Letters

ADB replies to Paul Brunton

Dear Editor,

Paul Brunton has written of the quotas used in the selection of subjects for inclusion in the Australian Dictionary of Biography in a review (ABR, February 2006) headed ‘Mysterious quotas’, and in a follow-up letter (ABR, April 2006).

Beverley Kingston’s riposte (ABR, March 2006) to my review of the ADB Supplement 1580–1980 (ABR, February 2006) accuses me of ‘reflecting the traditional bias of those early volumes in considering the work of the stock and station agent more worthy than that of the cookery teacher’. I do not. I pointed out that the same space allocated to a writer of a cookery book of only regional significance had also been given to three generations of proprietors of an Australia-wide family company. This was in the context of my comment that the space given to those of national significance had perforce been reduced because many entries were for those of only regional importance. Worthiness has nothing to do with it. There are thousands of worthy Australians who will never grace the pages of the ADB.

Walk the path

Dear Editor,

I was stimulated by Tamas Pataki’s essay ‘Against Religion’ (ABR, February 2006). That monotheistic God is a product of infantile separation anxiety is a familiar and plausible view. Pataki’s observation that ‘religious identity easily becomes an instrument of narcissistic assertion and aggression’ also rang true for me. Likewise his remark that ‘bullying is an inseparable feature of monotheism’. Yet the essay was entitled ‘Against Religion’. I’d be interested to hear what Pataki has to say about faiths that don’t fit the monotheistic mould. Are they just as delusional and dangerous to liberality and the rule of law? I’m thinking of religions that stem from the Vedic root (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism).

Books Alive

Dear Editor,

Jeremy Fisher criticises the 2005 Books Alive campaign (Letters, ABR September 2005) for failing to do things it was not set up to do, and then acknowledges that it does the things it was set up to do extremely well. Fisher says: ‘The ASA has no issue with increasing the sales of Australian books. But that no longer appears to be the focus of Books Alive. Books Alive had the potential to be a unique opportunity to promote Australian literary culture. It has mutated into “an Australian Government initiative that aims to encourage all Australians to experience the joys of reading”.’

Different attitudes

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to John Biggs’s letter (ABR, June/July 2004) regarding my review of his novel, The Girl in the Golden House (ABR, April 2004). Reading Biggs’s comments on my discussion of his use of English names and idioms, I was reminded just how different our attitudes towards contemporary fiction are. We are obviously writing from different generational perspectives, with quite different expectations of what writing, especially that about ex-British colonies, should be able – or at least attempting – to do. Of course I am aware that Chinese people in Hong Kong have old-fashioned English names and have received aspects of an English education, but it was the way that Biggs wrote about and, simply, continued this colonial tradition that I felt compelled to critique. People in Hong Kong have Cantonese names and traditions as well, but Biggs’s characters lacked complexity and believability in this regard. As I suggested in my review, this was most probably not only a result of Biggs’s own cultural background but, more importantly, of his lack of awareness of some of the wider debates that currently surround the practice of Westerners writing about Asia.

Scholarship and stylishness

Dear Editor,

On the subject of my poem (ABR, March 2004) about William Dobell’s Cypriot, Judith Pugh is no doubt correct about the scholarly facts (ABR, April 2004). At the moment, I am searching the poem for a single fact I got right. The only possible benefit of my blunder is that it might help draw even more attention to one of the greatest paintings in the Australian heritage – a painting which really did, after all, focus on the stylishness of a European male at a time when the stylishness of the Australian male was not yet even a concept. That was my subject: but I agree that scholarship should always set the limits before imagination gets to work.

Clive James, London, UK

Clive James’s Cypriot

Dear Editor,

It was irritating to read Clive James’s poem ‘William Dobell’s Cypriot’ in the Spectator, but surprising in ABR (March 2004). Doesn’t anyone there know that Dobell’s painting The Cypriot was worked up, after Dobell had returned to Sydney in 1940, from sketches made in London? James Gleeson’s William Dobell (Thames & Hudson, 1964) names The Cypriot as Aegus Gabriell Ides, a waiter in a restaurant in Bayswater Road.

Unambiguous rodomontade

Dear Editor,

I have not read Elliot Perlman’s new novel, but I was startled by the bilious tone of Peter Craven’s review (ABR, November 2003). It seems to me that whatever critical flaws the book may have could have been elaborated without applying the blowtorch as intensely and personally as Craven did. If Seven Types of Ambiguity was a polemic, Craven’s rodomontade might have been perfectly appropriate, but I thought that he was unfairly harsh. From my impressions, the book is ambitious and no doubt cost Perlman many buckets of sweat and blood to write. Is it not better to encourage literary ambition than to crush it, even when it, in Craven’s estimation, does not succeed?

Hugh Dillon, Drummoyne, NSW

Ali Ismail Abbas

Dear Editor,

Chris Goddard has written a powerful letter (ABR, August 2003) arguing that the photograph of Ali Ismail Abbas should not have accompanied my essay ‘Only As a Last Resort’ (ABR, May 2003). To tell the truth, I don’t know whether or not he is right. I am writing only to clarify the record. Peter Rose graciously accepted all responsibility for publishing the photograph (ABR, August 2003) and, thereby, all responsibility for whatever criticism its publication provoked. He did, however, consult me about the photograph, and I readily agreed that it should accompany my article, without, I’m now ashamed to say, thinking as much about it as Goodard has shown that I should have.