Henry Handel Richardson: The Getting of Wisdom

Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele eds, St Lucia: UQP, 2001, 280 Pages, Paperback, $80.00: Reviewed by Leonora Ritter in the August 2002 issue.

I must open with a confession. I am an Australian historian with an interest in biography, not a specialist in Australian literature. This complicates the already challenging task of reviewing this edition of the Australian classic, The Getting of Wisdom, a work whose previous incarnations have been reviewed by such notables as Germaine Greer, who described it as Henry Handel Richardson's 'only great book'. This particular previously unpublished version of The Getting of Wisdom is one of a series, the Academy Editions of Australian Literature, produced with the intent of providing 'reliable reading texts and contextual annotation based on rigorous scholarship and thorough textual ... read more.
 

His Natural Life

Marcus Clarke Lurline Stuart ed, St Lucia: UQP, 2001, 752 Pages, Paperback, $80.00: Reviewed by Graham Tulloch in the June 2003 issue.

New editions of classic texts do not always strike the general public as particularly important or interesting. Nevertheless it is not too much to say that the appearance of a full scholarly edition of His Natural Life is an event of national significance. The greatness of the work and its historical importance (both as an evocation of the convict era and as a work that has been crucial in forming our attitudes to that era) would itself make this new edition significant; the complex and fascinating history of the shaping of the text makes it doubly so. Clarke originally wrote the novel for publication as a serial in the Australian Journal but then had the great courage, in editing it for ... read more.
 

Raven Road

Cassandra Pybus, St Lucia: UQP, 2001, 232 Pages, Paperback, $30.00: Reviewed by Fiona Allon in the July 2002 issue.

Working with flimsy historical evidence, unreliable witnesses, incomplete or non-existent archives, contradictory sources, and trails that lead nowhere is part and parcel of the daily grind of the historian. This is often accepted as the travail of writing history, as what must be endured and overcome in order to reach the point when, after much hard work, it is finally possible to produce the definitive account or at least a satisfying sense of closure. Yet in Cassandra Pybus' new work, Raven Road, a chronicle of her attempt to uncover the 'truth' about Lillian Alling, the woman who supposedly walked from New York through Yukon and Alaska to Siberia, both definitive account and closure ... read more.
 

The Devil and James McAuley

Cassandra Pybus, Qld: UQP, 2001, 332 Pages, Paperback, $28.00: Reviewed by Geoff Parkes in the August 2002 issue.

At a time when our prime minister has been merrily showing the skills of an obsequious lapper, it is interesting perhaps to reflect on where exactly Mr Howard and Co learnt their talents and to consider the type of leadership that exposed Honest John and mates to the benefits of maintaining such a cosy relationship with our North American 'neighbours'. And so we journey to the 1940s and 50s, where Johnny, a budding blossom, no doubt would have looked on in awe at James McAuley, close friend and comrade to the wunderkind of Australian shadow-life, B A Santamaria. Cassandra Pybus' now revised edition draws us back into the dimly lit world of Catholic anti-communists, the CIA-funded Quadrant, ... read more.
 

Spurboard

Nick Enright, Sydney: Currency Press, 2001, Paperback, $15.95: Reviewed by Donald Pulford in the October 2001 issue.

Theatre, the most ephemeral of the arts, is a multi-mouthed monster which transforms scripts into bodies, sound, forms and light, leaving piles of costumes and sets, and memories. Many of us can nominate magnificent nights in the theatre of which nothing remains but our programmes and fading recollections. A script provides a useful indicator of what has happened and what might still happen in a theatre. But a script, too, may moulder and die unless it maintains currency through publication. Thus, if Currency Press did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. Currency was founded by Katharine Brisbane and Philip Parsons in 1971, near the start of a nationalist push in Australian ... read more.
 

Words and Silences

Peggy Brock ed, St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 2001, Paperback, $29.94: Reviewed by Clare Johnson in the March 2002 issue.

In Words and Silences Diane Bell asks of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair: 'what is one to make of the Royal Commission finding of fabrication?'(138).The Australian Federal Court certainly knows and in its recent, decisive finding vindicating the Ngarrindjeri women accused of that fabrication reminds us that the interpretation of silences is very much a political act. But the court's verdict simply confirms what the essays in this collection by Diane Bell and Deborah Bird Rose both convincingly argue: that the silences of indigenous women do not conceal the absence of knowledge, but instead reveal the incommensurability of the sacred and the secular. Rose begins from the premise that ... read more.
 

Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal

Stuart Ward, Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2001, 305 Pages, Hardback, $34.95: Reviewed by Daniel Oakman in the November 2002 issue.

The central proposition of Stuart Ward's Australia and the British Embrace is that Australian political culture did not defiantly cut the apron strings and reject the bonds of the British connection, as asserted in the radical-nationalist tradition of Australian history. Instead, Ward argues that since 1945 Australia was 'pulled along reluctantly in the wake of changing British policies and priorities'. The episode through which Ward pursues these questions is the United Kingdom's decision to seek membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the early 1960s. In the early chapters, Ward explores the nature of Australia's post-war economic ties with Britain and the shock that ... read more.
 

Out of Line: Australian Women and Style

Margaret Maynard, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001, 208 Pages, Paperback, $39.95: Reviewed by Dean Chan in the October 2001 issue.

Out of Line: Australian Women and Style is a significant scholarly contribution to an arguably under-researched topic -- namely, twentieth century women's fashion in Australia. The book attempts to redress the dominant perception that Australian dress style invariably is a poor imitation of imported (specifically, European couture) styles. Indeed, responses to recent stagings of the Mercedes Australian Fashion Week are still coloured by occasional intimations of the derivativeness of Australian fashionable style. Maynard argues instead for a re-appraisal of the different ways in which national style is constituted. Central to her thesis is the contention that although the superficial look of ... read more.
 

Elect The Ambassador! Building Democracy in a Globalised World

Duncan Kerr, Sydney: Pluto Press, 2001, 194 Pages, Paperback, $32.95: Reviewed by Robert Imre in the October 2001 issue.

This is quite an interesting book. Duncan Kerr has distilled a great deal of information about globalisation trends in approximately 130 pages. This is not what makes it interesting, for all of this information is to be found in any number of the large variety of university texts available for the global politics courses I lecture. Elect the Ambassador! is interesting because of the recommendations for the democratisation of the institutions which are setting the various agenda for the globalisation process. While some of the suggestions are not the kind I might agree with, there are so few analysts calling for sensible solutions that Elect the Ambassador! is a breath of fresh air and worthy ... read more.
 

The Captive White Woman of Gipps Land: In Pursuit of the Legend

Julie Carr, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001, 309 Pages, Paperback, $29.95: Reviewed by Paul Genoni in the October 2001 issue.

Interest in the theme of the white person living with Aboriginals has persisted in representations of colonial Australia, and it shows little sign of abating in the third century of European occupation. There has been ongoing scholarly and popular interest in the stories of those settlers who, for whatever reason, lived for extended periods with the indigenous Australians. The best known of these are Eliza Fraser and William Buckley. Eliza Frazer's healthy afterlife is traced in Kay Schaffer's In the Wake of First Contact: the Eliza Fraser Stories (1995), and in Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser's Shipwreck (1998), a collection she edited with Ian McNiven and ... read more.
 

Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia

David Day, Sydney: Harper Collins, 2001, 352 Pages, Paperback, $27.50: Reviewed by Lorenzo Veracini in the November 2001 issue.

This revised and updated edition of Claiming a Continent has been extended in order to cover the events of the past five years, most importantly, the republic referendum and the reconciliation process. While both republicanism and Aboriginal reconciliation are interpreted as a means to establish a sounder moral legitimacy for the non-indigenous Australian claim to the continent, the faltering of these processes is seen as a recrudescence of outdated notions of Australia's legitimacy and location. The themes of conquest, dispossession and race relations predominate. Day's reference to Blainey's Tyranny of Distance (1966) and to Dixson's The Real Matilda (1976) as capable of expressing the ... read more.
 

Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip (2nd Edition)

Margo Kingston, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, 243 Pages, Paperback, $19.95: Reviewed by Paul Reynolds in the Dec 2001-Jan 2002 issue.

This book was widely and favourably reviewed when the first edition came out in 1999. Margo Kingston was one of only two reporters who was permanently assigned to Pauline Hanson's 1998 federal election campaign. This then is the story behind the story of how Hanson and One Nation fared. Although many other journalists flocked in and out of One Nation coverage as her comments and style inevitably provoked interest, the author was the one with continuity and has given a very perceptive account of her experiences. The perspective the reader needs to bring to bear is that, in 1996 Hanson won Oxley as an independent but by 1998 was trying to win Blair, a newly created seat as Oxley had been ... read more.