1996 (45)
Children categories
February–March 1996, no. 178 (1)
Welcome to the February–March 1996 issue of Australian Book Review.
David McCooey reviews 'Mermaid' by Alan Gould and 'The Majestic Rollerink' By Heather Cam
Written by David McCooey‘Nothing odd will do long’, said Johnson (that great friend of reviewers). If we begin by positing Aland Gould as an odd poet (that is, more than merely eccentric or self-conscious), then whether Johnson is correct about oddness depends on the second half of his observation: ‘Tristram Shandy did not last’. No doubt ABR readers smile at such a sentiment; but if so, then the question becomes whether or not Gould is odd enough.
By some reckonings, Gould has moved away from the port of oddity towards accessibility (the blurb implies this). Gould’s seven collections of verse, four works of fiction, and unknown number of model ships certainly show his interest in making (he is, after all, a poet), and his continued use of stanzaic verse, rhyme and so on is handled with increasing skill and flexibility. It is, of course, not this that makes Mermaid odd or even a little difficult. Any inaccessibility emanates from an almost ‘Jamesian’ manner (another oddity which did not last) in which the poems rigorously fail to give up what it is they hint at offering. ‘Sea Ballad’ suggests this:
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‘Nothing odd will do long’, said Johnson (that great friend of reviewers). If we begin by positing Aland Gould as an odd poet (that is, more than merely eccentric or self-conscious), then whether Johnson is correct about oddness depends on the second half of his observation: ‘Tristram Shandy did not last’. No doubt ABR readers smile at such a sentiment; but if so, then the question becomes whether or not Gould is odd enough.
- Book 1 Title Mermaid
- Book 1 Biblio Heinemann, $16.95 pb, 77 pp
- Book 1 Author Type Author
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Book 1 Cover Small (400 x 600)
- Book 2 Title The Majestic Rollerink
- Book 2 Author Heather Cam
- Book 2 Biblio Heinemann, $16.95 pb, 85 pp
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Michael McGirr reviews 'Making it National: Nationalism and Australian Popular Culture' by Graeme Turner
Written by Michael McGirrIt was during the writers’ week of the Adelaide Festival in 1992 that I first heard the so-called Australian sense of humour described as ‘Slavic’. This intrigued me at the time; now it troubles me. That week in March 1992 turned out to be the one during which sharp lines were finally drawn in Sarajevo and the attack on Bosanski Brod signalled the outbreak of war in Bosnia. Although it is difficult to weigh the significance of such events to take much notice, the least you can say is that it was a bad week for the whole idea of nationalism.
On two separate occasions, both the parents of Slobodan Milosevic committed suicide. It is impossible to gauge of course the extent to which his drive to create and control a Serbian empire has been making up for fundamental deficiencies in his personal life. Psychological explanations of history are notoriously slippery. But it is curious that the only will able to resist Milosevic in six years has been that of Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Karadzic is not a professional soldier. He is a psychologist. A bleak view of history can see national identities being shanghaied into the working out of personal agendas.
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- Article Title A Kitbag of Popular Culture
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It was during the writers’ week of the Adelaide Festival in 1992 that I first heard the so-called Australian sense of humour described as ‘Slavic’. This intrigued me at the time; now it troubles me. That week in March 1992 turned out to be the one during which sharp lines were finally drawn in Sarajevo and the attack on Bosanski Brod signalled the outbreak of war in Bosnia. Although it is difficult to weigh the significance of such events to take much notice, the least you can say is that it was a bad week for the whole idea of nationalism.
- Book 1 Title Making it National
- Book 1 Subtitle Nationalism and Australian Popular Culture
- Book 1 Biblio Allen & Unwin, $19.95 pb, 189 pp
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The good old days (bad old days?) of young adult fiction are gone. A couple of decades back it was impossible to imagine a reputable mainstream publisher producing a book for older children which has been supported by the Literature Board of the Australia Council and whose plot revolves around drug-taking (casual and accepted), violence, murder, abduction and rape. This is what The Enemy You Killed is about. The question is, does it more accurately depict real life than, say, an old-fashioned genteel novel like Swallows and Amazons? Perhaps it depends where you live. I’m not convinced that teenage gunplay with live ammunition is necessarily more ‘real’ than messing about with boats. At least in Australia. There is more than a whiff of the tabloids around the melodrama of The Enemy You Killed. It tells of a fifteenyear-old girl, Jules (Julia), who lives in an unspecified country town which lies close to a state forest dissected by a steep gorge. In this forest, mostly at weekends, many of the local young people have for many years been playing wargames dressed in combat gear and using not only air rifles and home-made explosives, but sometimes real combat weapons. The Tunnel Rats stalk The Rebels and vice versa, and a successful ambush is the ultimate thrill.
Jules has an oppressive past. When she learned some time back that she was adopted, she freaked, and hid out in the local hotel as a groupie with a heavy metal band before finally returning home. Then she formed a relationship with cold-eyed, unruffled bad boy Wade,
before finally getting her act together and finding happiness in dumping him for sexy Jammo, boxing champion and hunk. Jammo is the most successful leader the Tunnel Rats have had; Wade’s speciality is to act as the lone sniper.
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- Article Title Guns, No Roses
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The good old days (bad old days?) of young adult fiction are gone. A couple of decades back it was impossible to imagine a reputable mainstream publisher producing a book for older children which has been supported by the Literature Board of the Australia Council and whose plot revolves around drug-taking (casual and accepted), violence, murder, abduction and rape. This is what The Enemy You Killed is about. The question is, does it more accurately depict real life than, say, an old-fashioned genteel novel like Swallows and Amazons? Perhaps it depends where you live. I’m not convinced that teenage gunplay with live ammunition is necessarily more ‘real’ than messing about with boats. At least in Australia. There is more than a whiff of the tabloids around the melodrama of The Enemy You Killed. It tells of a fifteenyear-old girl, Jules (Julia), who lives in an unspecified country town which lies close to a state forest dissected by a steep gorge. In this forest, mostly at weekends, many of the local young people have for many years been playing wargames dressed in combat gear and using not only air rifles and home-made explosives, but sometimes real combat weapons. The Tunnel Rats stalk The Rebels and vice versa, and a successful ambush is the ultimate thrill.
- Book 1 Title The Enemy You Killed
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Jeffrey Grey reviews 'The Empire Fractures: Anglo-Australian Conflict in the 1940s' by Christopher Waters
Written by Jeffrey GreyThe central contention of this provocative, well-written, and extensively researched study is that Australia underwent a process of decolonisation during the 1940s, and that only by understanding this can we make sense of the subsequent relationships between Australia, Britain and the United States.
The wartime reorientation of Australian affairs away from Britain and towards the United States was viewed as a purely wartime expedient, and even before the war’s end the Australian government (a Labor government, let it be remembered), was looking to renewing the military and diplomatic ties with Britain which the Pacific war had weakened. The election of Attlee’ s government in Britain in 1945 brought with it expectations that a grouping of Labour governments in the Dominions would prove a positive force in remaking Commonwealth relations in the postwar era. The British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, jokingly referred to a meeting of the Commonwealth prime ministers in 1946 as the ‘Imperial Labour Executive’.
It was not to be, and in the field of foreign relations in particular the Australian and British governments found it increasingly difficult to reach agreement or act to a common purpose across a range of issues in the second half of the 1940s. The two overriding issues of postwar history – decolonisation of the European empires and the East-West tensions which rapidly developed into a state of Cold War – emerged early, and agreement between Australia and Britain on either proved impossible, at least until 1949.
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The central contention of this provocative, well-written, and extensively researched study is that Australia underwent a process of decolonisation during the 1940s, and that only by understanding this can we make sense of the subsequent relationships between Australia, Britain and the United States.
- Book 1 Title The Empire Fractures
- Book 1 Subtitle Anglo-Australian Conflict in the 1940s
- Book 1 Biblio Australian Scholarly Publishing, $34.95 pb, 269 pp
- Book 1 Author Type Author
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The first virtue of this study is to remind us of the dramatic, potentially cataclysmic, quality of the mid-nineteenth century gold rushes to California in the late 1840s and to south-east Australia soon afterwards. That was prime among the several characteristics the two experiences had in common. At few other points is there so close affinity in the histories of Australia and the USA. The subject is altogether appropriate for one, like David Goodman, who has engaged in research in both countries, and who teaches their comparative history. The result is a most satisfying monograph. While the heavier incidence is on the Australian side, this is one of the few examples in the Australian repertoire of effective comparative work. One of few others in that list – Andrew Markus’s Fear and Hatred – also probes the goldfield, experience, describing how the British master-race treated the Chinese in either case. Goodman’ s aim is much more ambitious – to reveal basic socio-political responses to the cataclysm of gold.
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- Free Article No
- Contents Category History
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- Article Title The Cataclysm of Gold
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The first virtue of this study is to remind us of the dramatic, potentially cataclysmic, quality of the mid-nineteenth century gold rushes to California in the late 1840s and to south-east Australia soon afterwards. That was prime among the several characteristics the two experiences had in common. At few other points is there so close affinity in the histories of Australia and the USA. The subject is altogether appropriate for one, like David Goodman, who has engaged in research in both countries, and who teaches their comparative history. The result is a most satisfying monograph. While the heavier incidence is on the Australian side, this is one of the few examples in the Australian repertoire of effective comparative work. One of few others in that list – Andrew Markus’s Fear and Hatred – also probes the goldfield, experience, describing how the British master-race treated the Chinese in either case. Goodman’ s aim is much more ambitious – to reveal basic socio-political responses to the cataclysm of gold.
- Book 1 Title Gold Seeking
- Book 1 Subtitle Victoria and California in the 1850's
- Book 1 Biblio Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 302 pp
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Letters to the Editor - April 1996
Written by Hidden AuthorDear Editor,
I am flabbergasted at the savage, totally unjustified hatchet job that Richard Hall has done on Hugh Mackay in the National Library Voices Essay (ABR, Feb/March 1996). Is the National Library now paying for character assassination?
I know both Hugh Mackay and Richard Hall. I think that the Pot should always think carefully before calling the Pan sooty-arse. If Mr Mackay looks like ‘a possum thinking about an apple’, the curmudgeonly Mr Hall looks a bit like the possum’s bum.
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Dear Editor,
I am flabbergasted at the savage, totally unjustified hatchet job that Richard Hall has done on Hugh Mackay in the National Library Voices Essay (ABR, Feb/March 1996). Is the National Library now paying for character assassination?
I know both Hugh Mackay and Richard Hall. I think that the Pot should always think carefully before calling the Pan sooty-arse. If Mr Mackay looks like ‘a possum thinking about an apple’, the curmudgeonly Mr Hall looks a bit like the possum’s bum.
- Display Review Rating No
Kristin Hammett reviews 'Marilyn's Almost Terminal New York Adventure' by Justine Ettler
Written by Kristin HammettMarilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure offers all the ingredients that have made Justine Ettler’s name to date: sex, drugs, tough women, bad men, and rough prose. Thankfully it does leave behind some, though not all, of the relentless violence of The River Ophelia. Marilyn is not as hell-bent on the same masochistic path as Ettler’s earlier heroine, Justine, and the novel admits a lightness of tone which is initially refreshing.
‘This story about Marilyn’, the narrator informs us,
doesn’t start with her moderately immaculate conception or with her depraved adolescence ... or with that summer she spent clinging to a bobbing beyond-the-breakers surfboard off Australia’s most famous beach and squeezed orgasm after orgasm from between her tanned teenager’s thighs.
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- Article Title A New Justine?
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Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure offers all the ingredients that have made Justine Ettler’s name to date: sex, drugs, tough women, bad men, and rough prose. Thankfully it does leave behind some, though not all, of the relentless violence of The River Ophelia. Marilyn is not as hell-bent on the same masochistic path as Ettler’s earlier heroine, Justine, and the novel admits a lightness of tone which is initially refreshing.
- Book 1 Title Marilyn's Almost terminal New York Adventure
- Book 1 Biblio Picador, $14.95, 254pp
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Edward Colless is the ‘don’ of the art world – in fact, he is Juan, Quixote, and Giovanni all woven together. The Error of My Ways is his ‘mille e tre’ of theoretical affairs – essays and articles that have infected an otherwise sterile art scene with a flame of desire.
The catalogue essay is a sadly neglected craft. Every week, art galleries commission hundreds of short essays to accompany images in their exhibition catalogues. The quality of these essays range from testimonies by an artist’s mate, theoretical exegesis, and creative musing. Regardless of quality, their destiny appears as ephemeral as the shows they illuminate. That such a mass of writing should be consigned to oblivion is disheartening for those in the trade, which is reason to welcome the decision by Brisbane’s IMA to publish a collection of essays by the best catalogue essay writer in the country. The enigmatic style of Colless emerged in the early 1980s, along with art theory publications such as On the Beach and Paul Taylor’s Art and Text. While many of his colleagues have since moved to fresh pastures in Cultural Studies, Colless migrated to Hobart. Judging from the sample of forty-six essays included in The Error of My Ways, Hobart has insulated this writer from the cults of contemporaneity that flourish on the mainland.
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Edward Colless is the ‘don’ of the art world – in fact, he is Juan, Quixote, and Giovanni all woven together. The Error of My Ways is his ‘mille e tre’ of theoretical affairs – essays and articles that have infected an otherwise sterile art scene with a flame of desire.
- Book 1 Title The Error of My Ways
- Book 1 Biblio Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, $19.95 pb, 233 pp
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It is always a pleasure to read Glenda Adams, a most accomplished and stylish writer. At its best her work displays a natural and unassuming flow, masking artistry of a high order. Admirers of her earlier books will find many familiar concerns in The Tempest of Clemenza; they will also discover her striking out in new directions in a bold and adventurous undertaking.
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It is always a pleasure to read Glenda Adams, a most accomplished and stylish writer. At its best her work displays a natural and unassuming flow, masking artistry of a high order. Admirers of her earlier books will find many familiar concerns in The Tempest of Clemenza; they will also discover her striking out in new directions in a bold and adventurous undertaking.
- Book 1 Title The Tempest of Clemenza
- Book 1 Biblio Angus and Robertson, $24.95 hb, 299 pp
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Thérèse Radic reviews 'Playing the Past', edited by Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg, 'The Gap' by Anna Broinowski, and 'The History of Water' by Noëlle Janaczewska
Written by Thérèse RadicKatherine Brisbane’s Currency Press is the major play-publishing house in the country and no stranger to the snap-freeze process of producing program play texts by women as well as men. The women have a fair representation in Currency’s general range, but they proliferate in the Current Theatre Series, those pre-first production texts so impossible to follow up with the writer’s post-natal reconsiderations.
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Katherine Brisbane’s Currency Press is the major play-publishing house in the country and no stranger to the snap-freeze process of producing program play texts by women as well as men. The women have a fair representation in Currency’s general range, but they proliferate in the Current Theatre Series, those pre-first production texts so impossible to follow up with the writer’s post-natal reconsiderations.
- Book 1 Title Playing the Past
- Book 1 Biblio Currency, $10 pb, 54 pp
- Book 1 Author Type Editor
- Book 2 Title The History of Water
- Book 2 Author Noëlle Janaczewska
- Book 2 Biblio Currency, $14.95 pb, 56 pp
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Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)
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'Editorial' by Helen Daniel
Written by Helen DanielIn this issue, Hugh Mackay replies to Richard Hall’s essay in last month’s issue and his reply is printed here in full, unedited, at his insistence – which was communicated to me by his lawyers. As a matter of principle, of course, ABR offers right of reply, which is indeed a regular feature of the magazine, most commonly through the letters to the editor. On this occasion, given Hugh Mackay’s insistence, ABR includes his 3,300-word reply as a special feature.
In his reply, which he calls a ‘rebuttal’, Hugh Mackay points out that The Mackay Reports are not ‘books’ and therefore wonders ‘why they got a run in ABR’. I am interested that Hugh Mackay appears puzzled that matters not in ‘book’ form should come into the domain of ABR.
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In this issue, Hugh Mackay replies to Richard Hall’s essay in last month’s issue and his reply is printed here in full, unedited, at his insistence – which was communicated to me by his lawyers. As a matter of principle, of course, ABR offers right of reply, which is indeed a regular feature of the magazine, most commonly through the letters to the editor. On this occasion, given Hugh Mackay’s insistence, ABR includes his 3,300-word reply as a special feature.
In his reply, which he calls a ‘rebuttal’, Hugh Mackay points out that The Mackay Reports are not ‘books’ and therefore wonders ‘why they got a run in ABR’. I am interested that Hugh Mackay appears puzzled that matters not in ‘book’ form should come into the domain of ABR.
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There are two reasons for celebrating this chastely elegant slim volume. One is the arrival of a publisher prepared, when major firms are retreating from the field, to declare that poetry is central to a flourishing literary culture, and to match that declaration by commitment to a new series, Brandl & Schlesinger Poetry. The other is the appearance of a new and striking collection from that fine poet Rhyll McMaster.
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- Free Article No
- Contents Category Poetry
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- Article Title Married to Matter, Inexorably
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There are two reasons for celebrating this chastely elegant slim volume. One is the arrival of a publisher prepared, when major firms are retreating from the field, to declare that poetry is central to a flourishing literary culture, and to match that declaration by commitment to a new series, Brandl & Schlesinger Poetry. The other is the appearance of a new and striking collection from that fine poet Rhyll McMaster.
- Book 1 Title Chemical Bodies
- Book 1 Biblio Brandl & Schlesinger, $16.95pb, 75pp
- Book 1 Author Type Author
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Not another novel about heroin, you might ask. You might as well say, not another novel about addiction to anything, including love or death. Luke Davies’ novel risks being seen to jump on the bandwagon of relevance, or grunge, or whatever turns you off. But this a good book, a true book, which left me feeling sad for some days, not a bad thing in these times of numbing busyness in which many of us seem to be trapped.
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Not another novel about heroin, you might ask. You might as well say, not another novel about addiction to anything, including love or death. Luke Davies’ novel risks being seen to jump on the bandwagon of relevance, or grunge, or whatever turns you off. But this a good book, a true book, which left me feeling sad for some days, not a bad thing in these times of numbing busyness in which many of us seem to be trapped.
- Book 1 Title Candy
- Book 1 Biblio Allen & Unwin $16.95 pb, 286 pp
- Book 1 Author Type Author
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Hayden: An autobiography is a fine book – one of the best political memoirs written by an Australian. It’s also a valuable historical work by a former politician who, thank God, doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Bill Hayden clearly made good use of his time as governor–general (1989–96) to undertake extensive research. In the acknowledgments section, the author gives generous thanks to librarians and archivists who assisted his endeavours. But it is clear that much of the detailed work was undertaken by Hayden himself.
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Hayden: An autobiography is a fine book – one of the best political memoirs written by an Australian. It’s also a valuable historical work by a former politician who, thank God, doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Bill Hayden clearly made good use of his time as governor–general (1989–96) to undertake extensive research. In the acknowledgments section, the author gives generous thanks to librarians and archivists who assisted his endeavours. But it is clear that much of the detailed work was undertaken by Hayden himself.
- Book 1 Title Hayden
- Book 1 Subtitle An autobiography
- Book 1 Biblio HarperCollins $39.95 hb, 610 pp
- Book 1 Author Type Author
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