Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Hidden Author

Letters to the Editor – April 2001

April 2001, no. 229 01 April 2001
The Frank Hardy I Knew Dear Editor, Frank Hardy was a larrikin. It was probably one of his most endearing qualities, but he did tell me once that his membership of the Australian Communist Party enabled him to become something more than a larrikin. He didn’t always pay his debts, except for the one big debt and the only one worth remembering: the debt of living, to the end, a writer’s life. ... (read more)

Letters to the Editor - February-March 1998

February–March 1998, no. 198 01 February 1998
From Denis Altman Dear Editor, I suspect I’m the ‘(male) baby boomer academic who should have known better’ referred to by Delia Falconer in her piece in the Gangland symposium (ABR, November 1997). I have an unfortunately hazy memory of the event, but I certainly don’t assume a common age and education makes for ‘the same ideological viewpoint’: if it did I would have far more in co ... (read more)

Letters to the Editor - November 1997

November 1997, no. 196 01 November 1997
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 ol ... (read more)

Letters May 2003

May 2003, no. 251 01 May 2003
The missing five years Dear Editor,   Kerryn Goldsworthy’s valuable piece on the early years of ABR (‘The Oily Ratbag and the Recycled Waratah’, ABR, April 2003), giving details of Australian Book Review under Max Harris and Rosemary Wighton from 1961 to 1973, does not mention what caused its disappearance from 1973 to 1978, when John McLaren and the National Book Council revived it. ... (read more)

Letters - December 1997 - January 1998

December 1997–January 1998, no. 197 01 December 1997
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 ... (read more)

Letters Extra - November 1994

November 1994, no. 166 01 November 1994
Dear Editor, It has always been my understanding that the National Book Council’s principal function is the promotion of Australian books. Therefore I cannot understand why the Council has allowed the publication of a review in its Australian Book Review journal which calls for the public destruction of a book. To quote from Meredith Sorensen’s review (ABR, October 1994, p.67): take one Big ... (read more)

Letters - November 1994

November 1994, no. 166 01 November 1994
Dear Editor, In a generous review of my recently published novel, A Grain of Truth (Penguin), Andrew Peek mentioned an article I wrote for ABR two years ago, in which I suggested that the hostility of critics and reviewers in this country to novels dealing with current social issues threatens to suppress political fiction in general and the contemporary novel of ideas in particular. ... (read more)

Books of the Year 2001

December 2001–January 2002, no. 237 01 December 2001
Don Anderson Donald Home’s Looking for Leadership: Australia in the Howard Years (Viking) gives us an octogenarian social commentator in youthful form. Unlike our leaders, Home translates difficult ideas into something with connections to human lives. John Forbes’s Collected Poems (Brandl & Schlesinger) is an invaluable collection of work by a major poet – Sydney’s finest since Sles ... (read more)

Letters - August 1987

August 1987, no, 93 01 July 1987
Dear Madam, I don’t usually believe in responding to reviews, but Kenneth Gelder’s review (ABR June 87) of The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Stories, which I edited, raises a few points which are worth a reply. Gelder may have his fantasies of Adelaide as a city of ‘beautiful spaces’, greys and pinks, colour-coordinated, but I wish he would leave me out of them. I never lived in Ade ... (read more)

Advances: Literary News - December 2007–January 2008

December 2007–January 2008, no. 297 01 December 2007
Three Companions It is now thirteen years since OUP Australia published the second edition of The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (nine years after ‘Whitlam, Edward Gough’ launched the first edition). Peter Pierce, generally welcomed OCAL2 in his ABR review (‘A bountiful companion’, December 1994– January 1995): ‘The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature may be a touch t ... (read more)