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Archive

Melba by Thérèse Radic & Bernard Heinze by Thérèse Radic

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August 1987, no, 93

Disraeli considered that biography – in contrast to history – is life without theory, though the result of such a policy can be arid. It needs, as well, to be portrayal without betrayal, but it more often errs in the opposite direction: who is likely to write about someone for whom she or he feels an antipathy or an indifference? Yet I am inclined to think that there is a case to be made for ‘arranged biography’, analogous to the ‘arranged marriages’ of other times and cultures.

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Michael Sariban has provided us with a new and memorable collection of poetry. In 1984, the Queensland Community Press produced At the Institute for Total Recall, which met with an enthusiastic response.

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Rita Erlich states that Good Enough to Eat is ‘a guide to some of the best foods in Melbourne’. It is that indeed and a very good one – and fun to read as well. But it has much more than a provincial value. Since Australian Book Review is a national journal, it is worth stressing that this book gives invaluable advice that is applicable anywhere – how to shop, what to look for, how to judge this or that purveyor, above all what questions shoppers should ask not only of the sellers but of themselves.

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The D Generation Bumper Book of Aussie Heroes by John Alsop, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Andrew Knight, Rob Sitch, and Magda Szubanski

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August 1987, no, 93

It’s finally happened. I’m not funny. All my life I’ve been told I’m a ratbag. I’m a maniac. I need help. I see life different. Hint of lunacy in the blood. Touch of madness in the haircut. Dickins, he’s crazy. Dickins, he thinks like the turn-off to Shepparton.

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I don’t usually reply to Letters to the Editor, but … Since this lot (see opposite) is particularly atrabilious, a lovely word I have just learned from Don Anderson, I feel moved to make a few mild replies. Ken Gelder and Gerard Windsor are big boys now and can look after themselves, but I will say that John Carroll’s is the only negative response I have seen or heard to Windsor’s June Self Portrait (there were lots of positive ones, although Gerard did get a tad upstaged by his small son). I should also like to point out to John Carroll that Norman Mailer was reduced to his correct proportions years ago (‘brought down’, if you will – funny how Mailer’s name irresistibly suggests these metaphors of detumescence) by an assortment of immortal feminists who most certainly do not need any help from me, and as far as I am concerned the basic difference between Norman Mailer and John Hooker is that John Hooker is a serious human being. If I did indeed take a tone of unbecoming admonition, it seems to me that John Carroll has caught it; there’s a lurking sub-text to his letter best expressed as ‘Naughty girl, silly girl, stop it now or Daddy will smack.’

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My Place by Sally Morgan

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August 1987, no, 93

Reading My Place by Sally Morgan reminds one of how powerful a book can be when there is an urgent story to be told. This book, let me say at the outset, is wonderful.

Sally Morgan and her four brothers and sisters grew up in Perth in the 1950s and 1960s. They are part Aboriginal, but didn’t know it then. They knew they were darker, different, perhaps they were Greek; their mother and grandmother told them they were Indian and this answer satisfied the kids at school, and them for a time.

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Dear Madam,

I don’t usually believe in responding to reviews, but Kenneth Gelder’s review (ABR June 87) of The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Stories, which I edited, raises a few points which are worth a reply.

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As I write these words, I have just read the first forty-five pages of Murray Bail’s novel. Those pages are mostly about the Shadbolt family of Adelaide.

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Circles of Faces by Mary Dadswell & Self Possession by Marion Halligan

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July 1987, no. 92

In her autobiographical sketch One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty wrote of her mother: ‘But I think she was relieved when I chose to be a writer of stories, for she thought writing was safe.’ Can you just imagine the shock on Chestina Welty’s face when she read, as she must have, this sentence tucked away into the middle of one of her daughter’s first stories: ‘When he finally looked down there was blood everywhere; her lap was like a bowl.’ 

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In her interview with Candida Baker for Yacker 2, Jessica Anderson expresses her dissatisfaction with the covers of a number of her books, citing in particular the glum face on the paperback of The Impersonators and the representation of The Commandant as, in Baker’s words, ‘a Regency romance’. Anderson, who began as a commercial artist, stresses that ‘Design and presentation ... really matter. They’re the introduction to a book.’ It seems to me to be particularly unfortunate (although she may well have given it her blessing) that her new book sports a clichéd Ken Done cover. Perhaps Done’s bright colours might evoke the ‘warm zone’ of the title, although Anderson is referring to Brisbane, not Done’s mock-naïve view of Sydney. Unfortunately, the cover subliminally suggests that Anderson’s writing is sunnily comforting, easily assimilated.

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