David Tacey

Whatever happened to the men’s movement? Was it only a few years ago that we all gathered in the Dandenongs to bang drums, fashion spears, and – I quote from a flier advertising one such event – hug all night in ‘greased cuddle piles’. Now the tribes of management consultants, computer programmers and, well, wimps have retreated from view (to the chagrin of stand-up comedians everywhere) and the copies of Iron John litter the twenty cent tables of the second-hand bookstores.

The cover of David Tacey’s earlier book on Australian spirituality, Edge of the Sacred, showed a few parched branches sticking out of the sand. The cover of this one is quite different: billowing clouds, rocks, water, lilac sunset colours. You might think that a certain blossoming had taken place; that Tacey’s project – the spiritualising of ‘secular’ Australia – had been wonderfully realised. On the other hand, the luscious hues of ReEnchantment’s cover may place the book more firmly still in the realms of fantasy – a genre that also happens to be popular with Tacey’s publisher, HarperCollins.

A strong sense of déjà vu attends my reading of the latest book by David Marr. Not only have some of the pieces collected in this volume been published in the popular press and weekend magazines, but the tone, direction, and intellectual content of this work seems wearily familiar. In The High Price of Heaven we find the sardonic, witty, disbelieving voice of secular reason and common sense. It is a voice that has enjoyed a lot of airplay in Australia over the last one hundred years and more. This voice finds religion to be a huge joke, making claims about reality and truth that cannot be supported by reason or tested by ordinary experience.

‘Until the last decade or so,’ writes Maryanne Confoy, ‘most people thought of spirituality, if they thought of it at all, as something for other people.’ It is certainly true that there is a new and quite sudden interest in spirituality in this country, and this book on the spirituality of Morris West is a timely addition to the growing tradition of – what can we call it? – ‘wisdom writing’ in contemporary Australia. It might be a symptom of the turn of the millennium, it might be a reaction to the craziness and fragmentation of the modern world, it might be a sign of cultural disorientation and the search for roots – however we attempt to account for it, spirituality and the quest for meaning is back on the public agenda and is in great demand. Just ask your local bookseller.

Suzanne Falkiner’s Wilderness is a garden of delights. This is one of the most imaginative, innovative, and useful books on Australian literary culture to emerge for some time. The book represents the first volume of a two-part series entitled The Writers’ Landscape, and Wilderness traces the influence of Australian landscape on Australian writers.