Letters to the Editor
Print the Legend
Dear Editor,
In his review of Roger McDonald’s novel The Following, Don Anderson alludes to John Ford’s classic western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) in criticising McDonald for getting the facts wrong (St Vincent’s Hospital Syd ...
Olive and Ross
Dear Editor,
I very much enjoyed Helen Ennis’s article about Olive Cotton at Spring Forest (July–August 2013). I stayed there with Geoffrey Lehmann when, in the early 1990s, I was interviewing Ross McInerney and recording Geoff’s poems for an ABC radio feature. At one point Olive popped out of the back door and s ...
A question of syphilis
Dear Editor,
I enjoyed Jeffrey Tate’s excellent review of Paul Kildea’s biography of Benjamin Britten (June 2013). It is always interesting when doctors disagree with a diagnosis – especially with the benefits of hindsight.
I agree that syphilis seldom gets to the tertiary stage without being picked up earlier (and Britten’s own cardiologist has disputed the claim that Britten contracted it). Presumably, Peter Pears would have had symptoms as well – assuming that there was no treatment with penicillin, which was available from the early 1940s. If the surgeon was correct (and, like Jeffrey Tate, I would want to see more concrete evidence), then the other possibility is that Britten may have had some fleeting liaisons of his own!
Dr Alastair Jackson, Melbourne, Vic.
... (read more)Writing first
Dear Editor,
Rock critic Robert Christgau once argued that ‘writing about music is writing first’. His edict puts paid to all those who have erroneously demanded that music reviewers must be musicians themselves or otherwise musically literate. If you can listen to and appreciate music, then you can write about it.
... (read more)Myth and misrepresentation
Dear Editor,
Lyndon Megarrity’s review of my book, I Am Bound to Be True: The Life and Legacy of Arthur A. Calwell, begins with assertions about Arthur Calwell that appear to be intended to deter the reader from ...
A dilemma
Dear Editor,
Writing about land management issues in Indigenous Australia is replete with sensitivities relating to the complex intersection of ideologies of the environment, development, and Aboriginality. My ...
Obama’s second term
Dear Editor,
After admiring Morag Fraser’s perceptive and insightful review of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (February 2013),
Copping it sweet Dear Editor, I’ll cop sweet Jane Sullivan’s disaffection with my novel The Seaglass Spiral (December 2012–January 2013) but must defend my publisher, Finlay Lloyd, against her charge of showing ambiguous support for the book in its introduction. Put simply, in forty years dealing with publishing houses, large and small, Australian and ...
Denialism
Dear Editor,
Jan McGuinness is right to conclude that wading through two books on Gina Rinehart is not exactly one of life’s pleasures, but her review (November 2012) is a fine assessment of both Rinehart’s world of privilege, profits, and power, and of the qualities of Rinehart’s two biographers (De ...
True grit
Dear Editor,
Melinda Harvey’s piece on Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel (October 2012) is precisely the kind of review that makes a reader like myself write to editors. As the last line makes clear, her review is positive, but her first and penultimate paragraphs betray how much academia must ...