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Absolutely Revolting

April 1984, no. 59

Welcome to the April 1984 issue of Australian Book Review!

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John Hanrahan reviews White Stag of Exile by Thomas Shapcott
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Thomas Shapcott uses as a basis for his novel the fascinating life story of Karoly Pulszky, who left Hungary as the disgraced Director of the National Gallery of Art and who committed suicide after two months in Queensland. Pulszky, a forceful and flamboyant man, followed in the footsteps of his distinguished father in building up Hungary’s art collection. He was married to Emilia Markus, ‘The Blonde Wonder of Budapest, the Greatest Actress in Hungary’. Financial mismanagement enabled his family’s political enemies to bring him down and he left Hungary in shame. Years after his death, one of his two daughters, Romola, married Nijinsky, and she wrote extensively about her own colourful life. Shapcott draws on her writings with considerable skill.
Book 1 Title: White Stag of Exile
Book Author: Thomas Shapcott
Book 1 Biblio: Allen Lane, $12.95, 172 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Thomas Shapcott uses as a basis for his novel the fascinating life story of Karoly Pulszky, who left Hungary as the disgraced Director of the National Gallery of Art and who committed suicide after two months in Queensland. Pulszky, a forceful and flamboyant man, followed in the footsteps of his distinguished father in building up Hungary’s art collection. He was married to Emilia Markus, ‘The Blonde Wonder of Budapest, the Greatest Actress in Hungary’. Financial mismanagement enabled his family’s political enemies to bring him down and he left Hungary in shame. Years after his death, one of his two daughters, Romola, married Nijinsky, and she wrote extensively about her own colourful life. Shapcott draws on her writings with considerable skill.

Read more: John Hanrahan reviews 'White Stag of Exile' by Thomas Shapcott

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Harold Love reviews 25 Years of Australian Opera by Neil Warren-Smith with Frank Salter
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Contents Category: Opera
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That Neil Warren-Smith was a magnificent singer and actor I knew from having seen him in many Trust and Australian Opera seasons, including the very first in 1956. But his proneness to appear as czars, monks, ancient sages, field marshals and similar dignified personages had concealed from me that he was also a magnificent larrikin. This is a very welcome bonus of what is, sadly, a posthumous autobiography, talked with unblushing frankness down a tape recorder and presented with what seems to have been a minimum of intervention by Frank Salter.
Book 1 Title: 25 Years of Australian Opera
Book Author: Neil Warren-Smith with Frank Salter
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Press, 180 pp, $22.50 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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That Neil Warren-Smith was a magnificent singer and actor I knew from having seen him in many Trust and Australian Opera seasons, including the very first in 1956. But his proneness to appear as czars, monks, ancient sages, field marshals and similar dignified personages had concealed from me that he was also a magnificent larrikin. This is a very welcome bonus of what is, sadly, a posthumous autobiography, talked with unblushing frankness down a tape recorder and presented with what seems to have been a minimum of intervention by Frank Salter.

Read more: Harold Love reviews '25 Years of Australian Opera' by Neil Warren-Smith with Frank Salter

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J.A.C Mackie reviews The Other 100 Years War by Russell Braddon
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The Japanese tactics in today’s export war are identical with those they employed so successfully in 1941–42 against a bigger army than theirs in Malaya: they attack individual units ‘with surprise and with our strength concentrated’. This is one of the two leitmotifs of Russell Braddon’s book. The other is his notion of Japan’s ‘hundred years’ war’. During his years of captivity in Changi between 1942 and 1945, Braddon was told once by a Japanese officer: ‘This war will last a hundred years, Mr Braddon. I’m afraid you will never go home.’ Later, after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, when he was about to leave Changi, he passed a Japanese officer who was being escorted into the gaol. ‘In a spirit half of elation and half of spite I turned and shouted, “This war last one hundred years?” “Ninety-six years to go”, he called back; and neither of us bothered to bow.’
Book 1 Title: The Other 100 Years War
Book Author: Russell Braddon
Book 1 Biblio: William Collins, viii+ 245p., $19.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The Japanese tactics in today’s export war are identical with those they employed so successfully in 1941–42 against a bigger army than theirs in Malaya: they attack individual units ‘with surprise and with our strength concentrated’.

This is one of the two leitmotifs of Russell Braddon’s book. The other is his notion of Japan’s ‘hundred years’ war’. During his years of captivity in Changi between 1942 and 1945, Braddon was told once by a Japanese officer: ‘This war will last a hundred years, Mr Braddon. I’m afraid you will never go home.’ Later, after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, when he was about to leave Changi, he passed a Japanese officer who was being escorted into the gaol. ‘In a spirit half of elation and half of spite I turned and shouted, “This war last one hundred years?” “Ninety-six years to go”, he called back; and neither of us bothered to bow.’

Read more: J.A.C Mackie reviews 'The Other 100 Years War' by Russell Braddon

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Dennis Pryor reviews The Rapes of Lucretia: A myth and its transformations by Ian Donaldson
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Ian Donaldson’s The Rapes of Lucretia is a book so rich in ideas that a review can only be unfairly perfunctory. It starts from ancient accounts of the rape of Lucretia and tracks the transformations of the myth through two millennia. This is no wearisome catalogue, no tedious grinding of PhD mills. Donaldson is, as he puts it, ‘especially interested in the close relationship that may exist between the creative and the philosophical processes of mind; between art and argument’. What emerges is a sturdy contribution to the history of ideas, a book showing how a myth which sustained Roman ideas of heroism and political liberty was used at different periods of history to reflect and embody changing political and sexual ideas.
Book 1 Title: The Rapes of Lucretia
Book 1 Subtitle: A myth and its transformations
Book Author: Ian Donaldson
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, 203 pp., index, $37.50
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Ian Donaldson’s The Rapes of Lucretia is a book so rich in ideas that a review can only be unfairly perfunctory. It starts from ancient accounts of the rape of Lucretia and tracks the transformations of the myth through two millennia. This is no wearisome catalogue, no tedious grinding of PhD mills. Donaldson is, as he puts it, ‘especially interested in the close relationship that may exist between the creative and the philosophical processes of mind; between art and argument’. What emerges is a sturdy contribution to the history of ideas, a book showing how a myth which sustained Roman ideas of heroism and political liberty was used at different periods of history to reflect and embody changing political and sexual ideas.

Donaldson's use of visual sources is impressive. He is the most useful sort of art critic, showing the reader how a painting works and what to look at. The twenty plates are monochrome and of undistinguished quality. It is largely as a result of Donaldson's analysis that we are able to assess their significance as myth-making images.

Read more: Dennis Pryor reviews 'The Rapes of Lucretia: A myth and its transformations' by Ian Donaldson

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George Shaw reviews ‘The Popish Plot’ by Margaret M. Pawsey
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Contents Category: Religion
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Article Title: Bigotry
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Dr Pawsey’s The Popish Plot is a history of what never was – a popish plot to take over Victoria around 1860 to 1863. It makes fascinating reading. It is also quite partisan.

Considered from one angle this is the tale of four exceptional years, 1860-1863, when Victoria’s catholics suffered the full assault of protestant bigotry on a lavish and unprecedented scale. Protestants reminded catholics that they were welcome to settle in Victoria so long as they did not covet the place occupied by their ruling Anglo-protestant hosts.
Book 1 Title: The Popish Plot
Book Author: Margaret M. Pawsey
Book 1 Biblio: Studies in the Christian Movement, distributed by Dove Communications, 21pp., index, $24.95 0 94980709 5
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Dr Pawsey’s The Popish Plot is a history of what never was – a popish plot to take over Victoria around 1860 to 1863. It makes fascinating reading. It is also quite partisan.

Considered from one angle this is the tale of four exceptional years, 1860-1863, when Victoria’s catholics suffered the full assault of protestant bigotry on a lavish and unprecedented scale. Protestants reminded catholics that they were welcome to settle in Victoria so long as they did not covet the place occupied by their ruling Anglo-protestant hosts.

Read more: George Shaw reviews ‘The Popish Plot’ by Margaret M. Pawsey

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Judy Smart reviews ‘The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes’ by Peter Spartalis
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: Hardline Billy
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Billy Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923, had that same acerbic larrikin quality in his dealings with enemies at home and abroad that has become familiar to us in our current elected leader. Yet Hughes never forsook the heedless and stubborn directness that seems to have deserted Bob Hawke in recent and more sober times. Peter Spartalis’s book is about Hughes’s colourful and dynamic international role and achievements as Prime Minister and about the many protracted battles he fought in what he believed to be Australia’s diplomatic interests though there was nothing at all diplomatic about his style.
Book 1 Title: The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes
Book Author: Peter Spartalis
Book 1 Biblio: Hale & Iremonger, 309pp. biblio., index, $27.95, $14.95pb 0 86806 084 4, 0 86806 085 2 pb
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Billy Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923, had that same acerbic larrikin quality in his dealings with enemies at home and abroad that has become familiar to us in our current elected leader. Yet Hughes never forsook the heedless and stubborn directness that seems to have deserted Bob Hawke in recent and more sober times. Peter Spartalis’s book is about Hughes’s colourful and dynamic international role and achievements as Prime Minister and about the many protracted battles he fought in what he believed to be Australia’s diplomatic interests though there was nothing at all diplomatic about his style.

Read more: Judy Smart reviews ‘The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes’ by Peter Spartalis

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Law
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Article Title: Making criminals
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It is a common occurrence for teachers of criminal law in Australia to have their students ask: “I have found lots of materials on the situation in England and in America. Isn’t there anything useful written about Australia?” Sadly, the answer is all too frequently “no”, if the student is looking for material outside of bland appellate case analysis or correctional criminology.

Despite frequently being at the centre of political controversy and public attention, debate on the nature and direction of the Australian criminal justice system is still largely carried out at the low level of anecdote, impression and pre-existing prejudice.

Issues in Criminal Justice Administration is one of a few books published in the past several years which offer some hope for the development of a body of literature on the criminal justice system in Australia providing both theoretical discourse and empirical study and analysis.
Book 1 Title: Issues in Criminal Justice Administration
Book Author: Mark Findlay, Sandra J. Egger, Jeff Sutton
Book 1 Biblio: George Allen & Unwin, 233 pp., biblio., $22.50, $12.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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It is a common occurrence for teachers of criminal law in Australia to have their students ask: “I have found lots of materials on the situation in England and in America. Isn’t there anything useful written about Australia?” Sadly, the answer is all too frequently “no”, if the student is looking for material outside of bland appellate case analysis or correctional criminology.

Despite frequently being at the centre of political controversy and public attention, debate on the nature and direction of the Australian criminal justice system is still largely carried out at the low level of anecdote, impression and pre-existing prejudice.

Issues in Criminal Justice Administration is one of a few books published in the past several years which offer some hope for the development of a body of literature on the criminal justice system in Australia providing both theoretical discourse and empirical study and analysis.

Read more: David Wesbrot reviews ‘Issues in Criminal Justice Administration’ by Mark Findlay, Sandra J. Egger...

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Kate Ahearne reviews ‘The Strength of Tradition’ by R. F. Holt (ed.), ‘Shalom’ by Nancy Keesing (ed.) and ‘Births, Deaths and Marriages’ by Carmel Bird
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Contents Category: Australian Fiction
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Article Title: Newcomers
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The short story has always enjoyed a special place in Australian literature, and many of our finest writers have excelled in the form. Strangely enough for such a young culture, and one heavily dependant on immigration, the theme of the immigrant experience has been largely overshadowed by the bush ethos that dominated the stories of the 1890s, and the resurgence of interest in the bush and bush values in the stories of the late thirties and early forties. Our writers have been more interested in what it means to be Australian than in what it’s like to be new-Australian. More recently writers have tended to concern themselves with experimentation in language and form, and with themes that they considered to be of international rather than merely national importance.
Book 1 Title: The Strength of Tradition
Book 1 Subtitle: Stories of the Immigrant Presence in Australia
Book Author: R. F. Holt
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, 288pp., $14.95, $6.95 pb 0 7022 1691 7, 0 7022 1701 8 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Shalom
Book 2 Subtitle: Australian Jewish Stories
Book 2 Author: Nancy Keesing
Book 2 Biblio: Penguin, 239pp., $6.95 0 14 006 665 9
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Book 3 Title: Births, Deaths and Marriages
Book 3 Author: Carmel Bird
Book 3 Biblio: Carmel Bird, 20 Lesney St., Richmond, Vic., 91pp.
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The short story has always enjoyed a special place in Australian literature, and many of our finest writers have excelled in the form. Strangely enough for such a young culture, and one heavily dependant on immigration, the theme of the immigrant experience has been largely overshadowed by the bush ethos that dominated the stories of the 1890s, and the resurgence of interest in the bush and bush values in the stories of the late thirties and early forties. Our writers have been more interested in what it means to be Australian than in what it’s like to be new-Australian. More recently writers have tended to concern themselves with experimentation in language and form, and with themes that they considered to be of international rather than merely national importance.

Read more: Kate Ahearne reviews ‘The Strength of Tradition’ by R. F. Holt (ed.), ‘Shalom’ by Nancy Keesing...

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Carmel Oakley reviews ‘The Life and Work of Russell Drysdale’ by Lou Klepac
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Contents Category: Art
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Article Title: Painter of the outback
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It is an irony that one of the most European of our painters is regarded, in the popular mind, as being the most characteristically Australian. Drysdale, perhaps more so than any other modern Australian painter, depended on European models: his paintings locate themselves not in the outback but in the European modern tradition – beginning with Cézanne and extending through Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, de Chirico and Tanguy to Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.
Book 1 Title: The Life and Work of Russell Drysdale
Book Author: Lou Klepac
Book 1 Biblio: Bay Books, 383 pp., $69.95 0 85835 685 6
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It is an irony that one of the most European of our painters is regarded, in the popular mind, as being the most characteristically Australian. Drysdale, perhaps more so than any other modern Australian painter, depended on European models: his paintings locate themselves not in the outback but in the European modern tradition – beginning with Cézanne and extending through Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, de Chirico and Tanguy to Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.

Read more: Carmel Oakley reviews ‘The Life and Work of Russell Drysdale’ by Lou Klepac

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Dennis Pryor reviews ‘The Rapes of Lucretia’ by Ian Donaldson
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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Article Title: A regenerator of myth
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Ian Donaldson’s The Rapes of Lucretia is a book so rich in ideas that a review can only be unfairly perfunctory. It starts from ancient accounts of the rape of Lucretia and tracks the transformations of the myth through two millennia. This is no wearisome catalogue, no tedious grinding of PhD mills. Donaldson is, as he puts it, “especially interested in the close relationship that may exist between the creative and the philosophical processes of mind; between art and argument”. What emerges is a sturdy contribution to the history of ideas, a book showing how a myth which sustained Roman ideas of heroism and political liberty was used at different periods of history to reflect and embody changing political and sexual ideas.
Book 1 Title: The Rapes of Lucretia
Book Author: Ian Donaldson
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, 203 pp., index, $37.50 0 19 812638 7
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Cover Small (400 x 600):
Book 1 Cover (800 x 1200):
Display Review Rating: No

Ian Donaldson’s The Rapes of Lucretia is a book so rich in ideas that a review can only be unfairly perfunctory. It starts from ancient accounts of the rape of Lucretia and tracks the transformations of the myth through two millennia. This is no wearisome catalogue, no tedious grinding of PhD mills. Donaldson is, as he puts it, “especially interested in the close relationship that may exist between the creative and the philosophical processes of mind; between art and argument”. What emerges is a sturdy contribution to the history of ideas, a book showing how a myth which sustained Roman ideas of heroism and political liberty was used at different periods of history to reflect and embody changing political and sexual ideas.

Read more: Dennis Pryor reviews ‘The Rapes of Lucretia’ by Ian Donaldson

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