Archive

Advances - November 2006

November 2006, no. 286

More than a recorder

Still they arrive, though slowing to a trickle in recent days – the reader surveys that we sent out with the June–July issue. We expected about fifty to eighty, only to receive more than four hundred, making this a highly representative survey of our readership. Because of the large number, it has taken longer than we ...

Letters - November 2006

by Australian Book Review •

November 2006, no. 286

Behind the ‘myth’

Dear Editor,

As an unexpected child of the Depression years, I know how one working-class family coped with the economic difficulties that Geoffrey Bolton refers to in his review of David Potts’s The Myth of the Great Depression (October 2006). My father was an unskilled labourer, often out of work. His wages were supplemented by a small war-service disability pension. Some proportion of this income was handed over to my mother, who was expected to pay the mortgage, manage the household and feed five mouths (for I had two older siblings). Even with the income from occasional embroidery and dressmaking that she undertook, this was impossible. Her solution, when we sat down for dinner, was to put out five plates, leaving her own place empty. If my father asked why she was not eating, she would say she was not hungry, and would retire to the kitchen to weep or to find a piece of bread or fruit. So it was not half the population of the household that went hungry, only twenty per cent.

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How Fremantle's first newspaper was hoaxed

by Bob Reece •

October 2006, no. 285

Fremantle’s first real newspaper, The Herald, saw the light of day in a building on the corner of Cliff and High Streets on Saturday, 2 February 1867. The brainchild of two ex-convicts, James Pearce and William Beresford, it soon became the main voice of opposition to colonial autocracy, as well as the voice of Fremantle itself.

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Unintelligent Design: Why God isn’t as smart as she thinks she is by Robyn Williams

by Patrick Allington •

October 2006, no. 285

Patrick Allington reviews 'Unintelligent Design' by Robyn Williams

Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) suggests that the Babel fish, which, when inserted into the ear, offers instant translations of any alien language, cannot have evolved by mere chance. Similarly, proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) argue that, as Robyn Williams summarises, ‘there are parts of the natural world so complex and engineered with such precision that only a very smart intelligence, not blundering selection, could account for them’.

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'The Thing You're In' a poem by Nick Riemer

by Nick Riemer •

October 2006, no. 285

Everything happens fast and then goes –
the new movie you were waiting for
that you’ve suddenly just seen, the tunnel
under the harbour that seemed to take forever
now built and grooved by a million trips.
In winter fruit trees bud, shops
are full of summer clothes; only this
mind is slow, still stalling on the same
questions, never getting it, left behind
by life as by some wild-eyed nag
storming down the street, her hoofprints
pasted in the grass.

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'When Did You Last See Castagno?' a poem by Peter Porter

by Peter Porter •

October 2006, no. 285

Welcome to the feast, piccolo pasero,
A feast that never ends, of loyalty and treachery.
Two are sold for a farthing, little sparrow

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'Canasta for Lovers' a poem by Maria Takolander

by Maria Takolander •

October 2006, no. 285

Hold the hearts close to your heart:
they’ll feed each other blooms of colour

and the nudity of shapes
until you are bursting

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The Partnership: The inside story of the US–Australian Alliance under Bush and Howard by Greg Sheridan

by Peter Edwards •

October 2006, no. 285

Peter Edwards reviews 'The Partnership: The inside story of the US–Australian Alliance under Bush and Howard' by Greg Sheridan

If journalism is the first draft of history, this book is a rough-hewn draft of some important historical chunks. Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian, may not match some of his colleagues there in gravitas, intellectual depth, or analytical precision, but he compensates with an abundance of enthusiasm and enviable access to those in high office. In the early and mid-1990s, when The Australian was prominent among those boosting Asia and Australian–Asian relations, Sheridan was cheerleader for the boosters. His columns and books were often based on long interviews with presidents and foreign ministers, recounted in a tone more often found in celebrity journalism than in diplomatic reports. Sheridan’s obvious delight at being granted personal interviews with the powerful aroused some envious comments, but his technique served a purpose.

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By the Balls: Memoir of a football tragic by Les Murray

by Jay Daniel Thompson •

October 2006, no. 285

Jay Daniel Thompson reviews 'By the Balls' by Les Murray

IBy the Balls opens in the 1950s, when young Laszlo Urge and his family were forced to leave Stalinist Hungary and head to Australia. Laszlo was shocked to find his new country to be a ‘dry and colourless’ place where soccer (which he refers to as ‘football’) was unpopular. However, this situation was to change. In the following decades, Laszlo became ‘Les Murray’, a popular television sports commentator who has publicly championed his favourite game.

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Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, edited by John Wiltshire

by Penny Gay •

October 2006, no. 285

Penny Gay reviews 'Mansfield Park' by Jane Austen, edited by John Wiltshire

Why do we need another edition of Mansfield Park? Particularly, what is the justification for an expensive one, when we can get a plain reprint for $5, or a well-annotated paperback for $10? The answer is the one that all scholarly editors are driven by: editorial principles have changed. What was considered acceptable textual practice even twenty years ago no longer fulfils readers’ desires to get close to origins, to understand contexts.

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