David Buchbinder

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 himsel ... (read more)

The four books reviewed here may be divided into two categories: the first, consisting of The Gosses: An Anglo-Australian Family, by Fayette Gosse, and Dinkum Mishpochah*, by Eric Silbert, is family biography, while the second, into which fall The Tanner Letters, edited by Pamela Statham, and Don Charlwood’s The Long Farewell, is the reconstruction, by means of such primary sources as letters an ... (read more)