July 2008 - Letters

Patrick Allington replies to John Carmody Dear Editor, I sort of but don’t exactly agree with John Carmody, who sort of but didn’t exactly agree with my mixed review of Tony Jones’s edition of The Best Australian Political Writing (May 2008). Carmody suggests that the anthology should have been called ‘Best Political Journalism’ because it ‘completely lacks’ academic writing or reflective essays. I agree that the book was journalism-heavy, but there’s nothing to be gained by overstatement. It also included a number of longer essays, the best of which were intelligent, learned, thought-provoking and impassioned. In assessing any anthology, there’s a fine line between critique and compiling an alternative wish-list of inclusions. Personally, I wanted to see an extract from Torsten Krol’s Callisto, a satirical novel which was as overtly political as anything published in 2007; but its absence is hardly valid grounds for criticism. What is of legitimate concern is the anthology’s limited cohesion, its limpness (some of the time) and its wavering understanding of what constitutes ‘best’ in ‘best political writing’. Carmody says that Tony Jones told him that the MUP editors ‘assembled most of the selections’, to which Jones ‘added a few of his own’. Carmody calls this ‘odd’. Given that there is only one name on the cover, I agree. But it’s also a bit of a chicken-and-egg debate. There is no intrinsic reason why an ‘anthology by committee’ cannot be successful. As a reader, I’m not convinced I need to know the behind-the-scenes reasons why the finished product at times lacked purpose and vibrancy. Patrick Allington, South Plympton, SA The wrong wife Dear Editor, I was disappointed to see that Vivien Gaston, in her review of my memoir, Self-Portrait of The Artist’s Wife, and Judith Pugh’s autobiography, An Unstill Life (May 2008), confused Clifton Pugh’s wives. I wrote about the Christmas of 1965, when Andrew Sibley and I were living on Marlene and Clif Pugh’s property ‘Dunmoochin’. It was the first Christmas dinner I tried to cook – a disaster that was redeemed by the kindness of Marlene and the humour of Clif. One of the reasons I wrote my memoir was to attempt to flesh out some of the ordinary details of life in a vital but, as yet, relatively unexplored period in Melbourne’s art circles. This particular Christmas was not only comical but significant in the scheme of the book, because of what it says about the individuals at that time. Gaston’s reading is careless because Judith Pugh, Clif’s next wife, was not on the scene until quite a few years later. By then much had changed. I wish Gaston had checked her facts before going to print. Irena Sibley, Albert Park, Vic. No Mills & Boon Dear Editor, I wish to protest against Adam Rivett’s disgraceful review of Fiona Capp’s novel Musk and Byrne (June 2008). If Rivett dislikes the novel, he has every right to say so, but perhaps a measure of reasoned critical discourse might have been more useful than the spiteful and vituperative abuse (‘Mills & Boon watercolour’, ‘wallpapering and building-block psychology’, ‘all-thumbs puppeteer’) that constitutes most of his review. Yes, the plot of the novel does have elements of melodrama, as do the plots of Dickens, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which, perhaps unconsciously, Capp may have had in the back of her mind in writing her novel. The question is what she does with the plot. Musk and Byrne has a strong and compelling narrative drive, a wide range of convincingly realised characters and a subtly evoked period setting. The writing is restrained and measured, and as far from Mills & Boon as it is possible to be, as even this schizophrenic review seems to acknowledge in between tirades: ‘not trashy enough’, ‘Capp’s prose can deliver fine observations’, ‘too well written’ (how can a novel be too well written?). I don’t know Rivett’s qualifications as a reviewer. Perhaps he thinks that indiscriminately savaging novels is a way of gaining a reputation. It is – but probably not the kind he’d enjoy very much. Laurie Clancy, Brunswick East, Vic. Impressed by his own cleverness Dear Editor, Reading Adam Rivett’s review of Fiona Capp’s novel Musk and Byrne was like being forced to watch the revolting (to borrow a word from our prime minister) spectacle of a man getting off on his own sentences; a man so impressed by his cleverness that the novel in question was irrelevant. I’m sure there are words for that kind of self-satisfied behaviour, but it seems to me that ‘reviewing’ and ‘criticism’ are not the right ones. Sophie Cunningham, Carlton, Vic. Adam Rivett replies Assessing the quality of a book, armed with evidence and conviction, is the job of a critic. Fence-sitting or lying is not. The review in question was written from a place of sincere belief, not cynical attention-seeking. It gave me no giddy thrill to criticise the book. I remained uncertain to the end about the review, and would have much preferred to be delighted by the novel. But I was not, and therefore proceeded, as any honest writer must – from the inner voice, not the concocted voice of another critic with different tastes. The vinegar and irreverence of the review clearly irritated some. But a review can be a forum for strong opinions, harsh words and lines in the sand. Without higher standards guiding our words and ideals, we’re playing tennis without a net, producing a culture where the common reader will detect, in an instant, another piece of polite cottage-industry soft-pedalling – and most likely stop reading. Adam Rivett reviews Alex Jones’s Morris in Iceland on page 25 of this issue. Ed. Not forgotten in Missolonghi Dear Editor, The Anzacs who fought in Greece may have been forgotten by historians but not by the Greek people (Forgotten Anzacs: The Campaign in Greece,1941, reviewed in the June issue). During the 1970s, as the chair of my children’s local school council in inner-Melbourne, I mixed with the Greek families who made up a large part of the school community. Some of the Greek grandparents had strong and fond memories of Australian soldiers in Greece during 1941, and those memories had been passed on to their descendants. Better still, as a student travelling across Europe in 1962 in my worn out Morris Minor, I stopped in Missolonghi, desperate for a mechanic to fix a temperamental carburettor. Not only did the local mechanic fix the car for nothing but, while he worked, the locals from the town square took care of this representative Australian with plenty of ouzo and cheers for the Australian soldiers who fought with them in the 1940s. A mere 1955 national serviceman, I can still recall the feeling of pride. Alan Kirsner, South Yarra, Vic.

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