Nancy Keesing
Nancy Keesing AM (1923-93) was a Jewish Australian poet, writer, editor and promoter of Australian literature.
Thoroughly researched, well ordered, factual biography like Doherty’s Corner appeals to me. If, as is usual with a life-history, there is occasion for reading between the lines, I’m left alone to do it unhampered by authorial speculation. It often happens that when subjects of biographies live into the era of the writer of the book, facts emerge during research that might offend the feelings o ... (read more)
In the world of theatre and concert economics, the inelegant but expressive term, ‘bums on seats’ seems to be here to stay.
The books we buy or borrow (for borrowing patterns affect library sales) are the equivalent of theatre tickets. Books which keep an optimum number of bums on desk or living room chairs are just as good news to publishers and booksellers as prosperous box office returns t ... (read more)
Quarterly magazines have much in common with enjoyable small dinner parties whose hostesses serve fine food and wine in comfortable and attractive surroundings. Confident party-givers need no gimmicks to prompt their guests to lively and civilised conversation; they offer adventurous dishes and a few bottles from newer vineyards, but with respect for a balance with proven favourites [sic]; they in ... (read more)
I am sure A.B. Facey intended no irony in calling his remarkable autobiography A Fortunate Life. He is at once too unassuming and, too serious for smart games with words though he does find humour sometimes among the grim and frightful events of his earlier years and, after his perfect marriage, there were times of fulfilment and true happiness. He has chosen to emphasise triumphs as well as strug ... (read more)
One late afternoon in early summer I went to the launching of Helen Arbib’s Looking at Cooking (Helen Arbib Publications, $3.50, 80 pp) in a beautifully restored and reanimated old house in the Rocks area of Sydney. On the way to Lower Fort Street I’d indulged in one of my favourite meanderings past sentimental landmarks. Among these is a section of Windmill Street, and the Hero of Waterloo Ho ... (read more)
The World of Norman Lindsay is compiled by Lin Bloomfield, proprietor of the Bloomfield Galleries in Paddington, NSW, and an authority on Lindsay’s work. It was first published more expensively in 1979. This elegant paperback will make it widely accessible, which is a matter for satisfaction. It contains comprehensive, short, expert articles about Lindsay’s life and achievements as an artist a ... (read more)
The Bulletin, The Bulletin,
The journalistic Javelin,
The paper all the humor’s in
The paper every rumor’s in
The paper to inspire a grin
The Bulletin. The Bulletin.
(The Bulletin, 28 May 1887)
Though I’d been looking forward to this book I had doubts about reviewing it. By definition it must touch on personal loyalties and friendships, and then, too, I had preconceptions about Bu ... (read more)
It was my good fortune to be born into a family for whom books and paintings had a central place. My parents subscribed to an excellent lending library and were adventurous readers of novels. During the Depression they could not often afford to buy a painting, but they went to art shows and Sunday visits to the Art Gallery of New South Wales were frequent in my childhood.
... (read more)
Douglas Stewart has pointed out that James Joyce and Henry Lawson, opposites in art, and living at opposite ends of the earth, once wrote the same story and, each in his own way, made a masterpiece of it. The funeral of Dignam in Ulysses is the same story as Lawson’s ‘The Union Buries Its Dead’. In ‘Dublin and the Bush’ (The Flesh and the Spirit) he persuasively developed this argument.
... (read more)
