Letters - October 2009

The many in one Dear Editor, In responding to Peter Craven’s broad-brush review of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature in last month’s ABR, which I suppose you ran for the sake of controversy, let me touch on the wider debate about what’s in the book, and why. In compiling such an anthology, where you obviously can’t have everything, a principle of metonymy comes into play, in which the one is asked to stand for the many. In the Macquarie PEN, this is a principle of inclusion, not exclusion. Where space permits no more, authors are indicated by association or citation, making the whole greater, we hope, than the sum of the parts, more open and many-layered, as anyone will discover who reads the essays and author introductions in the book. Thus Gerald Murnane’s fiction is implied by a superb piece of non-fiction, ‘Why I Write What I Write’, showing him at his best. The only other answer to why the editors did not choose this particular work is that they chose that one, after careful consideration not only of the work itself but of its interaction with other works in the collection. Nothing’s perfect, of course. If readers have suggestions or corrections, we’d be grateful to hear them. See the feedback link on the home page of the anthology website: www.macquariepenanthology.com.au. In the same spirit, let me correct some misrepresentations in Peter Craven’s review. Elizabeth Webby selected the material to 1900, including poetry and non-fiction. Nicole Moore chose the works from 1900–1950. Kerryn Goldsworthy selected the fiction and drama from 1950, while David McCooey was responsible for poetry and non-fiction from the same period. The indigenous writing throughout was chosen by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter. We worked as a team – and the co-editors join me, as general editor, in this letter – consulting widely with teachers and others to understand the different ways the anthology would be used, here and around the world. This is all thoroughly explained in the book, as is the rule of thumb for eligibility: that authors should have been established in their genre by 2000 (though later work by those authors is included). Hence no Julia Leigh or Nicolas Rothwell, among others. Picking contemporary favourites – the task of Best of the Year anthologies – is not for a project such as this, which takes a longer view. But apart from naming a few icons, Craven ignores writing before the mid twentieth century, as if endorsing the notoriously uninformed claim that there was no Australian literature before 1940. ‘If someone were to publish this amount of African American writing in a comparable anthology of American literature, they would be laughed to scorn,’ Craven says of the Aboriginal writing in the Macquarie PEN. Has he looked at the latest five-volume Norton Anthology of American Literature? The quip reveals a cavalier ahistoricism in bracketing incomparably different cultures and historical experiences (though indigenous Australians have made common cause with African-Americans in suffering and struggle for rights). It ignores the foundational fact that, as the First Australians, Aboriginal people have been formative of Australian society, though often in ways against their will. A new generation of writers and scholars, including Anita Heiss and Peter Minter, has made Aboriginal writing and its lineages available as never before. Now it duly takes its place as a core presence in this new anthology of Australian literature, offering a counterpoint to the preoccupation of non-indigenous Australian writers with Aboriginal encounters, from Watkin Tench to Inga Clendinnen and Kate Grenville. How much is too much? Such writing enlarges our conception of what Australian writing can be and do, asking us to read differently. In extending the definition of literature beyond the conventionally literary, it directs our attention to those other kinds of writing – letters, speeches, journalism, humour – that contribute to the making of literature of this country: its texture, constituents and extraliterary contexts. Those arguments don’t need rehearsing here. They are made in the introductory essays in the anthology and can be experienced in the reading of it, though your reviewer doesn’t seem to have gone that far. Let the book be judged by its contents, taken whole, the many in one, rather than by a cursory glance at its table of contents. Nicholas Jose, Cambridge, MA, USA A hundred ways Dear Editor, Peter Craven’s review of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature provides a masterclass in the cut-and-thrust techniques of critical journalism – or would do so were it not weakened on two fronts. First, the historical perspective is misguided where it is not misleading. In one detail, Craven is just plain wrong when he says that the 1940s: was ‘before … Clem Christesen got going with Meanjin’. Christesen’s first number of the magazine coincided with the very start of that decade. This is not such a trivial blunder, as it forms part of Craven’s wider claim (or provocation) that ‘In 1940 no one thought there was an Australian literature’. That’s a bizarre generalisation, even if we don’t take it too literally. Craven probably means no one in university circles, and though he may have something of a point here, he rests it on the thinnest ‘authority’: that of a visiting pundit from the United Kingdom, J.I.M. Stewart, who remains rather more famous as the author of cosy Oxford thrillers (under the pseudonym Michael Innes) than as a scholar of literature (or any literature outside the United Kingdom and Europe). Several other professors of literature, with closer ties to Australia than Stewart, might be held just as culpable in their neglect of the local product, especially when it had been recognised and appreciated outside academic circles for decades – something Craven ignores. More than half a century earlier, another visiting pundit from the United Kingdom, Francis Adams, deeply schooled in the canonical view of literature prescribed by Matthew Arnold, but also impressively immersed in recent antipodean writing, recognised the dawning of a local literary canon in various of his pointedly titled Australian Essays (1886). The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1994 edition) dates the first anthology of antipodean writing as far back as 1848. That Craven himself, elsewhere in his review, is prepared to recognise certain earlier (pre-1940) ‘traditions’ in Australian literature saves him from any association with the delusions of younger generations that nothing preceded the genius of their own particular age. Yet there is another kind of self-centredness at work in his piece that erodes its power. He begins in a spirit of generous eclecticism – ‘There are a hundred ways of putting together any anthology’ – but from his insistent nomination of writers or works that the new anthology has, in his view, negligently excluded, Craven risks giving the impression that there is only one way, and that this is identifiable with his. Concentrating so much on what is not there radically reduces the space at his disposal to ballast with evidence and argument the often negative assertions he makes about what is there. These remain nothing more than assertions – daring, especially in the case of his philippic against the Aboriginal con-tent in the anthology, but easy and empty. Craven has subsequently provided more substantial backup for such claims in his reply to Sophie Cunningham’s critique of his review on crikey.com (14 September 2009), but this kind of chapter and verse deserved a place in the original review more than did his personal wish-list. Ian Britain, Richmond, Vic. Peter Craven replies: J.I.M. Stewart’s remark in 1941 about the absence of Australian literature predates Clem Christesen’s founding of Meanjin as a quarterly (1943). Although best known for the Innes detective stories, Stewart was a well-known literary critic when I was young. The author of the last volume of The Oxford History of English Literature (Volume XII, 1963), he also wrote psychoanalytic accounts of Shakespeare. He had dealings with Max Harris at the time of ‘Ern Malley’. The fact that Stewart could speak so dismissively of Australian literature is surely significant in itself. Not too many people were very confident about the matters until the advent of Patrick White and the efforts of Vincent Buckley, Leonie Kramer and Co. to establish an Australian literary history. David Malouf said once that the first Australian writing he read with excitement was the fiction of Patrick White. Pace Nick Jose, I was not endorsing the ‘notoriously ignorant claim’ that there was no Australian literature before the 1940s. I was saying that the redressing of that ignorance was a consequence of critics and scholars who took their responsibilities towards the literature of their country more seriously than Jose and his fellow editors do. I wonder what the late Helen Daniel, a critic and editor of unparalleled inclusiveness, would have made of the omissions in this book. Jose should bear in mind that they are, a fortiori, metonymic too. One final point: Ian Britain accuses me of puffing a personal wishlist. Does this mean that he thinks Jack Hibberd and Steve Sewell are rightly unrepresented, and that Clive James’s poetry is unworthy of selection? Is he happy to have no Amy Witting or Peter Mathers? He is at liberty to find that my style generates more heat than light, but does he really think that these are trivial instances? That Ruth Park should go unremembered in a volume like this? He declares that my judgements are merely assertive, as if there were world and time enough to offer detailed analyses of the many examples of undistinguished writing in the Aboriginal selections. Does Britain agree with me about this or not? If I am right then surely the PEN Anthology is flawed? If he disagrees, he should say so. The missing Palmer Dear Editor, One of the more extraordinary omissions in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature is that of Vance Palmer, especially given that Nettie is represented. One of the most influential literary couples in Australian literature from the 1920s to the 1950s, the Palmers were described by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, a contemporary of theirs, as ‘the brave institution of Vance-and-Nettie’; while Marjorie Barnard observed, ‘there can scarcely be a writer of any promise in Australia who does not owe something to the Palmers’. Even the reference to Vance in the introduction to Nettie’s piece, stating that his novels were ‘representative of an interwar revival of literary nationalism rooted in the values of the 1890s’, is condescending. He and Nettie brought an international perspective and a deep love of their own country to their vision for Australian literature that was far from the ‘offensively Australian’ bias of the 1890s. Nettie Palmer is represented by an extract from her journal Fourteen Years, which illustrates her cosmopolitanism in its account of 1930s literary Paris. Why is there no corresponding example of Vance’s contribution to Australian literature: perhaps an extract from The Passage or one of his short stories, a piece of his critical writing, the text from a radio broadcast, or an exchange of letters such as the one used so effectively in the Miles Franklin–Katharine Susannah Prichard entries? Vance was known for his ‘emotional restraint’; perhaps the editors of this new anthology ‘couldn’t find an extract that would jump off the page’, as Nicole Moore, one of those interviewed on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show (31 July 2009), commented of another writer who was excluded. But should the ‘wow’ factor be an overriding criterion in an anthology that purports ‘to give a sense of what the literary culture of the time was like’, as that same editor asserted elsewhere in the interview? One of the anthology’s strengths is its inclusion of women writers who have been little, if at all, acknowledged in the Australian literary canon, and it is gratifying to read an example of Nettie’s lucid prose, with its intellectual rigour and vivid observations. There is, however, a view among some feminist academics that Nettie sacrificed her talents as a poet to Vance’s literary career. While there may be a glimmer of truth in this (they were both influenced by accepted gender roles of their time), it is a reductive argument that fails to acknowledge Nettie’s achievements as a critic, diarist and reviewer, and also fails to recognise the Palmers’ extraordinary literary partnership. But could this be a factor in Vance’s exclusion from the anthology? My own writing has focused on recovering the work of women neglected in Australia’s literary history, but I feel that to deny Vance Palmer his rightful place alongside Nettie Palmer is rewriting history too far. Nettie, who, for ethical reasons, never reviewed her husband’s work, but who was ever sensitive to his writing being unappreciated or neglected, would be appalled. Sylvia Martin, Woodbridge, Tas. Myths and stoushes Dear Editor, Thank you for publishing the review of my book The Colony (September 2009). It is an honour to be reviewed by such an eminent historian as John Hirst. His words, as always, give me much food for thought. At first I was puzzled by the title ‘Mythic Grievances’. Then I realised it refers to Hirst’s claim that Aboriginal people did not express grievances over their dispossession. I am dismayed that my book is associated with such a phrase. Upon reflection, I wonder whether this was your attempt to ignite a good old stoush? Sorry to disappoint, but there is really nothing to stoush about here. Besides suggesting a rather narrow and myopic way of considering dispossession, this is merely a case of careless reading. Aborigines did express grievances over dispossession, and I cite them. In October 1790, Maugaron came from the Parramatta area to protest to Governor Phillip over the loss of his people’s lands. In 1804, three unnamed men from the Hawkesbury River came to see Governor King. They said they ‘did not like to be driven from the few places that were left on the banks of the river … if they went across the white men’s ground the settlers fired upon them’. These remonstrations were made at times when there seemed to be a chance that diplomatic strategies would be effective. They weren’t. Other tactics included violent attacks on settlers to drive them out, and fairly clear expressions of grievance over dispossession. I think that Mahroot’s discussion of ‘Boy’ – the Eora word meaning ‘death’ – at the 1845 Inquiry into the Condition of the Aborigines was an attempt to explain the enormity of what Aborigines had suffered and lost, though expressed in that unfailingly polite Aboriginal way, and cut short when the panel of gentlemen became alarmed. Interested readers may like to consult Rachel Perkins and Marcia Langton’s magnificent First Australians: An Illustrated History (2008) for many more Aboriginal expressions of grievance over dispossession, and, more importantly, the reasons why they did so. Grace Karskens, Sydney, NSW John Hirst replies: As Grace Karskens surmises, the headline, ‘Mythic Grievances’, was not mine. Of course I am aware of Aboriginal resistance and demands to the invaders to disappear. What strikes me is the lack of resentment after the conquest was complete. In this I am echoing the comments of early observers who found the Aborigines to be a mild, uncomplaining, generous people. Strehlow gave this explanation for it: the ‘sense of oneness with Eternity made them more kindly, tolerant and helpful towards their human fellows everywhere’. The question I posed for Karskens was whether the Eora in Sydney, whose high-spiritedness she describes so well, were full of resentment towards the Europeans. Breaking the barrier Dear Editor, I thank Susan Lever for her review of my Rainforest Narratives (September 2009), but, inevitably, I would like to make a few comments. The book was always intended by UQP to be a survey of Janette Turner Hospital’s work, in language that would be aware of contemporary debates about the many issues it refers to, but not to be too theoretically dense. I think it achieves this aim. To their credit, UQP never cavilled at the fact that I used around 370 pages, an extremely generous allocation, as anyone writing a monograph on a single writer these days will be aware. Even so, there will naturally be themes that are only lightly handled or scarcely mentioned. To have broken the 400-page barrier would have been asking for trouble, as I am sure would also be the case with respect to the Cambria Press series of books on contemporary Australian authors, of which Lever is the general editor. Despite being the first extended treatment of Hospital’s work as a whole, and necessarily broad in some senses, the book’s core emphasis, in my view, is the centrality of decoding, interpretation or reading in Hospital’s fiction. This theme is developed rather than other potential ones. On a small note, the supposedly missing element of Hospital’s publication of A Very Proper Death (1990), under the pseudonym Alex Juniper, is indeed touched on, albeit more briefly than it deserves, to be sure, on pages 55, 138 and 286, but principally on page 326, in the notes, where many of the observations on Hospital’s intellectual and writerly contexts are tucked away. Ultimately, however, what I regret is that Lever started from a position of not being very enthusiastic about Hospital’s writing in general, and that I have been unable to convince her otherwise. David Callahan, Aveiro, Portugal

The many in one

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