Letters

Behind the ‘myth’

Dear Editor,

As an unexpected child of the Depression years, I know how one working-class family coped with the economic difficulties that Geoffrey Bolton refers to in his review of David Potts’s The Myth of the Great Depression (October 2006). My father was an unskilled labourer, often out of work. His wages were supplemented by a small war-service disability pension. Some proportion of this income was handed over to my mother, who was expected to pay the mortgage, manage the household and feed five mouths (for I had two older siblings). Even with the income from occasional embroidery and dressmaking that she undertook, this was impossible. Her solution, when we sat down for dinner, was to put out five plates, leaving her own place empty. If my father asked why she was not eating, she would say she was not hungry, and would retire to the kitchen to weep or to find a piece of bread or fruit. So it was not half the population of the household that went hungry, only twenty per cent.

Dear Editor,

The Australian Society of Authors has written to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to oppose any moves to ban books. The ASA is very concerned by any move to ‘ban books’ under the guise of ‘counselling, urging, providing instruction or praising terrorism’ and hence determined as seditious. Under current law, it is a crime to publish ‘seditious words’, and the provisions within that law enable federal and state jurisdictions to take action if warranted. It is the view of the ASA that our members currently operate responsibly within this restriction and will continue to do so, even when critical of any government in power at the time.

Owen Richardson’s review of D.B.C. Pierre’s novel Ludmila’s Broken English (ABR, May 2006) was a bit harsh – not to mention mean-spirited and way off the mark. As a Texan, I can tell you that Pierre nailed the big-haired women who surrounded Vernon. I, for one, was immediately transported back to small-town Texas. Pierre has the most unique voice I’ve read in a long, long time. ‘Sophomoric and tritely executed satire’? No. It is very funny, it is original and it rings true.

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ADB replies to Paul Brunton

Dear Editor,

Paul Brunton has written of the quotas used in the selection of subjects for inclusion in the Australian Dictionary of Biography in a review (ABR, February 2006) headed ‘Mysterious quotas’, and in a follow-up letter (ABR, April 2006).

Beverley Kingston’s riposte (ABR, March 2006) to my review of the ADB Supplement 1580–1980 (ABR, February 2006) accuses me of ‘reflecting the traditional bias of those early volumes in considering the work of the stock and station agent more worthy than that of the cookery teacher’. I do not. I pointed out that the same space allocated to a writer of a cookery book of only regional significance had also been given to three generations of proprietors of an Australia-wide family company. This was in the context of my comment that the space given to those of national significance had perforce been reduced because many entries were for those of only regional importance. Worthiness has nothing to do with it. There are thousands of worthy Australians who will never grace the pages of the ADB.

Walk the path

Dear Editor,

I was stimulated by Tamas Pataki’s essay ‘Against Religion’ (ABR, February 2006). That monotheistic God is a product of infantile separation anxiety is a familiar and plausible view. Pataki’s observation that ‘religious identity easily becomes an instrument of narcissistic assertion and aggression’ also rang true for me. Likewise his remark that ‘bullying is an inseparable feature of monotheism’. Yet the essay was entitled ‘Against Religion’. I’d be interested to hear what Pataki has to say about faiths that don’t fit the monotheistic mould. Are they just as delusional and dangerous to liberality and the rule of law? I’m thinking of religions that stem from the Vedic root (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism).

Books Alive

Dear Editor,

Jeremy Fisher criticises the 2005 Books Alive campaign (Letters, ABR September 2005) for failing to do things it was not set up to do, and then acknowledges that it does the things it was set up to do extremely well. Fisher says: ‘The ASA has no issue with increasing the sales of Australian books. But that no longer appears to be the focus of Books Alive. Books Alive had the potential to be a unique opportunity to promote Australian literary culture. It has mutated into “an Australian Government initiative that aims to encourage all Australians to experience the joys of reading”.’

Different attitudes

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to John Biggs’s letter (ABR, June/July 2004) regarding my review of his novel, The Girl in the Golden House (ABR, April 2004). Reading Biggs’s comments on my discussion of his use of English names and idioms, I was reminded just how different our attitudes towards contemporary fiction are. We are obviously writing from different generational perspectives, with quite different expectations of what writing, especially that about ex-British colonies, should be able – or at least attempting – to do. Of course I am aware that Chinese people in Hong Kong have old-fashioned English names and have received aspects of an English education, but it was the way that Biggs wrote about and, simply, continued this colonial tradition that I felt compelled to critique. People in Hong Kong have Cantonese names and traditions as well, but Biggs’s characters lacked complexity and believability in this regard. As I suggested in my review, this was most probably not only a result of Biggs’s own cultural background but, more importantly, of his lack of awareness of some of the wider debates that currently surround the practice of Westerners writing about Asia.