Margaret McClusky

A slightly unconventional 1950s upbringing – I was nourished on Russia’s virtues as well as Weeties – may be responsible for my inability to believe in that pandemic, the tall poppy syndrome; instead I’ve always seen the naming of it as just one more jaunt down that jingoistic path which supposedly leads to the discovery of a definition of Australian identity – surely one of the dreariest literary pursuits known to person. But having popped my head up over the parapet a few times in the last few weeks, and having attracted an absolute fusillade of complaint, I was thinking seriously about changing my tune.

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 

Ian Hicks, the assistant editor of the Herald, took over the literary editorship after the brief reign of Chris Henning, who went back to work on page one, and the very lengthy incumbency of Margaret Jones. He remains assistant editor, and sees his books job as a short-term ‘appointment. His policy over embargoes on imported books is controversial. Like Valerie Lawson in her heyday at the Times On Sunday, he ignores them, especially if the book can be seen as having ‘some news interest’. Disregard of embargoes quite often drives overseas publishers to airfreight in the entire Australian run of a book and drive up its cost unconscionably. Hicks says he attempts to publish a new poem each week. But Australian fiction and poetry get more lip service than serious attention in the Herald. Often they’re dealt with in job-lot reviews of four books. Recent victims include Robert Gray and Gerard Windsor.

Hicks has employed a number of European expert reviewers, which is a healthy sign, but he relies too much on the old Herald standby of giving an inordinate number of books to ex-editors Pringle and Kepert. Reportedly, he has not changed another of the Herald’s legendary policies – demanding return of reviewers’ copies.

Christopher Pearson

Just one of the interesting things I found out from reading Tom Shapcott’s The Literature Board: A Brief History (reviewed by Evan Williams in the April ABR) was that I appeared to be just about the only person in Australia who’d never received a Lit. Board grant. Well, me and Sasha Soldatow, who’s a minor celebrity because of Private – Do Not Open (Penguin $8.95 pb) but much more famous for never having received a grant in over a decade’s application. One year he even included a naked photo – of himself – with the standard form. That only seemed to contribute to his perfect score: twelve out of twelve knock backs. And that’s just one thing you won’t find in Tom Shapcott’s book, teeming though it is with statistics for every occasion.