Letters

Judith Wright and Meanjin

Dear Editor,

As generally happens, your note of the recent death of ‘Clem’ Christesen (ABR, August 2003) appears to give him full credit for the early days of Meanjin. Judith Wright is, unfortunately, unable to correct that view of history herself. From what I have been told of those gestational wartime years, her role was no less significant than Christesen’s. Furthermore, she certainly did a great deal (probably most) of the practical work that is essential to sustain such a journal, especially one that was determined to open windows to worlds different from the one represented by the Bulletin. As their contemporary, the Queensland poet Val Vallis, once put it to me, poetry ‘had to have a whiff of eucalyptus about it for the Bulletin’. Certainly, Douglas Stewart, the redoubtable editor of The Red Page, did not relish the new competition, and Vallis recalls being told, with more than a touch of schadenfreude, when work appeared in the fledgling Meanjin: ‘We knocked that back at the “Bully”.’

Santamaria absolved

Dear Editor,

As one who was both active in the Labor Party at the time of The Split and also a Catholic, I agree with almost everything in Heather Nash’s review of The Pope’s Battalions (ABR, August 2003). But there are serious omissions.

The most important one is the reviewer’s neglect of a matter of history that is evident early in the book and that goes to the heart of the cause of The Split. This is the now proven fact that B.A. Santamaria aimed to control the ALP, secretly and from the outside, and to promote legislation through a Labor government in keeping with his own religious/political fantasies. Bemused, if not blinded, by his own enthusiasm and self-righteousness, Santamaria was confident that he would be able to do so. The Pope’s Battalions makes this clear, and provides firm evidence. This is not the first book to do so, but its early chapters also show how these less-than-realistic aims were the outcome of ideological theories of society that Santamaria absorbed from several different sources during his youth. They crystallised in his heart and mind, despite the impracticality of such dreams in the twentieth century, especially in Australia.

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Ali Ismail Abbas

Dear Editor,

There is a terrible irony in the title of Raimond Gaita’s La Trobe University Essay, ‘Only As a Last Resort’ (ABR, May 2003). His title should surely have been the phrase that guided the choice of accompanying stills. Gaita’s admirable piece contained much to ponder and praise. The Reuters photograph (by Faleh Kheiber) of Ali Ismail Abbas diminished those reflections.

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Tim Bowden on Denis Warner

Dear Editor,

I write to point out a singularly unfortunate error in Brian McFarlane’s otherwise thoughtful and indeed generous review of my autobiography, Spooling Through: An Irreverent Memoir, in the May edition of ABR. By using the phrase ‘the egregious Denis Warner’, your reviewer has confused the distinguished Australian foreign correspondent and author with Russell Warner, an ABC executive with whom, to put it bluntly, I did not get on, for reasons clearly stated in my memoir. 

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. Perhaps it is time for the explanation to be given.

ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Pushing ahead

Dear Editor,

Beverley Kingston has written a rather world-weary review of my book The Commonwealth of' Speech (ABR, December 2002/January 2003). I read it not long after writing to a senior person at my university complaining about the quaint attitude which central committees in the university world seem to take to the Humanities. Much of what I said to him can be recycled as a response to the review.

ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Letters and emails must include a telephone number for verification

ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Letters and emails must include a telephone number for verification

Poetry at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival

Dear Editor,

Juno Gemes asks what is the current place of poetry within our literary festivals (ABR, ‘Letters’, September 2002). She also asks related questions, which in summary give the overall impression that poetry, particularly at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, now has only a peripheral place. As evidence, she claims that in Melbourne ‘a mere five poets, including only one indigenous writer, will take part in five sessions in a programme representing hundreds of writers’.

ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Emailed letters must include a telephone number for verification.

Inga Clendinnen responds to John Hirst

Dear Editor,

I want to respond to John Hirst’s rather avuncular dismissal of Rosemary Neill’s White Out (ABR, August 2002). John is an old friend, and I have often relied on his goodwill and good sense, but I disagreed with just about every sentence of his evaluation of O’Neill’s excellent book. In fact, I think his review exemplifies the kind of predetermined politicised response that Neill and other engaged analysts of the Aboriginal condition are up against. Some Aborigines and whites have been ‘speaking the truth’ about the devastating disintegration of some Aboriginal communities for years. What is ‘new’ is that more of us are beginning to turn from our absorbing in-house squabbles to listen to what they are saying. We are being made to hear that the earnest diagnoses and recommendations we have been making over the last three decades appear to be mistaken. It is not only that Aborigines are dying earlier. Now they are suffering more before they die.