'Editorial' by Helen Daniel - May 1995

In an interview in this issue about his new novel, The Sitters, which is about a portrait painter, Alex Miller suggests the novel is almost a continuous monologue. almost something he shouted to himself while he was working. The Sitters is this kind of shouted monologue: this man shouting at himself, to himself, listening while he is painting, listening to the sounds of himself painting. That’s fine for the individual artist but the idea of shouted monologues suggests to me some of the collective furore that goes on in Australian literary culture: the collective shouting at ourselves and listening to the sounds of ourselves, which makes up the cultural hubbub. Amid all the shouting, it’s the listening that’s difficult, hearing the sometimes-inaudible voices which make up contemporary Australian literary culture. From where I listen, on this side of the page, it seems to me that there is often a silence out there. It’s not true, of course: it’s just that the voices are very often muted, only whispered asides, mutterings and muffled ripostes, so that only the faintest susurration actually reaches this side of the page. In Canberra, during the Word Festival, I listened to Michael Heyward’s special lecture on editing, in the course of which he suggested that Australia needs a literary magazine of the nature of The Times Literary Supplement or The New York Times Review of Books. Indeed, he referred to our need for an Australian Review of Books. I, in the audience, noted the title and could not refrain from … well, not shouting but commenting. I think we too readily assume that existing literary and indeed cultural mechanisms are locked into particular roles and identities. I think we are too ready to assume literary magazines are fixed entities, whereas in my view they are processes and, if healthy, they are protean, changing according to circumstances and to the needs and wishes of the literary community. If they are not so able to change, the risk is they become moribund. At one point, Michael Heyward pointed out to me that a magazine editor has the power to impose grand change. That’s true, of course, but I see it as hubris to impose grand change on this magazine without listening to the needs and wishes of the literary community. A vital literary magazine I see as a forum, where the ideas of many people in the literary community can find a voice. It’s not the first time I’ve pointed out that magazines, like myths, have to re-invent themselves if they are to go on playing a part in the whole messy and vital business of interpreting and re-interpreting a culture to itself. In my view, ABR like any other magazine must go on moulding itself anew – but with an awareness of what the community out there is shouting at itself, to itself, listening to the sounds of its own contestant voices. So, this is an open invitation again to voice your views on the nature of the review magazines we need in Australia – and your views on the role ABR should play. And, talking of shouting, the hot topic of the moment is undoubtedly the Ormond case. In ways I find disturbing and about which I have written in The Age, the responses in the literary community to Helen Garner’s book, The First Stone, seem to me often a cacophony of ill-informed shouting. Whatever my own views, this is undoubtedly the hot topic of the moment. So, in this issue, there is a longer review article on Garner’s book by Cassandra Pybus, who is the author of Seduction and Consent, her book on the Orr case, the only other Australian book on a major sexual harassment case. And, talking of listening, also in this issue, there is a three-way exchange first broadcast on the ABC’s Books and Writing, with Ramona Koval, Helen Garner and Cassandra Pybus – which is not shouted, but which is disturbing, at times painful, sometimes devastatingly honest. I want to record here my admiration for Helen Garner, who agreed to the publication of this interview even though she was dissatisfied with its content. Contestant voices, audible for a moment, above the hubbub. We should interrupt our separate monologues and listen – unless we are painting a portrait at the time.

Helen Daniel

From the New Issue

A Memoir of My Former Self: A life in writing by Hilary Mantel, edited by Nicholas Pearson

Frank Moorhouse: Strange paths by Matthew Lamb

Transgender Australia: A history since 1910 by Noah Riseman

Thunderhead by Miranda Darling

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