John McLaren

Rock Choppers: Growing up Catholic in Australia by Edmund Campion

September 1982, no. 44

The decisive influence on Australian politics and culture has been the fact that our society has always included a large minority who, even if they considered themselves British, were definitely Irish and not English. The fact that this minority has been Catholic and, as a result, has felt itself discriminated against, has shaped the church into an Irish rather than a European mode, so that, as Campion points out, not only was to be Irish to be Catholic, but to be Catholic was to be Irish.

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Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country by John McLaren

by Russel McDougall •

April 1981, no. 29

Russel McDougall reviews 'Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country' by John McLaren

John McLaren’s contribution to the new series titled ‘Essays in Australian Literature’ is, as the editorial page proclaims, ‘the ﬁrst extended study of the two major works by Xavier Herbert - his ﬁrst novel, Capricornia, and his last, Poor Fellow My Country. ... (read more)

Toil and Spin: Two directions in modern poetry by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

by John McLaren •

April 1980, no. 19

John McLaren reviews 'Toil and Spin' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

In a world which has lost its faith and its standards, the situation of the creative artist is both central and precarious. As Wallace-Crabbe sees it, he must stand inside and outside society at once, be both totally involved with himself and totally responsive to his society. While doing this, he must create not only his own audience but even his own language.

In this series of essays, Wallace-Crabbe explores this dilemma in the work of contemporary English-language poets ranging from Thomas Hardy to Elizabeth Bishop, and from W. H. Auden – ‘the good Christian practices light verse’ – to Robert Lowell and Ezra Pound. The essays both illuminate the work of the writers he discusses and contribute to our understanding of the crucial problem of contemporary culture.

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Angry Penguins edited by Max Harris and John Reed & Poetic Gems by Max Harris

by John McLaren •

February–March 1980, no. 18

John McLaren reviews 'Angry Penguins: 1944 Autumn Number to Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern Malley' and 'Poetic Gems' by Max Harris

In his introduction to The New Australian Poetry, reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Thomas Shapcott, John Tranter declares that this poetry has no allegiance except to itself. Some characteristics of works regarded as modernist are: ‘self-signature’ – the work validates its own technical innovations – and self-reference, where the ‘method’ is reflected consciously in the ‘medium’. He contrasts this modernism with such work as Vincent Buckley’s ‘Golden Builders’, which elicits a response of ‘quasi-religious rhetoric . . . a natural outgrowth of Australian university English departments’, and one sufficient to explain the ‘anti-academic bias’ evident in much of the work of the new poets.

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Problems of individuals and society

by John McLaren •

February–March 1980, no. 18

While the reading of a book has become a solitary matter, its interpretation remains a convivial task which must be performed anew for each new reader, new age, and new country. The business of criticism is to help us in this task, and from a multitude of judgements to further our understanding of an author’s words for our time. The critic is therefore involved not only with books, but through them with the cultural problems of his society. Critical debates thus become debates about major social issues.

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Bookends | August 1980

by John McLaren •

August 1980, no. 23

Marxists have always been concerned about the relationships of intellectuals to the rest of society, and particularly to change in society. The intellectual, being able to stand aside from immediate social pressures, is able to see the truth of what is happening, and so to correct the false consciousness of those who are involved in the everyday business of production.

Marx and Engels themselves provide the perfect examples of these roles – Engels earned the income, in his role as successful capitalist, while Marx did the thinking. Yet there is a contradiction. The conclusion to which Marx's thinking led him was that ideas themselves are determined by the material forces of production. If this is so, then the words of the intellectual who explains this process are not only irrelevant. but probably untrue, as the consciousness which has generated his ideas has not itself been a part of the productive process.

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Bookends | May 1979

by John McLaren •

May 1979, no. 10

Although the policy of the Australian Book Review is to review only Australian books, every now and then a publisher sends us a book which is so important or so relevant to issues of current concern that it cannot be ignored. Recent debate in Australian newspapers makes The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, by Yehuda Bauer (published in Australia by ANU Press), such a book.

The book consists of four lectures originally delivered in Seattle, and concerned with the question of why the Holocaust is the central experience of our civilisation, and of how it was allowed to occur.

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An Imaginary Life by David Malouf

by John McLaren •

October 1978, no. 5

John McLaren reviews 'An Imaginary Life' by David Malouf

The title of David Malouf’s novel, An Imaginary Life, must be read three ways. Most obviously, the novel is an imaginative recreation of the last years of the life of the Roman poet, Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), who was exiled to a village on the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus in the last century BCE. The life is imaginary because it imagines – most successfully – the circumstances of this exile.

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Bookends | October 1978

by John McLaren •

October 1978, no. 5

Beverley Kingston’s review in this issue draws attention to the effect the Women’s Liberation Movement has had on our understanding of our past. By asking the questions insistently imposed by the present, the historians of women’s affairs have not only forced us to see a segment of our history which had been hidden, but have made us realise that this omission was just part of a total distortion of our view of history, and therefore of life. This distorted knowledge of the past affects the way we see ourselves, and thus diminishes our recognition of the possibilities open to us in the present. The unreasoning hostility which the Women’s Movement has aroused can be explained only in terms of our fear of the unknown. These new ideas do not threaten just the security which a male-dominated world offers to men and women alike. Rather, by taking away our comfortable structure, they take away our personal identity, and therefore threaten the existence of any kind of order.

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The Australian Encyclopedia: Third Edition by Grolier Society of Australia

by John McLaren •

September 1978, no. 4

The first edition of the Australian Encyclopedia was published by Angus & Robertson in two volumes in 1925, under the general editorship of Captain Arthur Jose. The second edition, completely revised and rewritten, was published in 1958 and ran to ten volumes, including an index. The editorial team was headed by Alec Chisholm. This edition was later sold to the Grolier Society, which has now published a third edition with Bruce W. Pratt as Editorin-Chief. This edition is a complete revision and updating of the second.

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