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Absolutely Revolting

February–March 1983, no. 48

Welcome to the February–March 1983 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Gerard Windsor reviews The Plains by Gerald Murnane
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The Plains is a book for the critic, not the mere reviewer. It is a strange creature, to be approached with care. Several omens made me cautious. My review copy reached me three months after the date of posting.
Book 1 Title: The Plains
Book Author: Gerald Murnane
Book 1 Biblio: Norstrilia Press, 126 pp, $4.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The Plains is a book for the critic, not the mere reviewer. It is a strange creature, to be approached with care.

Several omens made me cautious. My review copy reached me three months after the date of posting. It was not in mint condition. In fact, the advanced state of spinal curvature is but a bagatelle to the numerous textual annotations and underlinings. There are apparently some gremlins in Australia Post determined to regulate the vagaries of our national reviewing. Most assiduously, during my trek, I closed my eyes to their signposts. Then I found myself dallying with the novel in an eating-house. A gentleman opposite asked if what I was reading had come from Israel. I took his point. Upside down, as well as right side up, the blue cover lettering might well pass for Hebrew. The cover is an abomination. Other people may have thought so too, for the book (first edition, first printing) is also sold in a different, brown dust jacket. A friend acquired a copy and was delighted to find he had scored two dust jackets, the brown and the blue.

Read more: Gerard Windsor reviews 'The Plains' by Gerald Murnane

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Laurie Clancy reviews An Item From the Late News by Thea Astley
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Returning to live in Queensland seems to have done something to Thea Astley’s perception of Australian country life. In this novel, as well as in her previous one, A Kindness Cup, she gives as appalling and scathing a vision of life in rural Australia as has come from any novelist since Barbara Baynton. Although her prose is as bitingly astringent as ever in this book, it lacks the sardonic humour of her recent collection of short stories Hunting the Wild Pineapple. The pessimism and anger are almost unrelieved.
Book 1 Title: An Item From the Late News
Book Author: Thea Astley
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, 200 pp, $12.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Returning to live in Queensland seems to have done something to Thea Astley’s perception of Australian country life. In this novel, as well as in her previous one, A Kindness Cup, she gives as appalling and scathing a vision of life in rural Australia as has come from any novelist since Barbara Baynton. Although her prose is as bitingly astringent as ever in this book, it lacks the sardonic humour of her recent collection of short stories Hunting the Wild Pineapple. The pessimism and anger are almost unrelieved.

Read more: Laurie Clancy reviews 'An Item From the Late News' by Thea Astley

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John Hanrahan reviews Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally
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Thomas Keneally excels in stories of guilt. Schindler’s Ark joins Bring Larks and Heroes and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith as his best work so far. Organised and complacent cruelty to convicts, to blacks, to Jews grabs Keneally’s imagination to produce his most powerful novels. On one level, Schindler’s Ark is the story of a man who played the system to ensure the survival of his Jewish factory workers. On another level, it is their story, a compelling narrative of suffering and the will to survive. Fifty years after Hitler’s vaguely democratic marching to power, Keneally compels us to believe in the reality of the Holocaust. He writes of death, separation, and survival with the matter-of-fact authority of Kevin Heinz telling us how to mulch our petunias in a time of drought.
Book 1 Title: Schindler’s Ark
Book Author: Thomas Keneally
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder & Stoughton, 432 pp, $19.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Thomas Keneally excels in stories of guilt. Schindler’s Ark joins Bring Larks and Heroes and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith as his best work so far. Organised and complacent cruelty to convicts, to blacks, to Jews grabs Keneally’s imagination to produce his most powerful novels. On one level, Schindler’s Ark is the story of a man who played the system to ensure the survival of his Jewish factory workers. On another level, it is their story, a compelling narrative of suffering and the will to survive. Fifty years after Hitler’s vaguely democratic marching to power, Keneally compels us to believe in the reality of the Holocaust. He writes of death, separation, and survival with the matter-of-fact authority of Kevin Heinz telling us how to mulch our petunias in a time of drought.

Read more: John Hanrahan reviews 'Schindler’s Ark' by Thomas Keneally

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Mary Lord reviews Archipelagoes and Readings from Ecclesiastes by Peter Goldsworthy and The Harlots Enter First by Gerard Windsor
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It is comparatively rare for a new writer to bring out his first two collections in the one year, and even more rare that one should be a collection of verse and the other of short stories. Yet this is exactly what Peter Goldsworthy has done. His name will be unfamiliar to many, but those who regularly read literary magazines will have come across his stories and poems before and he will undoubtedly be heard of again.
Book 1 Title: Archipelagoes
Book Author: Peter Goldsworthy
Book 1 Biblio: A&R, $6.95 pb, 108 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: The Harlots Enter First
Book 2 Author: Gerard Windsor
Book 2 Biblio: Hale & Iremonger, $15.95 hb, $8.95 pb, 159 pp
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It is comparatively rare for a new writer to bring out his first two collections in the one year, and even more rare that one should be a collection of verse and the other of short stories. Yet this is exactly what Peter Goldsworthy has done. His name will be unfamiliar to many, but those who regularly read literary magazines will have come across his stories and poems before and he will undoubtedly be heard of again.

There are nineteen stories in Archipelagoes, two of which have been competition winners. ‘Memoirs of a small “m” marxist’ was joint winner of the 1979 Western Australian Sesquicentenary Literary Competition and ‘Before the Day Goes’ won the 1980 Premio Bancarella Literary Award from the Italian Festival of Victoria. These, and the other stories in the collection, are marked by the cool objectivity of the writing and the neat last paragraph sums up the point to which the story has been driving.

Read more: Mary Lord reviews 'Archipelagoes' and 'Readings from Ecclesiastes' by Peter Goldsworthy and 'The...

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Helen Elliott reviews Martin Boyd’s Langton Novels by Brian McFarlane
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Brian McFarlane’s small book on Martin Boyd’s Langton novels is a particularly measured and useful study. He makes no grand claims for Boyd but sees and appreciates him for the writer that he is when he is at his best, and the Langton novels – The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love, and When Blackbirds Sing – certainly see Boyd at his best.
Book 1 Title: Martin Boyd’s Langton Novels
Book Author: by Brian McFarlane
Book 1 Biblio: (Studies in Australian Literature) Edward Arnold, 60 pp, $4.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Brian McFarlane’s small book on Martin Boyd’s Langton novels is a particularly measured and useful study. He makes no grand claims for Boyd but sees and appreciates him for the writer that he is when he is at his best, and the Langton novels – The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love, and When Blackbirds Sing – certainly see Boyd at his best.

Boyd does not by any means offer limitless possibilities to the student, and most of what McFarlane is saying has been noticed before. But what is so pleasing about this study is the balance and the calm clear-sighted way in which the author assesses Boyd. To use Boyd’s own words, McFarlane assesses his subject with ‘intelligent kindness’. This does not of course imply any lack of critical toughness – it is simply a starting point.

Read more: Helen Elliott reviews 'Martin Boyd’s Langton Novels' by Brian McFarlane

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Chris Tiffin reviews Yoogum Yoogum by Lionel George Fogarty
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Yoogum Yoogum is the second collection of verse by a young Queensland Aboriginal whose earlier volume, Kargun, did not get a great deal of attention when it was published in 1980. Fogarty’s themes are ones increasingly heard in contemporary Australian writing: the historical dispossession of the Aboriginals, the present decay and demoralisation of Aboriginal society, white greed and exploitation, the primacy and potential of the land as a key to fulfilled life, the plight of (Aboriginal) women, the pathetic dispossession of Aboriginal children, solidarity in the cause of redressing the wrongs to Aboriginals, the fundamentally positive values of Aboriginal society, the possibilities for solidarity with other groups in the struggle for social justice.
Book 1 Title: Yoogum Yoogum
Book Author: Lionel George Fogarty
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, 132 pp, $4.95 pb
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Yoogum Yoogum is the second collection of verse by Lionel George Fogarty, a young Queensland Aboriginal whose earlier volume, Kargun, did not get a great deal of attention when it was published in 1980. Fogarty’s themes are ones increasingly heard in contemporary Australian writing: the historical dispossession of the Aboriginals, the present decay and demoralisation of Aboriginal society, white greed and exploitation, the primacy and potential of the land as a key to fulfilled life, the plight of (Aboriginal) women, the pathetic dispossession of Aboriginal children, solidarity in the cause of redressing the wrongs to Aboriginals, the fundamentally positive values of Aboriginal society, the possibilities for solidarity with other groups in the struggle for social justice.

In his new volume, Fogarty departs from his earlier clear statement of these themes to a difficult, dense and sometimes obscure phrase and idiom which allow the themes to emerge as substrata of a forbidding barrage of language. The cover of the earlier volume bore the disclaimer that Fogarty ‘still has difficulty in reading and writing’. The publishing of that first volume must have done much for his confidence, for Yoogum Yoogum is not the work of an unconfident writer. In fact, its successes and its faults stem rather from a confident and courageous experimentalism.

Read more: Chris Tiffin reviews 'Yoogum Yoogum' by Lionel George Fogarty

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Robert Murray reviews The New Conservatism in Australia by Robert Manne
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Those who have hopes or fears of a Reagan–Thatcher hardline conservatism arising in Australia can forget it, if this newest attempt by the local ‘right’ to define itself is any guide. For a major topic, it is a listless, sickly growth from Australia’s whiggish soil that struggles – mostly unsuccessfully – for anything new to say.
Book 1 Title: The New Conservatism in Australia
Book Author: Robert Manne
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, 290 pp, $25 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Those who have hopes or fears of a Reagan–Thatcher hardline conservatism arising in Australia can forget it, if this newest attempt by the local ‘right’ to define itself is any guide. For a major topic, it is a listless, sickly growth from Australia’s whiggish soil that struggles – mostly unsuccessfully – for anything new to say.

Familiar old war-horses are trotted out saying predictable things, almost entirely in the spirit of left-bashing rather than of a constructive conservatism. Far from these being any glimmer of arguments for recession cures, smaller government or constructive critique of the Liberal Party, such subjects are not touched on.

Read more: Robert Murray reviews 'The New Conservatism in Australia' by Robert Manne

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I first met Fabinyi in November, 1963 – he had offered me an editorial job sight-unseen at F.W. Cheshire while I was living in London. On my first day in the basement in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, I shook hands formally with a handsome, greying man in his early fifties with a slight stoop and a thick European accent. Within a week or two of my arrival, my new acquaintances warned me about him: he was ambitious, and he was circuitous. Then followed the tired, old (and to me, offensive) joke about the Hungarian in the revolving door. I shall comment on these accusations later.
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[Ed.: The renewal of Australian publishing after World War II was in no small part due to the efforts of one man, Andrew Fabinyi, Publishing Director of the Melbourne firm of F.W. Cheshire. His personal interests in ideas and his commitment to Australia were demonstrated in his publishing program as a whole and in such titles as Peter Coleman’s Australian Civilization, in which a number of writers investigate the reality and prospects of Australian society. The successor firm to F.W. Cheshire, Longman Cheshire, later this year are commemorating Fabinyi’s service to Australian life and publishing by issuing A Nation Apart, which takes a similar look at Australia today. John Hooker worked with Fabinyi, and this memoir, published by permission of Longman Cheshire, comes from A Nation Apart.]

 

I first met Fabinyi in November, 1963 – he had offered me an editorial job sight-unseen at F.W. Cheshire while I was living in London. On my first day in the basement in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, I shook hands formally with a handsome, greying man in his early fifties with a slight stoop and a thick European accent. Within a week or two of my arrival, my new acquaintances warned me about him: he was ambitious, and he was circuitous. Then followed the tired, old (and to me, offensive) joke about the Hungarian in the revolving door. I shall comment on these accusations later.

Read more: 'Andrew Fabinyi – A memoir' by John Hooker

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Jack Clancy reviews Australian Motion Picture Yearbook 1983 by Peter Beilby and Ross Lansell
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This is the third edition of the Australian Motion Picture Yearbook, a production of the leading Australian film magazine Cinema Papers, which is itself solidly established with Issue No. 41 currently on sale, and a circulation of over 12,000 per issue. The Yearbook is one of a number of publications to come from Cinema Papers Pty Ltd, their range – from The New Australian Cinema and The Documentary Film in Australia to the Film Expo Seminar Report – indicating the task the magazine sets itself.
Book 1 Title: Australian Motion Picture Yearbook 1983
Book Author: Peter Beilby and Ross Lansell
Book 1 Biblio: Thomas Nelson/Roscope Publishers (Four Seasons, in association with Cinema Papers), directories, illus., 480 p., $25.00 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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This is the third edition of the Australian Motion Picture Yearbook, a production of the leading Australian film magazine Cinema Papers, which is itself solidly established with Issue No. 41 currently on sale, and a circulation of over 12,000 per issue. The Yearbook is one of a number of publications to come from Cinema Papers Pty Ltd, their range – from The New Australian Cinema and The Documentary Film in Australia to the Film Expo Seminar Report – indicating the task the magazine sets itself.

Read more: Jack Clancy reviews 'Australian Motion Picture Yearbook 1983' by Peter Beilby and Ross Lansell

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Nancy Keesing reviews One Continuous Picnic: A history of eating in Australia by Michael Symons
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Adam Smith’s economics foresaw that capital would seek new ways to save us kitchen time, to brighten the dinner table and to stop us for a roadside snack, but each time an investment saved a minute here, lifted a moment there, filled a gap in the market, it separated eaters further from the source of food. The ‘middle­man’ slandered agrarian values, insulated us from the seasons, took away the diversity of distance, compromised quality for price, and then distracted us from the deterioration with the baits of cheapness, convenience and gourmet entertaining.

That statement on page 229 more or less summarises Michael Symons’s book and indicates several of its basic muddles. Yet in many ways it is an invaluable pioneering history and, if it often exasperates, it at least leads the reader to some stimulating and constructive fury, in a very enjoyable way.
Book 1 Title: One Continuous Picnic
Book 1 Subtitle: A history of eating in Australia
Book Author: Michael Symons
Book 1 Biblio: Duck Press, illus., index, 278 p., $19.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Adam Smith’s economics foresaw that capital would seek new ways to save us kitchen time, to brighten the dinner table and to stop us for a roadside snack, but each time an investment saved a minute here, lifted a moment there, filled a gap in the market, it separated eaters further from the source of food. The ‘middle­man’ slandered agrarian values, insulated us from the seasons, took away the diversity of distance, compromised quality for price, and then distracted us from the deterioration with the baits of cheapness, convenience and gourmet entertaining.

That statement on page 229 more or less summarises Michael Symons’s book and indicates several of its basic muddles. Yet in many ways it is an invaluable pioneering history and, if it often exasperates, it at least leads the reader to some stimulating and constructive fury, in a very enjoyable way.

Read more: Nancy Keesing reviews 'One Continuous Picnic: A history of eating in Australia' by Michael Symons

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S.M. McLauren reviews Signs of Australia by Richard Tipping
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Contents Category: Photography
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Article Title: Graffiti a la art?
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We all have our favourite examples of language in the landscape, and can feel disappointment not to find them in collections. The pleasure they give can only be enhanced by finding more. This Richard Tipping has done, his choice of graffiti, random association, incongruity, and vandalised property documents man-made absurdity in what he terms ‘this visual and verbal traffic jam ... our every day mental habitat’. The resulting ‘photo-poems’ exploit the ambiguity between intent and effect, text and context to provide fields of symbols from which the reader (viewer?) construct his own meaning.
Book 1 Title: Signs of Australia
Book Author: Richard Tipping
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $6.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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We all have our favourite examples of language in the landscape, and can feel disappointment not to find them in collections. The pleasure they give can only be enhanced by finding more. This Richard Tipping has done, his choice of graffiti, random association, incongruity, and vandalised property documents man-made absurdity in what he terms ‘this visual and verbal traffic jam ... our every day mental habitat’. The resulting ‘photo-poems’ exploit the ambiguity between intent and effect, text and context to provide fields of symbols from which the reader (viewer?) construct his own meaning.

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