Archive
Michele Field reviews 'The Australian and New Zealand Writers Handbook (2nd Edition) edited by Joan Clarke
The greatest area of growth in the writing profession is among the group that used to be scurrilously called ‘hobby writers’.
A recent study of British authors reveals that fifty-nine per cent will write only one book in their writing careers.
Using this figure and extrapolating from the 3500 applicants for Public Lending Right here, there are at least 2100, maybe 3000, people in Australia who have written one book and either have run out of the spirit to write another, or maybe have encountered such frustrations with contracts, editors, and distributors that it is not worth it to write another.
... (read more)Marxists have always been concerned about the relationships of intellectuals to the rest of society, and particularly to change in society. The intellectual, being able to stand aside from immediate social pressures, is able to see the truth of what is happening, and so to correct the false consciousness of those who are involved in the everyday business of production.
Marx and Engels themselves provide the perfect examples of these roles – Engels earned the income, in his role as successful capitalist, while Marx did the thinking. Yet there is a contradiction. The conclusion to which Marx's thinking led him was that ideas themselves are determined by the material forces of production. If this is so, then the words of the intellectual who explains this process are not only irrelevant. but probably untrue, as the consciousness which has generated his ideas has not itself been a part of the productive process.
... (read more)Georgia Savage reviews 'Who's Taking You to the Dance' by Sally Morrison
Australia has a tradition of brilliant female writers. With this book, her first novel, Sally Morrison has joined them.
It’s a knockout.
If she had used a simple narrative form, I’m sure she’d have made as much money as the lady who wrote The Thorn Birds. Luckily for us, she didn’t. She fashioned a work of art instead.
The characters are marvellous, they are so real, you can smell them, I’d say that if you don’t find yourself, or at least part of yourself, among them, you don’t exist. The story, told in a series of mental flashes from the characters (and some of them are flashes indeed) is of the last three days of the last term in a country high school.
... (read more)Rosemary Creswell reviews 'A Woman of the Future' by David Ireland
A Woman of the Future, David Ireland’s sixth novel, is narrated in the first person by a woman, Alethea Hunt. This kind of ‘literary transvestism’ is not new, and in any case is not essentially different from writers who, in third-person narration, inject themselves into the consciousness of a character of the opposite sex. Ireland’s book, however, is remarkable for the way in which a male writer deals obsessively with the sexual thoughts and experiences of a woman. Indeed, it may well incur the ire of feminists that a man should presume, on principle, to understand such experiences. But he handles the role with sensitivity and insight, as he traces a young girl’s awakening sexual consciousness (if it was ever asleep) through to her later contacts with boys and men, most of which are, if not brutalising, at least unsatisfying. Though she claims, even as a small child and much to the satisfaction of her liberated ‘feminist’ parents, that she is without penis envy, she exhibits an extraordinary fascination with the male sexual organ, which is usually described in terms that would make most women want to give up heterosexual intercourse permanently. If these descriptions were meant to be representative of women’s feelings, perhaps one might object, but Alethea Hunt is clearly mad, albeit in the context of a world which is far crazier.
... (read more)Gary Catalano reviews 'Conrad Martens in Queensland: The Frontier Travels of a Colonial Artist' by J.G. Steele and 'A few Thoughts and Paintings' by Ted Andrew
I don’t quite know what to make of J.G. Steele’s dull, parochial catalogue of sketches and watercolours by Conrad Martens. The ‘frontier travels’ of one of our better colonial artists should, you expect, make interesting copy – especially when the artist in question happened to be prolific and the area of his travels the sparsely settled pastoral area of what is now South-eastern Queensland.
Phillip Edmonds reviews 'A Dozen Dopey Yarns: Tales from the pot prohibition' by J.J. McRoach
Clement Semmler reviews 'Henry Lawson: Favourite verse' compiled by Nancy Keesing
I think it was Judith Wright who once remarked that Lawson as a poet wasn’t important; that he seems, usually to have turned to verse as a journalistic medium or as a weapon for propaganda, and that the few of his better poems were such rather because of the intensity of feeling than through any technical or poetic gift.
... (read more)Don Grant reviews ' Western Landmarks' by Ronald P. Wright and 'Western Heritage' by Ray and John Oldham
‘The feelings aroused in us by our old buildings are difficult to define. But they are nonethe-less powerful feelings. There’s something of a dream-like quality in going back into the past; of projecting oneself into history; of identifying oneself with outstanding personalities and events in our national story; or perhaps with the simple and unknown pioneers who patiently laid the foundations of today. We, as heirs to this story, become one with our history. And the old buildings, which are visible reminders of that history, become ours in a very personal way.’
... (read more)Julie Marginson reviews 'Eucalypts for Wood Production' by W.E. Hillis and A.G. Brown, 'Keys to the Families and Genera of Queensland Flowering Plants (Magnoliophyta)' by H.T. Clifford and Gwen Ludlow and 'Emigrant Eucalypts' by Robert Fyfe Zacharin
Eucalypts for Wood Production is a highly professional reference work produced by a team of Australian forest scientists most of whom work in state, government forestry services, CSIRO or the Department of Forestry at ANU. It consists of a series of reviews of scientific literature bringing together all that is presently known of the growth habits of eucalypts from the point of view of their management as hardwood crop plants. The editors’ purpose is to draw attention to the potential of eucalypts and thereby to point the way to a national strategy for hardwood production. For those in the industry, its appearance is timely. Both softwood and woodchip production are under attack on several fronts, perhaps the most important of which concern the chemical and physical deterioration of soils associated with the harvesting of tree crops. Improvements in techniques for the profitable management of native hardwood forests may overcome some of these problems, and perhaps alleviate some of the pressure for increasing the acreage (hectareage?) of cleared land at the expense of our prime native forests.
... (read more)