Vale John Hanrahan. Dear reader, if you think you miss him, you should see how I feel. I tried to get a Sydney person to take over this column. I really did. He said no. (Actually, he laughed.) So for those Sydney people who complain that ABR suffers from rampant Melbocentrism (and as a native of Adelaide I am far from blind to the ravages of this local disease, myself), bear in mind that the number of Sydney writers who get asked to write for ABR is considerably greater than the number who actually do. In the meantime I shall do my best, faute de mieux, since neither rain nor hail nor sleet etc., and ABR’s monthly deadline waits for no person …
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Vale John Hanrahan. Dear reader, if you think you miss him, you should see how I feel. I tried to get a Sydney person to take over this column. I really did. He said no. (Actually, he laughed.) So for those Sydney people who complain that ABR suffers from rampant Melbocentrism (and as a native of Adelaide I am far from blind to the ravages of this local disease, myself), bear in mind that the number of Sydney writers who get asked to write for ABR is considerably greater than the number who actually do. In the meantime I shall do my best, faute de mieux, since neither rain nor hail nor sleet etc., and ABR’s monthly deadline waits for no person …
Custom Article Title: Little Women: Helen Garner, sold by weight
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Article Title: Little Women
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The publishing world and other allied industries, namely the media and literary critics, tend to promote authors on a ‘star’ system. Especially women writers. They allow certain women to become ‘flavour of the month’. Recently, if you remember, it was Beverley Farmer, and then Kate Grenville. For a short period, every newspaper, magazine, or radio program with a literary bent featured them and their fiction. This treatment is reserved for fiction writers. Never is such sustained coverage given to that awesome creature, the ‘woman poet’.
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The publishing world and other allied industries, namely the media and literary critics, tend to promote authors on a ‘star’ system. Especially women writers. They allow certain women to become ‘flavour of the month’. Recently, if you remember, it was Beverley Farmer, and then Kate Grenville. For a short period, every newspaper, magazine, or radio program with a literary bent featured them and their fiction. This treatment is reserved for fiction writers. Never is such sustained coverage given to that awesome creature, the ‘woman poet’.
Both Grenville and Farmer have now been allowed to fade from the scene. Farmer, especially, refuses to comply with the modern demand for writers to be literary performing seals, required to dash off brilliant reviews of other writers, give insightful and in-depth interviews about the autobiographical content of their fiction, or deliver fascinating talks on ‘female aesthetics’. Perhaps this explains why, when Farmer wins a major literary award, she is only accorded ‘flavour of the day’ status. For the star system only works with a co-operative author who enjoys the demands of being a star. Someone who is a consistent and flexible performer as well as writer.
The Australian Bookseller & Publisher serves as the trade magazine for the Australian publishing and bookselling industry. It derives a substantial amount of its revenue from the advertisements that publishers place in it.
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The Australian Bookseller & Publisher serves as the trade magazine for the Australian publishing and bookselling industry. It derives a substantial amount of its revenue from the advertisements that publishers place in it.
Some publishers have accused the magazine of being too bland, too afraid to be critical or to tackle the real issues that are important to the industry. The editor, Michael Webster, no doubt mindful of this criticism, has been making concerted attempts to put some teeth into the magazine by making the content less self-congratulatory and more critical.
The history of Australia at war has tended to focus on the exploits of the Australian army to the neglect of the other two services. It is usually forgotten, for example, that the most famous of Australia’s military actions, that at Gallipoli, was part of a combined operation, in which the failure to land the troops at the designated spot virtually condemned the attack from the outset. In both world wars, command of the sea was the prerequisite for Australia’s military participation and for her own security. Far removed from the main theatres in World War I, Australian forces had to be transported thousands of miles by sea to the Middle East, Gallipoli and the western front. Allied sea power made that possible.
Book 1 Title: German Raiders of the South Seas
Book Author: Robin Bromby
Book 1 Biblio: Doubleday, 208pp, $19.95pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Royal Australian Navy 1942–1945
Book 2 Author: G. Hermon Gill
Book 2 Biblio: William Collins/Australian War Memorial, 758pp, $35.00hb
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The history of Australia at war has tended to focus on the exploits of the Australian army to the neglect of the other two services. It is usually forgotten, for example, that the most famous of Australia’s military actions, that at Gallipoli, was part of a combined operation, in which the failure to land the troops at the designated spot virtually condemned the attack from the outset. In both world wars, command of the sea was the prerequisite for Australia’s military participation and for her own security. Far removed from the main theatres in World War I, Australian forces had to be transported thousands of miles by sea to the Middle East, Gallipoli and the western front. Allied sea power made that possible.
It is impossible to know who first said, ‘Get your end in!’ but that is probably the only normal colloquialism of ours left out of this beaut (if you’ve got about forty bucks) book.
Clearly, G. A. Wilkes has had his end in; we all have, haven’t we? But Australia’s greatest saying is not included. Perhaps it is Welsh.
I’m buggered if I could have summoned up the bloody patience to wade through valleys and dusty quagmires of books, newspapers, dead pamphlets, had-the-gong magazines and no-longer-with-us snippets, fragments, skerricks and dust of deceased smartarsedom.
Book 1 Title: A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms
Book Author: G.A. Wilkes
Book 1 Biblio: Sydney University Press, 480p., $35.00 hb , 0 424 00113 6
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It is impossible to know who first said, ‘Get your end in!’ but that is probably the only normal colloquialism of ours left out of this beaut (if you’ve got about forty bucks) book.
Clearly, G. A. Wilkes has had his end in; we all have, haven’t we? But Australia’s greatest saying is not included. Perhaps it is Welsh.
I’m buggered if I could have summoned up the bloody patience to wade through valleys and dusty quagmires of books, newspapers, dead pamphlets, had-the-gong magazines and no-longer-with-us snippets, fragments, skerricks and dust of deceased smartarsedom.
Greg Chappell’s cricketing career from the mid-sixties until 1984 coincided with developments affecting players, administrators and audiences which reoriented attitudes and expectations, causing schisms and bitterness. McGregor’s biography stresses three related themes: the growth of professionalism, the effects of commercialism and especially colour television, and the difficulties in a cricketer’s life caused by conflicting allegiances, and personal and family considerations. A fourth theme, the ascendancy of speed bowling, gets due attention, but more incidentally. It is a conscientious book: Chappell’s early life and the arc of his superb career are followed carefully, comprehensively, informatively, but too often a false note of the ‘excitement’ of it all is journalistically struck.
Book 1 Title: Greg Chappell
Book Author: Adrian McGregor,
Book 1 Biblio: William Collins Pty. Ltd., 286p., illus.,
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Greg Chappell’s cricketing career from the mid-sixties until 1984 coincided with developments affecting players, administrators and audiences which reoriented attitudes and expectations, causing schisms and bitterness. McGregor’s biography stresses three related themes: the growth of professionalism, the effects of commercialism and especially colour television, and the difficulties in a cricketer’s life caused by conflicting allegiances, and personal and family considerations. A fourth theme, the ascendancy of speed bowling, gets due attention, but more incidentally. It is a conscientious book: Chappell’s early life and the arc of his superb career are followed carefully, comprehensively, informatively, but too often a false note of the ‘excitement’ of it all is journalistically struck.
The everlasting dance of sounds and feelings and colours, the taste and scent of life, comes to us in its most explicit form in words. Even when Proust’s famous Madeleine led him back through its scents and associations in search of a time that was lost, he followed its tracks through words that brought back the images of the past and tied them down into clear grammatical patterns of form and relationship. Because language teaches us how to think and feel and see it is always political. The speaker and the writer impose on us patterns which either reinforce or subvert established power. It is no accident that a failed conservative businessman and politician has been able to recover his fortunes by writing a political thriller, or that Mrs Thatcher has now engaged him on the task of selling her politics of destruction to a wary electorate. The words create the reality.
The everlasting dance of sounds and feelings and colours, the taste and scent of life, comes to us in its most explicit form in words. Even when Proust’s famous Madeleine led him back through its scents and associations in search of a time that was lost, he followed its tracks through words that brought back the images of the past and tied them down into clear grammatical patterns of form and relationship. Because language teaches us how to think and feel and see it is always political. The speaker and the writer impose on us patterns which either reinforce or subvert established power. It is no accident that a failed conservative businessman and politician has been able to recover his fortunes by writing a political thriller, or that Mrs Thatcher has now engaged him on the task of selling her politics of destruction to a wary electorate. The words create the reality.
The Australian Bookseller & Publisher serves as the trade magazine for the Australian publishing and bookselling industry. It derives a substantial amount of its revenue from the advertisements that publishers place in it.
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The Australian Bookseller & Publisher serves as the trade magazine for the Australian publishing and bookselling industry. It derives a substantial amount of its revenue from the advertisements that publishers place in it.
Writing fiction is something I originally stumbled upon rather than consciously chose. Much the same can be said of my career as student and university teacher. Brought up in London in a lower working-class family, I certainly harboured no intellectual or literary ambitions. Like the rest of my family, I looked forward only to escaping from school as soon as possible and settling down to a steady job. What challenged that way of thinking was my parents’ unexpected decision to go to Northern Rhodesia (as it was then) when I was fifteen. Central Africa, where I was to spend a good portion of the next twenty years, did more to alter my attitudes and prospects than anything before or since. Still under British rule, it showed me the last and perhaps the ugliest face of colonialism; and in so doing destroyed any smug sense I may have had of my own Englishness. Equally, the politics of an emerging Zambia taught me some painful and abrupt lessons about both myself and the twentieth century preoccupation with violence.
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Writing fiction is something I originally stumbled upon rather than consciously chose. Much the same can be said of my career as student and university teacher. Brought up in London in a lower working-class family, I certainly harboured no intellectual or literary ambitions. Like the rest of my family, I looked forward only to escaping from school as soon as possible and settling down to a steady job. What challenged that way of thinking was my parents’ unexpected decision to go to Northern Rhodesia (as it was then) when I was fifteen. Central Africa, where I was to spend a good portion of the next twenty years, did more to alter my attitudes and prospects than anything before or since. Still under British rule, it showed me the last and perhaps the ugliest face of colonialism; and in so doing destroyed any smug sense I may have had of my own Englishness. Equally, the politics of an emerging Zambia taught me some painful and abrupt lessons about both myself and the twentieth century preoccupation with violence.
As an indirect result of those lessons, I took what in my family was the unprecedented step of attending university. At the time, I wasn’t motivated by any love of learning. I was simply on the run from what I’d come to regard as a white man’s army. Having decided early on that under no conditions would I do my compulsory military service, I had already spent some years evading the call-up – going ‘bush’, disappearing on protracted hitchhiking trips, changing jobs, even moving from country to country. When all else failed, I turned to university as a last resort!
In my circumstances (limited money, etc.) that meant heading south, to the University of Natal. Oddly enough, to flee from a British to a South African administration was not as contradictory as it may sound. English-speaking South African universities were and still are fairly radical places: and the University of Natal added to my education in more than just a formal sense. Not last, it put me in the company of young people who were as appalled as I was by racism and current white attitudes; and also convinced me that there were other options apart from running.
This is a book in two parts, the first written by historian Enid Moodie Heddie and published by Cheshire in 1960, and the second part written by well-known Melbourne writer on wine Frank Doherty, the two sections being joined for publication as one volume in l985.
Book 1 Title: Chateau Tahbilk
Book 1 Subtitle: Story of a vineyard 1860–1985
Book Author: Enid Moodie Heddle and Frank Doherty
Book 1 Biblio: Thomas C. Lothian, 89p., illus., $8.95 pb, $14.95hb
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This is a book in two parts, the first written by historian Enid Moodie Heddie and published by Cheshire in 1960, and the second part written by well-known Melbourne writer on wine Frank Doherty, the two sections being joined for publication as one volume in l985.
The present owners of Chateau Tahbilk, the Purbrick family, invited Enid Moodie Heddie in 1960 to write a history of the first hundred years of the existence of a vineyard on the present site. This forms the first and major part of this book. Frank Doherty's contribution traces the recent history of the Tahbilk winery from 1960 to 1985.
This book is a testament to the persistence of the legend of King O’Malley. Larry Noye tells the story of the self-proclaimed founder of the Commonwealth Bank and builder of Canberra very much as O’Malley himself never tired of telling it, heavily embellished with the exaggerated ‘spreadeagle’ rhetoric and baloney of the hot gospellers, land-boomers, social reform cranks, and snake-oil salesmen of the American West among whom O’Malley took his first steps in the adult world. The book’s strength is that its author is so intoxicated with the O’Malley legend that it faithfully gives us a picture, as it were, straight from the horse’s mouth, full of colour and incident; its weakness is that it fails adequately to step back and separate fact from fiction.
Book 1 Title: O'Malley MHR
Book Author: Larry Noye
Book 1 Biblio: Neptune Press, $13.30 pb, 304 pp
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This book is a testament to the persistence of the legend of King O’Malley. Larry Noye tells the story of the self-proclaimed founder of the Commonwealth Bank and builder of Canberra very much as O’Malley himself never tired of telling it, heavily embellished with the exaggerated ‘spreadeagle’ rhetoric and baloney of the hot gospellers, land-boomers, social reform cranks, and snake-oil salesmen of the American West among whom O’Malley took his first steps in the adult world. The book’s strength is that its author is so intoxicated with the O’Malley legend that it faithfully gives us a picture, as it were, straight from the horse’s mouth, full of colour and incident; its weakness is that it fails adequately to step back and separate fact from fiction.
Article Subtitle: Whose right to what kind of life?
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The contentious issue of abortion will probably never be resolved. The antagonists in any discussion frequently confuse facts with moral problems. There are two fundamental questions in the abortion argument: the empirical one, ‘when does human life begin’, and the philosophical one, ‘is human life always sacred?’
The answer to the first question may be considered a matter of fact. Indeed the authors of this book are unequivocal. They respond by saying that ‘A unique human being comes into existence when a human egg is fertilised by a human sperm’ (p.8). Others would dispute this statement. The authors however anticipate the well-known arguments and, through a question-and-answer format, dispose of them to their own satisfaction. It is this first chapter that is the least credible and, at the same time, the most emotive chapter in the book. It will delight the pro-life people, anger the pro-choice people and worry the fence-sitters.
Book 1 Title: Abortion in Australia
Book 1 Subtitle: Answers and alternatives
Book Author: Anthony Fisher and Jane Buckingham
Book 1 Biblio: Dove Communications, $9.95 pb, 165 pp
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The contentious issue of abortion will probably never be resolved. The antagonists in any discussion frequently confuse facts with moral problems. There are two fundamental questions in the abortion argument: the empirical one, ‘when does human life begin’, and the philosophical one, ‘is human life always sacred?’
The answer to the first question may be considered a matter of fact. Indeed the authors of this book are unequivocal. They respond by saying that ‘A unique human being comes into existence when a human egg is fertilised by a human sperm’ (p.8). Others would dispute this statement. The authors however anticipate the well-known arguments and, through a question-and-answer format, dispose of them to their own satisfaction. It is this first chapter that is the least credible and, at the same time, the most emotive chapter in the book. It will delight the pro-life people, anger the pro-choice people and worry the fence-sitters.
There is no evidence of objectivity throughout the book. The authors’ stance is obvious, and their statements are broad; data is selective and loosely interpreted, and unsubstantiated opinions are offered as fact. For example, in spite of medical uncertainty on the way in which an IUD acts, the authors state that ‘the number [of abortions] is very considerably greater [than 4 million] if one includes the millions of abortions soon after conception which result from the intrauterine device’ (p.15).
Having started with the premise that human life begins at conception, the authors fail to tackle directly the question of the sanctity of human life. It is taken as an inherent truth that abortion under any circumstance is wrong and for these authors it would appear that sheer weight in numbers of (presumed) abortions makes it even more wrong.
Having taken the authors to task for their lack of objectivity and absence of philosophical reasoning, it is important to note the useful and positive aspects of this book.
Chapter Eight discusses the service available to pregnant women. Obviously this excludes abortion services. But this chapter is extremely useful and does provide information on alternatives to abortion.
The outstanding aspect of the book is the chapter on action for pro-lifers. This chapter restores the authors’ credibility. They advocate positive means for reducing the need for abortion and for providing non-judgmental support for the reluctant mother.
For a student of the topic the Appendix on the various church views is useful.
Unlike other books written from the pro-life perspective, this book does provide its source of references and, setting aside the emotive phraseology and the selectivity of data, is more learned in its approach. The book is very readable and is recommended to those on either side of the fence as well as those who sit astride that fence. It has now entered my list of ‘recommended reading’ for students of human behaviour and for students of philosophy. Abortion in Australia, Answers and Alternatives is rich in trigger statements for discussion groups.
The Australian colonies were much more of an ethnic mix in the middle of the last century than is nowadays imagined. In 1861 one Victorian in ten was Chinese. Germans were everywhere, not just in the Barossa: 10,000 also lived in Victoria. The folk memory of such groups was not continuous enough to preserve a sense of their collective heritage. Few material traces remain: overgrown tombstones, fading foreign surnames atop country stores, an exotic farmhouse looking quite unlike its neighbours.
The vast majority of these itinerant aliens left no mark at all. They lived in a goldfields tent, rented a room in the inner city, or built a shanty amid tall timber. Within a few years they moved on, perhaps to New Zealand or the Americas, and returned home in old age. Of Italians, for instance, probably 120,000 had come to this country by the time of the Great War, but the 1921 census counted only 8,000 of them.
Book 1 Title: Raffaello! Raffaello!
Book 1 Subtitle: A Biography of Raffaello Carboni
Book Author: Desmond O'Grady
Book 1 Biblio: Hale and Iremonger, 304 pp, $29.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The Australian colonies were much more of an ethnic mix in the middle of the last century than is nowadays imagined. In 1861 one Victorian in ten was Chinese. Germans were everywhere, not just in the Barossa: 10,000 also lived in Victoria. The folk memory of such groups was not continuous enough to preserve a sense of their collective heritage. Few material traces remain: overgrown tombstones, fading foreign surnames atop country stores, an exotic farmhouse looking quite unlike its neighbours.
The vast majority of these itinerant aliens left no mark at all. They lived in a goldfields tent, rented a room in the inner city, or built a shanty amid tall timber. Within a few years they moved on, perhaps to New Zealand or the Americas, and returned home in old age. Of Italians, for instance, probably 120,000 had come to this country by the time of the Great War, but the 1921 census counted only 8,000 of them.
These itinerants were doubly cursed. Their Australian ambitions were never quite realised, and while they were in the Antipodes their hometown had changed. Despite their fund of stories and experiences, people were not interested in where they had been, or in what they had learned. Such was the life of the Italian Raffaello Carboni. This notorious chronicler of the events at Eureka returned home in 1856, but never achieved the recognition as a man of letters he thought he deserved.
The reasons for which anyone finally values a literary work – for its insight into human behaviour, for the place it occupies in some aesthetic hierarchy – lie beyond the control of all but that reader himself. My concern is with the earlier and possibly sub-critical activities of gaining access to the text, making it fully present to the reader, putting him into a position to judge for himself.’ (p.3) This is the purpose of G.A. Wilkes’Studying Literature, as expressed in the first chapter, ‘Functions of Criticism.’ The book, according to the preface, evolved from material delivered to English I classes at the University of Sydney. Because these students are the intended addressees, Studying Literature is readable; and, in its occasional humorous debunking of The Literary Establishment, and its advice to the student, it is also a valuable handbook for novices in the study of literature.
Book 1 Title: Studying Literature
Book Author: G.A. Wilkes
Book 1 Biblio: Sydney University Press, $7.95 pb, 92 pp
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The reasons for which anyone finally values a literary work – for its insight into human behaviour, for the place it occupies in some aesthetic hierarchy – lie beyond the control of all but that reader himself. My concern is with the earlier and possibly sub-critical activities of gaining access to the text, making it fully present to the reader, putting him into a position to judge for himself.’ (p.3) This is the purpose of G.A. Wilkes’Studying Literature, as expressed in the first chapter, ‘Functions of Criticism.’ The book, according to the preface, evolved from material delivered to English I classes at the University of Sydney. Because these students are the intended addressees, Studying Literature is readable; and, in its occasional humorous debunking of The Literary Establishment, and its advice to the student, it is also a valuable handbook for novices in the study of literature.
These two first novels join the rapidly increasing library of fine and varied fiction being written by Australian women. Pairing them in this review is entirely fortuitous, and it is always possible to construct a comparison between any two books with a little ingenuity. I would want to stress the contrasting ways in which these authors explore very different aspects of female experience. However, at this juncture I am also particularly conscious of the doubtful position a male reviewer takes when he wishes to praise women’s fiction in this way. It is one thing for men imbued with a dash of new consciousness to recognise the positive examination of women’s lives in fiction; it is quite another for them to hold it up to (masculine) judgement. Despite the passage of virtually a generation, I’m uncomfortably aware, as I write this, of some remarks made by Mary Ellmann in Thinking about Women:
Book 1 Title: Rain in the Distance
Book Author: Suzanne Falkiner
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $7.95 pb, 162 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Book 2 Title: Tilly’s Fortunes
Book 2 Author: Helen Asher
Book 2 Biblio: Penguin Books, $6.95 pb, 149 pp
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These two first novels join the rapidly increasing library of fine and varied fiction being written by Australian women. Pairing them in this review is entirely fortuitous, and it is always possible to construct a comparison between any two books with a little ingenuity. I would want to stress the contrasting ways in which these authors explore very different aspects of female experience. However, at this juncture I am also particularly conscious of the doubtful position a male reviewer takes when he wishes to praise women’s fiction in this way. It is one thing for men imbued with a dash of new consciousness to recognise the positive examination of women’s lives in fiction; it is quite another for them to hold it up to (masculine) judgement. Despite the passage of virtually a generation, I’m uncomfortably aware, as I write this, of some remarks made by Mary Ellmann in Thinking about Women:
Paul Salzman has wit and judgement. He knows his chosen period is usually thought of as a lean one for prose fiction; he is anxious not to be typed as ‘the indefatigable in pursuit of the unreadable.’ He sees himself as the cartographer of a largely uncharted region: his main aim is to give us an idea of what is there.
A writer in this situation would like to be able to report on neglected masterpieces. Salzman is too sensible to make extravagant claims: the claims he does make are the more believable because they are modest. If he fails to find a seventeenth-century rival to Clarissa or Middlemarch, he nevertheless turns up some long and short fictions that deserve to be better known than they are. Mary Wrath’s Urania, ‘a feminist reading of the romance form’ which exposes ‘the less salubrious underside of the courtly code’, is one. It is apparently the earliest published work of fiction written in English by a woman. (It was suppressed soon after publication because it allegedly played ‘palpably and grossly’ with the reputations of certain influential people whom it portrayed under fictional names.)
Book 1 Title: English Prose Fiction 1158–1700: A Critical History
Paul Salzman (English Prose Fiction 1158–1700: A Critical History, Clarendon Press, $67.50 hb, $30 pb, 391 pp) has wit and judgement. He knows his chosen period is usually thought of as a lean one for prose fiction; he is anxious not to be typed as ‘the indefatigable in pursuit of the unreadable.’ He sees himself as the cartographer of a largely uncharted region: his main aim is to give us an idea of what is there.
A writer in this situation would like to be able to report on neglected masterpieces. Salzman is too sensible to make extravagant claims: the claims he does make are the more believable because they are modest. If he fails to find a seventeenth-century rival to Clarissa or Middlemarch, he nevertheless turns up some long and short fictions that deserve to be better known than they are. Mary Wrath’s Urania, ‘a feminist reading of the romance form’ which exposes ‘the less salubrious underside of the courtly code’, is one. It is apparently the earliest published work of fiction written in English by a woman. (It was suppressed soon after publication because it allegedly played ‘palpably and grossly’ with the reputations of certain influential people whom it portrayed under fictional names.)
Place has always been an intrinsic element in the detective story from the Paris of Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (despite the fact that his knowledge of the city came from an exhibition and not reality) to the London of Holmes to the village of Miss Marple to San Francisco of Hammett. In many cases it is as important a component as the detective character itself, or at least the detective is so entwined in his or her geography as to be impossible to conceive without it. This aspect of the detective novel probably reached if not its penultimate then its most obvious demonstration in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and has continued through the LA detective tradition that Chandler founded (with considerable outside help from Hammett). The liveliness of that tradition together with the fact that Los Angeles is home to Hollywood have made it the most mapped city in public consciousness.
Book 1 Title: The Big Drop
Book 1 Subtitle: More of Cliff Hardy
Book Author: Peter Corris
Book 1 Biblio: Unwin Paperbacks, $5.95 pb, 213 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Book 2 Title: Pokerface
Book 2 Author: Peter Corris
Book 2 Biblio: Penguin, $5.95 pb, 191 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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Place has always been an intrinsic element in the detective story from the Paris of Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (despite the fact that his knowledge of the city came from an exhibition and not reality) to the London of Holmes to the village of Miss Marple to San Francisco of Hammett. In many cases it is as important a component as the detective character itself, or at least the detective is so entwined in his or her geography as to be impossible to conceive without it. This aspect of the detective novel probably reached if not its penultimate then its most obvious demonstration in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and has continued through the LA detective tradition that Chandler founded (with considerable outside help from Hammett). The liveliness of that tradition together with the fact that Los Angeles is home to Hollywood have made it the most mapped city in public consciousness.
Among the many attributes of the editor of ABR is his capacity for whimsy. (The current acting editor would like to think she shares this trait and has therefore left this bit in, believing, with Muriel Spark, that ‘the more truths and confusions the better.’) He knows full well of my own political, industrial, and academic struggles in the chill of sunny Queensland; I am, in a sense, the last person who should have been asked to review these books.
Having been set the task, however, I’ll try to look at the situation through the wrong end of a metaphorical telescope, and, thus distancing myself, I evaluate as follows.
Book 1 Title: They Meant Business
Book 1 Subtitle: An illustrated history of eight Toowoomba enterprises
Book Author: Bruce Hinchliffe
Book 1 Biblio: Darling Downs Institute Press, $24.95 hb, 240 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Sworn To No Master
Book 2 Subtitle: A history of the provincial press in Queensland to 1930
Book 2 Author: Rod Kirkpatrick
Book 2 Biblio: Darling Downs Institute Press, $16.50 hb , 334 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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Among the many attributes of the editor of ABR is his capacity for whimsy. (The current acting editor would like to think she shares this trait and has therefore left this bit in, believing, with Muriel Spark, that ‘the more truths and confusions the better.’) He knows full well of my own political, industrial, and academic struggles in the chill of sunny Queensland; I am, in a sense, the last person who should have been asked to review these books.
Having been set the task, however, I’ll try to look at the situation through the wrong end of a metaphorical telescope, and, thus distancing myself, I evaluate as follows.
Publishing collections of documents takes several forms and meets different needs. There are the great series of volumes that strive to leave nothing significant out, such as Mansergh’s Transfer of Power on Indian independence; there are the individual illustrative examples commonly published in the midst of a work of secondary prose; and there are the single volume or so works that strive to be more selective, so as to render the taste of the greater feast in more manageable proportions. These different approaches satisfy the intellectual appetite rather as a banquet, an after dinner mint and a cottage-pie respectively answer humankind’s more common hunger.
Book 1 Title: Australian War Strategy 1939-1945
Book Author: John Robertson and John McCarthy
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $50, 464p, 0 7022 1924X
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Publishing collections of documents takes several forms and meets different needs. There are the great series of volumes that strive to leave nothing significant out, such as Mansergh’s Transfer of Power on Indian independence; there are the individual illustrative examples commonly published in the midst of a work of secondary prose; and there are the single volume or so works that strive to be more selective, so as to render the taste of the greater feast in more manageable proportions. These different approaches satisfy the intellectual appetite rather as a banquet, an after dinner mint and a cottage-pie respectively answer humankind’s more common hunger.
Donald Thomson was an altogether extraordinary man. We are fortunate that at last some of his great legacy to us is being published. It was my recent fascinated delight to read his Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (Currey O’Neil, 1983) and now, only a few weeks later, to find this equally fascinating book on my plate for a short review. I knew him, although not well, when he and an assistant and his collections were housed at the University of Melbourne in various parts of that jumble of old buildings on the comer of Tin Alley and Swanston Street which also held Trikojus’s Biochemistry Department. Where he kept his Aboriginal canoes later became our departmental tearoom and what had been his office later became our Professor’s office.
Book 1 Title: Donald Thompson's Mammals and Fishes of Northern Australia
Book Author: Joan M. Dixon and Linda Huxley
Book 1 Biblio: Thomas Nelson, $35, 210 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Donald Thomson was an altogether extraordinary man. We are fortunate that at last some of his great legacy to us is being published. It was my recent fascinated delight to read his Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (Currey O’Neil, 1983) and now, only a few weeks later, to find this equally fascinating book on my plate for a short review. I knew him, although not well, when he and an assistant and his collections were housed at the University of Melbourne in various parts of that jumble of old buildings on the comer of Tin Alley and Swanston Street which also held Trikojus’s Biochemistry Department. Where he kept his Aboriginal canoes later became our departmental tearoom and what had been his office later became our Professor’s office.
Robert Brown’s interesting book makes it clear that the history of ideas is a more complex and tough-minded enterprise than popular sloganising in this area would suggest. Brown, who is Professorial Fellow in the History of Ideas unit at the Australian National University, concerned with two different conceptions of the operation of the humane ‘sciences’. On the one side is the scientistic approach espoused by those inheritors of the Enlightenment who believe that there are laws of society just as there are laws of nature, and that the aims and methods of the social scientist should be similar to those of the natural scientist.
Book 1 Title: The Nature of Social Laws
Book Author: Robert Brown
Book 1 Biblio: Cambridge University Press, $59.50, 270 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Robert Brown’s interesting book makes it clear that the history of ideas is a more complex and tough-minded enterprise than popular sloganising in this area would suggest. Brown, who is Professorial Fellow in the History of Ideas unit at the Australian National University, concerned with two different conceptions of the operation of the humane ‘sciences’. On the one side is the scientistic approach espoused by those inheritors of the Enlightenment who believe that there are laws of society just as there are laws of nature, and that the aims and methods of the social scientist should be similar to those of the natural scientist.
Confronted with a tide like Thomas Hardy’s English the reviewer is likely to exclaim waspishly ‘I know that!’, but any tendency towards frivolity disappears once one begins to read this book. This is an extraordinarily thorough, exhaustive and illuminating study of the amazingly varied resources Hardy drew on for his language. The book is part of a series known as The Language Library and it is the specifics of Hardy’ s actual use of words that Professor Elliott, now Emeritus Professor and Master of University house at the Australian National University, is concerned with.
Book 1 Title: Thomas Hardy's English
Book Author: Ralph W. V. Elliott
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $48.50, 388pp
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Confronted with a tide like Thomas Hardy’s English the reviewer is likely to exclaim waspishly ‘I know that!’, but any tendency towards frivolity disappears once one begins to read this book. This is an extraordinarily thorough, exhaustive and illuminating study of the amazingly varied resources Hardy drew on for his language. The book is part of a series known as The Language Library and it is the specifics of Hardy’ s actual use of words that Professor Elliott, now Emeritus Professor and Master of University house at the Australian National University, is concerned with.
In 1981 the historian Peter Gardner wrote a moving article in the VictorianHistoricalJournal on the fate of the Gippsland aboriginal leader Bunjilene, who was thought to be holding a lost white woman supposedly captured by aboriginals in the early 1840s. Bunjilene was first taken into custody by Commissioner Tyers at Eagle Point near Bairnsdale in 1847, but while escaping, his son drowned in the lakes. This was the first in a series of tragedies which was to eliminate the Bunjilene family. When he couldn’t produce the white woman, he was taken as punishment to the Native Police station near Dandenong, even though the authorities knew he could not legally be kept prisoner. Here he was chained to a gumtree for long periods. His wife soon died, and after 18 months of illegal detention Bunjilene himself passed away from ‘grief’. Their two sons were taken away to be educated like whites and displayed around Melbourne. One died early, and the other, after some tragic incidents which revealed his disorientation, succumbed to fever and consumption in 1865. He was only eighteen-years-old.
Book 1 Title: The Kurnai of Gippsland
Book 1 Subtitle: Volume 1
Book Author: Phillip Pepper and Tess De Araugo
Book 1 Biblio: Hyland House, $30.00 pb, 322 pp
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In 1981 the historian Peter Gardner wrote a moving article in the VictorianHistoricalJournal on the fate of the Gippsland aboriginal leader Bunjilene, who was thought to be holding a lost white woman supposedly captured by aboriginals in the early 1840s. Bunjilene was first taken into custody by Commissioner Tyers at Eagle Point near Bairnsdale in 1847, but while escaping, his son drowned in the lakes. This was the first in a series of tragedies which was to eliminate the Bunjilene family. When he couldn’t produce the white woman, he was taken as punishment to the Native Police station near Dandenong, even though the authorities knew he could not legally be kept prisoner. Here he was chained to a gumtree for long periods. His wife soon died, and after 18 months of illegal detention Bunjilene himself passed away from ‘grief’. Their two sons were taken away to be educated like whites and displayed around Melbourne. One died early, and the other, after some tragic incidents which revealed his disorientation, succumbed to fever and consumption in 1865. He was only eighteen-years-old.
The last few years have seen a major reorientation of Australian defence policy. The Guam doctrine of limited commitment declared by the United States, the withdrawal of United States forces from mainland Southeast Asia, the British withdrawal of forces east of Suez and the substantial development of the capacities of regional countries, especially the ASEAN states, to provide for their own security all had major implications for Australian defence policy. Australia’s defence planners (and successive Australian Governments) concluded that our first priorities should be the defence of Australia with increasing independence, the encouragement of a favourable security environment in our region and the maintenance of ANZUS cooperation. This reorientation effectively spelt the end of the so-called ‘forward defence’ era and initiated a challenging process of transition.
Book 1 Title: To Live in Peace
Book Author: Michael O'Connor
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, $9.50 pb, 176 pp
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The last few years have seen a major reorientation of Australian defence policy. The Guam doctrine of limited commitment declared by the United States, the withdrawal of United States forces from mainland Southeast Asia, the British withdrawal of forces east of Suez and the substantial development of the capacities of regional countries, especially the ASEAN states, to provide for their own security all had major implications for Australian defence policy. Australia’s defence planners (and successive Australian Governments) concluded that our first priorities should be the defence of Australia with increasing independence, the encouragement of a favourable security environment in our region and the maintenance of ANZUS cooperation. This reorientation effectively spelt the end of the so-called ‘forward defence’ era and initiated a challenging process of transition.
The last few years have seen a major reorientation of Australian defence policy. The Guam doctrine of limited commitment declared by the United States, the withdrawal of United States forces from mainland Southeast Asia, the British withdrawal of forces east of Suez and the substantial development of the capacities of regional countries, especially the ASEAN states, to provide for their own security all had major implications for Australian defence policy. Australia’s defence planners (and successive Australian Governments) concluded that our first priorities should be the defence of Australia with increasing independence, the encouragement of a favourable security environment in our region and the maintenance of ANZUS cooperation. This reorientation effectively spelt the end of the so-called ‘forward defence’ era and initiated a challenging process of transition.
Book 1 Title: To Live in Peace
Book Author: Michael O'Connor
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, $9.50 pb, 176 pp
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The last few years have seen a major reorientation of Australian defence policy. The Guam doctrine of limited commitment declared by the United States, the withdrawal of United States forces from mainland Southeast Asia, the British withdrawal of forces east of Suez and the substantial development of the capacities of regional countries, especially the ASEAN states, to provide for their own security all had major implications for Australian defence policy. Australia’s defence planners (and successive Australian Governments) concluded that our first priorities should be the defence of Australia with increasing independence, the encouragement of a favourable security environment in our region and the maintenance of ANZUS cooperation. This reorientation effectively spelt the end of the so-called ‘forward defence’ era and initiated a challenging process of transition.
Sketching in the background to current defence thinking is a rather essential precondition to making much sense of O’Connor’s contribution. Regrettably, he demonstrates little knowledge or understanding of recent developments in Australian defence concepts, nor the compelling reasons for them. His approach is to propose a defence policy that essentially ignores the primary changes in the international environment in the last two decades. His is an approach more in keeping with the late 1950s or mid1960s than the late 1980s.
From the beginnings of white settlement, Australia has had, an economy based almost entirely on rural production. The effects of a rural economy and population influencing broad social attitudes, not surprisingly, has resulted in a culture wherein the ‘up-country bushman’ and the legendary ‘outback’ are the very essence of this nation’s lore. And comedy has been a significant element of the lore. The early Australian writers ‘Steele Rudd’, Edward Dyson, ‘Banjo’ Patterson and Henry Lawson among many have celebrated some aspect of country life, as it was, with comedy; and so, of course, have the black and white artists working for the Australian press. Indeed, Australia today is the last remaining country observing her rural origins in graphic satire. One of the more significant twentieth century creators of Australian bush comedy was the magnificent pen-draughtsman Percy Leason.
Book 1 Title: Wiregrass
Book 1 Subtitle: The drawings of Percy Leason
Book Author: Garrie Hutchinson
Book 1 Biblio: Lothian, $14.99 pb, 80 pp
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From the beginnings of white settlement, Australia has had, an economy based almost entirely on rural production. The effects of a rural economy and population influencing broad social attitudes, not surprisingly, has resulted in a culture wherein the ‘up-country bushman’ and the legendary ‘outback’ are the very essence of this nation’s lore. And comedy has been a significant element of the lore. The early Australian writers ‘Steele Rudd’, Edward Dyson, ‘Banjo’ Patterson and Henry Lawson among many have celebrated some aspect of country life, as it was, with comedy; and so, of course, have the black and white artists working for the Australian press. Indeed, Australia today is the last remaining country observing her rural origins in graphic satire. One of the more significant twentieth century creators of Australian bush comedy was the magnificent pen-draughtsman Percy Leason.
Like most artists, Percy Alexander Leason, when a young boy, began sketching the birds, animals, trees and other subjects around, in his case, his father’s wheat farm at Kaniva in Victoria’s Wimmera district where Percy was born in 1889. At the peak of his talent and popularity in 1925, writing of his youth, he stated: ‘Then something happened that nearly put an end to my interest in art. I was sent to an art school’. He travelled with the driver of a railway steam engine hauling the local train, for lessons twice a week at Nhill. ‘And the town’s name represents what I learnt there’ he added. During this period, a truly formative one for him, he was employed driving his father’s lorry loaded with wheat to the local rail-yards where he had the priceless opportunity of studying the types of farmers and country dwellers. ‘Between the loads I lay on the bags and listened to them yarning, unconsciously memorising their appearance and thus accumulating a fund of material that was to prove invaluable later on.’ This indeed was the case; Leason never at any time used a sketchbook. Those joyous days of his boyhood were again recalled when in 1934 he wrote some high quality fictional prose published over six issues of Mervyn Skipper’s magazine of the arts, and of protest, Pandemonium.
A Window In Mrs X’ s Place presents nineteen stories by Peter Cowan written over a period of more than thirty-five years and taken from six collections already published: Drift (1944), The Unploughed Land (1958), The Empty Street (1965), The Tins (1973), New Country (1976) and Mobiles (1979). This selection is neatly introduced by another Western Australian writer, Bruce Bennett, who makes some clear and worthwhile points and notices, especially, Cowan’s shift into a more ‘bleak vision of human motives and behaviour’ in his later stories. This later ‘bleak version’ perhaps reflects (the ageing) Cowan’s view of modern Australia: certainly some of the stories manifest a nostalgia for things ‘as they were’, as well as a resistance to change and, more particularly, to the single-minded capitalist notion of ‘progress’.
Book 1 Title: A Window in Mrs X's Place
Book Author: Peter Cowan
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $6.95 hb, 278 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: The Book of Sei and Other Stories
Book 2 Author: David Brooks
Book 2 Biblio: Hale & Iremonger Pty. Ltd., $9.95 hb, 127 pp
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A Window In Mrs X’ s Place presents nineteen stories by Peter Cowan written over a period of more than thirty-five years and taken from six collections already published: Drift (1944), The Unploughed Land (1958), The Empty Street (1965), The Tins (1973), New Country (1976) and Mobiles (1979). This selection is neatly introduced by another Western Australian writer, Bruce Bennett, who makes some clear and worthwhile points and notices, especially, Cowan’s shift into a more ‘bleak vision of human motives and behaviour’ in his later stories. This later ‘bleak version’ perhaps reflects (the ageing) Cowan’s view of modern Australia: certainly some of the stories manifest a nostalgia for things ‘as they were’, as well as a resistance to change and, more particularly, to the single-minded capitalist notion of ‘progress’.
Two early stories from Drift, ‘Requiem’ and the title story, present the preoccupation with change through the anxieties felt by characters about to leave the country for War service. Here, War provides a point of departure, and in ‘Requiem’ especially Cowan mystifies the connection between the soldier and the (rural) land he is about to leave to such an extent that the departure itself contains the death that is to come: ‘For a time I have been a part of reality, for a time I have been fitted to this scene, have been one with the things which gave me being. Then in the madness which has triumphed over the ages I go and become engulfed and am no more’ (pp. 26–27). The ‘scene’ itself becomes central to these earlier stories: the title of Cowan’s second collection, The Unploughed Land, itself testifies to his preoccupation with a precapitalist (that is, ‘prehistorical’) rural Australian landscape, from which we have all now ‘departed’.
With issues 101 and 102 (Renewing Dialects: New Poetry from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), Poetry Australia has entered upon the estate of the sage organ. The two issues account fairly representatively for PA’s traditional function – to provide opportunity, a periodic review of contemporary poetic activity, and a reliable voice. Herbert Jaffa leads off 101 with ‘Poetry Australia at One Hundred: An Impression and Appreciation’, a tribute to PA as source material and as a place of opportunity for the newish and oldish poet; and Elizabeth Perkins closes the show with a review essay of its special issues since 1968 (up to, but not including, 102). This essay cogently reminds poets and readers of a basic requirement: that poets keep ‘good faith towards the language they use’. An editor could do worse than start with such a requirement. Both 101 and 102 are clearly open to the possibilities of ‘new’ languages, and alternatives to the sort of ‘I’ catalogue of micromoments that so often puts new readers off. Shifting of the ‘I’ shuffles up some interesting versions of tone.
Book 1 Title: Poetry Australia No. 101
Book Author: Grace Perry
Book 1 Biblio: South Head Press, $30.00 (Annual Subscription), 80 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 2 Title: Poetry Australia No. 102
Book 2 Author: Paul Kavanagh
Book 2 Biblio: South Head Press, $30.00 (Annual Subscription), 96 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Editor
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Book 3 Title: The Solitary Islands
Book 3 Author: Audrey Longbottom
Book 3 Biblio: Ollif Publishing Company, $7.00 pb, 62 pp
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With issues 101 and 102 (Renewing Dialects: New Poetry from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), Poetry Australia has entered upon the estate of the sage organ. The two issues account fairly representatively for PA’s traditional function – to provide opportunity, a periodic review of contemporary poetic activity, and a reliable voice. Herbert Jaffa leads off 101 with ‘Poetry Australia at One Hundred: An Impression and Appreciation’, a tribute to PA as source material and as a place of opportunity for the newish and oldish poet; and Elizabeth Perkins closes the show with a review essay of its special issues since 1968 (up to, but not including, 102). This essay cogently reminds poets and readers of a basic requirement: that poets keep ‘good faith towards the language they use’. An editor could do worse than start with such a requirement. Both 101 and 102 are clearly open to the possibilities of ‘new’ languages, and alternatives to the sort of ‘I’ catalogue of micromoments that so often puts new readers off. Shifting of the ‘I’ shuffles up some interesting versions of tone.
In 101 there’s some fun – tiny punnic reminders like Peter Bibby’s ‘Footnote’, S. G. Evans’s ‘The Pink Shoes’; gaily self-contained parables which evolve their own languages – Lynne Alvarez’s ‘Dog and Hermit Crab’, and another ‘opus’ from Krzysztof Ostaszewski about two zebras. The star of Jesse Lee Kercheval’s ‘Le Grand Hotel’ poems is the proprietaire Madame Desnos, whose ‘hair is the faded red/of a very old dachsund’. His patient control of Madame Desnos coaxes out a poignant humour, and obviously owes something to the lineage of slow dramatic gesture. Less fun, more vitriol in Catalano’s ‘Roman Imitations’, with its vicelike tone; and two Dawesian pieces from Bruce, sticking up for the voiceless: ‘Malingering’s a style like any other ... ’
Article Title: The Virtues of Simplicity... and one cryptic overgrowth
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Here we have poetry by five women. The most artful, Patricia Avery, her motifs glass, ice, crystal, reflections, mirrors, water, waves, ocean, I find obscure. In absolute contrast is the work of Susan Schwartz, simply expressed, crystal clear, yet subtle, and full of striking images.
Book 1 Title: The Unborn Child Speaks To The Sea
Book Author: Susan Schwartz
Book 1 Biblio: Abalone Press, PO Box 202 Cheltenham Victoria, 76p., $7.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Heritage Of Air
Book 2 Author: Madge Staunton
Book 2 Biblio: Queensland Community Press, 49p.
Book 2 Author Type: Author
Book 3 Title: Other People (And Other Poems)
Book 3 Author: Elly McDonald
Book 3 Biblio: Published by the author, PO Box 123 0, Potts Point 2011 NSW, 60p., $5.00 pb
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Here we have poetry by five women. The most artful, Patricia Avery, her motifs glass, ice, crystal, reflections, mirrors, water, waves, ocean, I find obscure. In absolute contrast is the work of Susan Schwartz, simply expressed, crystal clear, yet subtle, and full of striking images.
These are the poems of a woman for the time being engrossed in the care of her family, realising how fast her young years slip away. The family is at the centre of more than half; the rest are portraits, landscapes, political satires, intelligent, assured. Let no one think she has sunk into motherhood like a featherbed. The sequence The Unborn ChildSpeaks to the Sea, which gives the book its title, is honest, tender, objective, triumphant, as it follows the first realisations of pregnancy from instinctive recoil to joyful acceptance, and the title poem, which has already found its way into an anthology for children, one would like to quote in full if space allowed. The consciousness is the child’s, a whale in her mother’s belly, ocean within ocean, as her mother swims.
