Journals

As with all such collections, this issue of Meanjin mixes the inspired with the modest, the fascinating with the mediocre. That is of no consequence: in this fraught cultural age, all that matters is that journals like Meanjin survive and provide a forum for both established and aspiring writers.

The most recent edition of La Trobe Journal is an exploration of Melbourne’s gay and lesbian past. Amusingly titled Queen City of the South, it investigates an aspect of this city’s history that has frequently been overlooked or ‘hidden’. In the Introduction, guest editor Graham Willett argues that the compilation will help bring to light ‘striking stories and deep insights’ about the ‘sexual subcultures’ of Melbourne. These ‘stories’ will enrich not only our understanding of the city’s history, but also the history of homosexuality in Australia. There are essays on gay male networks in Melbourne during the interwar years, the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the queer presence in our museums, and the (in)visibility of homosexuality in the Australian Communist Party.

The decision to use Ned Kelly’s last words as the subtitle of Griffith Review 33 was most unwise. This well-worn line threatens to overshadow the journal’s contents, which are otherwise fresh and intelligent.

Australian and New Zealand universities have for more than a century produced significant numbers of medieval and early modern literary scholars and historians. Formerly, full international recognition was won by many who moved to the northern hemisphere, but, happily, in these days of the global scholarly community, those who have chosen to make their careers at home are now accorded recognition and acclaim by their colleagues abroad. Parergon will next year celebrate its fortieth birthday; the journal’s belated coming of age is a tribute to a series of dedicated editors, the most recent being Anne M. Scott and Andrew Lynch at the University of Western Australia.

A declaration of interest is in order. I have twice appeared in the pages of HEAT. I am also in the latter stages of a doctorate, which I have been writing for the past few years under the supervision of HEAT’s editor, Ivor Indyk. Under normal circumstances, I would decline to review a new edition of the journal for these reasons. The latest edition is, however, of particular significance, for it is the last that will appear in print form. It is important to stress the qualification: Indyk has stated that he is interested in reinventing the journal in an electronic format. But it is difficult not to feel that the occasion has the sense of an ending about it. Whatever form HEAT may take in the future, its life as a printed journal, which began in 1996 and continued through two series of fifteen and twenty-four editions, respectively, is now over.

When pressed during a Radio National interview last year to identify how Kill Your Darlings differentiates itself from other Australian literary journals, editor Rebecca Starford said, ‘We want to be publishing fiction and non-fiction that has a fearlessness to it, that is frank, that is offering alternative perspectives.’ The fourth issue of this journal pursues this mission with thought-provoking commentary, fiction, and reviews.

From Menzies to Gillard, from the Cold War to Pacific solutions, the history of Overland magazine offers a leftist version of post-World War II Australian political, cultural and literary life. This issue of Overland is its two hundredth. As Jeff Sparrow, the current Editor, points out, survival is an achievement: ‘The “little magazine” is a peculiar animal. The life cycle of the species generally follows a predictable pattern: birth (usually marked by the ritual issuing of manifestos) and rapid growth, followed by financial crisis, paralysis and death, a cycle that typically unfolds within the span of six months or so.’ Sparrow, one of Australia’s more penetrating commentators, might have granted himself more space to discuss the future of Overland, and, more broadly, to reflect on challenges facing activists who challenge the assumption that capitalism can save – is saving – the world.

This special issue of La Trobe Journal is guest edited by Lynette Russell from Monash University, and John Arnold, the Journal’s new general editor (since No. 82). Titled Indigenous Victorians: Repressed, Resourceful and Respected, it showcases new historical scholarship that draws on the State Library of Victoria’s unrivalled collections. Topics covered in the twelve essays are diverse: Aboriginal guides to the Victorian goldfields, fisheries in western Victoria, cricketers at Coranderrk, Lake Tyers Aboriginal settlement, the Victorian Aboriginal Advancement League, and government legislation relating to Aboriginal Victorians, among others.

The Australian Journal of French Studies special number on Jacques Rivette continues the journal’s tradition of ground-breaking scholarship. Rivette has long been acknowledged as both an important and enigmatic film director – in some respects even more challenging than his New Wave colleague, Jean-Luc Godard. Rivette’s work is notoriously difficult of access. Almost all his films are unconventionally long; the longest, Out 1 – Noli me tangere (1970), runs for almost thirteen hours. In all of them, narrative lines are deliberately unresolved and complicated, and made the more disorienting by the director’s improvisational filming methods; only exceptionally, such as with Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974) or Va savoir (2001), have they attracted sizeable mainstream audiences.

Reading the editorials and listening to editor Lisa Greenaway speak at the recent Melbourne Writers Festival, you could have been forgiven for noting a feeling of defeatism in Going Down Swinging’s sense of its own trajectory: a journal that has from the start, and each year since, been ‘destined to fail’.