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Absolutely Revolting

April 2012, no. 340

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Contents Category: Seymour Biography Lecture
Custom Article Title: Pushing against the dark: Writing about the hidden self
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Article Title: Pushing Against the dark: Writing about the hidden self
Article Subtitle: 2011 Seymour Biography Lecture
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If you’re a theatregoer, then somewhere along the line you’re bound to have seen The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol’s comedy about a rapacious nobody being mistaken for a government official by the citizens of a nameless provincial backwater. (They too are nobodies, greedy to be somebodies.) You might remember (since it’s a line that will have evoked both your contempt and your compassion) that the fussy fool Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky, a local landowner, who fails to exist to the point of being almost indistinguishable from his companion Pyotr Ivanovych Dobchinsky, says to the government inspector (who isn’t one):

I beg you most humbly, sir, when you’re in St Petersburg, say to all the different bigwigs there – the senators and admirals: You know, in such-and-such a town, your Excellency, or your Eminence, lives Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky. Just say that: lives Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky … And if you’re speaking to the sovereign, then say to the sovereign as well: in such-and-such a town, your Imperial Highness, lives Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky.
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This is an edited version of the 2011 Seymour Biography Lecture, which Robert Dessaix delivered at the National Library of Australia on 24 October 2011 and repeated during Adelaide Writers’ Week, on 8 March 2012. The Seymour Lecture is supported by John and Heather Seymour, the National Library, and ABR. We have published three previous Seymour Lectures, all of which are still available in print: Lawrence Goldman, ‘Virtual Lives: History and Biography in an Electronic Age’ (June 2007), Richard Holmes, ‘Biography: The Past Has a Great Future’ (November 2008), Frances Spalding, ‘The Biographer’s Contract’ (February 2011).

If you’re a theatregoer, then somewhere along the line you’re bound to have seen The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol’s comedy about a rapacious nobody being mistaken for a government official by the citizens of a nameless provincial backwater. (They too are nobodies, greedy to be somebodies.) You might remember (since it’s a line that will have evoked both your contempt and your compassion) that the fussy fool Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky, a local landowner, who fails to exist to the point of being almost indistinguishable from his companion Pyotr Ivanovych Dobchinsky, says to the government inspector (who isn’t one):

I beg you most humbly, sir, when you’re in St Petersburg, say to all the different bigwigs there – the senators and admirals: You know, in such-and-such a town, your Excellency, or your Eminence, lives Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky. Just say that: lives Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky … And if you’re speaking to the sovereign, then say to the sovereign as well: in such-and-such a town, your Imperial Highness, lives Pyotr Ivanovych Bobchinsky.

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Contents Category: Poem
Custom Article Title: 'Night Guard, The Futures Museum after the ACMI Star Voyager Exhibition', a new poem by Lisa Gorton
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I

Rooms so familiar
they complete themselves in me –
this darkened hall where the glass cases,
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for Sarah Tutton

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Peter Conrad reviews The Hanging Garden by Patrick White
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Contents Category: Fiction
Custom Article Title: Peter Conrad reviews 'The Hanging Garden' by Patrick White
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‘Genius,’ as Arthur Rimbaud put it, ‘is childhood recovered at will.’ Rimbaud himself abandoned poetry at the age of twenty and thereafter refused to look back, but Patrick White exemplified the rule in writing The Hanging Garden. He was sixty-eight at the time, and had just completed his rancorous memoir Flaws in the Glass (1981); having disburdened himself of a lifetime’s gripes and grudges, he now re-imagined adolescence in a novel about two refugees – a boy from blitzed London, a girl from Greece – sent to Sydney early in World War II. He worked on it for a few months at the start of 1981, then set it aside, suspending the lives of the disparate but psychologically twinned characters at the end of the war.
Book 1 Title: The Hanging Garden
Book Author: Patrick White
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $29.95 hb, 226 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-hanging-garden-patrick-white/book/9781742752662.html
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‘Genius,’ as Arthur Rimbaud put it, ‘is childhood recovered at will.’ Rimbaud himself abandoned poetry at the age of twenty and thereafter refused to look back, but Patrick White exemplified the rule in writing The Hanging Garden. He was sixty-eight at the time, and had just completed his rancorous memoir Flaws in the Glass (1981); having disburdened himself of a lifetime’s gripes and grudges, he now re-imagined adolescence in a novel about two refugees – a boy from blitzed London, a girl from Greece – sent to Sydney early in World War II. He worked on it for a few months at the start of 1981, then set it aside, suspending the lives of the disparate but psychologically twinned characters at the end of the war.

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Open Page with Brenda Niall
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Writing has always seemed an easy, natural thing to do. But it was a long time before I thought of myself as a writer rather than an academic.
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Why do you write?

Writing has always seemed an easy, natural thing to do. But it was a long time before I thought of myself as a writer rather than an academic.

Are you a vivid dreamer?

I don’t think so. I hardly ever remember any of my dreams, so I suspect they are mostly routine.

Where are you happiest?

Walking on the beach at Mount Martha, on Port Phillip Bay, around sunset, just when the light is leaving the water and the sand is still warm.

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Frank Bongiorno reviews A History of Australia by Mark Peel and Christina Twomey
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Contents Category: Australian History
Custom Article Title: Frank Bongiorno reviews 'A History of Australia' by Mark Peel and Christina Twomey
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The product under consideration is Shist.’ So began New Zealand historian Keith Sinclair’s discussion of short histories in 1968. His irreverent diminutive is still occasionally heard among professional historians of a certain age. It is less often recalled that Sinclair was defending the worth of the short history against those who might think ‘Shist beneath their dignity’. After all, Sinclair was himself the author of a fine short history of New Zealand, and he was contributing to a collection of essays in honour of W.K. Hancock, who had arguably produced the most distinguished – and certainly the most influential – short history of Australia up to that time.
Book 1 Title: A History of Australia
Book Author: Mark Peel and Christina Twomey
Book 1 Biblio: Palgrave Macmillan, $49.95 pb, 320 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/a-history-of-australia-mark-peel/book/9781137605498.html
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‘The product under consideration is Shist.’ So began New Zealand historian Keith Sinclair’s discussion of short histories in 1968. His irreverent diminutive is still occasionally heard among professional historians of a certain age. It is less often recalled that Sinclair was defending the worth of the short history against those who might think ‘Shist beneath their dignity’. After all, Sinclair was himself the author of a fine short history of New Zealand, and he was contributing to a collection of essays in honour of W.K. Hancock, who had arguably produced the most distinguished – and certainly the most influential – short history of Australia up to that time.

Read more: Frank Bongiorno reviews 'A History of Australia' by Mark Peel and Christina Twomey

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