to dispossess them.

Read more: Joy Damousi reviews ‘Barmaids: A history of women’s work in pubs’ by Diane Kirkby

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Guy Rundle reviews Remaking Men: The revolution in masculinity by David Tacey
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Whatever happened to the men’s movement? Was it only a few years ago that we all gathered in the Dandenongs to bang drums, fashion spears, and – I quote from a flier advertising one such event – hug all night in ‘greased cuddle piles’. Now the tribes of management consultants, computer programmers and, well, wimps have retreated from view (to the chagrin of stand-up comedians everywhere) and the copies of Iron John litter the twenty cent tables of the second-hand bookstores.
Book 1 Title: Remaking Men
Book 1 Subtitle: The revolution in masculinity
Book Author: David Tacey
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $19.95 pb., 222 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/DVrJZ2
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Whatever happened to the men’s movement? Was it only a few years ago that we all gathered in the Dandenongs to bang drums, fashion spears, and – I quote from a flier advertising one such event – hug all night in ‘greased cuddle piles’. Now the tribes of management consultants, computer programmers and, well, wimps have retreated from view (to the chagrin of stand-up comedians everywhere) and the copies of Iron John litter the twenty cent tables of the second-hand bookstores.

Read more: Guy Rundle reviews 'Remaking Men: The revolution in masculinity' by David Tacey

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Pam Macintyre reviews Burning for Revenge by John Marsden
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The fifth book in a planned series of seven would not be surprising if it were science fiction or fantasy. But Burning for Revenge is neither, rather its connections are with the much more currently unfashionable genres of adventure and war stories. And what a war adventure series it is. This fifth volume, in hardback, has been on the bestseller lists in this journal and daily newspapers since its publication – not usual for young adult books. The first, Tomorrow When the War Began, is fourth on Angus & Robertson’s Top 100 Books Voted by Australians – after Bryce Courtenay, but before the Bible!
Book 1 Title: Burning for Revenge
Book Author: John Marsden
Book 1 Biblio: Pan Macmillan, $22.95 hb, 274 pp
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Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/x9PRv1
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The fifth book in a planned series of seven would not be surprising if it were science fiction or fantasy. But Burning for Revenge is neither, rather its connections are with the much more currently unfashionable genres of adventure and war stories. And what a war adventure series it is. This fifth volume, in hardback, has been on the bestseller lists in this journal and daily newspapers since its publication – not usual for young adult books. The first, Tomorrow When the War Began, is fourth on Angus & Robertson’s Top 100 Books Voted by Australians – after Bryce Courtenay, but before the Bible!

Read more: Pam Macintyre reviews 'Burning for Revenge' by John Marsden

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Brenda Walker reviews Capital, Volume One by Anthony Macris
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The point of return in this highly moveable associative novel is the London Underground, not as an instance of efficiency or even the most modest and individual progression, but rather as a static enclosure where creatures and people are delayed, starved, balked, pained by the straps or handles of their baggage and, most overwhelmingly, alone.
Book 1 Title: Capital, Volume One
Book Author: Anthony Macris
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $16.95 pb, 228 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/mgB0vM
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The point of return in this highly moveable associative novel is the London Underground, not as an instance of efficiency or even the most modest and individual progression, but rather as a static enclosure where creatures and people are delayed, starved, balked, pained by the straps or handles of their baggage and, most overwhelmingly, alone.

Read more: Brenda Walker reviews 'Capital, Volume One' by Anthony Macris

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John Birmingham reviews Confessions of an S&M Virgin by Linda Jaivin
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One hardly knew where to look. There were breasts everywhere. Not dozens of them mind you. Just two. On Mistress Sabine. The left mammary with a disturbing blue vein running over it, seeming to fill half the room on its lonesome. Other bits and pieces of the Mistress bulged alarmingly around the inadequate constraints of her leather fetish outfit, threatening to break free completely as she tied up Linda Jaivin and administered a paddling at the launch of the author’s Confessions of an S&M Virgin.
Book 1 Title: Confessions of an S&M Virgin
Book Author: Linda Jaivin
Book 1 Biblio: Text Publishing, $19.95 pb, 208 pp
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Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/yR5Bv3
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One hardly knew where to look. There were breasts everywhere. Not dozens of them mind you. Just two. On Mistress Sabine. The left mammary with a disturbing blue vein running over it, seeming to fill half the room on its lonesome. Other bits and pieces of the Mistress bulged alarmingly around the inadequate constraints of her leather fetish outfit, threatening to break free completely as she tied up Linda Jaivin and administered a paddling at the launch of the author’s Confessions of an S&M Virgin.

Read more: John Birmingham reviews 'Confessions of an S&M Virgin' by Linda Jaivin

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Delia Falconer reviews Fathers in Writing edited by Ross Fitzgerald and Ken Spillman
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I am still puzzling over why Ross Fitzgerald and Ken Spillman chose the odd title, Fathers in Writing, for this anthology of personal essays. Because of its academic resonance, I first assumed that this book would be a scholarly analysis of father figures in literature – or, perhaps, following on from the work of certain feminist theorists, that it would look at how different valorisations of ‘fatherhood’ are embedded in language itself. Then, once I learned that this was an anthology of Australian writing, the title led me to expect a collection of extracts from literature previously published. Or, if these were newly commissioned essays, that they would be pieces in which the difficulties and pleasures of the act of writing itself would take centre stage.
Book 1 Title: Fathers in Writing
Book Author: Ross Fitzgerald and Ken Spillman
Book 1 Biblio: Tuart House (UWAP) $29.95pb, 288pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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I am still puzzling over why Ross Fitzgerald and Ken Spillman chose the odd title, Fathers in Writing, for this anthology of personal essays. Because of its academic resonance, I first assumed that this book would be a scholarly analysis of father figures in literature – or, perhaps, following on from the work of certain feminist theorists, that it would look at how different valorisations of ‘fatherhood’ are embedded in language itself. Then, once I learned that this was an anthology of Australian writing, the title led me to expect a collection of extracts from literature previously published. Or, if these were newly commissioned essays, that they would be pieces in which the difficulties and pleasures of the act of writing itself would take centre stage.

Read more: Delia Falconer reviews 'Fathers in Writing' edited by Ross Fitzgerald and Ken Spillman

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Philippa Hawker reviews Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes
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What do the fab four of this book have in common? Not simply that they are Australian and expatriate, that they are writers who have achieved a degree of celebrity and performers who have made skilful use of television.
Book 1 Title: Once an Australian
Book 1 Subtitle: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes
Book Author: Ian Britain
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $39.95hb, 290pp
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What do the fab four of this book have in common? Not simply that they are Australian and expatriate, that they are writers who have achieved a degree of celebrity and performers who have made skilful use of television.

Read more: Philippa Hawker reviews 'Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine...

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Terri-ann White reviews Swallowing Clouds by Lillian Ng
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The funny ways we have of writing about sex and how rarely it really works. The memory of how it feels, what is involved, what it means. How strenuously we, as writers and as people who have done it and then talk or write about it, try to capture the movement and intensities we remember. And how ludicrously it so often comes out at that second division, once removed from the flesh and heat.
Book 1 Title: Swallowing Clouds
Book Author: Lillian Ng
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $19.95pb, 305pp
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The funny ways we have of writing about sex and how rarely it really works. The memory of how it feels, what is involved, what it means. How strenuously we, as writers and as people who have done it and then talk or write about it, try to capture the movement and intensities we remember. And how ludicrously it so often comes out at that second division, once removed from the flesh and heat.

Read more: Terri-ann White reviews 'Swallowing Clouds' by Lillian Ng

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Sarah Dowse reviews Last Walk in Naryshkin Park by Rose Zwi
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Holocaust denial comes in many guises. One is the comfortable belief that European nationals were ignorant of the slaughter of their fellow Jewish citizens, and would have been appalled had they known. Daniel Goldhagen’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust has been the most controversial challenge to this so far, but it is not alone. Abraham Biderman, survivor of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, whose memoir The World of My Past had difficulty finding a publisher here but went on to win awards, is reluctant to exaggerate about the Poles. Nevertheless he writes, ‘With hindsight, however, it seems to me that the majority of them were happy to see the Jews destroyed.’
Book 1 Title: Last Walk in Naryshkin Park
Book Author: Rose Zwi
Book 1 Biblio: Spinifex Press, $24.95 pb, 252 pp
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Holocaust denial comes in many guises. One is the comfortable belief that European nationals were ignorant of the slaughter of their fellow Jewish citizens, and would have been appalled had they known. Daniel Goldhagen’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust has been the most controversial challenge to this so far, but it is not alone. Abraham Biderman, survivor of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, whose memoir The World of My Past had difficulty finding a publisher here but went on to win awards, is reluctant to exaggerate about the Poles. Nevertheless he writes, ‘With hindsight, however, it seems to me that the majority of them were happy to see the Jews destroyed.’

Now in Rose Zwi’s sensitively written Last Walk in Naryshkin Park we have an examination of Lithuanian complicity. Naryshkin Park was a wooded space outside the small town of Zhager, a place where couples met, families went for walks, weddings were conducted, but today it is a mass grave. Three thousand Jewish men, women and children were massacred there in 1941, but it is only within the last decade that their Jewishness has been publicly acknowledged. Hitherto, they were merely ‘victims of fascism’. The Soviets were anti-Semites too.

Read more: Sarah Dowse reviews 'Last Walk in Naryshkin Park' by Rose Zwi

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Michael McGirr reviews Intellectuals and Publics by Paolo Bartolini, Karen Lynch, and Shane Kendal
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About ten years ago, the British writer, Paul Johnson, published a book called Intellectuals. He had evidently formed a low impression of the species. If you look up ‘intellectual’ in the index you won’t find a list of learned personalities, nor of publications, nor of universities or academic societies. Instead you’ll find references to aggressiveness, violence, cowardice, cruelty, dishonesty, egoism, hypocrisy, vanity, snobbery, intolerance, self-pity and so on. If you think the index is nasty, wait till you try the book.
Book 1 Title: Intellectuals and Publics
Book 1 Subtitle: Essays on Cultural Theory and Practice
Book Author: Paolo Bartolini, Karen Lynch, and Shane Kendal
Book 1 Biblio: School of English, Latrobe University $15pb, 144pp
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PIC TO BE ADDED TO MAJOR 197 Dec Jan 1997 Intellectuals and Publics Michael McGirr

About ten years ago, the British writer, Paul Johnson, published a book called Intellectuals. He had evidently formed a low impression of the species. If you look up ‘intellectual’ in the index you won’t find a list of learned personalities, nor of publications, nor of universities or academic societies. Instead you’ll find references to aggressiveness, violence, cowardice, cruelty, dishonesty, egoism, hypocrisy, vanity, snobbery, intolerance, self-pity and so on. If you think the index is nasty, wait till you try the book.

Intellectuals and Publics draws on a far narrower field than Johnson. Johnson surveys the whole of western history since the enlightenment; these ‘essays on cultural theory and practice’ are largely preoccupied by the fortunes of a smallish group of thinkers and writers, in Australia, in the present. Occasionally, some historical context is added by somebody, such as McKenzie Wark in his contribution, referrers to experiences of twenty years ago. Even so, the book brings together a far wider range of images of ‘intellectuals’ and attitudes to ‘publics’ than Johnson is bothered with.

Read more: Michael McGirr reviews 'Intellectuals and Publics' by Paolo Bartolini, Karen Lynch, and Shane Kendal

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J.R Carroll reviews Kicking in Danger by Alan Wearne
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A kidnapping forms the centrepiece of Alan Wearne’s Kicking in Danger, an Australian Rules mystery bearing the imprimatur of such diverse luminaries as Ron Barassi and Peter Craven. The only other football mystery I know about is Death in the Back Pocket, which failed to kick a goal, but thankfully Wearne’s tilt is much more successful. He is better known for his epic verse novel The Nightmarkets, but with this book he has shown his true colours, which are red and black. A true Bomberholic, he boasts an impressive store of club lore and trivia. In fact, sometimes the book seems to be merely an excuse for him to flaunt his knowledge and obvious love of the game.
Book 1 Title: Kicking in Danger
Book Author: Alan Wearne
Book 1 Biblio: Black Pepper, $16.95 pb, 177 pp
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A kidnapping forms the centrepiece of Alan Wearne’s Kicking in Danger, an Australian Rules mystery bearing the imprimatur of such diverse luminaries as Ron Barassi and Peter Craven. The only other football mystery I know about is Death in the Back Pocket, which failed to kick a goal, but thankfully Wearne’s tilt is much more successful. He is better known for his epic verse novel The Nightmarkets, but with this book he has shown his true colours, which are red and black. A true Bomberholic, he boasts an impressive store of club lore and trivia. In fact, sometimes the book seems to be merely an excuse for him to flaunt his knowledge and obvious love of the game.

The protagonist in Kicking in Danger is super-sleuth to the sporting world, Damien Chubb, who was a ruckman for Essendon in the 1960s and 1970s, before the advent of Simon Madden, but the thing he is remembered most for is tangling – unwisely – with Big Nick in the 1968 Grand Final. I was there, but must have missed it. Now, however, Collingwood superstar Johnny Moomba is missing, and with the Grand Final a week away Chubb has to find him fast. Moomba is so good he makes Gary Ablett look like a bush hack: mega-goalkicker, hot favourite for the Brownlow and high-profile Aboriginal activist – and he plays for Collingwood, which is a nice ironic touch.

Read more: J.R Carroll reviews 'Kicking in Danger' by Alan Wearne

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Katherine England reviews If God Sleeps by J.M. Calder
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Custom Highlight Text: Justice is traditionally depicted blindfolded – fair game, one might think, for those who would stack her scales. If God sleeps, who looks out for His little ones in a system that increasingly values property above the person, and expediency above all?
Book 1 Title: If God Sleeps
Book Author: J.M. Calder
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $16.95pb, 357pp
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Justice is traditionally depicted blindfolded – fair game, one might think, for those who would stack her scales. If God sleeps, who looks out for His little ones in a system that increasingly values property above the person, and expediency above all?

This pacy American crime thriller from an intriguing new Australian voice responds to the common current perception that justice is weighted against the victim, particularly women and children, and that the courts hold life cheap. Demoralised judges, already concerned, according to the ABC, about declines in pay and public respect, will get no joy from J.M. Calder’s caustic representation.

Chief dispenser of acid is Calder’s star cop, Lieutenant Solomon Glass of the unnamed City’s Police Department, a scarred and seamy veteran with all the traditional attributes - a smart mouth, a dark past, a classical education and a load of attitude. Malone is his equally standard-issue young Irish side­kick, dewy-eyed with respect and loyalty, but able on occasion to give as good as he gets: ‘Under one seat he’d found a paperback. An old Penguin Iliad. Strange what Soll went for. Malone had always had him down as an Odyssey man.’

Read more: Katherine England reviews 'If God Sleeps' by J.M. Calder

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters - 1997 December - 1998 January
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Dear Editor,

As the convenor of the conference ‘The Public, the Intellectuals and the Public Intellectual’ (La Trobe University, May 1996), and as co-editor of the collection of essays, Intellectuals and Publics: Essays on Cultural Theory and Practice, I have followed the discussion generated by the publication of Mark Davis’s book Gangland with great interest. Besides a certain repetitiveness of some of the pieces comprising the symposium featured in the last issue of ABR, I found that discussion much more relaxed than the somewhat visceral and even hysterical responses filling the pages of Australian newspapers days after Gangland was released. Incidentally, it was good editorial vision to combine the symposium on gatekeeping with two related and important essays, ‘Literary Authority’ by Ivor Indyk and ‘The Role of the Critic’ by Brian Castro.
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From Paolo Bartoloni

Dear Editor,

As the convenor of the conference ‘The Public, the Intellectuals and the Public Intellectual’ (La Trobe University, May 1996), and as co-editor of the collection of essays, Intellectuals and Publics: Essays on Cultural Theory and Practice, I have followed the discussion generated by the publication of Mark Davis’s book Gangland with great interest. Besides a certain repetitiveness of some of the pieces comprising the symposium featured in the last issue of ABR, I found that discussion much more relaxed than the somewhat visceral and even hysterical responses filling the pages of Australian newspapers days after Gangland was released. Incidentally, it was good editorial vision to combine the symposium on gatekeeping with two related and important essays, ‘Literary Authority’ by Ivor Indyk and ‘The Role of the Critic’ by Brian Castro.

Read more: Letters - December 1997 - January 1998

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Elizabeth Jolley reviews A Biased Memoir by Ruth Cracknell
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Custom Article Title: Bugger The Scenery. Where’s the butter?
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Article Title: Bugger The Scenery. Where’s the butter?
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David Marr, in his biography of Patrick White, makes the statement that White saw suffering as a force of history shaping human life and events. The worst suffering of all being loneliness and the need to be rescued from it. White is quoted as saying; ‘I have always found in my own case that something positive, either creative or moral, has come out of anything I have experienced in the way of affliction.’ Marr explains that White admired, in others, signs of his own ambivalence: ‘men of unexpected gentleness and women with masculine strength’. A realisation, an explanation, sensed in childhood and expressed when he was an old man. Perhaps the inheritance for many sensitive and perceptive children.
Book 1 Title: A Biased Memoir
Book Author: Ruth Cracknell
Book 1 Biblio: Viking
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David Marr, in his biography of Patrick White, makes the statement that White saw suffering as a force of history shaping human life and events. The worst suffering of all being loneliness and the need to be rescued from it. White is quoted as saying; ‘I have always found in my own case that something positive, either creative or moral, has come out of anything I have experienced in the way of affliction.’ Marr explains that White admired, in others, signs of his own ambivalence: ‘men of unexpected gentleness and women with masculine strength’. A realisation, an explanation, sensed in childhood and expressed when he was an old man. Perhaps the inheritance for many sensitive and perceptive children.

Read more: Elizabeth Jolley reviews ' A Biased Memoir' by Ruth Cracknell

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Elizabeth Jolley reviews A Biased Memoir by Ruth Cracknell
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David Marr, in his biography of Patrick White, makes the statement that White saw suffering as a force of history shaping human life and events. The worst suffering of all being loneliness and the need to be rescued from it. White is quoted as saying; ‘I have always found in my own case that something positive, either creative or moral, has come out of anything I have experienced in the way of affliction.’ Marr explains that White admired, in others, signs of his own ambivalence: ‘men of unexpected gentleness and women with masculine strength’. A realisation, an explanation, sensed in childhood and expressed when he was an old man. Perhaps the inheritance for many sensitive and perceptive children.
Book 1 Title: A Biased Memoir
Book Author: Ruth Cracknell
Book 1 Biblio: Viking
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David Marr, in his biography of Patrick White, makes the statement that White saw suffering as a force of history shaping human life and events. The worst suffering of all being loneliness and the need to be rescued from it. White is quoted as saying; ‘I have always found in my own case that something positive, either creative or moral, has come out of anything I have experienced in the way of affliction.’ Marr explains that White admired, in others, signs of his own ambivalence: ‘men of unexpected gentleness and women with masculine strength’. A realisation, an explanation, sensed in childhood and expressed when he was an old man. Perhaps the inheritance for many sensitive and perceptive children.

Many people are exiles, either from choice or for some unrelenting reason. Whether we like it or not, we are all exiles, without choice, from childhood. Certain experiences during childhood shape our lives later on. Memories from Ruth Cracknell’s childhood present the reader with a sensitive and perceptive child and, at the same time, an adult able to bring to the printed page some of the realisations and explanations from certain events and certain people.

Read more: Elizabeth Jolley reviews 'A Biased Memoir' by Ruth Cracknell

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