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Nathan Hollier

'Alpha and Omega' Nathan Hollier on the establishment of Monash University Publishing

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October 2010, no. 325

 On 8 September 2010, in the foyer of the Robert Blackwood Hall at Monash University, beneath the beautiful ‘Alpha and Omega’ stained-glass window created by Leonard French and connoting humankind’s endless striving for achievement, Monash University ePress became Monash University Publishing. It was very appropriate that the press should be launched by B ...

Meanjin edited by Ian Britain & Overland No. 181 edited by Nathan Hollier

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April 2006, no. 280
Melinda Harvey reviews 'Meanjin Vol. 64, No. 4, 2005' edited by Ian Britain and 'Overland No. 181, Summer 2005' edited by Nathan Hollier

Like Monaco, journals are sunny places for shady people. Black sheep and dark horses have often found a first sanctuary there. Precarious principalities, they are built on the shifting sands of subsidies, sponsorships and subscriptions. But their lifeblood is won or lost at the roulette wheel of submissions and commissions.

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Meanjin edited by Ian Britain & Overland 177 edited by Nathan Hollier

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March 2005, no. 269

‘Meanjin,’ writes Ian Britain, ‘always aims for a blend of the astringent and the convivial.’ A worthy aim, and one that is well realised in its ‘Psychology’ edition. It may simply be a consequence of the theme’s depth and complexity, but On Psychology also feels weightier than previous issues. Britain shares responsibility for this edition with guest co-editor Robert Reynolds, a Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales. Reynolds contributes an essay arguing for the importance of distinguishing between a valid sense of sadness and full-blown depression. He also seems to have influenced the overall tone. There is a touch of academic dryness about several of the essays and slightly less emphasis on personal reflection, although cover-star M.J. Hyland’s account of her experience of depression is central.

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Sending Them Home: Refugees and the new politics of indifference (Quarterly Essay 13) by Robert Manne (with David Corlett)

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April 2004, no. 260
Nathan Hollier reviews 'Sending Them Home: Refugees and the new politics of indifference' (Quarterly Essay 13) by Robert Manne (with David Corlett)

Some time before the sun set on the British empire, ‘British justice’ took on an ironic meaning. In the colonies, we knew it was a charade, like that doled out to ‘Breaker’ Morant during the Boer War. The dice are loaded in favour of a prosecution that nevertheless insists on carrying out its cold-blooded retribution in an apparently value-free legalese, thus preserving the self-righteousness of the empire and tormenting the condemned. Yet, as Robert Manne and David Corlett make clear in this latest Quarterly Essay, the larrikin land of Australia can now, through its treatment of asylum seekers, fairly be said to lead the world in the practice of traditional British justice.

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Sexing It Up by Geoffrey Barker & Why the War was Wrong edited by Raimond Gaita

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February 2004, no. 258
Nathan Hollier reviews ‘Sexing It Up: Iraq, intelligence and Australia’ by Geoffrey Barker and ‘Why the War was Wrong’ edited by Raimond Gaita

Like several other publishers, UNSW Press and Text Publishing have produced responses to the recent war against Iraq. The intention appears to be to engage critically with popular perceptions of the war before these harden into accepted historical ‘memory’. The potential benefits of quickly produced, historically aware and politically critical books, which collate and deal comprehensively with the existing evidence and arguments raised by the mass media on a particular issue, are obvious. The two main dangers with publications of this type are that editing and production standards may slip and that the desire to compete with mass-media forms may lead to a replication of, rather than an alternative to, standard journalistic commentary.

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A Perilous and Fighting Life: : From communist to conservative: The political writings of Professor John Anderson edited by Mark Weblin

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November 2003, no. 256

Most of us know something about John Anderson (1893–1962). He is remembered as a libertarian philosopher who, during his time at the University of Sydney, influenced various individuals and groups, most notably the Sydney ‘Push’. Writers on Sydney’s intellectual tradition tend to locate the Scottish-born Anderson at the epicentre of this universe. Anderson is someone, however, of whom it is true to say that he is more often referred to than read. His major philosophical works were collected, or entombed, in Studies in Empirical Philosophy (1962). Now, as part of his ongoing attempt to resurrect Anderson, Mark Weblin, the John Anderson Research Fellow, has collated, edited and provided a useful introduction to Anderson’s political writings. The volume, as a whole, raises two questions. Firstly, do Anderson’s political views remain of general interest? And secondly, what is the place or legacy of Anderson in contemporary Australian debate?

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Letters

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November 1997, no. 196

From Gerard Hayes

Dear Editor,
If Mark Davis had wanted to concoct a parody of babyboomer fogeyism, he could hardly have done better than Peter Craven’s review of Gangland. Opening with a quotation from Anthony Powell and doing his best to parrot the Powellian tone of bored hauteur, Craven details the shortcomings of Davis’s age: not young – in fact a ‘late bloomer’ – but still not old enough to know better, indeed ‘rather earnest and plodding’.

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