No 249 - March 2003
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Patrick McCaughey's Essay: A Sketch Portrait of Fred Williams , Edwina Preston reviews Barry Dickins' Black + Whiteley , Morag Fraser reviews the Morris & Co. exhibition, Peter Robb reviews Raymond John Howgego's Encyclopedia of Exploration , Bridget Griffen-Foley's essay on 200 years of newspapers, Allan Patience reviews Peter Singer's One World , Simon Caterson reviews Peter Temple's White Dog , Gay Bilson reviews Angela Heuzenroeder and Catherine Murphy.
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ItemBestsellers / Subscription.(Australian Book Review, 2003-03)This item outlines the February 2003 Bestsellers, subscription information from this issue, and 2002 Bestsellers.
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ItemFestival Days.(Australian Book Review, 2003-03)'What do women want?' Even if Sigmund Freud didn't have writers' festivals in mind when he framed his famous question, it is apt enough in the context of the many pleasant-faced, intelligent-looking, female ticket-holders at these celebrations of readerly jouissance. Mingling with them during the first three days of the Western Australian Writers' Festival - one of the activities of the cutely named PIAF, or Perth International Arts Festival - what Armstrong wanted was to find out why they were there, other than to hear celebrity speakers such as Michael Palin (Booked Out).
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ItemMagic Moments. "Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic" by Simon During. [review](Australian Book Review, 2003-03)During's discussion of magic lanterns, photography and film is extremely suggestive and stimulating, but at the same time it remains rather fragmentary: a series of suggestions, rather than a continuous argument. During disarmingly admits to this process: 'my argument as presented so far [this on page 277!] skips and swerves and depends upon a number of coincidences and loose connections.' He then advances, in the last pages of his book, his overarching argument about modernity's intertwining with the history of secular magic. Rather than 'argument', one might call this a richly illustrated suggestion that sums up a stimulating, clearly written, rich, but slightly frustrating book.
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ItemDazzling Complexes. "After Electra: Rage, Grief and Hope in Twentieth-Century Fiction" by Eden Liddelow. [review](Australian Book Review, 2003-03)This book continues the conversation between psycholanalysis and literature, drawing on Klein, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari to frame the work of twentieth-century women writers in the psycho-pathology of their time. The book's argument rests on mapping the Kleinian traumatic scenario - '[the child's] violent feelings of anxiety, splitting and rage towards the mother on withdrawal of the breast, and later the grief that goes with fear of being left abandoned and alone if that rage is expressed' - onto twentieth-century social and textual relations. In essays on nine writers (Marguerite Duras, Eva Figes, Janet Frame, Helen Garner, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Jolley, Jean Rhys, Susan Sontag and Ania Walwicz), Liddelow explores how each one offers a path beyond the identification and assimilation of child to mother - self to other - which, in her analysis, dominates intersubjective relations in the twentieth century.
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ItemNational News.(Australian Book Review, 2003-03)The National Library holds more than 50,000 pieces of Australian sheet music as part of its collection of 200,000 music items. The Library collects, holds and individually preserves 'mint condition' copies of all music currently published in Australia, by Australians or which are related to Australia. But the National Library also 'hunts and gathers' post-1830 treasures that, through serendipity, have survived those traditional repositories: the piano stool or the box in the shed.
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ItemSeeds in the Woods. "Barossa Food" by Angela Heuzenroeder and "The Market: Stories, History and Recipes from the Adelaide Central Market" by Catherine Murphy. [review](Australian Book Review, 2003-03)Catherine Murphy’s "The Market" is not a major work in the way that "Barossa Food" is, but both books share a belief in placing recognition fair and square in specific communities and the lives of 'ordinary' people rather than turning produce and dishes into costume jewellery for the affluent. Both spoon healing broth, not tainted concoctions, and both write encomia for the conjunction of people and place.