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Absolutely Revolting

April 1986, no. 79

Jim Davidson reviews The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger edited by Kay Dreyfus
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Some years ago a perky little tune used to introduce Jong Amis’s programme, Talking About Music. Stravinsky, I thought, listening to the cupped trumpets. But no, the BBC had chosen a piece, by our very own Percy Grainger. Surprise number two occurred when it was announced a few years later that Benjamin Britten himself was conducting an all-Grainger programme in London’s Festival Hall. Could this be the same Percy Grainger, he of the museum built like a public lavatory, said to contain photographs of all the great composers specially endowed with Nordic blue eyes? It was. Never was the point more forcefully made than when Philip Jones, performing with his Brass Ensemble in Melbourne in 1982, stepped forward on the platform of the Concert Hall to ask, with an English solicitude for the proprieties, for permission to play a piece by Grainger to honour the centenary day of the composer’s birth. The audience was a little puzzled.
Book 1 Title: The Farthest North of Humanness
Book 1 Subtitle: Letters of Percy Grainger
Book Author: Kay Dreyfus
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, 532 pp, $50 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Some years ago a perky little tune used to introduce Jong Amis’s programme, Talking About Music. Stravinsky, I thought, listening to the cupped trumpets. But no, the BBC had chosen a piece, by our very own Percy Grainger. Surprise number two occurred when it was announced a few years later that Benjamin Britten himself was conducting an all-Grainger programme in London’s Festival Hall. Could this be the same Percy Grainger, he of the museum built like a public lavatory, said to contain photographs of all the great composers specially endowed with Nordic blue eyes? It was. Never was the point more forcefully made than when Philip Jones, performing with his Brass Ensemble in Melbourne in 1982, stepped forward on the platform of the Concert Hall to ask, with an English solicitude for the proprieties, for permission to play a piece by Grainger to honour the centenary day of the composer’s birth. The audience was a little puzzled.

Read more: Jim Davidson reviews 'The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger' edited by Kay...

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It is Sunday and that is all it is. I have just read the Australian. It is not Australian. It is The Cringe. I have struggled to like Phillip Adams for years; I liked him when he was Phillip Adams – I guess he did too. He worships Mammon when he once seemed to worship cries in the street and whispers from above. No God in him.
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It is Sunday and that is all it is. I have just read the Australian. It is not Australian. It is The Cringe. I have struggled to like Phillip Adams for years; I liked him when he was Phillip Adams – I guess he did too. He worships Mammon when he once seemed to worship cries in the street and whispers from above. No God in him.

Read more: 'Self Portrait' by Barry Dickins

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Leigh Astbury reviews European Vision and the South Pacific by Bernard Smith
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In the late nineteenth century, the Sydney barrister and critic, William Bede Dalley is reported to have said: ‘I enjoy literature in all its manifestations. But if there is one class of books I prefer to another, I think it must be’ – with a flash of his teeth – ‘why, New Books!’
Book 1 Title: European Vision and the South Pacific
Book Author: Bernard Smith
Book 1 Biblio: Harper & Row, 370 pp., $39.95 pb
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In the late nineteenth century, the Sydney barrister and critic, William Bede Dalley is reported to have said: ‘I enjoy literature in all its manifestations. But if there is one class of books I prefer to another, I think it must be’ – with a flash of his teeth – ‘why, New Books!’

It is possible to greet with equal enthusiasm however, the republication of an ‘old book’, especially when it happens to be a revised edition of Bernard Smith’s European Vision and The South Pacific, first published by Oxford University Press in 1960. Readers already familiar with the book will perhaps derive most pleasure from the handsome appearance and improved layout of the new edition. Whereas the first edition sent one scurrying back and forth from the text to the black-and-white illustrations at the end of the book, the illustrations in this edition are conveniently located close to the relevant text. Moreover, there are an additional fifty-one black-and-white illustrations as well as the introduction of thirty-two good quality colour plates.

Read more: Leigh Astbury reviews 'European Vision and the South Pacific' by Bernard Smith

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Graham Burns reviews The Night We Ate the Sparrow: A memoir and fourteen stories by Morris Lurie
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Welcome again to Morris Lurie’s global village: Melbourne, Paris, New York, London, Tangier, Tel Aviv, Melbourne again, London. Lurie is one of our most reliable entertainers, but he is also, in the recesses of his stories, a chronicler of inner loneliness. The round world for him is signposted with stories; as one of his characters says, ‘everything is a story, or a prelude to a story, or the aftermath of one.’ The sheer variety of narrative incidents and locales in this collection is, as usual with him, impressive in itself. His characters play hard with experience in those bright or familiar places, a Tangier of easy living and surprising acquaintances, a London of the sixties fierce with contrasts. Yet finally they are always partly detached from it all and able to set themselves free, curiously able to resume the role of spectator of life. Many of Lurie’s characters give the initially disconcerting impression of possessing that ultimate detachment of a certain kind of writer, even when, as is usually the case, they are not actually cast as a writer or artist.
Book 1 Title: The Night We Ate the Sparrow
Book 1 Subtitle: A memoir and fourteen stories
Book Author: Morris Lurie
Book 1 Biblio: McPhee Gribble Penguin, 152pp, $6.96
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Welcome again to Morris Lurie’s global village: Melbourne, Paris, New York, London, Tangier, Tel Aviv, Melbourne again, London. Lurie is one of our most reliable entertainers, but he is also, in the recesses of his stories, a chronicler of inner loneliness. The round world for him is signposted with stories; as one of his characters says, ‘everything is a story, or a prelude to a story, or the aftermath of one.’ The sheer variety of narrative incidents and locales in this collection is, as usual with him, impressive in itself. His characters play hard with experience in those bright or familiar places, a Tangier of easy living and surprising acquaintances, a London of the sixties fierce with contrasts. Yet finally they are always partly detached from it all and able to set themselves free, curiously able to resume the role of spectator of life. Many of Lurie’s characters give the initially disconcerting impression of possessing that ultimate detachment of a certain kind of writer, even when, as is usually the case, they are not actually cast as a writer or artist.

Read more: Graham Burns reviews 'The Night We Ate the Sparrow: A memoir and fourteen stories' by Morris Lurie

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Abbreviations by John Hanrahan
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Now we are in the season of missed and mellow fruitfulness. The mellow fruitfulness belongs to the winners of literary awards and literary grants. The missed are those who are eternally short listed but never ascend the throne. Of course, some books shortlisted never have a chance of winning. They are put there for encouragement, minor recognition, sometimes tokenism.
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Now we are in the season of missed and mellow fruitfulness. The mellow fruitfulness belongs to the winners of literary awards and literary grants. The missed are those who are eternally short listed but never ascend the throne. Of course, some books shortlisted never have a chance of winning. They are put there for encouragement, minor recognition, sometimes tokenism. Of course, being shortlisted is a welcome form of recognition. Peter Carey won the NBC awards. He was given the odds of 6/4 by our bookmaker, Don Scott, which made him hot favourite. However, The Kurnai of Gippsland, by Phillip Peper and Tess de Araugo came in equal second and the good odds of 50/ l – along with Morris Lurie’s The Night We Ate the Sparrow (6/4). So outsiders do sometimes come in. Good for the NBC. But shortlists do need examining. So do judges and their credentials. So do judges’ reports. I say this with total belief in the credibility of this year’s NBC judges. But this is not always the case with awards. Or with short lists. I had an uncle who achieved a lifelong ambition and ran a horse romantically named The Dentist in the Melbourne Cup. The Dentist was never a possible winner, but he made the shortlist.

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Laurie Clancy reviews About Tilly Beamis by Sumner Locke Elliott
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Expatriate Australian writer and now naturalised American citizen Sumner Locke Elliott seems to have written this novel to dramatise his own sense of cultural displacement and identity. Cutting back and forth in time (between 1978 and 1950) and place (Australia and the United States), it traces the attempt of a woman named Tanya van Zandt in New York to retrace the whereabouts and identity of an Australian, Tilly Beamis, who turns out to be (it does not take the alert reader long to recognise) her actual former self.
Book 1 Title: About Tilly Beamis
Book Author: Sumner Locke Elliott
Book 1 Biblio: Pavanne, 252p., $6. 95 pb
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Expatriate Australian writer and now naturalised American citizen Sumner Locke Elliott seems to have written this novel to dramatise his own sense of cultural displacement and identity. Cutting back and forth in time (between 1978 and 1950) and place (Australia and the United States), it traces the attempt of a woman named Tanya van Zandt in New York to retrace the whereabouts and identity of an Australian, Tilly Beamis, who turns out to be (it does not take the alert reader long to recognise) her actual former self.

Read more: Laurie Clancy reviews 'About Tilly Beamis' by Sumner Locke Elliott

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Don Grant reviews Borderline by Janette Turner Hospital
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Janette Turner Hospital was born in Melbourne, but has lived and travelled abroad in recent years. Borderline, her third novel, is set for the most part in Boston and Montreal. It is a mystery story which contains many of the conventional ingredients of the genre: disappearances, murder and violence, mysterious messages. However, these things are subsidiary to its dominating theme which is an exploration of the nature of reality. In this it achieves mixed results, but on the whole favourable ones.
Book 1 Title: Borderline
Book Author: Janette Turner Hospital
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder & Stoughton, 287p., $19.95hb
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/RzDN2
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Janette Turner Hospital was born in Melbourne, but has lived and travelled abroad in recent years. Borderline, her third novel, is set for the most part in Boston and Montreal. It is a mystery story which contains many of the conventional ingredients of the genre: disappearances, murder and violence, mysterious messages. However, these things are subsidiary to its dominating theme which is an exploration of the nature of reality. In this it achieves mixed results, but on the whole favourable ones.

Read more: Don Grant reviews 'Borderline' by Janette Turner Hospital

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Michael Heyward reviews The Cloud Passes Over by Robert Harris
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Contents Category: Poetry
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This book signals a dramatic shift in the poetry of Robert Harris. His three previous books – Localities (1973), Translations from the Albatross (1976), The Abandoned (1979) – were born out of an intense and self-propelling passion for the glitter and the glow of words, the power they have to transform reality through a kind of internal poetic combustion. This was a poetry laden with abstraction and with quasi­surrealist imagery, heavily influenced by the French symbolists, by American poets like Robert Duncan, and in particular by the Australian poet Robert Adamson. Some of it stands up pretty well, though there was always the tendency for the verse to veer out of control, overblown and unfocused in the headiness of its phrasing.
Book 1 Title: The Cloud Passes Over
Book Author: Robert Harris
Book 1 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, 68 pp $9.95 pb
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This book signals a dramatic shift in the poetry of Robert Harris. His three previous books – Localities (1973), Translations from the Albatross (1976), The Abandoned (1979) – were born out of an intense and self-propelling passion for the glitter and the glow of words, the power they have to transform reality through a kind of internal poetic combustion. This was a poetry laden with abstraction and with quasi­surrealist imagery, heavily influenced by the French symbolists, by American poets like Robert Duncan, and in particular by the Australian poet Robert Adamson. Some of it stands up pretty well, though there was always the tendency for the verse to veer out of control, overblown and unfocused in the headiness of its phrasing. Harris’s problem in these earlier books was not an insufficiency of content or a lack of expressive power but a persistent haziness of outline, as though the young man’s yearnings which impelled the poetry were finding their evocative if not their indelibly precise verbal correlatives. The books have a slightly unfinished, ‘unedited’ feel about them, which is made the more interesting by the fact that the poems so often confront a sense of incompleteness, of dislocation and loneliness in the face of an unstable, unaccommodating world. This is true whether Harris is writing about love or some menial factory job or the desperate ecstasy of poetry itself.

Read more: Michael Heyward reviews 'The Cloud Passes Over' by Robert Harris

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Soundings | From Bookstall to Boom: Paperback publishing in Australia
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Article Title: From Bookstall to Boom
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Penguin Books, which has just celebrated its fiftieth birthday, is widely known through its paperback publishing as the great populariser of literature in the English language.
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Penguin Books, which has just celebrated its fiftieth birthday, is widely known through its paperback publishing as the great populariser of literature in the English language.

Penguin was not, of course, the inventor of paper bindings, which go back several centuries. It was not even the initiator of quality paperback series which had been common in Europe long before Penguin was hatched. However, Penguin provided a consistency in quality of content, production and marketing that made good books in English available to almost everyone.

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Laurie Clancy reviews Nuns in Jeopardy by Martin Boyd
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It is astonishing how many major works of Australian fiction – and often major works in themselves – are out of print at any given time. Angus and Robertson and Penguin, occasionally assisted by smaller firms like the specialist feminist press Virago and the university presses, have done fine work in drawing attention to novels and writers undeservedly out of print. One writer who seemed out of fashion for a time but whom Penguin are systematically bringing back into print is Martin Boyd. The latest is their series of reissues of his work is a relatively little known and lightweight novel with the misleadingly enticing title of Nuns in Jeopardy (first published in 1940).
Book 1 Title: Nuns in Jeopardy
Book Author: Martin Boyd
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $6.95 pb, 215 pp
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It is astonishing how many major works of Australian fiction – and often major works in themselves – are out of print at any given time. Angus and Robertson and Penguin, occasionally assisted by smaller firms like the specialist feminist press Virago and the university presses, have done fine work in drawing attention to novels and writers undeservedly out of print. One writer who seemed out of fashion for a time but whom Penguin are systematically bringing back into print is Martin Boyd. The latest is their series of reissues of his work is a relatively little known and lightweight novel with the misleadingly enticing title of Nuns in Jeopardy (first published in 1940).

This strange parable by Boyd wanders uncertainly among a number of modes before losing direction altogether. A ship called the Princess of Teck sinks and all on board are lost except for the occupants of the one boat of four which escapes the disaster. In it are: two officers, Joe and Dick; three sailors, Harry, George, and Tom; Mrs Dawes and her young daughter Marinella; six nuns; and the mysterious Mr Smith who suddenly appears out of the water. (Oddly, the book seems to think that there are thirteen people on board, though Mrs Dawes soon kills herself, crazed with grief at the loss of her husband.)

Read more: Laurie Clancy reviews 'Nuns in Jeopardy' by Martin Boyd

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Starters & Writers by Mark Rubbo
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As managing direction of the English publishing house, Chatto & Windus, expatriate Australian Carmen Callil has been described as the bête noire of Australian publishing. She had been invited to Australia for Writers Week at the Adelaide Festival. She left slightly annoyed and hurt that she had been cast in a predatory role when her interest in Australian writing stemmed from her own sense of Australianness.
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As managing direction of the English publishing house, Chatto & Windus, expatriate Australian Carmen Callil has been described as the bête noire of Australian publishing. She had been invited to Australia for Writers Week at the Adelaide Festival. She left slightly annoyed and hurt that she had been cast in a predatory role when her interest in Australian writing stemmed from her own sense of Australianness.

Carmen left Australia in 1960 for Europe and ended up in England in 1967, working for Hutchinson. Different publishing jobs followed and in 1970 she decided to start her own publishing company, Virago Press, which was committed to publishing works by and/or about women. As well as publishing original works, Virago embarked on an ambitious program of reprinting ‘lost works’ by women writers. Many Australian writers have been included in this list – Dorothy Hewett, M. Barnard Eldershaw, Katherine Susannah Prichard, and Christina Stead are a few examples.

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Graham Seal reviews Lasseter: The making of a legend by Billy Marshall-Stoneking
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The legend of Lasseter’s Reef is a strand of Australian folklore that has been transformed from its original oral state largely through the fascination of the mass media with the events of 1930–31, and with lost treasure tales in general. A number of books, newspapers, and magazine articles, together with some fiction and documentary films have been produced on the Lasseter story. In fact it was the 1956 Hollywood ‘B’ movie, Green Fire, (about fabled treasure in South America) that first sparked Billy Marshall-Stoneking’s long interest in Lasseter.
Book 1 Title: Lasseter
Book 1 Subtitle: The making of a legend
Book Author: Billy Marshall-Stoneking
Book 1 Biblio: George Allen and Unwin Australia, 200pp, illus., $24.95hb
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The legend of Lasseter’s Reef is a strand of Australian folklore that has been transformed from its original oral state largely through the fascination of the mass media with the events of 1930–31, and with lost treasure tales in general. A number of books, newspapers, and magazine articles, together with some fiction and documentary films have been produced on the Lasseter story. In fact it was the 1956 Hollywood ‘B’ movie, Green Fire, (about fabled treasure in South America) that first sparked Billy Marshall-Stoneking’s long interest in Lasseter.

Read more: Graham Seal reviews 'Lasseter: The making of a legend' by Billy Marshall-Stoneking

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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: Neville and Joh: Compulsory reading
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For a reform politician, these three books should be compulsory reading. They are not, for such a reader, heartening. But they do ‘serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate’.

Brian Dale’s Ascent to Power, very much less than fair to Neville Wran, is an unintended expose of the nature of political journalism in this country and its practitioners.
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Ascent_to_Power.jpgAscent to Power by Brian Dale

Allen & Unwin, $8.95 pb, 148 pp

For a reform politician, these three books should be compulsory reading. They are not, for such a reader, heartening. But they do ‘serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate’.

Brian Dale’s Ascent to Power (Allen & Unwin, $8.95 pb, 148 pp), very much less than fair to Neville Wran, is an unintended exposé of the nature of political journalism in this country and its practitioners.

Read more: Don Dunstan reviews 'Ascent to Power' by Brian Dale, 'The Wran Model: Electoral politics in NSW in...

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George Sprod reviews What the Dickins! A symposium of low life by Barry Dickins
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Article Title: Yeah, But Is It Funny?
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Humour is much too serious business to be left to humourists; it is up to others to find it funny, while the comic goes about his trade with desperate lugubrity, Thus humour that goes out of its way to be funny falls flat: dryness is all.
Book 1 Title: What the Dickins! A symposium of the low life
Book Author: Barry Dickins
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, 179p., $5.95
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Humour is much too serious business to be left to humourists; it is up to others to find it funny, while the comic goes about his trade with desperate lugubrity, Thus humour that goes out of its way to be funny falls flat: dryness is all.

Read more: George Sprod reviews ' What the Dickins! A symposium of low life' by Barry Dickins

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Sandra Moore reviews The Man of Slow Feeling by Michael Wilding
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Article Title: Wild About the Man
Article Subtitle: Much sense, much feeling
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‘The Man of Slow Feeling’ is the title story of a selection of Michael Wilding’s short stories published between 1972 and 1985.

These stories vary widely in setting, content, character, tone, but Wilding’s voice is consistent. By ‘voice’ I mean that if I was given an unidentified story in an envelope I’d be able to tell if it was Wilding’s before I was halfway through. It would be a plain, sealed, brown-paper envelope, of course.

The voice I hear is that of the writer as condemned observer. It records experience, it records itself in the midst of experience, it records itself recording. The title story is apt: the man of slow feeling is broken in the attempt to record and experience at the same time. The voice telling the stories is so distinctive that very soon I gave up trying to keep writer and writing separate in my mind. Whether they are first person narratives or not, the stories are intensely personal. They always seem to reveal what the writer chooses to expose of himself.
Book 1 Title: The Man of Slow Feeling
Book Author: Michael Wilding
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin Books, 303 pp, $8.95 pb
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‘The Man of Slow Feeling’ is the title story of a selection of Michael Wilding’s short stories published between 1972 and 1985.

These stories vary widely in setting, content, character, tone, but Wilding’s voice is consistent. By ‘voice’ I mean that if I was given an unidentified story in an envelope I’d be able to tell if it was Wilding’s before I was halfway through. It would be a plain, sealed, brown-paper envelope, of course.

The voice I hear is that of the writer as condemned observer. It records experience, it records itself in the midst of experience, it records itself recording. The title story is apt: the man of slow feeling is broken in the attempt to record and experience at the same time. The voice telling the stories is so distinctive that very soon I gave up trying to keep writer and writing separate in my mind. Whether they are first person narratives or not, the stories are intensely personal. They always seem to reveal what the writer chooses to expose of himself.

Read more: Sandra Moore reviews 'The Man of Slow Feeling' by Michael Wilding

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David Matthews reviews A Creed for the Third Millennium by Colleen McCullough
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Article Title: A Corny Creed
Article Subtitle: Colleen as Messiah
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The apocalypse might have seemed like pretty stimulating stuff when St John was writing about it, but these days. the post-Apocalyptic landscape is a well-trodden literary territory. This fact notwithstanding, Colleen McCullough’s latest screen-fodder epic, A Creed for the Third Millennium, goes back to the future one more time, to the year 2032, when mankind is under threat, not from nuclear war but from an incipient ice age. This is because the world’s glaciers have put on an uncharacteristic turn of speed, but curiously, this improbable and unexplained phenomenon is one of the few indications that the setting is the future – otherwise the impression one gains is that technology has stood still for fifty years. As is so often the case it is the Department of Environment, which is fostering a secret plan to find a man of charisma and use him as a messiah to bolster the flagging morale of the people of America. The person in charge of this program is Dr Judith Carriol, and the man eventually chosen for the job of messiah is Dr Joshua Christian. If the significance of those names goes unnoticed, it should be remarked that Dr Christian lives with, among others, his brothers, James and Andrew, and his sister Mary. McCullough is very much a proponent of the bludgeon approach to symbolism, as if the difficulties inherent in successfully rewriting the story of Christ’s preaching years weren’t great enough without this fatal tendency to make every allusion so painfully clear, and to drag the plot out in a similarly unsubtle fashion.
Book 1 Title: A Creed for the Third Millennium
Book Author: Colleen McCullough
Book 1 Biblio: Harper & Row, $19.95, 346 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The apocalypse might have seemed like pretty stimulating stuff when St John was writing about it, but these days. the post-Apocalyptic landscape is a well-trodden literary territory. This fact notwithstanding, Colleen McCullough’s latest screen-fodder epic, A Creed for the Third Millennium, goes back to the future one more time, to the year 2032, when mankind is under threat, not from nuclear war but from an incipient ice age. This is because the world’s glaciers have put on an uncharacteristic turn of speed, but curiously, this improbable and unexplained phenomenon is one of the few indications that the setting is the future – otherwise the impression one gains is that technology has stood still for fifty years. As is so often the case it is the Department of Environment, which is fostering a secret plan to find a man of charisma and use him as a messiah to bolster the flagging morale of the people of America. The person in charge of this program is Dr Judith Carriol, and the man eventually chosen for the job of messiah is Dr Joshua Christian. If the significance of those names goes unnoticed, it should be remarked that Dr Christian lives with, among others, his brothers, James and Andrew, and his sister Mary. McCullough is very much a proponent of the bludgeon approach to symbolism, as if the difficulties inherent in successfully rewriting the story of Christ’s preaching years weren’t great enough without this fatal tendency to make every allusion so painfully clear, and to drag the plot out in a similarly unsubtle fashion.

Read more: David Matthews reviews 'A Creed for the Third Millennium' by Colleen McCullough

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Dan Byrnes reviews Smokey Dawson by Herbert Henry Dawson
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Smokey Dawson, a millionaire, is a Mason.

He is also a country music singer/songwriter, knife thrower, whipcracker, cartoon strip, voice in radio programs well remembered by those over 35. He is still a kind of media institution reincurring the value of … precisely what? Cowboy kitsch?
Book 1 Title: Smokey Dawson
Book 1 Subtitle: A Life
Book Author: Herbert Henry Dawson
Book 1 Biblio: George Allen & Unwin $19.95 pb, 237 pp
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Smokey Dawson, a millionaire, is a Mason.

He is also a country music singer/songwriter, knife thrower, whipcracker, cartoon strip, voice in radio programs well remembered by those over 35. He is still a kind of media institution reincurring the value of … precisely what? Cowboy kitsch?

Publicity works. Without it, Dawson, a household name, would probably have spent his life as farmer spending spare time singing and playing guitar. When frustrated he might have flicked angrily with a stock whip at chook feathers set in beer bottles on a creaking fence.

Read more: Dan Byrnes reviews 'Smokey Dawson' by Herbert Henry Dawson

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John Whiter Reviews ‘The Bunburyists’ By Anthony Hill
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Article Title: Wilde about the Bush
Article Subtitle: : William and Oscar come home
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The Bunburyists is a reminiscence of the author’s five years’ escape from the ‘dependent worlds of politics and journalism’.

I had fled with my family to the bush … where we sought to escape the present by returning to the past and setting ourselves up in business as dealers in antiques. Or at any rate, a superior kind of junk.

Today, as the novel opens, he finds himself again perched in the Parliamentary Press Gallery – ‘I have come back to work, to all I had sought to escape. The admission of defeat is self-evident. One more among many failings.’
Book 1 Title: The Bunburyists
Book Author: Anthony Hill
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, 216p., $6.95 pb
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The Bunburyists is a reminiscence of the author’s five years’ escape from the ‘dependent worlds of politics and journalism’.

Read more: John Whiter Reviews ‘The Bunburyists’ By Anthony Hill

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Barbara Giles reviews ‘Poem of Thanksgiving and Other Poems’ by Paul Kavanagh (ed) and ‘Poems Selected From The Australian’s 20th Anniversary’ by Judith Rodriguez and Andrew Taylor (ed)
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Article Title: More Like Than Not: The ‘Mattara’ and ‘Australian’ anthologies
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Comparison between these anthologies is interesting. As the poems (6,000 for Mattara, 3,000 for the Australian), were the response to a general invitation, can we reasonably speculate that here we have a picture of what Australian middle of the spectrum poetry is like – or what poets in that range see as approved? The ends of the spectrum remain unrepresented.

Filtered through the judges’ taste we have a more similar product than I would have expected. Few of the lively young are there, none of even the wittiest of performance poetry, – which can hold up on the page – and some poets of course don’t compete in this sort of contest. There’s too much likeness.
Book 1 Title: Poem of Thanksgiving and Other Poems
Book Author: Paul Kavanagh
Book 1 Biblio: The University of Newcastle, $10.00 pb, 119 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Poems Selected From The Australian’s 20th Anniversary’
Book 2 Author: Judith Rodriguez and Andrew Taylor
Book 2 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, $12.95 pb, 96 pp
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Comparison between these anthologies is interesting. As the poems (6,000 for Mattara, 3,000 for the Australian), were the response to a general invitation, can we reasonably speculate that here we have a picture of what Australian middle of the spectrum poetry is like – or what poets in that range see as approved? The ends of the spectrum remain unrepresented.

Filtered through the judges’ taste we have a more similar product than I would have expected. Few of the lively young are there, none of even the wittiest of performance poetry, – which can hold up on the page – and some poets of course don’t compete in this sort of contest. There’s too much likeness.

Read more: Barbara Giles reviews ‘Poem of Thanksgiving and Other Poems’ by Paul Kavanagh (ed) and ‘Poems...

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John Kernick reviews ‘The Health Farm Murders’ by Tom Howard, ‘The Beach-Front Murders’ by Tom Howard and ‘Builder of Dreams’ by Andrew Mallon
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Article Title: More Sydney Cops: And a convict who made it
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Tom Howard is a new character/pseudonymous author in the same general region inhabited so prominently by Peter Corris’ Cliff Hardy, although with the publication of his first two novels it remains to be seen how far Howard will be able to rival Corris’ talent for bringing out the local flavour of crime and corruption, and how far his books will simply have Australian settings grafted on to classic forms of the whodunnit. Of the two Howard novels under review The Health Farm Murders follows the formula of a small isolated community with its numbers dropping off like ninepins, while The Beach-Front Murders is a much more credible account of passion and loneliness, of the lure and isolation of the big city.
Book 1 Title: The Health Farm Murders
Book Author: Tom Howard
Book 1 Biblio: Rastar Pty Ltd, $19.95, 337pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: The Beach-Front Murders
Book 2 Author: Tom Howard
Book 2 Biblio: Rastar Pty Ltd, $19.95, 222pp
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Book 3 Title: Builder of Dreams
Book 3 Author: Andrew Mallon
Book 3 Biblio: Rigby, $9.95, 284pp
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Tom Howard is a new character/pseudonymous author in the same general region inhabited so prominently by Peter Corris’ Cliff Hardy, although with the publication of his first two novels it remains to be seen how far Howard will be able to rival Corris’ talent for bringing out the local flavour of crime and corruption, and how far his books will simply have Australian settings grafted on to classic forms of the whodunnit. Of the two Howard novels under review The Health Farm Murders follows the formula of a small isolated community with its numbers dropping off like ninepins, while The Beach-Front Murders is a much more credible account of passion and loneliness, of the lure and isolation of the big city.

Tom Howard is a university-educated cop in the police prosecutions branch with a habit of getting caught up in the real action of crime. Like Cliff Hardy he is a loner, but he is even more downbeat than Hardy. If Cliff Hardy can only afford to drive an old Falcon, he manages to wear his poverty with style and the sure knowledge of his cool incorruptibility. He lives in Glebe amongst Sydney’s inner-city trendies, and if few of them would be able to emulate his courage or integrity they will at least have a cerebral appreciation of his values and welcome him as a resident adding to the local colour. And of course he shares his terrace house with a student-lodger, the exotic young Hilde.

Read more: John Kernick reviews ‘The Health Farm Murders’ by Tom Howard, ‘The Beach-Front Murders’ by Tom...

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Article Title: An American Looks at the Australian ‘Renaissance’
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How Picnic at Hanging Rock not only touched American sentimentality but revealed as well the surprising news that Australians made movies is all history now. As is the short-lived, yet astounding success of The Thorn Birds, that renowned caterer to the American appetite for sex, violence and instant morality. Yet those who comment on the inroads Australian literature, the novel in particular, has made in the United States point always to that nostalgic film and encyclopaedic novel as the start of what one New York editor recently called "an explosion of American interest in Australian literature".
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How Picnic at Hanging Rock not only touched American sentimentality but revealed as well the surprising news that Australians made movies is all history now. As is the short-lived, yet astounding success of The Thorn Birds, that renowned caterer to the American appetite for sex, violence and instant morality. Yet those who comment on the inroads Australian literature, the novel in particular, has made in the United States point always to that nostalgic film and encyclopaedic novel as the start of what one New York editor recently called “an explosion of American interest in Australian literature”.

The analysis is probably correct, for those two works triggered in millions of Americans a fascination with the continent so far removed from their immediate experience. The works also opened the way for more films, good ones and bad, and, without argument, for better novels. Before long the mere fascination had turned to a genuine interest and awareness.

Read more: An American Looks at the Australian ‘Renaissance’

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Article Title: Children’s Books: Worth the effort?
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Custom Highlight Text: When, or if, children and young people get around to reading books they do so for one of only two reasons: as the response to adult (teacher or parental) pressure, or in the expectation of enjoyment. The pleasure principle is therefore of paramount importance to the writers, illustrators and publishers of juvenile literature, many of whom seem not yet to have grasped the fact that they are in a highly competitive market – not with each other, but with all the other primary producers vying for the free time of the young consumer. Today as in no other period of history young people have a bewildering assortment of choices for the hours sandwiched between school and bedtime, and time spent reading a book (which you have to do in school anyway) is time subtracted from sport, telly, video, or any of the multitudinous other well publicised alternatives. A book, therefore, has to be seen as well and truly worth the effort to qualify; and the ones that make it are those with which a young reader can instantly identify, those which offer adventure, comedy, or life experience at the interest and appreciation travel of their intended audience.
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When, or if, children and young people get around to reading books they do so for one of only two reasons: as the response to adult (teacher or parental) pressure, or in the expectation of enjoyment. The pleasure principle is therefore of paramount importance to the writers, illustrators and publishers of juvenile literature, many of whom seem not yet to have grasped the fact that they are in a highly competitive market – not with each other, but with all the other primary producers vying for the free time of the young consumer. Today as in no other period of history young people have a bewildering assortment of choices for the hours sandwiched between school and bedtime, and time spent reading a book (which you have to do in school anyway) is time subtracted from sport, telly, video, or any of the multitudinous other well publicised alternatives. A book, therefore, has to be seen as well and truly worth the effort to qualify; and the ones that make it are those with which a young reader can instantly identify, those which offer adventure, comedy, or life experience at the interest and appreciation travel of their intended audience. With these criteria in mind, consider the following:

Older Readers

Read more: Children’s Books: Worth the effort?

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Article Title: A Turbulent Priest
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Why do Catholic priests, actual or technical celibates, all persist in writing books about sexuality? Sceptics and natural adversaries of the Roman ecclesial discipline will doubtless respond ‘because they are fascinated with what is denied to them’. True in many cases, but, overall, too neatly pejorative to be entirely convincing. As the late Kenneth Clark reminded us, the extremes of Protestant puritanism have held more fear and rejection of the body than Rome ever did in her most repressive periods. Even so, Australian and New Zealand Catholicism has always been both formed and deformed on sexual issues by the legacy of its Irish past. Since the 17th century where the native Irish clergy were heavily tainted with the Jansenist heresy in French seminaries, the baleful Hibernian attitude to sex has been unique in Christendom. To our colonial Irish forbears, gambling, improvidence, drunkenness, and pugnacity were indeed confessional matters, but the fires of hell itself awaited the sexually incontinent.
Book 1 Title: Flames and Ether
Book Author: Felix Donnelly
Book 1 Biblio: George Allen & Unwin $9.95pb, 168 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Why do Catholic priests, actual or technical celibates, all persist in writing books about sexuality? Sceptics and natural adversaries of the Roman ecclesial discipline will doubtless respond ‘because they are fascinated with what is denied to them’. True in many cases, but, overall, too neatly pejorative to be entirely convincing. As the late Kenneth Clark reminded us, the extremes of Protestant puritanism have held more fear and rejection of the body than Rome ever did in her most repressive periods. Even so, Australian and New Zealand Catholicism has always been both formed and deformed on sexual issues by the legacy of its Irish past. Since the 17th century where the native Irish clergy were heavily tainted with the Jansenist heresy in French seminaries, the baleful Hibernian attitude to sex has been unique in Christendom. To our colonial Irish forbears, gambling, improvidence, drunkenness, and pugnacity were indeed confessional matters, but the fires of hell itself awaited the sexually incontinent.

Read more: Ronald Conway reviews ‘Flames and Ether’ by Felix Donnelly

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Margaret John reviews ‘In Her Own Image’ by Anna Murdoch
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Article Title: It’s All in the Title: Some have it
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It was a comparatively easy task for Anna Murdoch to have In Her Own Image published. After all, as the critics vied with each other to point out – Rupert does own forty-two per cent of Collins. A cynical observation is that she had considerable difficulty in having it seriously reviewed – when one considers how many critics Mr Murdoch has at his disposal! Everyone wrote about it of course – after all, the Murdochs make good copy. Through her many interviews, we learn a good deal about Anna Murdoch and pick up a few pointers about Rupert the family man – but relatively little about the novel itself.
Book 1 Title: In Her Own Image
Book Author: Anna Murdoch
Book 1 Biblio: Collins, $17.95 hb, 240 pp
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It was a comparatively easy task for Anna Murdoch to have In Her Own Image published. After all, as the critics vied with each other to point out – Rupert does own forty-two per cent of Collins. A cynical observation is that she had considerable difficulty in having it seriously reviewed – when one considers how many critics Mr Murdoch has at his disposal! Everyone wrote about it of course – after all, the Murdochs make good copy. Through her many interviews, we learn a good deal about Anna Murdoch and pick up a few pointers about Rupert the family man – but relatively little about the novel itself.

Read more: Margaret John reviews ‘In Her Own Image’ by Anna Murdoch

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Jim Davidson reviews 3 architecture books
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Article Title: Saltbush Building
Article Subtitle: Towards an Australian architecture
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He that hath no relish for the grandure [sic] and joy of building’, wrote Roger North in 1698, ‘is a stupid ox.’ Unfortunately, despite the considerable progress made over the last thirty years, such oxen abound in Australia. One has but to think of the destruction of Brisbane’s Bellevue Hotel, or of Townsville’s Buchanan’s, its balconies the most artfully cast-iron laden in the country: fire had destroyed the rear of the building, justification enough for the council to move against the façade. Not even appearance on a postage stamp was enough to save it. But it is not only in Queensland that we see the depredations of these Captain Midnights: Melbourne recently saw the Toorak Methodist Church similarly attacked, to the point where it was deliberately placed beyond repair. Developers and the imperatives of capitalism still effortlessly outpace both half-hearted conservation measures and the degree of public awareness necessary to make such sanctions work.
Book 1 Title: The History and Design of the Australian House
Book Author: Robert Irving
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, 328 p., illus., biblio., index., $50.00
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Book 2 Title: Australia’s Iron Lace
Book 2 Author: Brian Turner
Book 2 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, 192 p., illus., biblio., index, $39.95
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Book 3 Title: Leaves of Iron: Glen Murcutt, Pioneer of an Australian Architectural Form
Book 3 Author: Philip Drew
Book 3 Biblio: Law Book Company, illus., biblio., index, 148 p., $37.50 hb
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He that hath no relish for the grandure [sic] and joy of building’, wrote Roger North in 1698, ‘is a stupid ox.’ Unfortunately, despite the considerable progress made over the last thirty years, such oxen abound in Australia. One has but to think of the destruction of Brisbane’s Bellevue Hotel, or of Townsville’s Buchanan’s, its balconies the most artfully cast-iron laden in the country: fire had destroyed the rear of the building, justification enough for the council to move against the façade. Not even appearance on a postage stamp was enough to save it. But it is not only in Queensland that we see the depredations of these Captain Midnights: Melbourne recently saw the Toorak Methodist Church similarly attacked, to the point where it was deliberately placed beyond repair. Developers and the imperatives of capitalism still effortlessly outpace both half-hearted conservation measures and the degree of public awareness necessary to make such sanctions work.

Read more: Jim Davidson reviews 3 architecture books

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Article Title: Poetic Larrikinism
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The only real depth a novel, short-story, or book of poems can have for me is the authenticity of the writer and his ability to accurately capture the experience. Shelton Lea’s Poems From A Peach Melba Hat do exactly that, and in the process thump the reader with the quick left hook of rhyme.

There is violence in the poet’s experience, a recklessness, and he can get away with being a buffoon the charm out weighing the effrontery. The poems would find their home equally in a Governor’s mansion or some lowly pub. The imagery is sometimes brutal, but can soften a fusillade of butterflies.
Book 1 Title: Poems From a Peach Melba Hat
Book Author: Shelton Lead
Book 1 Biblio: Abalone Press, $8.00 pb, 96 pp
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The only real depth a novel, short-story, or book of poems can have for me is the authenticity of the writer and his ability to accurately capture the experience. Shelton Lea’s Poems From A Peach Melba Hat do exactly that, and in the process thump the reader with the quick left hook of rhyme.

There is violence in the poet’s experience, a recklessness, and he can get away with being a buffoon the charm out weighing the effrontery. The poems would find their home equally in a Governor’s mansion or some lowly pub. The imagery is sometimes brutal, but can soften a fusillade of butterflies.

Read more: Mal Morgan reviews ‘Poems From a Peach Melba Hat’ by Shelton Lead

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Joseph Chetcuti reviews ‘The Liberals’ by Patrick O’Brien
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Article Title: Not Wet, Not Dry: Nor soggy?
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Party factionalism in Australia has traditionally been located almost uniquely in the ALP Splits and dissensions have been part and parcel of the Party’s long history: and some of their colleagues with them, had, even joined their former opponents. The Split, extending fully in 1955–56, destroyed Labor as a coherent political force, and as a serious alternative to its rivals. But other parties also have faced dissension; not excepting the Liberal Party, a curious mosaic of ideas and personalities. Yet writers in the past have only glanced at this characteristic in the Liberal Party.
Book 1 Title: The Liberals – Factions, Feuds and Fancies
Book Author: Patrick O’Brien
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, Penguin, $24.95, 161 pp
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Party factionalism in Australia has traditionally been located almost uniquely in the ALP Splits and dissensions have been part and parcel of the Party’s long history: and some of their colleagues with them, had, even joined their former opponents. The Split, extending fully in 1955–56, destroyed Labor as a coherent political force, and as a serious alternative to its rivals. But other parties also have faced dissension; not excepting the Liberal Party, a curious mosaic of ideas and personalities. Yet writers in the past have only glanced at this characteristic in the Liberal Party.

Recent publications have started to show interest in dissensions within the Liberal Party. In The liberal Party: Principles and Performance, (1978), P.G. Tiver alludes to two strands in the Party’s liberalism (individualistic and ameliorative), but this interpretation relies too heavily on the assumption that ideas are the ‘motor of politics’. Marian Simms has referred to other ‘strains’ on liberalism, especially those arising out of what she refers to as ‘economic interventionism’ (Meanjin, Vol 39, 1980). Two years later, Simms’ A liberal Nation (1982) detected ‘dissension of an organisational nature as well as discord over policies and ideologies’ (pg 1) in the Liberal Party.

Read more: Joseph Chetcuti reviews ‘The Liberals’ by Patrick O’Brien

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Ludmilla Forsyth reviews ‘Their Solitary Way’ by Julian Croft
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Article Title: Reading the Signs: Defeated by symbols
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This is a novel of dissociation. It is a novel laden with symbolism. It overworks at telling one so. ‘“It’s the nature of things,” he said, “to be symbolic. Perhaps that’s Nature itself.”’, The title, Their Solitary Way, indicates the state of the world and the way of the protagonists. In the novel, Julian Croft creates a sense of emotional lassitude. This doesn’t help the reader to like the characters. To meander through the soulless corridors of disenchanted lovers while the history of the world is caught in the corners of their consciousness, is to sympathize with Georg Lukacs and see that the middleclass Australian intellectual has it all out of proportion. In one sense this is what Croft’s novel is about. Bombs explode, people starve, revolution erupts but the Australian only feels pain when he inadvertently gets caught up in a demonstration. Croft is excellent on alienation.
Book 1 Title: Their Solitary Way
Book Author: Julian Croft
Book 1 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, $12.95 pb, 88 pp
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This is a novel of dissociation. It is a novel laden with symbolism. It overworks at telling one so. ‘“It’s the nature of things,” he said, “to be symbolic. Perhaps that’s Nature itself.”’, The title, Their Solitary Way, indicates the state of the world and the way of the protagonists. In the novel, Julian Croft creates a sense of emotional lassitude. This doesn’t help the reader to like the characters. To meander through the soulless corridors of disenchanted lovers while the history of the world is caught in the corners of their consciousness, is to sympathize with Georg Lukacs and see that the middleclass Australian intellectual has it all out of proportion. In one sense this is what Croft’s novel is about. Bombs explode, people starve, revolution erupts but the Australian only feels pain when he inadvertently gets caught up in a demonstration. Croft is excellent on alienation.

Read more: Ludmilla Forsyth reviews ‘Their Solitary Way’ by Julian Croft

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Coral Lansbury is well known in Australia as a prize-winning feature and drama writer for the ABC. She once owned a radio and television company, Lansbury Productions, and conducted a talk show.

In the United States, Dr Lansbury has been at the forefront of the animal rights movement and has just published a book in which she explores the roots of the anti-vivisection movement. The book, The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers and Vivisections in Edwardian England (University of Wisconsin Press), has received rave reviews. Lansbury does not deal with contemporary animal rights issues in her book, but she does make it clear why the old anti-vivisection movement failed and why the current animal rights movement has been so successful in sensitizing people to animal suffering.
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Coral Lansbury is well known in Australia as a prize-winning feature and drama writer for the ABC. She once owned a radio and television company, Lansbury Productions, and conducted a talk show.

In the United States, Dr Lansbury has been at the forefront of the animal rights movement and has just published a book in which she explores the roots of the anti-vivisection movement. The book, The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers and Vivisections in Edwardian England (University of Wisconsin Press), has received rave reviews. Lansbury does not deal with contemporary animal rights issues in her book, but she does make it clear why the old anti-vivisection movement failed and why the current animal rights movement has been so successful in sensitizing people to animal suffering.

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Ken Methold reviews ‘Vietnam: A Reporter’s War’ by Hugh Lunn
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Article Title: The Battle for News
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It may still be useful to begin by describing what Hugh Lunn’s book does not set out to do, then there can be no misunderstandings as to whether or not he has achieved his objectives.

The book is not an account of the Vietnam War in the sense that it at any time attempts to explain who is fighting whom, for what reasons and by whatever tactics and strategies. You will learn next to nothing from Lunn about the causes of the war, the reasons for American and Australian involvement or anything else of a significant political, historical or military nature.
Book 1 Title: Vietnam: A Reporter’s War
Book Author: Hugh Lunn
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $19.95
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It may still be useful to begin by describing what Hugh Lunn’s book does not set out to do, then there can be no misunderstandings as to whether or not he has achieved his objectives.

The book is not an account of the Vietnam War in the sense that it at any time attempts to explain who is fighting whom, for what reasons and by whatever tactics and strategies. You will learn next to nothing from Lunn about the causes of the war, the reasons for American and Australian involvement or anything else of a significant political, historical or military nature.

Neither is the book an attempt to describe in graphic detail a series of military engagements, though there is no shortage of battle action.

Read more: Ken Methold reviews ‘Vietnam: A Reporter’s War’ by Hugh Lunn

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