Raja Ratnam

Stickers on a rotten apple

Dear Editor,

In his review of Angela Bennie’s anthology of hostile Australian reviews, Peter Rose is correct when he surmises that ‘we tend to exaggerate the number of severe reviews’ (September 2006). I think that, generally, Australians do not like disagreement; they prefer to ‘keep the peace’, and this is mostly true of our critics also.

The really troubling aspect of Crême de la Phlegm: Unforgettable Australian Reviews (apart from the clear assumption of its subtitle that it is only adverse reviews which are ‘unforgettable’) was a comment in Bennie’s introductory essay. At least on my reading, she appeared to generalise that our critics are ‘philistines’. Many maybe, but I’d rather not call them critics.