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Absolutely Revolting

August 1988, no. 103

Welcome to the August 1988 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Pamela Payne Heckenberg reviews Patrick White by May-Brit Akerholt and Jack Hibberd by Paul McGillick
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
Custom Article Title: Pamela Payne Heckenberg reviews 'Patrick White' by May-Brit Akerholt and 'Jack Hibberd' by Paul McGillick
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Article Title: Contemporary theatre
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Although it is accidental that these two books have been released simultaneously (they just happen to be numbers two and three in a series of monographs on Australian playwrights) it’s a fortuitous accident. In form, they provide examples of two markedly contrasting and entirely appropriate methods of dealing with the work of a playwright. And historically, both Patrick White and Jack Hibberd have been landmark playwrights. Together they may well share the honours for the instigation of the most critical vitriol in the Australian press. At the same time, their work has always generated fervent praise and support from theatre critics, practitioners, and audience members who want theatre that is surprising, challenging, and innovative.
Book 1 Title: Patrick White
Book Author: May-Brit Akerholt
Book 1 Biblio: Editions Rodopi, $20.00 pb, 153 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Jack Hibberd
Book 2 Author: Paul McGillick
Book 2 Biblio: Editions Rodopi, $20.00 pb, 153 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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Although it is accidental that these two books have been released simultaneously (they just happen to be numbers two and three in a series of monographs on Australian playwrights) it’s a fortuitous accident. In form, they provide examples of two markedly contrasting and entirely appropriate methods of dealing with the work of a playwright. And historically, both Patrick White and Jack Hibberd have been landmark playwrights. Together they may well share the honours for the instigation of the most critical vitriol in the Australian press. At the same time, their work has always generated fervent praise and support from theatre critics, practitioners, and audience members who want theatre that is surprising, challenging, and innovative.

Read more: Pamela Payne Heckenberg reviews 'Patrick White' by May-Brit Akerholt and 'Jack Hibberd' by Paul...

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Contents Category: Australian History
Custom Article Title: Bill Garner reviews 'La Mama: The story of a theatre' by Liz Jones, Betty Burstall, and Helen Garner
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Article Title: 'Whatever happened to realism'
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The most impressive building in the village of Tepoztlán, near Cuernavaca, is a huge sixteenth century Spanish monastery. But high up on the cliffs, when the mist rises, you can see – if you know where to look – a tiny Indian temple which everyone in the valley knows is where the gods really live.

La Mama is like that – to those who know it. But even the watchers on the bank know that theatre is built on a foundation of human sacrifice, so it is not surprising that La Mama should, on close inspection, turn out to be a regular little charnel house, a bloody altar on which all sorts of queer and callous rituals are performed in the hope of raising up the great gods Laughter and Applause. Apparently I sacrificed a wife and child there myself.
Book 1 Title: La Mama
Book 1 Subtitle: The story of a theatre
Book Author: Liz Jones, Betty Burstall, and Helen Garner
Book 1 Biblio: Mcphee Gribble $16.99 pb, 112 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The most impressive building in the village of Tepoztlán, near Cuernavaca, is a huge sixteenth century Spanish monastery. But high up on the cliffs, when the mist rises, you can see – if you know where to look – a tiny Indian temple which everyone in the valley knows is where the gods really live.

La Mama is like that – to those who know it. But even the watchers on the bank know that theatre is built on a foundation of human sacrifice, so it is not surprising that La Mama should, on close inspection, turn out to be a regular little charnel house, a bloody altar on which all sorts of queer and callous rituals are performed in the hope of raising up the great gods Laughter and Applause. Apparently I sacrificed a wife and child there myself.

Read more: Bill Garner reviews 'La Mama: The story of a theatre' by Liz Jones, Betty Burstall, and Helen Garner

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Contents Category: Tribute
Custom Article Title: Mary lord on 'Celebrating Olga Masters'
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Article Title: Celebrating Olga Masters
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Somewhere between seventy and eighty enthusiasts attended a conference at the University of Wollongong on 10–12 July to celebrate the work of Olga Masters, the award-winning novelist and short story writer who died in 1986. It was not the usual academic conference by anyone’s standards although, as might be expected, some academic papers were given. Interesting and provocative as these were, they were greatly overshadowed by the readings from Masters’s works by two of Olga’s daughters, Sue and Debra, a rehearsed play-reading by Wollongong’s professional theatre company, Theatre South, of Poor Man’s Castle published by Currency, and lively reminiscences of their mother by two of Olga’s sons, Roy and Chris.
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Somewhere between seventy and eighty enthusiasts attended a conference at the University of Wollongong on 10–12 July to celebrate the work of Olga Masters, the award-winning novelist and short story writer who died in 1986. It was not the usual academic conference by anyone’s standards although, as might be expected, some academic papers were given. Interesting and provocative as these were, they were greatly overshadowed by the readings from Masters’s works by two of Olga’s daughters, Sue and Debra, a rehearsed play-reading by Wollongong’s professional theatre company, Theatre South, of Poor Man’s Castle published by Currency, and lively reminiscences of their mother by two of Olga’s sons, Roy and Chris.

Read more: Mary Lord on 'Celebrating Olga Masters'

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Brenda Niall reviews In the Half-Light edited by Jacqueline Kent
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Contents Category: Non-fiction
Custom Article Title: Brenda Niall reviews 'In the Half-Light' edited by Jacqueline Kent
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Article Title: Ordinary lives made extraordinary
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Telling one’s own story comes naturally: we are all in some sense autobiographers. There is nothing new in the urge to seek a pattern in a life while living it, to advertise an ego, to explain, confess, justify, understand – or simply to say ‘I was there’. What is new is the comparative ease with which the urge can be accommodated and the ‘self-life’ made into text.

The current interest in the narratives of ‘ordinary people’ is attested by the extraordinary success of Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life. It may also be seen in some recent and important scholarly enterprises such as the nineteenth century Australian women’s diaries published by Lucy Frost in No Place for a Nervous Lady or the oral histories from which Janet McCalman constructed inner urban Richmond in the depression years as Struggletown.
Book 1 Title: In the Half-Light
Book 1 Subtitle: Life as a child in Australia 1900-1970
Book Author: Jacqueline Kent
Book 1 Biblio: Angus and Robertson, $24.95 hb, 265 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Telling one’s own story comes naturally: we are all in some sense autobiographers. There is nothing new in the urge to seek a pattern in a life while living it, to advertise an ego, to explain, confess, justify, understand – or simply to say ‘I was there’. What is new is the comparative ease with which the urge can be accommodated and the ‘self-life’ made into text.

The current interest in the narratives of ‘ordinary people’ is attested by the extraordinary success of Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life. It may also be seen in some recent and important scholarly enterprises such as the nineteenth century Australian women’s diaries published by Lucy Frost in No Place for a Nervous Lady or the oral histories from which Janet McCalman constructed inner urban Richmond in the depression years as Struggletown.

Read more: Brenda Niall reviews 'In the Half-Light' edited by Jacqueline Kent

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James Griffin reviews Australia at the Crossroads by B. A. Santamaria
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Contents Category: Essay Collection
Custom Article Title: James Griffin reviews 'Australia at the Crossroads' by B. A. Santamaria
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Article Title: Just a point of view?
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B.A. Santamaria is given to self-dramatization. His autobiography (1981) was subtitled Against the tide but he was not metaphorically explicit as to whether the tide was going out or coming in. For myself I do not want to think of Santamaria behaving with Canute-like megalomania; I prefer to envisage him backstroking towards shore with a rear-vision snorkel, spouting against the undertow of inevitable social change, and praying for some apocalyptic dumper to preserve him from the future agoraphobic shock of an ever-widening ocean.
Book 1 Title: Australia at the Crossroads
Book 1 Subtitle: Reflections of an outsider
Book Author: B. A. Santamaria
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, $17.95 pb, 262 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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B.A. Santamaria is given to self-dramatization. His autobiography (1981) was subtitled Against the tide but he was not metaphorically explicit as to whether the tide was going out or coming in. For myself I do not want to think of Santamaria behaving with Canute-like megalomania; I prefer to envisage him backstroking towards shore with a rear-vision snorkel, spouting against the undertow of inevitable social change, and praying for some apocalyptic dumper to preserve him from the future agoraphobic shock of an ever-widening ocean.

Much given to citing ‘authorities’, Santamaria had his foreword written by that profound observer of Australian life; Malcolm Muggeridge, who spent a few imperial days here in 1958 and whose protracted entry into the Church kept some local Catholics breathless for a further generation. In his wizened, feline way Muggeridge mewled dogmatically that Australia had only fifteen years before facing extinction. The sage was quoted continually by Santamaria against the unbelievers until 1973 after which (and particularly with the parliamentary demise of the DLP in 1974) he, unlike innumerate millenarians, had to settle for a more indeterminate doom. Nevertheless, even this can be a comforting gloss for a lack of constructive, pragmatic thought.

Read more: James Griffin reviews 'Australia at the Crossroads' by B. A. Santamaria

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Inez Baranay reviews Fox by Bruce Pascoe
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Contents Category: Fiction
Custom Article Title: Inez Baranay reviews 'Fox' by Bruce Pascoe
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Article Title: Enigma and Aboriginality
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It opens with an enigmatic statement – ‘It might take two hundred years’ – (what might?) – and then presents an enigmatic situation. Amidst Australian bush images and scraps of Aboriginal sounding stories, there is someone called Fox wandering around.

Fox, we soon learn, is a young chap called Jim Fox who is making a mysterious trip to Sydney from a farm he once lived on somewhere up the Murray.

He’d expected to be able to just go to places and remain anonymous, for people to just accept his presence as easily as he did theirs, with only the questions which could be answered by your own observations.

He was wrong, of course. People do ask him where he’s from and where he’s headed for and why he’s going there. Fox never says much, but no one minds; people only say affectionately ‘you’re a strange bugger, Fox’ and buy him beers, and give him rides, jobs, money, places to stay, and all the best advice they know.
Book 1 Title: Fox
Book Author: Bruce Pascoe
Book 1 Biblio: McPhee Gribble, $11.95 pb, 167 pp
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It opens with an enigmatic statement – ‘It might take two hundred years’ – (what might?) – and then presents an enigmatic situation. Amidst Australian bush images and scraps of Aboriginal sounding stories, there is someone called Fox wandering around.

Fox, we soon learn, is a young chap called Jim Fox who is making a mysterious trip to Sydney from a farm he once lived on somewhere up the Murray.

He’d expected to be able to just go to places and remain anonymous, for people to just accept his presence as easily as he did theirs, with only the questions which could be answered by your own observations.

He was wrong, of course. People do ask him where he’s from and where he’s headed for and why he’s going there. Fox never says much, but no one minds; people only say affectionately ‘you’re a strange bugger, Fox’ and buy him beers, and give him rides, jobs, money, places to stay, and all the best advice they know.

Read more: Inez Baranay reviews 'Fox' by Bruce Pascoe

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D.J. OHearn reviews The Motorcycle Café by Mathew Condon
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Of bikies and the soul
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All those years ago when the Literature Board was set up and given a moderate budget, taking over the excellent work of the Commonwealth Literature Fund, many sceptics expressed doubt that our small nation had enough spread of writing talent to warrant what they considered excessive expenditure on books and writers. The record stands for itself and, even if we consider only the established writers who have so far showered us with their works in the 1970s and 1980s, the scheme must be reckoned highly successful. The wonder is, however, that each year new writers spring up with works of high quality as though talent has bred talent or we have established a cultural climate which has allowed the muse ample room to breathe and take flight. Who had heard of Kate Grenville five years ago, Rod Jones or John Sligo three years ago, or Mark Henshaw before April of this year?
Book 1 Title: The Motorcycle Café
Book Author: Mathew Condon
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $10.95 pb, 170 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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All those years ago when the Literature Board was set up and given a moderate budget, taking over the excellent work of the Commonwealth Literature Fund, many sceptics expressed doubt that our small nation had enough spread of writing talent to warrant what they considered excessive expenditure on books and writers. The record stands for itself and, even if we consider only the established writers who have so far showered us with their works in the 1970s and 1980s, the scheme must be reckoned highly successful. The wonder is, however, that each year new writers spring up with works of high quality as though talent has bred talent or we have established a cultural climate which has allowed the muse ample room to breathe and take flight. Who had heard of Kate Grenville five years ago, Rod Jones or John Sligo three years ago, or Mark Henshaw before April of this year?

Read more: D.J. O'Hearn reviews 'The Motorcycle Café' by Mathew Condon

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Anthology
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Article Title: A bicentennial offering
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Although this is not the first selection of Greek-Australia literary works to be published in book form – George Kanarakis’s Logotechniki parousia ton Ellinon stin Australia (1985), which was recently published in English as Greek Voices in Australia: A Tradition of Prose, Poetry and Drama, lays claim to this honour – the introduction to Reflections does claim that it represents the ‘first attempt to select, to choose, to say these (Greek-Australian works) … have quality’, ‘these are significant as works of literature’. In contrast, it is argued that Kanarakis’s collection is ‘not an anthology in the normal sense’ because Kanarakis’s aim was to present a sample of the work of all the authors who can be considered Greek-Australian.
Book 1 Title: Reflections
Book 1 Subtitle: Selected works from Greek-Australian literature
Book Author: Thanasis Spilias and Stavros Messinis
Book 1 Biblio: Elikia Books, $13.95 pb, 292pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Although this is not the first selection of Greek-Australia literary works to be published in book form – George Kanarakis’s Logotechniki parousia ton Ellinon stin Australia (1985), which was recently published in English as Greek Voices in Australia: A Tradition of Prose, Poetry and Drama, lays claim to this honour – the introduction to Reflections does claim that it represents the ‘first attempt to select, to choose, to say these (Greek-Australian works) … have quality’, ‘these are significant as works of literature’. In contrast, it is argued that Kanarakis’s collection is ‘not an anthology in the normal sense’ because Kanarakis’s aim was to present a sample of the work of all the authors who can be considered Greek-Australian.

Read more: Pavlos Andronikos reviews 'Reflections: Selected works from Greek-Australian literature', edited...

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Sue Murray reviews Big-noting: the heroic theme in Australian war writing by Robin Gerster
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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Article Title: Mythology in the making
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At a time when critics are becoming increasingly interested in Australia’s war literature, Robin Gerster turns to it for an understanding of how national legends are created and perpetuated.
Book 1 Title: Big-noting
Book 1 Subtitle: The heroic theme in Australian war writing
Book Author: Robin Gerster
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, $34.95 hb, 294 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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At a time when critics are becoming increasingly interested in Australia’s war literature Robin Gerster turns to it for an understanding of how national legends are created and perpetuated.

With World War I, European and English writers recognized that the development of technology in weaponry and munitions enabled military bureaucrats to destroy on a dimension never before envisaged. The historical concept of dying for the honour and glory of one’s country was abandoned in literature about ‘the common soldier’ where the individual was seen as passive rather than active, a victim rather than a hero. Australian writing was also anti-war but the individual was given a heroic dimension. He too was a victim but his individuality, his Australianness, was celebrated. The collective result is a literature which, if not actually propagandist in tone, is the stuff from which mythologies are made.

Read more: Sue Murray reviews 'Big-noting: the heroic theme in Australian war writing' by Robin Gerster

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Richard White reviews A Nation at Last? The changing character of Australian nationalism 1880–1988 by Stephen Alomes
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: The question of a national identity
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The dilemma for confessedly nationalist intellectuals has always been what to do about their strange bed-fellows, the scoundrels who have sought a last refuge under the same patriotic blanket. Generally they have distanced themselves with glib distinctions between good and bad nationalisms, left and right nationalisms, radical and conservative and larrikin and respectable nationalisms. Often, too, they looked back – radicals to the 1890s, conservatives to the Great War – and contrasted an idealised past nationalism with contemporary selfishness. How often does discussion of Australian nationalism not get past the 1890s?
Book 1 Title: A Nation At Last?
Book 1 Subtitle: The changing character of Australian nationalism 1880–1988
Book Author: Stephen Alomes
Book 1 Biblio: Angus and Robertson, $24.95 pb, 408 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The dilemma for confessedly nationalist intellectuals has always been what to do about their strange bed-fellows, the scoundrels who have sought a last refuge under the same patriotic blanket. Generally they have distanced themselves with glib distinctions between good and bad nationalisms, left and right nationalisms, radical and conservative and larrikin and respectable nationalisms. Often, too, they looked back – radicals to the 1890s, conservatives to the Great War – and contrasted an idealised past nationalism with contemporary selfishness. How often does discussion of Australian nationalism not get past the 1890s?

Read more: Richard White reviews 'A Nation at Last? The changing character of Australian nationalism...

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