Nathan Hollier

Meanjin edited by Ian Britain & Overland No. 181 edited by Nathan Hollier

April 2006, no. 280

Melinda Harvey reviews 'Meanjin Vol. 64, No. 4, 2005' edited by Ian Britain, and 'Overland No. 181, Summer 2005' edited by Nathan Hollier

Like Monaco, journals are sunny places for shady people. Black sheep and dark horses have often found a first sanctuary there. Precarious principalities, they are built on the shifting sands of subsidies, sponsorships and subscriptions. But their lifeblood is won or lost at the roulette wheel of submissions and commissions.

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Sending Them Home: Refugees and the new politics of indifference (Quarterly Essay 13) by Robert Manne (with David Corlett)

by Nathan Hollier •

April 2004, no. 260

Nathan Hollier reviews 'Sending Them Home: Refugees and the new politics of indifference' (Quarterly Essay 13) by Robert Manne (with David Corlett)

Some time before the sun set on the British empire, ‘British justice’ took on an ironic meaning. In the colonies, we knew it was a charade, like that doled out to ‘Breaker’ Morant during the Boer War. The dice are loaded in favour of a prosecution that nevertheless insists on carrying out its cold-blooded retribution in an apparently value-free legalese, thus preserving the self-righteousness of the empire and tormenting the condemned. Yet, as Robert Manne and David Corlett make clear in this latest Quarterly Essay, the larrikin land of Australia can now, through its treatment of asylum seekers, fairly be said to lead the world in the practice of traditional British justice.

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A Perilous and Fighting Life: : From communist to conservative: The political writings of Professor John Anderson edited by Mark Weblin

by Nathan Hollier •

November 2003, no. 256

Most of us know something about John Anderson (1893–1962). He is remembered as a libertarian philosopher who, during his time at the University of Sydney, influenced various individuals and groups, most notably the Sydney ‘Push’. Writers on Sydney’s intellectual tradition tend to locate the Scottish-born Anderson at the epicentre of this universe. Anderson is someone, however, of whom it is true to say that he is more often referred to than read. His major philosophical works were collected, or entombed, in Studies in Empirical Philosophy (1962). Now, as part of his ongoing attempt to resurrect Anderson, Mark Weblin, the John Anderson Research Fellow, has collated, edited and provided a useful introduction to Anderson’s political writings. The volume, as a whole, raises two questions. Firstly, do Anderson’s political views remain of general interest? And secondly, what is the place or legacy of Anderson in contemporary Australian debate?

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Letters

by Hidden Author •

November 1997, no. 196

From Gerard Hayes

Dear Editor,
If Mark Davis had wanted to concoct a parody of babyboomer fogeyism, he could hardly have done better than Peter Craven’s review of Gangland. Opening with a quotation from Anthony Powell and doing his best to parrot the Powellian tone of bored hauteur, Craven details the shortcomings of Davis’s age: not young – in fact a ‘late bloomer’ – but still not old enough to know better, indeed ‘rather earnest and plodding’.

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