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Expressway edited by Helen Daniel

by
August 1989, no. 113

Expressway edited by Helen Daniel

Penguin, $12.99 pb, 294 pp

Expressway edited by Helen Daniel

by
August 1989, no. 113

Prelude

From this I shall evolve a man.
This is his essence: the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind,
Like something on the stage, puffed out,

His strutting studied through the centuries.
At last, in spite of his manner, his eye

A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole
Supporting heavy cables, slung

Through Oxidia, banal suburb …
Professor Eucalyptus responds to the host.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then Helen Daniel came up with a wonderful recipe indeed. Invite thirty-odd prominent Australian fiction writers to respond to Jeffrey Smart’s 1962 oil-on-plywood painting, Cahill Expressway, hung in the National Gallery of Victoria. Some declined, but twenty-nine accepted, and Helen Daniel can take great pride and satisfaction in regarding herself as a ‘privileged host’ indeed. This is truly a magic pudding of a book.

Don Anderson reviews 'Expressway' edited by Helen Daniel

Expressway

edited by Helen Daniel

Penguin, $12.99 pb, 294 pp

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