Jay Daniel Thompson

Madam Lash is a biography of Australia’s most famous dominatrix. Author Sam Everingham provides an engaging insight into the life of the woman who helped bring sadomasochism to mainstream attention in this country.

I have lived in Melbourne’s northern suburbs for almost a decade. I am also an aficionado of Australian literature. Thus, I was interested to read Stamping Ground, a collection of writings about my favourite side of the Yarra River.

In his influential book The Lucky Country (1964), Donald Horne argued: ‘The time has come when broad views of change that now seem impractical will seem sensible and to the point.’ This argument is taken up by the contributors to Griffith Review 28. These contributors explore the ways that Australia has reinvented itself in recent years, both economically and culturally.

In the latest edition of Quarterly Essay, entitled What’s Right?, Monash University academic Waleed Aly argues that right-wing politics has lost its way in the twenty-first century. Aly’s engaging and sophisticated analysis will appeal to readers from around the political spectrum.    Aly begins by arguing that the terms ‘Left and Right are the hallmark of a political conversation that is obsessed with teams …’ Such a ‘conversation’ is unhelpful, for many reasons. ‘Team Right’ is hardly homogeneous, and many of its members have, in recent decades, abandoned traditional conservatism. Aly supports this point by citing the Bush administration’s distinctly ‘un-conservative’ decision to invade Iraq, and the implementation of the controversial WorkChoices laws by John Howard’s government. Aly contends that such endeavours are by-products of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism.

The key theme of Overland 198 is upheaval. The contributors explore a range of dramatic changes that have occurred in Australian politics and global culture in recent years. Mungo McCallum contends that asylum seekers have been used as political footballs by both Labor and the Liberals. Raewyn Connell investigates how the left has been affected by what she terms the ‘neoliberal agenda’. Michael Brull responds to a recent debate between ‘dissident Jews’ Dennis Altman and Ned Curthoys. James Ley describes the work of up-and-coming Australian novelists, and there is short fiction by Miriam Sved, Phillip Tang and Tim Richards.

House of Hits is an historical account of the family whose company helped change Australian music. The book is written by Jane Albert, a former journalist who, while wanting to respect her family’s ‘privacy’, nonetheless felt the Australian public was owed ‘some insight into the people who created such an inspiring business’.

In her editorial for Griffith Review 26, Julianne Schultz argues that ‘the best Australian writing has always had a cosmopolitan edge, grounded yet engaged with the world …’ This argument is supported by the contributions to this issue, which are penned by a number of well-known and up-and-coming Australian writers. 

This edition of Griffith Review is one of several local journals to take the ‘global financial crisis’ as its latest theme. A range of writers address this ‘crisis’ and other ‘major recessions’ throughout history. The journal opens with Julianne Schultz’s essay about how the global economy has worsened following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Other contributors investigate the impact of recession upon the media, consumer culture, the banking industry and the workplace. Examples are drawn from Australia, Britain, America, China and Dubai. Reference is made to Gordon Gekko, the anti-hero of Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street (1987). Gekko’s mantra, ‘Greed is good’, has come to define the 1980s, but viewers, as Schultz observes, tend to ignore the battle between ‘local enterprises’ and ‘clever schemers’ that is central to Stone’s movie. Schultz suggests that the schemers appear to have won.

The key theme of Overland 195 seems to be crisis. The contributors to this edition of the journal address the ‘global financial crisis’, as well as various other moments of tension and unrest in Australia’s present and past.

The key theme of HEAT 19 is death. In 224 pages, a collection of Australian writers and academics pay homage to the departed in a range of essays, poems and short stories. The journal opens with Judith Beveridge’s moving and personal tribute to the poet Dorothy Porter. According to Beveridge, ‘Dot’ (as she was known to her friends) was a ‘consummate professional and her public performances were unfailingly polished’. However, Porter ‘also had a very fragile side, vulnerable to the pain of exclusion and rejection’. The title of Beveridge’s piece is ‘Trapper’s Way’, which is the name for a strip of land in the New South Wales suburb of Avalon where Beveridge once lived with Porter.