Review

For much of the nineteenth century, John Gould (1804-81) was known internationally as ‘the bird man’. His fame derived from two main sources: first, as the author and publisher of a series of sumptuous, folio-sized books featuring beautiful, hand-coloured lithographs of birds from particular regions or spectacular bird families; secondly, by using his position as an ornithologist at the Zoological Society of London to amass an unequalled collection of stuffed birds to use as reference material. Such was his fame that collectors and natural scientists from Charles Darwin down sought his advice about species identities and relationships. In a local context, Gould is rightfully regarded as a giant of Australian ornithology. He described and named over 400 species of birds and mammals collected in Australia.

It is worth noting that Jennifer Maiden, along with the present reviewer, seems to be one of the few Australian poets born in the 1940s who is still writing. Each of us has to be careful now (as Peter Goldsworthy wrote long ago) that we are not ‘Carving this same face / out of soap, each morning / slightly less perfectly’.

Zahra Stardust is, in her own words, ‘a sex worker in the academy’ who champions the ‘epistemology of whores’, a term she coined to describe the ‘unique lens through which sex workers know about the world’. As she impressively models in her first book, Indie Porn: Revolution, regulation and resistance, published in Duke University Press’s innovative Camera Obscura series, this epistemology is multifaceted and multi-purpose. Stardust, a research fellow at Queensland University of Technology, takes us behind the scenes, while expanding what a book about pornography can be. Against enduring ‘whore stigma’, which functions to keep sex workers at society’s margins and ‘sex’ within heteronormative bounds, Stardust flips the script. Sex workers, and in particular porn performers like herself and the many others whom she interviews and cites, have much to tell the rest of us about the algorithmic, gig economy world we all live in.

The diaries of Fred Williams (1927-82) invite the inevitable, unfair, but instructive comparison with those of Donald Friend; unlike the latter, they are not a masterpiece of witty and incisive prose, filled with insightful and indiscreet comments about contemporaries, the life of the artist, and the social and cultural world of the author’s time. They are plainly written observations on the day-to-day life of a hard-working painter, with an emphasis on the practical; it would be wrong to describe them as modest or self-effacing, for manifestly they were not written with any thought of publication. Friend, steeped in the culture of past centuries, was well aware of composing a literary work like the great diarists of earlier generations; Williams was jotting down, especially at the outset, largely professional notes in a standard page-to-a-day business diary.

Ian Barker was a relative rarity among barristers in that he never used two words when one would suffice. He died in 2021 and is now the subject of a biography by Stephen Walmsley, himself a barrister and then a judge – since retired – of the NSW District Court. This is an unusual exercise in Australia, where judicial biography is a sparse species and the lives of other lawyers are seldom chronicled.

Australian liberals and the Liberal Party were once thought laggards in attending to their own history in comparison with the Labor Party. Even so, Robert Menzies’ life and career had been well documented, with multiple biographies and memoirs, including Allan Martin’s masterful two-volume biography (1993-99) and Judith Brett’s influential analysis of Menzies’ ‘Forgotten People’ speech as a key to understanding the ‘public life’ (1992). More recently, liberal political history has become a cottage industry.

Few books are greater than the sum of their parts – many are less. In the case of Ross Garnaut’s latest effort, the parts are greater than the sum. As a book, Let’s Tax Carbon: And other ideas for a better Australia succeeds and fails. It succeeds as a field guide to the past, present, and future of the Australian economy’s three big policy problems: transitioning to a net-zero carbon economy; reversing social and economic inequity; and creating new industries that secure the nation’s prosperity. But it fails as a work of non-fiction.

Boris Johnson is of course one of the most distinctive political leaders of recent times. With his mop of unruly blond hair, plummy Etonian tones, and carefully confected air of bumbling amiability, he seems to have been on the British political scene for decades. In fact, his political career has been relatively short by comparison with many of his peers. This in turn helps explain the timing of Unleashed. As becomes clear, Johnson is in no mood for idle reminiscence or nostalgia for the top table.