Ivan Southall
Vale Jacob Rosenberg (1922 – 2008)
The presence of octogenarians and even nonagenarians on publishers’ lists is one phenomenon of the age. Sybille Bedford gave us her exotic memoir, Quicksands (2005), in her ninety-fourth year. P.D. James, aged eighty-eight, has just published another novel, The Private Patient.
The Melbourne writer Jacob Rosenberg, who died on October 30, was not quite that old, but in some ways he seemed as old as the accursed century that he wrote about so memorably. Rosenberg was born in Poland in 1922. During World War II he was confined in the Lodz Ghetto, then transported to Auschwitz. In 1948 he emigrated to Australia with his wife, Esther.
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Would it surprise you to know that a number of our well-known writers write to please themselves? Probably not. If there’s no pleasure, or challenge, or stimulus, the outcome would probably not be worth the effort. If this effort is writing, it seems especially unlikely that someone would engage in the activity without enjoying the chance to be their own audience.
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