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Absolutely Revolting

December 2024, no. 471

In November, ABR surveys some of Australia’s most stimulating thinkers on Australia-US relations, asking whether our almost compulsive fascination with the US election is good for Australian democracy. Elsewhere, Josh Bornstein shows how corporations feed the social-media beast, and Ruth Balint cautions against mob politics in reporting. Paul Giles praises Tim Winton’s new novel and its ‘colloquial brevity’, and our reviewers consider new works by Michelle de Kretser, Alex Miller, Rachel Kushner, and Alan Hollinghurst. We examine life writing on Nancy Pelosi and Race Matthews, and books on film, theatre, law, heritage, robot tales, medicine, information networks, and much, much more.

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Michael Halliwell reviews ‘No Autographs, Please! A backstage pass to life in the chorus – the stars who take their bow from the second row’ by Katherine Wiles
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Opportunity knocks
Article Subtitle: Backstage with a chorister
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It is a cliché of the operatic world that all members of the chorus are frustrated or failed soloists. The traditional operatic pathway frequently emerges from the chance discovery of a singing voice with potential, followed by an exploration of opportunities to develop this as yet untapped ability. This usually means enrolment in a university vocal program, sometimes followed by postgraduate degrees. In the past, this was not always the case with many instances of highly renowned singers being ‘discovered’ under the most unlikely circumstances while pursuing very different occupations, often with limited or no musical training.
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Book 1 Title: No Autographs, Please!
Book 1 Subtitle: A backstage pass to life in the chorus – the stars who take their bow from the second row
Book Author: Katherine Wiles
Book 1 Biblio: Echo, $34.99 pb, 281 pp
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It is a cliché of the operatic world that all members of the chorus are frustrated or failed soloists. The traditional operatic pathway frequently emerges from the chance discovery of a singing voice with potential, followed by an exploration of opportunities to develop this as yet untapped ability. This usually means enrolment in a university vocal program, sometimes followed by postgraduate degrees. In the past, this was not always the case with many instances of highly renowned singers being ‘discovered’ under the most unlikely circumstances while pursuing very different occupations, often with limited or no musical training.

Soprano Katherine Wiles followed the traditional path of a BMus Performance at Auckland University followed by a Masters at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. She opens her fascinating and heart-warming account of her career with the following observations:

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Francesca Newton reviews ‘Seven Children: Inequality and Britain’s next generation’ by Danny Dorling
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Contents Category: United Kingdom
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Article Title: No place for the young
Article Subtitle: Challenges facing the Starmer government
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Britain today is no place for young people. The evidence is as familiar as it is stark. One million of the nation’s fourteen million children experienced destitution in 2022, meaning that their families could not afford to adequately feed or clothe them or keep them warm. In 2024, a record 150,000 lived in temporary accommodation in England. The long-standing decline in infant mortality has stalled. Facts like these, concerning the families struggling most, are often cited as proof of atrophy under Conservative austerity (which, while destructive in its own right, degraded Britain’s resilience against Covid-19 and the energy crisis that followed) and as indicators of the issues that Keir Starmer’s new Labour government should prioritise. But what do we miss by focusing on the worst-off?
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Book 1 Title: Seven Children
Book 1 Subtitle: Inequality and Britain’s next generation
Book Author: Danny Dorling
Book 1 Biblio: Hurst, £14.99, 305 pp
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Britain today is no place for young people. The evidence is as familiar as it is stark. One million of the nation’s fourteen million children experienced destitution in 2022, meaning that their families could not afford to adequately feed or clothe them or keep them warm. In 2024, a record 150,000 lived in temporary accommodation in England. The long-standing decline in infant mortality has stalled. Facts like these, concerning the families struggling most, are often cited as proof of atrophy under Conservative austerity (which, while destructive in its own right, degraded Britain’s resilience against Covid-19 and the energy crisis that followed) and as indicators of the issues that Keir Starmer’s new Labour government should prioritise. But what do we miss by focusing on the worst-off?

Read more: Francesca Newton reviews ‘Seven Children: Inequality and Britain’s next generation’ by Danny Dorling

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Michael Roberts reviews ‘The Football War: The VFA and VFL’s battle for supremacy’ by Xavier Fowler
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Contents Category: Sport
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Article Title: Up there Todd!
Article Subtitle: Football’s internecine history
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Imagine the uproar if Nick Daicos left Collingwood tomorrow, seduced by a huge financial offer from a rival Australian football competition. Imagine if the reigning Brownlow Medallist, Patrick Cripps, followed suit, then Christian Petracca and Charlie Curnow and more. Chaos would ensue.
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Michael Roberts reviews ‘The Football War: The VFA and VFL’s battle for supremacy’ by Xavier Fowler
Book 1 Title: The Football War
Book 1 Subtitle: The VFA and VFL’s battle for supremacy
Book Author: Xavier Fowler
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, $39.99 pb, 306 pp
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Imagine the uproar if Nick Daicos left Collingwood tomorrow, seduced by a huge financial offer from a rival Australian football competition. Imagine if the reigning Brownlow Medallist, Patrick Cripps, followed suit, then Christian Petracca and Charlie Curnow and more. Chaos would ensue.

Welcome to the world of football in the late 1930s. The Victorian Football League (VFL) was as dominant then as its successor, the Australian Football League (AFL), is now, and the likelihood of a challenger emerging seemed just as remote. But that’s exactly what the Victorian Football Association (VFA) did, launching a bold and audacious bid for footballing primacy. Poaching the League’s stars was just the VFA’s most high-profile strategy. Other changes made its version of Australian football a genuine alternative and pitted the two bodies against each other in a brief but no-holds-barred battle.

Read more: Michael Roberts reviews ‘The Football War: The VFA and VFL’s battle for supremacy’ by Xavier Fowler

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Tim Loveday reviews ‘Fragile Creatures: A memoir’ by Khin Myint
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Uncertain masculinities
Article Subtitle: The frailties of patriarchy
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In his seminal book I Don’t Want To Talk About It (1997), Terrence Real outlines how contemporary men, within the frameworks of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, must undergo a severing of self from self, and self from community. Real identifies how the so-called masculine power attained through this severing comes from a ‘one down’ position in which the struggle for ‘power over’, rather than ‘power with’, is a central doctrine of what he calls ‘patriarchal masculinity’. This power over, rather than power with, is similarly manifest in international governance, statehood, community and the family unit itself – and it is even manifest in the representation of male characters in Australian literature.
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Book 1 Title: Fragile Creatures
Book 1 Subtitle: A memoir
Book Author: Khin Myint
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $34.99 pb, 272 pp
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‘Under patriarchy, men cannot be both powerful and connected.’

Terrence Real, 2020

In his seminal book I Don’t Want To Talk About It (1997), Terrence Real outlines how contemporary men, within the frameworks of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, must undergo a severing of self from self, and self from community. Real identifies how the so-called masculine power attained through this severing comes from a ‘one down’ position in which the struggle for ‘power over’, rather than ‘power with’, is a central doctrine of what he calls ‘patriarchal masculinity’. This power over, rather than power with, is similarly manifest in international governance, statehood, community and the family unit itself – and it is even manifest in the representation of male characters in Australian literature.

Read more: Tim Loveday reviews ‘Fragile Creatures: A memoir’ by Khin Myint

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Open Page with Susan Hawthorne
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Susan Hawthorne is the author/editor of thirty books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Her latest book, Lesbian: Politics, culture, existence (Spinifex Press), interweaves her thinking about these subjects over a fifty-year period. She has worked in Indigenous education and has taught English as a second language to Arabic-speaking women. For fifteen years, she was an aerialist in two women’s circuses. She researched the torture of lesbians on which her novel Dark Matters is based.
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Susan Hawthorne (photograph by Susan Kelly)Susan Hawthorne
(photograph by Susan Kelly)Susan Hawthorne is the author/editor of thirty books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Her latest book, Lesbian: Politics, culture, existence (Spinifex Press), interweaves her thinking about these subjects over a fifty-year period. She has worked in Indigenous education and has taught English as a second language to Arabic-speaking women. For fifteen years, she was an aerialist in two women’s circuses. She researched the torture
of lesbians on which her novel Dark Matters is based.

Read more: Open Page with Susan Hawthorne

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