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Absolutely Revolting

March 2024, no. 462

The March issue of ABR opens with a volley of letters following Kevin Foster’s lively review of David McBride’s memoirs in the previous issue. The cover feature is a major essay from pioneering gay rights scholar Dennis Altman on being gay, eighty and a secular Australian Jew at a time of great violence and tension in the Middle East. Patrick Mullins wrestles with two books on Robert Menzies, and Clinton Fernandes shows why the European Union is founded on white myth. Nathan Hollier tells the remarkable story of Indonesia’s Buru novels – and Australia’s crucial role in them – and we review Gail Jones’s new novel. There are interviews with federal minister Andrew Leigh, historian Frank Bongiorno, and pianist-writer Anna Goldsworthy.

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Backstage with Anna Goldsworthy
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Professor Anna Goldsworthy is Director of the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, and an award-winning pianist, writer, and festival director. She co-founded the Seraphim Trio in 1995. Her books include the memoir Piano Lessons (2009) and a novel, Melting Moments (2020). Anna has directed numerous music festivals, and in April 2024, will direct the Music and Mountains Festival in Queenstown, New Zealand.
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Anna GoldsworthyICONAnna Goldsworthy (Alex Frayne)Professor Anna Goldsworthy is Director of the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, and an award-winning pianist, writer, and festival director. She co-founded the Seraphim Trio in 1995. Her books include the memoir Piano Lessons (2009) and a novel, Melting Moments (2020). Anna has directed numerous music festivals, and in April 2024, will direct the Music and Mountains Festival in Queenstown, New Zealand.

 

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Richard Leathem reviews ‘Film Music: A very short introduction, Second Edition’ by Kathryn Kalinak
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Article Title: Immersion by stealth
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The second edition of Kathryn Kalinak’s modestly titled Film Music: A very short introduction arrives thirteen years after the publication of its predecessor, extending its chronology of film music from the inception of cinema in the late nineteenth century to 2022. What makes it unique is the global reach of its documentation of significant events and developments in film music history. This offers a broad coverage from countries and cultures other than Hollywood and the West, and illustrates how practices and ideals vary globally.
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Book 1 Title: Film Music
Book 1 Subtitle: A very short introduction, Second Edition
Book Author: Kathryn Kalinak
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Press, US$12.99 pb, 163 pp
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The second edition of Kathryn Kalinak’s modestly titled Film Music: A very short introduction arrives thirteen years after the publication of its predecessor, extending its chronology of film music from the inception of cinema in the late nineteenth century to 2022. What makes it unique is the global reach of its documentation of significant events and developments in film music history. This offers a broad coverage from countries and cultures other than Hollywood and the West, and illustrates how practices and ideals vary globally.

Read more: Richard Leathem reviews ‘Film Music: A very short introduction, Second Edition’ by Kathryn Kalinak

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Bridget Vincent reviews ‘Kin: Family in the 21st century’ by Marina Kamenev
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Article Title: Reimagining families
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Marina Kamenev’s Kin begins with a calmly unadorned outline of the nuclear family’s recent fortunes. In the space of just a few pages, she gives a condensed tour of the concept’s history, concluding with US historian Stephanie Coontz’s suggestion that the nuclear family is a ‘historical fluke’ – one that has, as Kamenev puts it, ‘been idolised long after its use-by date’. The introduction’s mini-tour prefigures, in capsule form, both the book’s thematic emphases and its guiding rhetorical procedures. As Kin’s chapters move through their discussions of the moral panics that accompany non-nuclear family structures, from same-sex parenthood to chosen childlessness to single-parent families, the book reveals that the real moral hazards of reproductive technology lie not in deviations from the nuclear model but in attempts to impose the model where it doesn’t fit.
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Book 1 Title: Kin
Book 1 Subtitle: Family in the 21st century
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Book 1 Biblio: NewSouth, $34.99 pb, 440 pp
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Marina Kamenev’s Kin begins with a calmly unadorned outline of the nuclear family’s recent fortunes. In the space of just a few pages, she gives a condensed tour of the concept’s history, concluding with US historian Stephanie Coontz’s suggestion that the nuclear family is a ‘historical fluke’ – one that has, as Kamenev puts it, ‘been idolised long after its use-by date’. The introduction’s mini-tour prefigures, in capsule form, both the book’s thematic emphases and its guiding rhetorical procedures. As Kin’s chapters move through their discussions of the moral panics that accompany non-nuclear family structures, from same-sex parenthood to chosen childlessness to single-parent families, the book reveals that the real moral hazards of reproductive technology lie not in deviations from the nuclear model but in attempts to impose the model where it doesn’t fit.

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Susan Sheridan review ‘Slipstream: On memory and migration’ by Catherine Cole
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Article Title: Straddling cultures
Article Subtitle: An incomplete account of migration
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Slipstream is both a memoir and an essay on migration. It hangs upon the story of one family, who migrated from Yorkshire (where this book was published) to Sydney in 1949. The narrator was their first-born in the new land and, as she tells it, her life has been one of constant oscillation, both emotional and physical, between England and Australia. It is a tale of her parents’ ‘exile’ and her ‘returns’ – to the country she only ever knew in stories, as she was growing up, but which became ingrained in her imagination.
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Book 1 Title: Slipstream
Book 1 Subtitle: On memory and migration
Book Author: Catherine Cole
Book 1 Biblio: Valley Press, £19.99 pb, 234 pp
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Slipstream is both a memoir and an essay on migration. It hangs upon the story of one family, who migrated from Yorkshire (where this book was published) to Sydney in 1949. The narrator was their first-born in the new land and, as she tells it, her life has been one of constant oscillation, both emotional and physical, between England and Australia. It is a tale of her parents’ ‘exile’ and her ‘returns’ – to the country she only ever knew in stories, as she was growing up, but which became ingrained in her imagination.

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Seumas Spark reviews ‘British Internment and the Internment of Britons: Second World War camps, history and heritage’ edited by Gilly Carr and Rachel Pistol
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Article Title: In haste and fear
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The title and subtitle give it away. This edited collection considers two related subjects: the British practice of internment in World War II, and Britons’ experience of internment at the hands of enemy powers in that conflict. The editors define internment as ‘the state of civilian confinement caused by citizenship of a belligerent country’. Thus, the histories this book tells are those of civilian men, women, and children betrayed by nationality and circumstance, as opposed to those of military men captured in conflict. Each of the histories included here is worthy, and some are riveting. There is much in this volume that will be unfamiliar to students of internment and World War II generally.
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Book 1 Title: British Internment and the Internment of Britons
Book 1 Subtitle: Second World War camps, history and heritage
Book Author: Gilly Carr and Rachel Pistol
Book 1 Biblio: Bloomsbury Academic, $170 hb, 300 pp
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The title and subtitle give it away. This edited collection considers two related subjects: the British practice of internment in World War II, and Britons’ experience of internment at the hands of enemy powers in that conflict. The editors define internment as ‘the state of civilian confinement caused by citizenship of a belligerent country’. Thus, the histories this book tells are those of civilian men, women, and children betrayed by nationality and circumstance, as opposed to those of military men captured in conflict. Each of the histories included here is worthy, and some are riveting. There is much in this volume that will be unfamiliar to students of internment and World War II generally.

Read more: Seumas Spark reviews ‘British Internment and the Internment of Britons: Second World War camps,...

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