Archive

Letters Extra - November 1994

November 1994, no. 166

Dear Editor,

It has always been my understanding that the National Book Council’s principal function is the promotion of Australian books.

Therefore I cannot understand why the Council has allowed the publication of a review in its Australian Book Review journal which calls for the public destruction of a book. To quote from Meredith Sorensen’s review (ABR, October 1994, p.67):

take one Big Bad Bruce and tear it to shreds – preferably in front of as many small children of both sexes as you can gather about.

The males of the party, having consumed enormous amounts of something smelly and bubbly, must then piss on the remains.

There are many ways in which a reviewer can express dislike of a particular publication, bµt Sorensen has totally overstepped the mark in her incitement to violence.

I am outraged that the National Book Council deigned to publish such an unprofessional, grossly offensive review.

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Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone, David Veloz, Richard Rutowski (screenplay); story by Quentin Tarantino

by Barbara Creed •

01 October 1994

'Natural Born Killers' | The serial killer as folk hero

Mickey and Mallory love to kill. Murder comes naturally to them – it’s all part of a successful day’s work. Bullets fly, bodies drop, and the couple move on as if enjoying a prolonged shopping spree in which the objects consumed just happen to be human lives. Their actions blend in perfectly with a culture that emphasises mass production, mass consumption, repetition, seriality. After all we live in an era that has not only produced a new breed of serial killers but also raises them to the status of folk heroes – icons to be consumed, in turn, by the media, fans, filmmakers, writers, profiteers. Mickey and Mallory are also deeply in love; a starry-eyed Romeo and Juliet whose passion, in the post-consumer society, feeds on a continual diet of violence, cruelty, death. (It is perhaps telling that in many contemporary films, violence and murder serve to unite the couple rather than drive them apart.) This circuit of consumption, repetition and seriality is self-regulating, continuous, carnivorous.

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The Hand That Signed the Paper by Helen Demidenko

by Cathrine Harboe-Ree •

October 1994, no. 165

Cathrine Harboe-Ree reviews 'The Hand That Signed the Paper' by Helen Demidenko

Whether you track backwards in time from the hidden pestilence that is Chernobyl, or forwards from the vengeful terror of Stalin’s collectivisation and anti-nationalist policies, it is an inescapable fact that the Ukraine has had a bloody and awful century. In the winter of 1932-33 alone some four to five million Ukrainians died in ...

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An Officer of the Blue: Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne: South Sea Explorer, 1724–1772 by Edward Duyker

by Oscar Spate •

October 1994, no. 165

The title of this book has a faint dash of Ouida, but actually it signifies not a dashing cavalry regiment but the officiers bleus of the French navy under the Ancien Regime, who were not of the nobility and so socially inferior to their aristocratic colleagues, though often (or usually) superior as seamen. Duyker has written a good businesslike account of a remarkable career. The book is very well presented, with genealogies, bibliography and glossary, many plates (some in colour), and above all plenty of maps. An appendix by Rex Nan Kivell recounts his rescue, in the confusion at Calais when the German’s were overrunning France in 1940, of the painting of Marion’s death. He rolled up the canvas and stuffed it down his trouser leg, doubtless walking rather stiffly. A wry footnote to history.

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From the Word Go

by Stephen Matthews •

October 1994, no. 165

‘Years ago we threw the old didacticism (dowdy morality) out of the window; it has come back in at the door wearing modern dress (smart values) and we do not even recognise it.’ John Rowe Townsend’s words, from more than a quarter of a century ago, retain a fresh ring of truthfulness. I recalled them after reading The Girl with No Name (Puffin, $8.95 pb), Pat Lowe’s first novel for children.

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Australian Women: Contemporary feminist thought edited by Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns

by Vashti Farrer •

October 1994, no. 165

Vashti Farrer reviews 'Australian Women: Contemporary feminist thought' edited by Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns

Feminism is one of the great, enduring intellectual movements of the twentieth century. This collection of essays, mainly by academics, examines how that movement has advanced to date and where it appears to be headed.

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Guilt Edge

by J.R. Carroll •

October 1994, no. 165

For Englishman Michael Dibdin, the road to success in crime fiction has been long, frustrating, and somewhat circuitous. After studying English at Sussex University, he went to Canada to do his PhD, dropped out, hit the hippie trail in the 1970s, then founded a business that went bust. In amongst that, his marriage went down the gurgler too. In short he had seen and experienced a great deal without making a fist of anything.

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Peter Schneider

by David Roberts •

October 1994, no. 165

Peter Schneider, who was born in Lubeck but grew up in Freiburg, studied philosophy, history and German literature at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and then West Berlin, where he has lived since the early 1960s. The immediate attraction of Berlin was that it enabled him to avoid military service but in the course of the 1960s Berlin became the centre of student activism. In 1965 he worked as a speech writer for the Social Democrats’ election campaign and in 1967 played a prominent role in the campaign against the right-wing newspapers of the Springer Press. From 1967 to 1971 Schneider was active as an organiser and speaker in the student movement in Berlin and then in Italy.

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A Wish of Distinction: Colonial gentility and femininity by Penny Russell

by Helen Elliott •

October 1994, no. 165

Helen Elliott reviews 'A Wish of Distinction: Colonial gentility and femininity' by Penny Russell

Penny Russell could not have chanced upon a better phrase than Jane Austen’s ‘It was rather a wish of distinction … It was the desire of appearing superior to other people’ when she was seeking a title for this book. The colonial gentility of Melbourne, or ‘Society’ if you want to use their understanding of who they were, could only define themselves in terms of who they were not – or who they would never wish to be.

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Ceremony at Lang Nho by Georgia Savage

by Kate Veitch •

October 1994, no. 165

Kate Veitch reviews 'Ceremony at Lang Nho' by Georgia Savage

It would not be unreasonable, given the title and the cover (saffron-tinted, showing a vaguely Buddha-like image overlaid with helicopter gunships) to expect Ceremony at Lang Nho to be about Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Well, we all know about judging books by their covers, don’t we? The image is no Buddha, but an elaborate twelfth-century European beehive, and the helicopter gunships are themselves overlaid by little golden bees. And the true battleground of this novel is not Vietnam but the family and the individual psyche.

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