Flinders Academic Commons :: Browsing No 253

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1621 and All That. "Literary Culture in Jacobean England: Reading 1621" by Paul Salzman. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Campbell, Marion J.

A crucial difference between Salzman's work and more conventional literary histories is its privileging of reading over writing: he aims to cover what was readable in 1621, not simply what was written then. His book begins with a map of the mental horizon of a paradigmatic late-Jacobean reader in his account of John Chamberlain, a gentleman, information-gatherer and letter-writer who immersed himself in the news of his own culture and recirculated its currents. He is interested, promiscuously, in feasting and masquing and gossiping; he interprets what he sees and hears, whether it is trivial and playful or serious and political. For Salzman, Chamberlain stands 'as the exemplar of a method that will endeavour to allow nothing to pass unnoted.' It is hard for a reviewer to resist this as a characterisation of Salzman's own book, which is long, learned and enlightening. It adds a great deal to our sense of the detail of this rich period of literary history, even if it leaves the traditional contours of the bigger picture firmly in place.

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Advances, Contents, Letters, Imprints and Contributors.

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08)

This items includes miscellaneous pieces from this issue.

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Apprentice. [poem]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Beveridge, Judith

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An Artist Speaks to His Model. [poem]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Beveridge, Judith

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Bestsellers / Subscription.

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08)

This item contains the July 2003 Bestellers list and Subsciption page from this issue.

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Broad-brush History. "A Short History of Indonesia: The Unlikely Nation?" by Colin Brown. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Monfries, John

This is a welcome addition to the historical literature about Indonesia. Aimed at new readers with limited or no knowledge of Indonesia, and written in an informal and accessible style, it makes an interesting contrast with the other well-known history in this field, Merle Ricklefs’s "History of Modern Indonesia". When Ricklefs produced his second edition about ten years ago (he published a third expanded edition in 2001), the very existence of the Indonesian state was not as problematic as it now seems. Scholars could still talk without hesitation of a 'history of Indonesia'. These days, the future of the country as a single state is more contested than at any time since the 1950s - hence Brown’s subtitle, "The Unlikely Nation?" He explains in the foreword that, since the idea of a united archipelago is so recent, 'in a sense the book has been written backwards, using the Indonesian state and nation at the end of the twentieth century as its starting or defining point.'

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A Burning Fiery Furnace. [poem]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Porter, Peter

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Commentary.

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Deane, Sir William

An address by Sir William Deane at the University of Queensland on 29 May 2003.

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Diary.

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) McCaughey, Patrick

This item is taken from a travel diary set in New York.

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Drab Caricatures. "The Premiers of Queensland" by Denis Murphy et al (eds). [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Crotty, Martin

Queensland's history is different in many respects from the older states, and similar only to Western Australia in features such as its vastness, its relative emptiness and its history as the last of the ‘frontier’ states. It is easy to caricature Queensland as historically and naturally conservative, even reactionary, by comparison to its more cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant counterparts in the south-eastern corner of Australia. This is the state in which, if Henry Reynolds’s estimates are accepted (as they still generally are, despite the notorious efforts of Keith Windschuttle), half of the 20,000 Aborigines killed in violent conflicts with European settlers in Australia met their deaths. This is the state that gave us Joh Bjelke-Petersen and all the corruption that went with his government. And this is the state that was home to Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, and that gave it twenty-three per cent of the vote and ten seats in the 1998 state election. But the distinctive features of Queensland politics are not all concerned with the forces of conservatism and reaction. Queensland saw the world's first Labor government, under Anderson Dawson, albeit one that lasted a matter of a week. It was the only state to maintain a Labor government in World War I, when Thomas Ryan's government stood alone and bravely against Billy Hughes and his Nationalists, and controversially fought Hughes’s demagogic pursuit of conscription. Labor maintained an almost continuous hold on office from 1915 to 1957, interrupted only by three years of Country Party government in the Depression, and ending only when the Labor premier was thrown out by his own party organisation. It was, moreover, the first state to dispense with its upper house when the Legislative Council, traditionally the preserve of the conservatives, was abolished in 1922.

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Dream on. "Dream Home" by Mark Wakely. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Spigelman, Alice

A fascination with the kinds of abodes we humans inhabit, and dream about, is the central theme around which Mark Wakely has spun his wide-ranging observations, anecdotes and personal stories. The topic lends itself to as many possibilities as you wish to make it. In order to narrow the focus, the author could have gone several ways. One approach would have been to write for a specific audience, perhaps for people interested in building a home. Or the book could have become a memoir of observations and people around their favoured homes. The author has instead decided to present stories, facts and observations that seemed relevant to specific periods of life, from childhood to old age, even death (what kind of mausoleum would you like as your final resting place, baroque or minimalist?). Although a valid approach, the book's form presents particular problems.

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Dressed for Deco. "Art Deco: 1910-1939" by Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton and Ghislaine Wood (eds). [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Weng-Ho, Chong

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is currently hosting a 'sumptuous' survey of the Art Deco period. Quoting curator Ghislaine Wood that the central themes are 'fashion, glamour, commerce', "Time" magazine’s review presses the buttons: Top Hat, ocean liners, Cartier (the scarab brooch), streamlined cocktail shakers and radios, and stepped pyramid skyscrapers … The list evokes a suspension of glittering objects in amber. The book "Art Deco: 1910-1939" accompanies the exhibition. The editors note in the introduction that 'Art Deco' was not recognised as a style label until 1966, with the publication of Bevis Hillier's "Art Deco of the 20s and 30s". Deco was born and became a craze without ever having a name. John Pile's "Art Deco Dictionary of 20th Century Design" says that 'the Modernists denigrated the style as Modernistic, putting a modern surface on things without any of Modernism's depths.' That’s a lot of protesting moderns there. The book at hand notes that as late as 1984 a critic was writing doubtfully: 'The critical re-evaluation of which Art Deco today is the object cannot deny that it consists more of a taste than a style, and this is responsible for the slippery way it resists theoretical categorization.' A taste rather than a style? Was Art Deco merely 'Modernistic'? Did it simply substitute a dress code for a program? One may as defensibly argue that it was ahead of its time - not Modernist but already Post-Modern. As "Art Deco: 1910–1939" demonstrates in its hundreds of pictures and the connecting skein of exegeses, Deco was the international face of its age. Not the faces of Dorothea Lange's WPA farmers or August Sanders’s peasants, but the shining face of grace and luxe and leisure - that is to say, one kind of the best we can be. As someone once remarked about civilisation, even a veneer is an actual thing.

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An Ethical Newsman. "The Man Who Saw Too Much: David Brill, Combat Cameraman" by John Little. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Griffen-Foley, Bridget

This book is about 59-year-old, Tasmanian-born David Brill, who has covered events from most of the world’s hot spots: Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Africa, South and Central America, the Middle East and eastern Europe. (The island state, which Brill sometimes proudly purports to represent as an ambassador, has contributed much to the Australian news media, also producing Davis and even the Packers.) "The Man Who Saw Too Much" is a rather curious book, as much autobiography as biography.

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An Exclusive Club. "The Complete Book of Great Australian Women: Thirty-six Women Who Changed the Course of Australia" by Susanna de Vries. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Wright, Clare

The book works best as a sort of extended "Who's Who", introducing readers to a host of captivating female writers, artists, activists and innovators. But whether through lack of editorial guidance or resources, there has been a missed opportunity here. In bringing together two volumes and, patently, years of painstaking research, this book offered the chance to draw a bigger picture about the historical and personal circumstances that shaped the lives of certain important Australians - an occasion to draw distinctions or resonances between the women whose experiences display such extreme richness and complexity.

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Exilic Colour. "Summer Visit: Three Novellas" and "The Island/ L’Île/ To Nisi" by Antigone Kefala. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Gauntlett, Stathis

Readers who share Helen Nickas's view that Antigone Kefala's fiction forms 'a continuous narrative which depicts and explores the various stages of an exilic journey' may be pleased to find more instalments in her fourth book of fiction, "Summer Visit". The first of the three novellas is an account of an unsatisfying marriage, told with a controlled detachment that makes its title, 'Intimacy', seem ironic. In contrast, the third, 'Conversations with Mother', contains a series of elegiac apostrophes of the deceased; the connections with Braila and other congruities with a figure familiar from previous writings again encourage an assumption of autobiography. However, it is the middle, title story, 'Summer Visit', that will provide most sustenance for followers of Kefala's repeated engagement with issues in her diasporic identity. The summer visit is to Greece, the briefest of Kefala's stops en route to Sydney, and it provides opportunities for laying ghosts. She revisits the Piraeus orphanage that was the whole family's cramped refuge after fleeing Romania. "The Island" depicts the New Zealand stage of Kefala's 'exilic journey' and revolves around the first love of the heroine Melina. "The Island" was reviewed on its first publication in 1984, so this review focusses on the novelty of the latest (third) edition: a juxtaposition of the original English text with two translations, one French (by Marie Gaulis), the other Greek (by Helen Nickas).

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Gallery Notes.

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Wallace-Crabbe, Chris

Art is a strange posing of discoveries, a display of what was no more than possible. For it is the task of the creative artist to come up with ideas which are ours, but which we haven't thought yet. In some cases, it is also the artist's role to slice Australia open and show it bizarrely different, quite new in its antiquity. Half a century ago, Sidney Nolan did just this with his desert paintings and those of drought animal carcasses. I recall seeing some of these at the Peter Bray Gallery in 1953 and being bewildered by their aridity: a cruel dryness which made the familiar Ned Kelly paintings seem quite pastoral. Nor could I get a grip on his 'Durack Range', which the NGV had bought three years earlier. Its lack of human signs affronted my responses. The furthest our littoral imaginations had gone toward what used to be called the 'Dead Heart' was then to be found in Russell Drysdale's inland New South Wales, Hans Heysen's Flinders Ranges, and Albert Namatjira's delicately picturesque MacDonnells. Nolan's own vision was vastly different: different and vast. It offered new meanings and posed big new questions.

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The God of Small Islands. "The Trickster" by Jane Downing. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) McGirr, Michael

This story is told from a number of points of view. One of them is that of Joy, a woman with impeccable light Green political credentials, a job in a suburban library in Canberra and a mother who seems to have a clearer idea of what Joy should be doing than Joy does herself. Joy's partner, Geoff, takes a job at the Office of Planning in the Marshall Islands. His motives are good. He'd like to help. That's his problem. He has walked into a culture where much happens but nobody ever seems to do anything. "The Trickster" is rich in satire, mostly of a gentle rather than a punishing kind. Initially, it appears that the novel will be garnished with stereotypes of Pacific passivity. As the book evolves, however, its purpose is never so obvious. "The Trickster" is intimately acquainted with the Marshall Islands: with the detritus left in our neighbour by both World War II and atomic testing; with the buildings that have been developed but stand empty; with the yachting club without yachts; with the problems disposing of rubbish; with a supply centre in which everything useful that is imported manages to get lost, only to turn up in the faces of people who are looking for something else. It is an environment that has been put upon, squeezed out and wrung dry. Geoff and Joy are part of a chain of visitors who have wanted to help but can't.

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The Good Old School. "A Short History of the University of Melbourne" by Stuart Macintyre and R. J. W. Selleck and "The Shop: The University of Melbourne" by R. J. W. Selleck. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Morrison, Ian

R.J.W. Selleck’s "The Shop" - along with his "Short History", co-authored with Stuart Macintyre - is welcome evidence that this once insular institution is developing the capacity for self-analysis that it needs if it is to attain the 'world class' status it craves. Although both are presented as sesquicentenary publications, neither is the kind of sanitised history usually brought forth at anniversaries. Selleck and Macintyre understand the subtlety of official records: as Selleck puts it, 'minutes [of meetings] contain what the majority wants them to contain.' Their sympathy towards the dilemmas facing administrators, and their lucid advocacy of effective leadership, give real depth to their analysis of educational policies. The "Short History" is an especially valuable contribution to the current debates. Selleck has a Swiftian way with corporate doublespeak. There was a time, not long ago, when retribution fell hard on anyone taking such an independent line. "The Shop" is an unexpected delight: lively, thought-provoking, and frequently laugh-aloud funny, it ranges across the history of the 'learned professions' and interrogates the whole 'idea of a university'. They’ll be choking on their tea down at the Melbourne Club. For everyone else, Selleck offers an opportunity to reflect on educational institutions and how their workings affect the rest of society.

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A Grand Disrobing. "Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader" by Marilyn Dodkin. [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Blewett, Neal

Over the past few years, Bob Carr has been tweaking the veils that shroud his inner self. In essays, speeches and book reviews, he has teased and titillated us with glimpses of his diary and extracts from his unpublished autobiographical novel, "Titanic Forces". Now, with Marilyn Dodkin’s "Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader", built around Carr’s personal diary, we have a grand disrobing. Although she has used Hansard reports, newspaper files and interviews, there would be no publishable work without the diary, quotations from which average two per page. But what a revelation it all is, providing an intimate insight into the personality of the diarist, something rarely provided in political autobiography and missing frequently in authorised political biographies.

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The Great Pessimist. "The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split" by Ross Fitzgerald (with Adam Carr and William J. Dealey). [review]

(Australian Book Review, 2003-08) Nash, Heather

Ross Fitzgerald's book is timely, for two reasons. Five years having passed since the death of B.A. Santamaria, an appropriate distance stands between the immediate obituaries and a better perspective on his impact on Australian politics. As Fitzgerald's highly readable work unfolds, he sets Santamaria's career against an Australian society that changed irreversibly in the 1960s and 1970s, meaning that any rapprochement between the ALP and what became the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) became impossible as the profiles of both parties' supporters changed from those that had underpinned The Split.

No 253 - August 2003

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