No 255 - October, 2003

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/2328/485
Tony Birch reviews Stuart Macintyre and Anne Clark's The History Wars
and Robert Manne's Whitewash
Peter Ryan reviews Chester Porter's autobiography Walking on Water
Spring Reading by Lolla Stewart

Browse

Browsing No 255 - October, 2003 by Issue Date

Jump to a point in the index:
Now showing 1 - 20 of 38
  • Item
    No Free Ride. "The Bright Shapes and the True Names: A Memoir" by Patrick McCaughey. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Wallace-Crabbe, Chris
    "The Bright Shapes and the True Names" is an autobiography-to-date by a man of many parts, a natural extrovert who has directed three major art galleries, as well as having been a youthful Monash professor. As the title, drawn from his admired teacher Vincent Buckley, indicates, he has sustained much interest in poetry and drama as well. On both sides of the Pacific, his life so far has been a colourful one, his stutter imitated in a thousand conversations. But he has always had to be on his guard against becoming merely what Yeats called ‘a smiling public man’.
  • Item
    A Comet of Wonder Fallen to Earth: The Diaries of Miles Franklin.
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Brunton, Paul
    Franklin published fifteen books in her lifetime becoming a respected literary figure in Australia in her last twenty years. But none of the books would be quite the success that "My Brilliant Career" was, at least in her own mind. In the period immediately following its publication, when Franklin was taken into Rose Scott’s glittering circle, she was regarded, she believed, as a ‘comet of wonder’ by many people. She rather liked that. By the time she wrote about this in her diary in April 1949, she added the phrase ‘God knows why’. The comet had plummeted to earth. Now she had the gnawing doubt that perhaps she really was not a great writer. Franklin's diaries bring her to life in all her infinite variety.‘I bewilder myself, I’m so complex,’ she wrote to Emma Pischel, a friend from Chicago days, in May 1947, ‘so how cd he who knows me not, be able to unravel me?’ The diaries help in the unravelling process.
  • Item
    Other Fronts. "Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians" by Michele Grossman et al [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Sims, Bruce
    Fortunately, the operations of the Australia Council and others (in the case of this book, Victoria University) have tempered the rule of the ‘marketplace’ and allowed different views and genres to be heard. Some would argue that this is a distortion of the marketplace and that different views should be buried or confined to ‘alternative’ media like graffiti walls, a good venue for slogans but not critical writing. This book demonstrates the value of good, thoughtful criticism by indigenous scholars. Mercifully, it is relatively free of jargon and daunting terminology. It needs careful reading, but that reading is amply rewarded.
  • Item
    Only One Masta. "The Third Force: ANGAU's New Guinea War 1942-46" by Alan Powell [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Dillon, Hugh
    Unattractive as some aspects of ANGAU’s régime may have been, the battle could not have been won without it. But it is the native peoples who emerge from this fascinating and powerful account as the true heroes of the campaign. What gives the book its particular authority is that Powell articulates the stories of individual men who served within ANGAU’s ranks, and their often extraordinary feats. He accurately sums up their contribution: ‘ANGAU’s men, black and white, were the essential force behind the Allied war machine in New Guinea; a symbiosis that carried the seeds of victory.’ Powell’s fine book is a worthy tribute to those strong, brave men of PNG.
  • Item
    Get Porter. "Walking on Water: A Life in the Law" by Chester Porter. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Ryan, Peter
    All young persons contemplating ‘a life in the law’ as a career should read this book, ideally when they are about sixteen, to allow adequate time to switch to dentistry, say, or engineering. But whatever your age, Chester Porter’s huge experience, wisdom and humanity will enlighten you about the true inwardness of those sometimes compatible concepts, justice and law. We should all read "Walking on Water" and be better educated, and no one should embark on litigation before they have done so. By the time they lay the volume down, they will have cooled off, left their solicitor untelephoned, saved themselves a bucket of money and averted a heart attack.
  • Item
    Advances, Contents, Letters, Imprints and Contributors.
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10)
    This item includes miscellaneous pieces from this issue.
  • Item
    Bestsellers/Subscription
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10)
    This item is the September 2003 Bestsellers and Subscription Form page of this issue.
  • Item
    The Shape of Things. "Agamemnon's Poppies" by Adrienne Eberhard and "The Weight of Irises" by Nicolette Stasko. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Strauss, Jennifer
    Each of these collections has much to offer. A preference for one over the other may depend largely on the reader’s temperamental disposition. But as ideal readers, we ought to be capable of taking pleasure in the different qualities, the varied balance of passion and poise in each. Besides, the pair make a handsome addition to the bookshelf. Black Pepper is to be congratulated not only for its continuing commitment to the publishing of poetry, but also for matching quality production to fine poetry.
  • Item
    Suspension Bridges of Disbelief. "The Anatomy of Truth" by Kate Wild. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Tetaz, Carolyn
    As a whole, Wild struggles to establish a fictional world the reader can fully relax into. In this strange, dramatic story, Wild requires the reader to build suspension bridges of disbelief, at times without her assistance. But each section of this work is strong, with many vivid scenes and sharp observations, and Janey is an intriguing character, as much a victim of her own delusions as those around her. This ambitious and sinister exploration of women as wives, friends, mothers and sexual partners is worth reading.
  • Item
    Diary
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Trumble, Angus
    This article is a diary account of the author's travels through the United States and England and his reflections on collections and exhibitions of artworks.
  • Item
    Creative Choices. "Explorations in Creative Writing" by Kevin Brophy. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Tucker, Robyn
    Kevin Brophy shows us his skills as an entertainer in "Explorations in Creative Writing". He has read widely and has a diverse collection of tales to tell, from the mundane to the fantastic. The story, anecdote and fragment are all part of his performance. We shift between a reading of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’, to the ‘agenda of the couch’ and even to writers’ accounts of visits to analysts (Lacan’s consulting rooms — shabby!). Like the best entertainers, Brophy knows how to tell a good story. His writing has an admirable lightness of touch, alternately reflective and playful, and conveys a sense of the vitality of its subject matter.
  • Item
    White Legacies. "Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture, and Nation" by Laksiri Jayasuria, David Walker and Jan Gothard (eds). [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Sherlock, Peter
    The Immigration Restriction Act (1901) was the centrepiece of the White Australia Policy and reflected the new nation’s desire to regulate the composition of its population and culture, free from British interference. This collection of essays, authored by some of the country’s foremost academics in law, history and politics, commemorates that anniversary. It is a timely publication, and demanding in its persistent consideration of what the Australian national project has been and what it could be in the twenty-first century.
  • Item
    Behind the Poppycock. "Bamboo Palace: Discovering the Lost Dynasty of Laos" by Christopher Kremmer [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Walker, Nicola
    Walker first met a refugee from Laos, a teacher in her former life, while working part-time in a miserable egg-packing factory in the early 1980s. She had only a hazy notion of what had brought Ping to this country. Christopher Kremmer’s "Bamboo Palace" has now clarified those circumstances, and what a sad and painfully human story it is: of a 600-year-old socially iniquitous, politically benign kingdom destroyed and replaced by a totalitarian state.
  • Item
    A Scrummy Book. "A Life Worth Living" by Nicholas Shehadie [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Sherborne, Craig
    Not one word is wasted in Sir Nicholas Shehadie’s memoir, "A Life Worth Living". Almost all the words are. This book is a triumph of lack of style over lack of substance. It’s a pity to attach such a proud word as ‘book’ to a publication like this, as it is to attach ‘music’ to two-fingered renditions of Chopsticks. Shehadie is no writer, nor does he pretend to be, which is a shame. Rugby boffins wanting to know Shehadie’s favourite coaches or his all-time dream team will find enough passages in "A Life Worth Living" to satisfy them. But a more demanding reader is advised to spend their $29.95 on something that demonstrates far more care for language and depth of, well, depth of pretty much anything. Self-analysis, gravity of feeling, social or political insightfulness, engaging revelation, are not to be found in these pages. There is little description to speak of, barely any detailed observation, and no images to please the mind. It’s as though Shehadie were only half interested in writing the damned thing at all. He conveys memories of his childhood and youth in a throwaway anti-language of clichés as if he can’t remember the period too well.
  • Item
    The Abacus of History. "The History Wars" by Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark and "Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History" By Robert Manne (ed) [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Birch, Tony
    Both "Whitewash" and "The History Wars" suggest that the discipline of history in Australia is a battlefield for the nation’s hearts and minds. But, more explicitly, it is a plaything for particular ideological forces. At present, we have a group of populist conservatives waging not a history war but a propaganda one — and a cultural and political struggle. It is an issue for all of us, not just historians.
  • Item
    A Brace of Martins. "The New World of Martin Cortes" by Anna Lanyon [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Ball, Martin
    In 1519 the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés marched into Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), heart of the Aztec Empire. Thus began the often tragic history of European colonialism in the Americas. Anna Lanyon’s previous book, "Malinche’s Conquest" (1999), retraced and recovered the extraordinary life of Cortés’s translator and lover, the native American woman Malinche. The present book does the same for their child, Martín Cortés.
  • Item
    Fixing the Bounds. "The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas" by Anne Salmond. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Frost, Alan
    Anne Salmond has been assiduous in searching the records, archival as well as published; and her knowledge of Maori history and ethnography allows her to write authoritatively about culture contact. There are some very good aspects to this book; nonetheless, it is not altogether successful, faltering in editorial matters large and small, and in organisational ones. Readers will learn much from this work. However, with more time spent on it and with the benefit of rigorous editorial advice, it might have been a really distinctive study, rather than one with some distinctive aspects.
  • Item
    Among the Chinese. "From Rice to Riches: A Personal Journey Through A Changing China" by Jane Hutcheon. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Torney-Parlicki, Prue
    The opening scene of "From Rice to Riches" has the author travelling in a taxi with a camera crew through the city of Bengbu in China’s central Anhui province. A furtive glance in the mirror of her powder compact convinces Jane Hutcheon that they are being followed by Chinese officials. Determined to escape their pursuers in order to obtain the interviews needed for an investigative report on the pollution of the nearby Huai River, the crew twice changes taxi before diving into a crowded street market. It is a fitting introduction to a book that is largely about journalism and the means by which journalists — in this case, foreign correspondents — get their stories.
  • Item
    The Amplitudes. "The Global Reach of Empire: Britain's Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764 - 1815" by Alan Frost [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Merwick, Donna
    Frost’s British empire of the eighteenth century may not be the one that others prefer to write about. He doesn’t take naked imperialism to task as others do. He doesn’t make it his job to look closely at the other side of the beach. He is concerned with the terrible personal cost —to sailors, whalemen, soldiers — of trafficking imperialism. And the story he tells is as complex an account as any historian might care to undertake.
  • Item
    Striated Tears. "Blood and Old Belief" by Paul Hetherington. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-10) Pierce, Peter
    The scene of Paul Hetherington's ‘verse novel’, "Blood and Old Belief", is established in the opening stanza. From the start, we are in the hands of a skilled verse practitioner for whom ‘conservative’ metrical forms are both the bedrock and the supple medium of the story that he tells.
Copyright to all textual material owned by Australian Book Review Inc. Flinders Dspace has made every effort to contact the copyright owners of other material, and will remove items upon request.