Letters - 1997 December - 1998 January

From Paolo Bartoloni Dear Editor, As the convenor of the conference ‘The Public, the Intellectuals and the Public Intellectual’ (La Trobe University, May 1996), and as co-editor of the collection of essays, Intellectuals and Publics: Essays on Cultural Theory and Practice, I have followed the discussion generated by the publication of Mark Davis’s book Gangland with great interest. Besides a certain repetitiveness of some of the pieces comprising the symposium featured in the last issue of ABR, I found that discussion much more relaxed than the somewhat visceral and even hysterical responses filling the pages of Australian newspapers days after Gangland was released. Incidentally, it was good editorial vision to combine the symposium on gatekeeping with two related and important essays, ‘Literary Authority’ by Ivor Indyk and ‘The Role of the Critic’ by Brian Castro. However one puts it, Davis’s book is an important contribution. Its relevance is highlighted by many of those who took part in the ABR symposium. Delia Falconer, whose contribution is to my view the most poignant and effective of all, has the merit of drawing attention to some crucial issues raised by Davis yet ignored or neglected by his critics. She asks herself, for instance, if the anti-‘youth’ generationalism might be the result of a ‘widely circulating hostility in Australia ... to universities and students as products of them’. I believe this to be a key issue. To me the most problematic aspect of this anti-‘youth’ generationalism is the consolidation of a clear polarisation whereby young people should apparently occupy themselves with popular culture while high culture should be left to others. This artificial and simplistic division of labour is, to be sure, reinforced by both groups. On the one hand there are those, like Peter Craven, who believe that young people don’t have a say because they don’t have anything to say. He is obviously misinformed. Yet this misinformation is well nourished by Davis’s sweeping remark that ‘None of my own friends voluntarily reads Elizabeth Jolley or Helen Garner’ (in Gangland p.135) or by articles such as the one that Simon During published recently in the electronic journal Australian Humanities Review (‘Teaching Culture’), in which he states that the study of literature is going to be superseded by cultural studies. The problem is that people tend to confuse, say, Mark Davis or Kathy Bail as a representative of a whole generation and During as the whole of the academy. Many cultural commentators willingly plunge themselves into the cataloguing trap, and in doing so they effectively obscure and ignore that rich and diverse group of people who, regardless of age and social and ethnic background, don’t belong to coteries or well identifiable schools. Why, for instance, don’t we ask ourselves whether in fact there are young people out there interested in reviewing or talking about canonical writings in the mainstream media? I’m sure they are there, and I’m also sure they are struggling to find an editor interested in their stuff because, as the legend has it, if you are young you can certainly talk about popular culture but surely not about ‘Shakespeare’ (used here as a metaphor for high culture). As a result the same people keep reviewing Malouf, Jolley and so on. And it doesn’t really matter, as Peter Craven has remarked on more than one occasion, if they review them negatively, what matters is that they and no one else does it. Paolo Bartoloni, Eldwood, Vic. Editor’s reply: The writer may be interested to know that it is a policy of ABR to give opportunities to younger reviewers to gain some experience with reviewing through the ‘Shorts’ reviews. A number of those contributors have now moved on to full&shy;length reviews. This policy is designed to nurture a younger generation of reviewers, for whom there are few other venues. From Paul Dawson Dear Editor, If the debate over Mark Davis’ book, Gangland, has not already run out of puff I would like to venture an opinion from the perspective of the under-thirty age group which he claims is being excluded. Davis suggests there is a network of ex-Scripsi associates dominating the literary establishment and that a recent issue of Meanjin ‘sums up this syndrome’. Entitled ‘The Next Generation’, this issue was branch-stacked, Davis argues, with contributions from the Scripsi gang. Furthermore, ‘the other essays were by writers over thirty, and predominantly instructional in tone ... the voices of younger essayists from outside the circle were etirely absent.’ This is somewhat bemusing when I consider the essay of mine which appeared in that issue. I am twenty-five and most definitely not a part of the Scripsi circle. Of course, Davis could not know my age, which is why such a statement is ill advised. Furthermore, given the meticulousness and breadth of his research, could he have failed to notice that my essay, ‘Grunge-lit: Marketing Generation X’, covers similar territory to his own? In this essay, I argued that generationalism is used by the media as a simplistic means of explaining social change, exemplified by P. McGuinness’ columns about taxation policy and Hugh Mackay’s ‘social research’ culminating in his soon to be released book. This sort of journalistic rhetoric, I argued, underpins the idea of generational cultures, which enabled the construction of grunge-lit through the promotion and reception of certain books as a set of generational artefacts. The term ‘Baby Boomer’, I suggested, ‘has come to stand for "the establishment", the dominant culture, the primary source of social values and buying power. Generation X is all the disparate kind of "nowness" lumped into a dialectical "other"’. Given Davis’s interests, it seems strange that he would decline to mention this particular essay in his assessment of ‘The Next Generation’. But in line with the argument of my essay I would suggest that, like James Bradley’s introduction to Blur and Catharine Lumby’s December 1996 article on the ‘Squeeze Generation’ in The Sydney Morning Herald, Gangland operates within the same paradigm it is trying to oppose. Although rejecting generationalism as a concrete social force, describing it as a rhetorical device employed by the cultural elite, the book nonetheless revolves around the concept of New Generationalism as an ideology supported by the current political economy. The biggest selling point of Gangland is also unfortunately its weakness. While the idea of generational tension may hold some truth in relation to recent debates about feminism and grunge-lit, it is more like window-dressing, gossipy name-calling and market-driven polemic when it comes to the main concerns of his book – postmodernism and political correctness. ‘It has already been noted that the voices Davis does champion are closer to his ‘generation of ‘68’ than to the young guns he is meant to be barracking for. These voices are the ones who didn’t become conservative columnists, but maintained their leftists credentials, largely within the academy. Here Davis merely reverses the argument put forward by critics as diverse as Robert Hughes and Terry Eagleton that post-’68 intellectuals have sold out by nosediving into ‘theory’. Like those he censures, Davis is also guilty of positing a narrative of decline, in this case regarding the arts and the publishing industry from the golden Whitlam era to the age of economic rationalism. The cultural debate Davis is talking about is not so much an anxiety about youth, but a debate played out amongst the establishment in which the prize is whose stories will be passed on to younger generations through the university. Although Davis rejects the notion of the young as tabula rasa which this implies, he still homogenises and champions the category of youth through the prism of postmodernism, which, if anything, is a product of the Boomer salad days. Davis castigates the cultural elites for not recognising that we exist within a postmodern society, but surely he could not have failed to notice last year’s front page editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald which condemned Pauline Hanson and referred to Australia as potentially one of the first postmodern societies because of its cultural heterogeneity. I think the elites would be more inclined to accept the condition of postmodernity rather than postmodernism, which John Frow (one of Davis’ good guys) has called nothing more and nothing less than a genre of theoretical writing. Finally, if, as should be the case, fiction is seen as the product of intellectuals working in the cultural arena, rather than first order artistic practices to be argued over, the number of first novels by writers under thirty published in recent years indicates that this demographic is by no means being ignored. Paul Dawson, Bexley, NSW From Hugh Tolhurst Dear Editor, Given the relative amounts of space given by ABR and other literary periodicals to Mark Davis and his book Gangland and my own first collection of poetry, Filth and Other Poems, I’m beginning to suspect that my brief claim to fame might best be thought to rest on having enjoyed various coffees with Mr Davis while we were in first year at Melbourne University. Perhaps the fact of my not being in anyway a baby boomer like Mr Davis but rather the sort of young author that Mr Davis is out to blaze a trail for is also fundamental to a lack of literary newsworthiness. I’d have thought that a prose account of ‘gatekeeping’ by baby boomers written by a junior baby boomer was less of a scandal than the lead review followed by a symposium in ABR that Gangland has enjoyed. Well, at least compared with a book by a genuinely young writer which treats of the Carlton literary scene ridiculing (to quote from The Australian’s Review of Books) ‘its seediness, the “mentors” easily bought off with a few bucks or the promise of a subscription or easy sex in a Lit Board-subsidised Saab’. Indeed, the short review of Filth in ABR praised the book as ‘an assured first collection from an interesting poet’ but dismissed the controversial satires as for ‘the cognoscenti’ which I find a more mystifying response as each new day brings column inches on’ gatekeeping’ by the ‘baby boomer establishment. Given that Filth points the finger of corruption at Meanjin, Scripsi, University House, John Forbes, Chris Wallace&shy;Crabbe, John Tranter, Rodney Hall, and Kevin Hart (as well as the Lit Board in general) ... but has so far gained about three hundred and fifty words of review space, I can only conclude that hype is restricted to prose and that short of being attacked by Ivor Indyk there is nothing a poet can do that will create controversy. I’m left hoping my next coffee with fame will not be too far away, and further hoping that given the relative size of our royalty cheques, kind Mr Davis might buy me an easy latte in an ABR beaten-up café. Hugh Tolhurst, Elwood, Vic. From Ross Manley Dear Editor, In the first issue of ABR for 1997 (no. 188), your editorial confided to readers: ‘obviously none of “us” have the time to read all the books we receive’. This revealing statement is preceded by what I would call a conundrum, to which, unfortunately, you did not provide an answer: ‘At issue, of course, is what constitutes an important book and of course there is a wide range of rival interests to be catered for.’ The latter clause of this sentence begs the question raised in the former. It disingenuously evades the point at issue and assumes that eclecticism is the real issue. I humbly beg to differ my Dear Editor, for eclecticism is laudable only if it is affordable. Then, before posing your conundrum, you write about ‘the enormous pressure on the space in ABR’ and tell us that eight pages of the issue were occupied by an index of some five hundred books (my rough count) reviewed by ABR in 1996. Presumably, all those books were regarded by you as important, even though it is arguable that a significant percentage do not qualify as Australian literature. For example, The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini, reviewed by Adrian Martin (ABR April 1996 pp.33–4). Why, when you tell us that ABR space is so scarce, do you indulge in reviewing British books? Surely, reviews of this book are available, for those who are interested in contemporary Italian cinema, from our excellent network of Australian libraries via their extensive collections of British review publications. The excuse that the author, Rhodie, spent years in Australia, even though none of his books have been published here, hardly justifies the occupation of our scarce ABR space, unless of course your reason is eclecticism for the sake of, in this case, Italian cinema buffs. I suspect the primary reason for this particular review is that the reviewer, The Age film critic, wanted readers to know that he was currently completing a book for the British Film Institute. I return now to your conundrum: ‘what constitutes an important book’? I honestly suggest that, to deserve such a pompous adjective, the work should possess literary merit, evoking beauty of form or emotional effect on the readers. To have emotional effect, the book must be read; it should not be judged by, dare I say, its cover; nor indeed its publisher; nor the importance of the author in the eyes of the ABR editor. And so, Dear Editor, I close with a satirical verse penned by Victor Daley, back in 1899, which, incidentally, he dedicated to the notorious ‘Red Editor’: I am the Blender of the pure Australian Brand of Literature. No verse, however fine, can be The radiant thing called Poetry Unless it is approved by me. I am the critic set on high. The Red Page Rhadamantbys I. Authors now be warned – never submit your work to ABR, unless the Editor pre-ordains it to be ‘important’; for it shall not be read, just ignominiously consigned to the WPB. Ross Manley, Randwick, NSW Editor’s reply: I would be interested in the writer’s evidence of ‘a significant percentage’ of books reviewed in ABR not qualifying/or review. The one example cited has an Australian connection (and I commissioned the review by Adrian Martin – it was not initiated by him). Whatever the subject matter, if an Australian writer is involved, the book is eligible for review. I do not insist on Australian content. I do not subscribe to the Miles Franklin judges’ definition of Australianness. Finally, I stress that I do not read all the books that I receive: it is beyond human capacity to edit a magazine such as ABR and read some 2,000 books per year. All books not reviewed are donated to schools and charities. From Ruth Starke Dear Editor, In your September editorial, you pointed out that the programming style of the Brisbane Writers’ Festival was ‘somewhat influenced’ by that of Melbourne’s: apparently those shameless Queenslanders pinched the name ‘Bi-focal’ for a two-author interview and copied the concept of the ‘Spotlight’ interview – as have, apparently, other lit&shy;fests around the country. Thus, you claim, the Melbourne Writers’ Festival has played a ‘crucial role’ in the literary and cultural life of our nation. The fact is that Melbourne and every other writers’ festival in the country owes a huge debt to Adelaide Writers’ Week. When it began in 1960 there were no other similar literary events in Australia, and very few worldwide. Ian Hunter, who came from Edinburgh to act as adviser for the first Adelaide Festival, was impressed with the plans for a Writers’ Week and said that none of the arts festivals he had been connected with had anything like it. Here’s a few of Adelaide’s ’firsts’: * readings of poetry and prose (1961) * keynote address by an eminent writer (1962) * special schools sessions (1962) * inclusion of overseas writers (1966) * tribute to eminent Australian writer {1972) * official bookseller on site (1976) and book signings (1978) * programmed book launches (1978) * on-site food and refreshments (1976) * parallel sessions (1986) The first Writers’ Week had five public forums or what we would now call ‘panel sessions’; in 1970 Stephen Murray&shy;Smith and Judah Waten were paired to discuss Literary Criticism (what Melbourne now dubs a ‘Bi-focal’); and in 1982 Jim Sharman conducted ‘An Hour with David Hare’ – an in-depth interview which in subsequent years became the popular Meet the Author sessions (or in Melbourne’s case, ‘Spotlight on …’). After almost forty years of literary excellence it is, I acknowledge, difficult to be truly innovative. Titles change but content and structure are often very similar. Melbourne Festival’s pairing of the Wallace-Crabbe brothers in a session on Fraternjty, for instance, was staged at Adelaide Writers’ Week in 1994. Nothing wrong with this; different times, different audiences. But chairs of programming committees should be cautious about claiming originality. Ruth Starke, Flinders University, SA Editor’s reply: Point taken. From Raimond Gaita Dear Editor, I hope there is point in saying, for the record, that I believe almost nothing of what McKenzie Wark says I do in his book, The Virtual Republic, and that for the most part I believe the opposite. Readers who are interested in my actual beliefs on matters disputed between Wark and me will find them summarised in ‘Evil, Moralism and Art’ in the current Meanjin. Wark should have known from reading the writings he refers to that his account of me had little relation to real&shy;ity. Christopher Cordner pointed it out when he replied to Wark’s first presenta&shy;tion of his distortions in Meanjin. To a less extensive degree, so did Guy Rundle. Wark calls Cordner’s discussion ‘logic chopping’. I suppose that’s what rigorous argument looks like to him. He also says that the mere fact that Cordner and Rundle thought it worth replying to him ‘affirms’ his point. It doesn’t matter what you say, open your mouth and you prove him right. In the virtual republic they call this conversation. Raimond Gaita, St Kilda, Vic. From Niall Lucy Dear Editor, The way Gerard Windsor, in his review of McKenzie Wark’s The Virtual Republic (ABR November), tells it – being able to ‘write well’ is still all that matters when it comes to saying anything about culture. There are no doubt many readers who would agree with this, as there are many listeners who agree with the robust opinions of the daytime shock-jocks. The talk-back audience is made up predominantly of listeners over the age of fifty-five. I wonder if Windsor would be prepared to countenance the possibility that readers who might agree with him comprise, similarly, ‘not the general public, but simply a certain demographic? If so, could he not accept that other demographics might think differently about culture, if not also about what it means to write ‘well’? I, too, like good writing. That’s one reason why I think Wark’s The Virtual Republic is a lot more interesting than Mark Davis’s Gangland, which is such an old-fashioned kind of book. But in saying that Wark writes well, I’m not saying that his writing is ‘timeless’. His writing is good, I think, precisely because it’s so utterly timed, so much in sync with the ethics and efficacies of a writing for today. The time of that writing is not universal. That’s why Windsor dislikes it so much, referring to writers whom Wark admires (Meaghan Morris, Eric Michaels, Catharine Lumby) as ‘unknowns, opportunists, and cabalistically academic’. By contrast, there remains for Windsor a pantheon of cultural commentators (‘track-record luminaries’, he calls them) whose every word ‘the Australian reading public’ continues to hang on. I’ve got no doubt that the likes of Robert Manne and Andrew Riemer do shift a lot of units, but I can’t see how Wark’s book (currently well-placed on the bestsellers list) stands to be devalued by comparison. Or is it that ‘luminaries’ like Manne and Riemer have another kind of ‘track&shy;record’ entirely – one that has nothing to do with book sales and column inches, but only with the quality of their writing? How come, then, the reading public is reading Wark, if Wark can’t write and the reading public reads only what Gerard Windsor thinks of as good writing? Or maybe Windsor’s ‘reading public’ is like the shock-jocks’ ‘Australia’ – something that literary critics are trained to recognise as a synechdoche. People who like the kinds of book that Windsor likes comprise, for him, ‘the’ reading public at large, when of course they comprise only a certain category of reader. And there’s another category of reader (which might include some or many of the readers who like the books that Windsor likes) who like the sorts of book that Wark and Morris write. I mean, how much tolerance, goodwill and common sense does it take to understand that? One could well read The Virtual Republic as a response to such a question. Why is it that the guys on the side of tolerance almost always come out sounding just like John Laws, even though they may happen to write a bit better? In my view, anyone who thinks that question is important should be reading The Virtual Republic. But if I didn’t think the book had interesting things to say about questions of tolerance and forms of cultural commentary (among many other things, not all of which I entirely agree with), I couldn’t care less about what kind of ‘writing’ it is. Could anyone? Niall Lucy, Murdoch University, WA From Darren Tofts Dear Editor, Gerard Windsor’s review of McKenzie Wark’s book, The Virtual Republic (ABR November), confirms that there is, indeed, a culture war being waged in Australian intellectual life; a war involving the values of cultural elites and those of a different generational sensibility. I would like to draw attention to two points that Mr Windsor raises to evidence this unfortunate divide. First Mr Windsor’s ‘problem’ with part one of The Virtual Republic. Windsor complains that it is ‘written in a language I am not at home in’ and that what he understands of its messages is ‘banal and platitudinous’. As with any form of criticism that is identifying and theorising new social and cultural terrain, Wark’s writing forces us to think outside habitual modes of understanding, and, if necessary, to invent alternative or more suitable concepts to make sense of emergent formations with which we are unfamiliar. In this Wark’s work fulfils a vital function of criticism: to mediate between the world and those attempting to make sense of it. The Virtual Republic needs to be considered ln the light of all Wark’s previous writing, which constitutes an important serial investigation into the ways in which media shape our perception of the world and situate us in relation to others. In an age of global electronic networks, terms such as ‘media’ are being re-negotiated and Wark’s work offers us inventive ways of thinking through these negotiations. Windsor does not indicate that he has read War’s previous book, Virtual Geography. If this is the case, then it is far from reasonable to be making judgments about a book that assumes some familiarity with a complex work in progress. To anyone familiar with the conceptual progress of Wark’s essays over the last ten years, it is anything but ‘banal and platitudinous’. The second point with which I would take issue with Windsor concerns his description of Meaghan Morris, Paul Taylor, Adrian Martin et al. as ‘unknowns, opportunists’. Excuse me? Mr Windsor, what have you been reading all of my life? I think the ‘gales of laughter’ should be immediately withheld. It should be unnecessary to have to point out that these writers are among the defining figures of Australian cultural criticism of the 1980s and 1990s. Without taking anything away from Andrew Riemer, they most certainly do have a ‘public following’ in a way that he does. And depending on how you define the public (which is what The Virtual Republic is all about), probably more so. Darren Tofts, Swinburne UT, Melbourne, Vic. From Veronica Francis Dear Editor, We recognise yours as being one of the few Australian review publications which gives substantial coverage to Indigenous writing and issues. It is, therefore, disappointing that Rosemary O’Grady’s review of Emerarra: A Man of Merarra contained less information about the book than any reader can find on the back cover. Why waste space on a cheap shot at the Leon Carmen/Koolmatrie business? Why say ‘at last Magabala has published a genuine and readable biography from the North Kimberley’? Has she missed the rest in Magabala’s ten-year history? There are personal agendas being played out in the review which others can properly address. From the publisher’s point of view, the main author should be the focus. Don’t be diverted by unfair attacks (potentially libellous) about processes which are asides to the power of this life and this book. Read the book, not the review, and see how dignity and humour are better than vitriol. Veronica Francis, Chairperson, Magabala Books, Aboriginal Corporation, Broome, WA From Mary Anne Jebb Dear Editor, When we read the review (ABR November) of Emerarra: A Man of Merarra, our hearts sank at the message to readers. It is hard and sad for us to think of the old man as your reviewer described him, as a weak old puppet who needed the reviewer to protect him from his own people and their co-conspirator, the editor. He was a very strong man. He didn’t have anybody leading him, telling him what to say. He made the tapes and the book of his own accord, the way he felt he should do it. He chose to produce a book that women, children, whitefellas and blackfellas could read. This meant that certain kinds of information were left out. He made his own decisions about what went on the tapes and therefore what was made public in the book. Issues of control of intellectual property were high in his mind. That is why he put protocols in place to make sure the book and the tapes would be looked after. He established a Trust to oversee this after his death. He was strong and clear on how the Trust would operate, why would be Trustees and what they had to do when he departed. He instructed the Trustees, the editor and the Gulingi Nangga Executive on their role of looking after the book and the tapes and always asking the right people before making them public. These people he trusted take their roles very seriously. In accordance with the written contract between the author, the Trustees and the editor, the original tapes were placed with an executive member of the Gulingi Nangga Aboriginal Corporation in 1992. They are still in his care. The editing of this. book, as the title of the review suggests, was careful, considered and time-consuming. There is a trail of contracts, reports and correspondence which shows just how open and professional this process was and which backs tip the description at the back of the book. This old man took the readers very seriously. He respected the public and the idea of publishing. He did not go into the book blindly or lightly. In publishing this work we looked forward to rigoroµs and respectful debate. It disturbs the Trustees that this old man’s book, which had such a long and careful process of consultation, could be used to publicise Ms O’Grady’s personal grievances. Mary Anne Jebb, For the Trustees, Momdi Munro autobiography From Agnes Nieuwenhuizen Dear Editor, When is a book not an Australian book? When it is an overseas tide, translated here, published here and supported by an Australia Council grant for literary translation. I would not wish to challenge the right and prerogative of an editor to select books for review from the massive flow of titles. Yet there are some literary and cultural issues at stake here. Some background. The best Australian writing for young adults is recognised here and overseas as diverse and stimulating. Many of our writers are published in the US and Canada and even more are widely translated and then reviewed overseas. Baillie, Marsden, Hathorn, Winton, Orr, Rubinstein, Gleeson, Lanagan, Southall, Wighton, Nix, Park, Crew, etc.. They appear in all the Scandinavian countries, Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, France and more. Some of our authors get translated into up to twenty languages. However: this traffic has been almost exclusively one way. Some years ago, the British author and critic, Aidan Chambers, embarked on an ambitious joint British Australian publishing venture to bring some outstanding European titles in translation to young people in our two countries. Sadly and for a number of reasons the venture failed. Nevertheless ABR at that time gave prominence to the nascent list and from memory interviewed Chambers. Whilst working on my More Good Books for Teenagers a few years ago I became increasingly dismayed at the rapidly decreasing number of titles by even the biggest and most popular overseas language writers coming into Australia. As for translations, I could barely locate a half a dozen. Consequently I took a proposal to our largest independent publisher, Allen & Unwin, that I work with them to locate a few outstanding award-winning overseas books each year for their specially created Ark fiction list. It says something for the courage and foresight of those at Allen & Unwin that they took the project on. So far we have one Canadian book, the Governor General Award winner, The Flight of Burl Crow by Tim Wynne-Jones and, more recently, Falling by the young Flemish writer, Anne Provoost, translated here by John Nieuwenhuizen (interest declared). You listed this book in the November ABR under the ‘re-issued/in paperback’ column. The book is not a re-issue and the Belgian original was in paperback. There is a Dutch book in the pipeline and we are considering US, Canadian, French, Swedish, Danish, Italian and German works. Finding the right readers and translators and getting the process right is a major challenge. There has been considerable discussion in Australia (generally amongst the adult literary community) about the quality and sophistication of some writing for young people. Much of this discussion is ill-informed but there are too many mediocre, dull, poorly written titles posing as more than mass market fodder. However, in Falling, we have a book that has won seven major European awards (upwards of $A70,000 in prize money). It has been translated into eight other languages and we have managed to secure world English language rights. The Australian translation is currently being considered by a number of US publishers. In Europe the book is widely read by adults and young people. It is complex (too complex for some US publishers), takes a long view of history and looks at the corrosive and seductive influences of the past and simplistic responses to race and violence. Its protagonist is an intriguingly disaffected, vulnerable young man. His relationship with the young dancer, Caitlin, puts an oblique and chilling spin on the tautly constructed narrative. Holland, which has a similar population to Australia, manages to sustain a publishing industry that welcomes translations from a number of languages and this despite much of the population being fluent in English. In Holland 40% of new publishing is in translation. Through The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, titles, author profiles, sample translations and other wide-ranging support for their works and authors is available. Publishers, booksellers, the media and generously funded government agencies co-operate to promote books through innovative joint projects and publications. Daily and weekly papers and review journals regularly contain lavishly illustrated, informative lift-out features on picture books and writing for young people. They seem to truly care about their young. We now have a triennial translation award in Victoria, support from the Australia Council and considerable financial support for publishers and translators from, so far, the cultural arms of the Dutch, Belgian and Danish (in another context) governments. Yet we have little interest or support from the Australian media and little recognition of either the cultural, literary or financial or export value or potential of translations or of the current project. There has been much discussion in your pages about ganglands and gatekeepers. One would assume that ABR is committed to the dissemination of good fiction, to the creation of sophisticated, dedicated readers, to the fostering of local talent be it writer or translator and to the opening up for our younger first and second-generation Australians of worlds and cultures they could only access through translated or imported literature. In the current climate, when books and reading are struggling for space in the lives and consciousness of young people, the openness, advocacy and policies of a journal such as ABR could be critical. Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, Armadale, Vic Letters to the editor must reach ABR by the 15th of the month to ensure publication in the next issue. Letters should be no longer than 300-400 words. Letters can be mailed to Suite 3, 21 Drummond Place, Carlton, Vic. 3053, or faxed on (03) 9663 8658, or e-mailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Hidden Author

From the New Issue

Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills

No Country for Idealists: The making of a family of subversives by Boris Frankel

The Penguin Book of Elegy: Poems of memory, mourning and consolation edited by Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan

‘Information and transformation: The continuing expansion of AustLit’ by Maggie Nolan