Hugh Mackay collects and sells information in a highly competitive market. He is not the Australian Bureau of Statistics nor is he Newspoll. He is not in the same area of poll-pushing as, say, radical feminists. His polling is not as comprehensively ‘scientific’ as some, nor is it driven by the desire to provide statistical support for an ideology. The people who buy the anecdotal information in The Mackay Reports also buy other pollster’s results. And his corporate customers are not such dills that they are incapable of assessing the particular values of the different types of opinion sampling.

Hugh Mackay is an outstanding communicator, both spoken and written. That is why he is always welcome on radio and television programs. He is interesting. He is fun. He is also modest and doesn’t claim more for himself or his methodology than is appropriate.

In his own modest way, Hugh is a star. He contributes something to our understanding of ourselves. He rises above the pack and stands out a little. He is an honest man of unassailable integrity. I hesitate to say this, but let’s face it, Hugh Mackay is a tall poppy. An irresistible target for a bitter little cutter.

I understand the mean motivations of the poppy lopper. What I don’t understand is why the National Library of Australia and Australian Book Review should pay such petty spirits to wound a fine man.

Terry Lane, Blackburn, Vic.

(Editor’s comment: The National Library of Australia sponsors the essay series but has no editorial role in the essays or the ABR in general. Neither the National Library of Australia nor ABR paid ‘to wound a fine man’. ABR commissioned an essay by Richard Hall, on a topic of his choice. ABR stands by the publication of that essay, just as it stands by Hugh Mackay’s right of reply, which is published in this issue.)

Dear Editor,

Peter Craven’s review of Natalie Jane Prior’s The Demidenko Diary¸ in the Feb/March ABR, is certainly the most honest and illuminating look at this book I’ve seen so far – a book that has been misrepresented by most other reviewers high on false indignation. Craven certainly read what was there, instead of making up his mind about it before he started, as too many others have done. He shows quite clearly that the Diary, despite making for uncomfortable reading at times, is a worthwhile addition to the ‘Demidenko’ shelf.

But I fail to see the relevance of this:

…given the limits of her critical and historical understanding, it is striking that she should say that Demidenko’s chosen theme (war turns people into animals) was an irresponsible and unfortunate one to explore in the context of Jews and Ukrainians. Out of the mouths of children’s novelists [my emphasis]

Mr Craven, it may surprise you to know that children’s novelists are not retarded or overgrown children; that writing children’s novels does not go hand in hand with political, critical, cultural or historical naivety and ignorance, just as writing ‘adult’ books does not mean you have a stunted imagination. One of the most patronising aspects of the anti-Prior bandwagon has been its assumption that someone who writes children’s novels should not have the temerity to contribute to something that should be left to the ‘grownups’. And I am really disappointed to see  Peter Craven’s otherwise measured and reflective review marred by such an unthinking aphorism.

Sophie Masson, Invergowrie, NSW

Dear Editor,

I endorsed Christopher Heathcote’s comments (‘Letters’, ABR Feb/March 1996, p. 4) concerning his disappointment that his book, A Quiet Revolution: The Rise of Australian Art 1946-1968, was not given to an art historian to review. I had very similar feelings when I read Peter Timms’ misinterpretation/review of my book,  Roy de Maistre, The English Years 1930-1968 (ABR, July 1995) but refrained from comment at the time.

There are dozens of well-trained art historians in this country who are adequately equipped and more than capable of writing informed reviews of books on art history. It is a great pity that Australian Book Review does not use them.

To demonstrate the difference in a review of an art history book by an art historian and the reviews published by ABR, I would draw your readers’ attention to the review of Christopher Heathcote’s book by Juliet Peers (Artlink, Vol. 16, No. 1, Autumn 1996, p. 83) and Mary Eagle’s (Art and Australia, Vol. 33, No. 1 Spring 1995, pp.42-3) and Sasha Grishin’s (Canberra Times, 12 August 1995, p. C12) reviews of my book.

Heather Johnson, West Pennant Hills, NSW

Dear Editor,

John Hanrahan’s review of my book, Ned Kelly: A Short Life (ABR Feb/March), is a confused and confusing exercise, layered as it is within thin slices of praise and generous slabs of denigration. This could be seen as your reviewer trying for balance. If  he tried, he failed spectacularly, largely because his obvious and deeply ingrained prejudice against Ned Kelly demanded detraction. So he flips to and fro like a literary shuttlecock. When I acknowledge Ned Kelly’s more admirable qualities, I am ‘mythologising’. When I point to his lies, blunders and failings, it is ‘tokenism’. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Hanrahan starts flailing. The book ‘does not vastly extend our knowledge of Kelly and his family’, he trumpets – probably because the dustjacket blurb modestly lists only a few examples of new material. One could ask how he defines ‘not vastly’. More to the point, this lofty judgement implies detailed knowledge of published Kellyana which Hanrahan fails to demonstrate – never more than in his ignorance of my 1992 work devoted to Joe Byrne and Aaron Sherritt – a broad gap in his knowledge which later traps him.

Hanrahan continues, ‘Some of Jones’ conclusions are irrefutable. Ned Kelly always told the truth except when he was lying.’ This is a facile dismissal of a major thread of Kelly’s life. He was usually truthful. His lies stand out like maternity garments, advertising what they were supposed to conceal – almost invariably someone else’s complicity in his crimes. The significance escapes your reviewer.

In an equally facile way, Hanrahan dismisses the Kelly Gang’s ‘unbushranger-like’ behaviour by scoffing,

They paid for their booze and food when they were on their way to rob a bank. Jones draws deep conclusions from this, but passes over the obvious one. It is not a good idea to run a red light when you’re going off to your job robbing banks.

Hanrahan airily ignores the fact that at this stage the Kellys were desperate men (the ‘booze’ was a bottle of brandy for a wounded Dan Kelly). They were on the run with ten horses through flooded country, barely two days after the three police killings at Stringybark Creek. But, as ever, we mustn’t let facts or details stand in the way of a cheap, anti-Kelly swipe.

Hanrahan repeatedly attacks me for what he calls ‘probabilism’ (in his odd historical world either there is no place for theory and conjecture or it must be glossed as fact). Yet he launches into ‘mayism’ with a theory about Ned Kelly’s two outlawry letters, declaiming that Joe Byrne ‘may have written more than Ned did’, attacking me for not giving Joe adequate credit for his role.

This is risible, especially given the face that I am the first writer to analyse Joe’s contribution to the letters (I repeatedly describe them as ‘Ned’s and Joe’s’) and the first to demonstrate that both letters were in Joe’s handwriting.

Perhaps Hanrahan’s silliest claim is that I am ‘a passionate supporter of the Kelly mythology’. While conceding what he calls my ‘awesome scholarship’, he claims that I am ‘more interested in mythologising than in asking questions or exploring facts’. I fail to see how a biographer can display scholarship – at the most rudimentary level – without ‘asking questions or exploring facts’. This aside, according to Hanrahan I have devoted my ‘awesome’ ability – whatever it might be – along with fifty-four years of my life, to nothing more meaningful than the creation of a mythological framework so flimsy that he can tear it down with a careless fingertip dance on his keyboard.

Far from trying to perpetuate or proliferate Kelly mythology in my book, I dissect it – in particular, stressing the extent to which it was created by Ned and Joe during the Gang’s outlawry.

In my book, says Hanrahan, ‘the man Kelly remains forever wandering in the mists of legend, armoured forever in folklore’. The ‘mists’ and ‘armoured’ images highlight a significant gap in his review and betray the very core of his problem, the great bane of Ned Kelly’s detractors – his last fight in the winter dawn at Glenrowan. Hanrahan simply cannot deal with the moral and physical courage, the extraordinary level of endurance displayed in that event. Yes, Kelly touched greatness there. Yes, he created a legend there. But what he was and what he did were real, and 110 years of foot-stamping and name-calling by the Hanrahans of this world have done nothing to detract of that reality.

I am assured that John Hanrahan has written some splendid reviews. More than ever, the current exercise emerges as a regrettable aberration.

Ian Jones, Malvern, Vic

(John Hanrahan’s reply:

Ian Jones is as fine an apologist for himself as he is for Ned Kelly, a man I still admire even after reading and enjoying Jones’ attempt at apotheosis. I’m aware of Jones’ extensive work on ‘the Kelly Outbreak’, and can only urge people to read his latest book and use their own intelligence to see if they agree with Jones’ judgment of himself or mine of him.)

Dear Editor,

I am, as yet, an unpublished writer, and was interested to read the letter from Rod Anderson in the Feb/March ABR. I have written two novels and am currently writing my third, while gestating a fourth.

So as to improve my chances of having my first manuscript at least scanned I too submitted it to the National Book Council for assessment. The report was pleasing:

This is an elegant and engrossing novel written with sensitivity and flair. The author is clearly a master of narrative technique and the reader was carried forward almost without paused. A real page turner.

This is essentially a lyrical book … The last pages were very adroitly managed…I thought this was all the mark of a skilful writer and craftsman…a very good command of your techniques, you are skilled in writing fiction, and that this manuscript should have little difficulty in finding a publisher.

So now, I thought, I had my battering ram to knock down the gates of ‘fortress publishing’. However the gates seemed to have now turned to rubber and bounced me back on my butt. I have sent the report to three publishers and none of them have shown any interest in seeing the manuscript. What does it take to make a publisher investigate another possible writer for his or her ‘stable’?

            Makes me feel like a horse so I’ll just trot off to the local bookshop and buy a copy of Australian Guide to Getting Published, find out where I went wrong, and start all over again.

Ron Thomas, Naranga, Queensland