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”.’

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

I was looking at Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s De Toren van Babel in Rotterdam, where I had gone for the day to escape the low skies and oppressive winds that buffet The Hague in springtime. Bruegel’s masterpiece has an exquisite stillness and delicacy, despite portraying the Tower of Babel in its first stages of busy construction. Ladders and wires are hung from its sides; the harbour on which it is being built throngs with ships unloading cargo and tools and manpower; its workers look as frail as insects perched on its myriad levels, hard at their labour. The tower is depicted such that it appears to be leaning slightly away from the sea, giving the impression that it is volute rather than level, its climb precariously leading to infinity. This impression is heightened by Bruegel’s use of colour: at its base, the tower is the colour of faded, earthy sandstone, but as it spirals into the sky it moves towards a rusted orange, and, at the point where the tower pierces the clouds, it turns a vivid red, as if to represent the wrath that awaits its completion. The clouds are menacing. Far in the distance, well beyond the tower, the skies are clear and fresh, unthreatening; but a gloom casts shadows over the side that faces the harbour where, under the pall, workers are trying to complete their task.

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Behold how low

Dear Editor,

Robert Manne’s review of my book Washout: On the Academic Response to the Fabrication of Aboriginal History (ABR, May 2005) avoids most of my criticisms of Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, and misrepresents the rest.

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Last week, escaping the latest blizzard, I went to Miami Beach for some sun. But it was cold and rainy, and they were noisily replacing the carpet in my hotel, so I was reduced to checking my e-mail in an Internet café and getting an expensive facial – truly a case of closing the stable door.

South Beach, as it is known, is widely celebrated for its art deco street and beachscape. This is one of the most colossally successful con jobs of all time. Take an unpretentious tropical beach community, popularised in the 1940s by canny Jewish holidaymakers from the north-east. Throw up a couple of thousand tawdry two- or three-storey shoeboxes with basic amenities: a couple of ceiling fans and no windows. Roll out some chrome cladding and neon. Toss in a bit of applied detail, a few top knots and some frosted glass. Then paint it an improbable pale pink or green or yellow, or some other combination of pastel colours that manage to be both insipid and stubbornly vulgar.

With wings as black as night and breast as white as cloud, the sea eagle swooped from the sky. It snatched up the baby boy in front of his mother’s very eyes. She acted quickly. She grabbed a coconut shell and hurled it towards the bird. The baby dropped to the ground and landed unhurt on soft sand. But before she could reach it, the baby was gone, swept away by the tsunami. The eagle knew, you see. Like the elephants who had already left the coast, like the dogs that ran for high ground before anyone saw anything, the eagle knew that the big wave was coming. It had been trying to save the baby, and the woman had stopped it, and now her baby is dead.

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Barry Jones on the ODNB

Dear Editor,

I read Angus Trumble’s review of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ABR, March 2005) with close interest and some envy. It was probably inevitable that he should concentrate on entries with Australian relationships. He comments that all deceased Australian prime ministers are there, except Scullin and Page. In fact, Fadden and Forde are also missing.

A fevered imagination

Dear Editor, in his review (ABR, December 2004–January 2005) of my recent book on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Herzl’s Nightmare: One Land, Two People, Colin Rubenstein comments that I write ‘well’. I’m intrigued by that observation as I find it near impossible to believe that he’s actually read the book. His judgements about it range from the fanciful to the preposterous.

Who’s who

Dear Editor,

Henry Ergas’s disingenuous response (ABR, November 2004) to my review (ABR, October 2004) of Peter Saunders’s Australia’s Welfare Habit and How to Kick It deserves a reply. Ergas poses as a dissatisfied ‘customer-reader’ of ABR. From this position, he expresses outrage at my review of Saunders’s book. Come off it, Henry!