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Australian Book Review
ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Emailed letters must include a telephone number for verification.
... (read more)
ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. They must reach us by the middle of the current month. Emailed letters must include a telephone number for verification.
... (read more)
When did you start reading ABR?
Several lifetimes ago. In the government offices where I worked, ABR lay around with the New Yorker and the London Review of Books. I assumed, because ABR offered a similar quality of reading experience, that the magazine enjoyed the same level of financial resources!
Why does cultural philanthropy matter to you? A life without books, music and the opportunity to ... (read more)
Creative Chairs
There is lots of movement in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, with the appointment of Brian Castro as Professor of Creative Writing. Castro, whose novels include Birds of Passage (1983) and Shanghai Dancing (2003), becomes the third person to hold this rare chair in Creative Writing. Tom Shapcott held it for many years, and was followed by Nicholas Jose, who has jus ... (read more)
Her Majesty’s barren honours
If writers, and creative artists in general, needed confirmation of the nation’s tenuous regard for their contribution, they got it in various forms last month. Most egregious of these was the controversy surrounding Bill Henson’s recent exhibition in Sydney and his use of adolescent models. Mayhem of a kind we haven’t seen in decades ensued, none of it edifyi ... (read more)
Patrick Allington replies to John Carmody
Dear Editor,
I sort of but don’t exactly agree with John Carmody, who sort of but didn’t exactly agree with my mixed review of Tony Jones’s edition of The Best Australian Political Writing (May 2008). Carmody suggests that the anthology should have been called ‘Best Political Journalism’ because it ‘completely lacks’ academic writing or ref ... (read more)
Vale John Button (1932–2008)
Australian Book Review has been in a sombre mood since April 8, having lost one of its great friends and contributors. It had been clear for some time that John Button’s condition was grave (he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer late last year). Just four days before his death, he resigned from the ABR board with customary punctiliousness.
... (read more)
Parroting Loewenstein
Dear Editor,
Tamas Pataki opens his review of Antony Loewenstein’s My Israel Question (October 2006) with a lengthy denunciation of the recent war in Lebanon. He decries Israel’s counterattack against Hezbollah as an ‘atrocity’, citing the ‘awful statistics’ of Lebanon’s larger casualty toll as evidence of the Jewish state’s nefariousness. But this is a curi ... (read more)
ASA opposes banning books
Dear Editor,
The Australian Society of Authors has written to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to oppose any moves to ban books. The ASA is very concerned by any move to ‘ban books’ under the guise of ‘counselling, urging, providing instruction or praising terrorism’ and hence determined as seditious. Under current law, it is a crime to publish ‘seditious words ... (read more)