Letters to the Editor
Obama’s second term
Dear Editor,
After admiring Morag Fraser’s perceptive and insightful review of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (February 2013),
Copping it sweet Dear Editor, I’ll cop sweet Jane Sullivan’s disaffection with my novel The Seaglass Spiral (December 2012–January 2013) but must defend my publisher, Finlay Lloyd, against her charge of showing ambiguous support for the book in its introduction. Put simply, in forty years dealing with publishing houses, large and small, Australian and ...
Denialism
Dear Editor,
Jan McGuinness is right to conclude that wading through two books on Gina Rinehart is not exactly one of life’s pleasures, but her review (November 2012) is a fine assessment of both Rinehart’s world of privilege, profits, and power, and of the qualities of Rinehart’s two biographers (De ...
True grit
Dear Editor,
Melinda Harvey’s piece on Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel (October 2012) is precisely the kind of review that makes a reader like myself write to editors. As the last line makes clear, her review is positive, but her first and penultimate paragraphs betray how much academia must ...
Patrick White in Adelaide
Dear Editor,
In his article on the theatre of Patrick White (May 2012), David Marr implies quite strongly that White had nothing to do with the theatre between John Tasker’s production of Night on Bald Mountain for the Adelaide University Theatre Guild during the 1964 Adelaide Festival and Nei ...
Fairfax Central
Dear Editor,
We, the undersigned, wish to draw to national attention the implication of the upcoming Fairfax consolidation of The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, and the Canberra Times book sections. This has the potential to reduce significantly the content of the three separate sections in terms of both the ...
Overlooking Max Harris
Dear Editor,
David Marr, in his article about the premières of three of Patrick White’s plays in Adelaide (ABR, May 2012), presents Geoffrey Dutton as the principal player in this story. However, any essay about White’s Adelaide performances should acknowledge the roles of Max Harris and Harry Medlin.
...Muddying the waters
Dear Editor,
A substantial part of Peter Hill’s review of my book Permanent Revolution: Mike Brown and the Australian Avant-Garde 1953–1997 recounts the artist’s prosecution for obscenity following the visit of the head of the Darlinghurst vice squad to Brown’s exhibition Paintin’ A Go-Go at Sydney’s Galler ...
Kerr the contextualist
Dear Editor,
Andrew Sayers’s thoughtful review of The Cambridge Companion to Australian Art (February 2012) encourages one to read this book that marks ‘the maturity of a new orthodoxy for Australian art’. However, it was his last two paragraphs that really caught my attention. Sayers refers to the omission of Joan Ker ...
Oz Lit at Melbourne University
Dear Editor,
The English program at the University of Melbourne has offered courses on Australian literature every year since 1982, when it was first introduced as a full seminar subject. Stephanie Guest’s article in last month’s issue of ABR, ‘Oz Lit in the Moot Court Room: Finding Australian Literature at the ...