McRoach is a good writer; look at this effective put-down of Senator Don Chipp.

Reports from the cannabis vine suggested Chipp was pleased with the expensive publicity. It was an excellent prop in his act as Untarnished but Beleaguered Light in the Darkness, and he promptly slipped it into his repertoire: sickly grin, followed by the raising of the eyebrows, cursory glance over each shoulder, honest and grave look directly into camera, and then the sotto voce suggestion that a lot of very strange people were worried about the possibility of him being elected to office.

Also McRoach’s antics are an apt mirror of ‘our’ neurosis. Whether he intended it or not he has depicted the boredom and cynicism of Australians. He demonstrates this through the prose – there are no morals and the cliches are his own. Some people eat too much; in McRoach’s world they are obsessed with dope, dope, and more dope.

Librarians should buy this book, because it is Australia in the 1970s – vulnerable, racist, escapist and ‘doped’ away from any idea of ‘self’. McRoach both accepts and rejects this vision; he is a hedonist after all. He suggests in the story ‘Who Killed Don Mackay’ that dope is infinitely acceptable and a necessary safety valve – that traditional business interests orchestrate the ‘rebellions’ of youth; but for me he is too cool. He prefaces ‘Storming the Senate’ with the quote ‘When great questions end, little parties begin’ (Walter Bagehot, English Constitution). With the right connections Mr McRoach should go a long way.

A Dozen Dopey Yarns has been well published in that it is a good-looking paperback, with an attractive cover. It deserves a wide readership outside the drug subcultures.