Archive

This is the 150th issue of ABR since its revival in 1978, and so it would seem appropriate for us to look back on that time in order to come to some wise conclusions about the state of book reviewing, of literature, of communication and culture in this country.

Appropriate can go jump, however. 150 is splendid, and here’s to another 150 of them.

Aboriginal poet and activist, Kevin Gilbert, died in Canberra on 1 April 1993 after a long battle with a respiratory disease. He was sixty years old.

The boy’s heart sank when he saw the ship.

For as long as he could remember he had held the dream of his first ship. She would be long and sleek, riding low in the water, white, with touches of blue along her prow. The funnel would stand high and proud, with the scarlet insignia of the line.

The daily special at the Great Northern Hotel that blustery late-November day was chicken schnitzel, mashed spuds, peas and a free pot for four bucks, but Marie’s spelling had struck again. Schitzel would not be passed up by anyone.

Martin Flanagan, well-known contributor to The Age newspaper in Melbourne, has written a peregrinatory first novel in which the narrator, Stephen, is hoping to find the connection he feels he doesn’t have with his own land, and consequently with himself.

‘Somewhere’, Stephen says, ‘there had to be a combination of words that could slow down the world long enough for me to get a look inside, to prove that I existed.’

This book opens with the pregnancy of an Irish actress in 1789 and concludes with the death of her grandson in 1888. There is mystery at both ends of the story, relating in the first case to paternity and in the second to the source of a substantial estate. In between comes a drama of marital dissonance and economic survival played out against the great crisis brought upon the musical profession in England by the collapse of its family-based guild traditions.

It is a gripping read and would make a wonderful mini-series; but it is equally a very welcome contribution to the social history of musical performance over the period when the art was first establishing itself in Australia.

The chief protagonist in Robert Wallace’s Art Rat is a character about as savoury as Sid Vicious at his worst. The Art Rat begins life as Glyn, then transforms himself into Matthew and finally Lupo, psychopath disguised as conceptual artist. With each new identity he sinks further into madness and obsession.

Where women lead, men generally have the sense to follow. Eventually. Feminist fiction, lesbian fiction have developed ahead of gay fiction in Australia. This is one of the many ideas acknowledged or explored in Dennis Altman’s welcome addition to literature about homosexual relationships.

There are some pretty ambiguous rats in this collection and most of them are male but ultimately, it’s the writer’s own unease that cumulatively gnaws away at happiness and achievement.

There were no winners in the first round of the Orr Case. Sydney Sparkes Orr lost his job as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania in 1955. Suzanne Kemp, who had accused him of seduction, lost her reputation. Her father, who had supported her accusations, was subjected to all manner of speculation and innuendo. Edwin Tanner, a mature-age student who had complained about Orr’s poor teaching and his requests for professional favours, had his life ruined. Dr Milanov, Orr’s colleague who had protested that Orr was harassing him professionally, found himself subjected to just the kind of persecution he had fled in his native Serbia.