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Writing Homeland

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May 1995, no. 170

Quite a few years ago, when the future was far more important than the days gone by and the past hadn’t acquired that elusively seductive voice to beckon me with the urgency that it does now, I tended to be rather flippant about the notions of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’. ‘Home’ simply meant where I was at any given time. To an extent such a shallow definition can be attributed to my early experiences of travel and the consequences of the constantly changing landscape which confronted a young backpacker who didn’t feel the necessity of a cultural anchor. I simply moved from one country to another, with the restless compulsion of the Wandering Jew, to satiate a curiosity sparked off by a trip to the exotic wilderness of the Khyber Pass when I was a child.

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Guilt Edge

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December 1992, no. 147

Wildlife film-makers Richard Southeby and his wife Nicole Vander are filming a duck hunt at Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, where Greenpeace demonstrators plan to make their presence felt. Their fanatical leader, Simon Rosenberg, has a flowing beard and deeply troubled eyes. His idea is to get his troops in front of the guns, really provoke the shooters and obtain maximum publicity. Remind you of anyone? But then in the early stages of filming, Nicole is blown away into the swamp by an unseen assassin. Who’s responsible? Greenpeace crazies? Duck hunters? Or an international hired hitman known as the Jaguar? You guessed right.

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The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the making of modern cricket by Gideon Haigh

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December 2001–January 2002, no. 237
Michael Costigan reviews 'The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the making of modern cricket' by Gideon Haigh

New Year’s Day 2002 marks the centenary of Warwick Windridge Armstrong’s Test cricket début for Australia. At the age of twenty-two, the promising all-rounder carried his bat in both innings on the Melbourne Cricket Ground against Archie MacLaren’s English side. Almost twenty years later, a much heavier and more famous Armstrong, then aged forty-one and nicknamed ‘The Big Ship’ because of his size, captained Australia for the tenth time in his fiftieth and last Test match, played at The Oval in London.

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A Gap in Nature: Discovering the world’s extinct animals by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten

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December 2001–January 2002, no. 237
Patrice Newell reviews 'A Gap in Nature: Discovering the world’s extinct animals' by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten

It is too heavy to read in bed or on an aeroplane, too handsome to besmirch at the beach, would court disaster if tackled at the kitchen table, and there’s no room on my always-littered desk. It’s the sort of book that, in its size and splendour, is aimed at the coffee table. Yet volumes like this seem more at home on television, their contents rendered into documentaries introduced by David Attenborough. ... (read more)

Australia's Own Cold War: The waterfront under Menzies by Tom Sheridan

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April 2007, no. 290
Braham Dabscheck reviews 'Australia's Own Cold War: The waterfront under Menzies' by Tom Sheridan
The most recent cause célèbre of Australian industrial relations was the 1998 waterfront dispute, when the Howard government failed to destroy the Maritime Union of Australia. The Australian waterfront has been a continuing site of struggle since the famous industrial disputes of the 1890s. Tom Sheridan’s Australia’s Own Cold War: The Waterfront Under Menzies helps to remind us of the intense and bitter nature of industrial relations in that industry. Readers will find themselves making comparisons with the 1998 dispute and with other major events which have occurred in Australia’s political history. ... (read more)

Company by Max Barry

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April 2007, no. 290
Richard Watts reviews 'Company' by Max Barry

Australian author Max Barry specialises in satirising the profit-obsessed world of corporate enterprise in his sharply observed, easily digestible novels, of which Company is his third. Syrup, his first book, published in 1999, told the story of Scat, a character whose name more than broadly hinted at the author’s jaundiced view of the career he had previously been engaged in (Barry was a salesman for Hewlett-Packard while he was writing the novel). A venomous satire about corporate rivalry and marketing squarely aimed at Coca-Cola, Syrup was also an easily marketable product. Thanks to the American branch of Penguin Books’ interest in the manuscript, Syrup established Barry as that classic Australian success story, the artist who was better known overseas than in his own country.

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Abbreviations

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July 1986, no. 82

I has sworn, in my editorial capacity, not to reinforce or allow to be reinforced, by word or deed, the old Sydney vs. Melbourne scenario in the pages of this magazine; but I realised very quickly that this was a case of one’s reach exceeding one’s grasp. The construction of this inter-city relationship as ‘St Petersburg or Tinsel Town?’, with its suggestion of two (and only two) opposing superpowers and its implication that one must make the choice, has – however you might feel about it – an imaginative force before which one can only bow. Several recent items in ABR have drawn on the two cities’ perceived differences in order to make points about the books or ideas under discussion (see, for instance, Rob Pascoe’s review of Frederic Eggleston and Intellectual Suppression in this issue); Jim Davidson has produced The Sydney Melbourne Book as heralded in last month’s ‘Starters & Writers’; the ‘opposition’ model seems to be a powerful figure in the national literary rhetoric.

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Bob Hawke by Robert Pullan & Hawke by John Hurst

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October 1980, no. 25
Don Grant reviews 'Bob Hawke: A portrait' by Robert Pullan and 'Hawke: The definitive biography' by John Hurst

Success may not always have come easy to Robert James Lee Hawke, but it has come often. In 1969 he became President of the ACTU without ever having been a shop steward or a union organiser or secretary; he had never taken part in or led a strike. His experience at grass roots or branch level in the ALP had not been extensive when he was elected Federal President of the party in 1973. Now, untested in parliament and government, his jaw is firmly pointed towards achieving what has always been his ultimate ambition – the prime ministership.

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Starters & Writers

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June 1986, no. 81

The Australian Bookseller & Publisher serves as the trade magazine for the Australian publishing and bookselling industry. It derives a substantial amount of its revenue from the advertisements that publishers place in it.

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Remaking Men: The revolution in masculinity by David Tacey

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December 1997–January 1998, no. 197
Guy Rundle reviews 'Remaking Men: The revolution in masculinity' by David Tacey

Whatever happened to the men’s movement? Was it only a few years ago that we all gathered in the Dandenongs to bang drums, fashion spears, and – I quote from a flier advertising one such event – hug all night in ‘greased cuddle piles’. Now the tribes of management consultants, computer programmers and, well, wimps have retreated from view (to the chagrin of stand-up comedians everywhere) and the copies of Iron John litter the twenty cent tables of the second-hand bookstores.

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