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Absolutely Revolting

April 2005, no. 270

Richard Arculus reviews ‘The Geology of Australia’ by David Johnson
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Contents Category: Nature Writing
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Article Title: Aggregate and fission
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No doubt there is a diverse readership for a book about the geological evolution of Australia. In fact, the last comprehensive text intended for experts was The Geological Evolution of Australia and New Zealand (1968), by D.A. Brown, K.S.W. Campbell and K.A.W. Crook; and nothing of major scope for a lay audience has appeared for a longer time. In the past forty years, of course, the subject has advanced enormously in a general sense, not the least being the revolution in our understanding of the mobility and interactions of the outer shell of the Earth through the processes labelled ‘plate tectonics’. Our specific geological knowledge of Australia has also progressed significantly.
Book 1 Title: The Geology of Australia
Book Author: David Johnson
Book 1 Biblio: CUP, $69.95pb, 276pp, 0 521 60100 2
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No doubt there is a diverse readership for a book about the geological evolution of Australia. In fact, the last comprehensive text intended for experts was The Geological Evolution of Australia and New Zealand (1968), by D.A. Brown, K.S.W. Campbell and K.A.W. Crook; and nothing of major scope for a lay audience has appeared for a longer time. In the past forty years, of course, the subject has advanced enormously in a general sense, not the least being the revolution in our understanding of the mobility and interactions of the outer shell of the Earth through the processes labelled ‘plate tectonics’. Our specific geological knowledge of Australia has also progressed significantly.

In The Geology of Australia, David Johnson, of James Cook University, has attempted to occupy the middle ground between expert and lay readerships. In a visually appealing but expensive volume, Johnson attempts to take the reader on a tour of the generalities of modern Earth science illuminated specifically by Australian examples and history.

Read more: Richard Arculus reviews ‘The Geology of Australia’ by David Johnson

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: Rabbit
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Life shivers between yourself and us: help us to stretch

toward the kingdom of our burrows in the earth: we’ll never occupy

again the silk-soft that was a womb, but we wander the night grass with you,

searching for a tenderness, an innocence at birth: until the quiet winds cut

the quiet breath from your mouth and your hindquarters stamp, Quickly, I must go —
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Read more: ‘Rabbit’, a new poem by Judith Bishop

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James Upcher reviews God Under Howard: The rise of the religious right in Australian politics by Marion Maddox
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Contents Category: Politics
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Campaigning during the 1912 US presidential election, the great labour leader and socialist Eugene Debs used to tell his supporters that he could not lead them into the Promised Land because if they were trusting enough to be led in they would be trusting enough to be led out again. In other words, he was counselling his voters to resist the easy certitude that zealotry brings; to reject a politics that trades on blind faith rather than the critical power of reason.
Book 1 Title: God Under Howard
Book 1 Subtitle: The rise of the religious right in Australian politics
Book Author: Marion Maddox
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 386 pp, 1741145686
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Campaigning during the 1912 US presidential election, the great labour leader and socialist Eugene Debs used to tell his supporters that he could not lead them into the Promised Land because if they were trusting enough to be led in they would be trusting enough to be led out again. In other words, he was counselling his voters to resist the easy certitude that zealotry brings; to reject a politics that trades on blind faith rather than the critical power of reason. The eventual winner of that fraught election was Woodrow Wilson, a deeply religious man who viewed the separation of Church and State as an inconvenience, and who seemed to believe that the United States was, metaphysically conceived, a religion to which the rest of the world needed to be converted. Generally, however, in the United States, the line between the secular and the religious has been policed with vigilance by Congress and by lobby groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

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Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews ‘Hecate vol.30, no.2’ edited by Carole Ferrier, ‘Island 99’ edited by David Owen and ‘Griffith Review 7: The lure of fundamentalism’ edited by Julianne Schultz
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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Article Title: Just say no
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Towards the end of the last century, Australian little magazines were forced to make a choice: become more interdisciplinary, or die. Those that have survived, and the new ones that have emerged, have taken on a new coherence and cohesion. Still mostly featuring a varied mix of writers, genres and approaches, they tend these days to have some unifying topic, or topos, and to be conducting a kind of internal conversation within their covers.
Book 1 Title: Hecate vol. 30, no. 2
Book Author: Carole Ferrier
Book 1 Biblio: $15pb, 212pp, 0311 4198
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Island 99
Book 2 Author: David Owen
Book 2 Biblio: $11.95pb, 128pp, 1035 3127
Book 2 Author Type: Editor
Book 3 Title: Griffith Review 7
Book 3 Subtitle: The lure of fundamentalism
Book 3 Author: Julianne Schultz
Book 3 Biblio: ABC Books, $16.95pb, 268pp, 0 7333 1548 8
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Towards the end of the last century, Australian little magazines were forced to make a choice: become more interdisciplinary, or die. Those that have survived, and the new ones that have emerged, have taken on a new coherence and cohesion. Still mostly featuring a varied mix of writers, genres and approaches, they tend these days to have some unifying topic, or topos, and to be conducting a kind of internal conversation within their covers.

Read more: Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews ‘Hecate vol.30, no.2’ edited by Carole Ferrier, ‘Island 99’ edited by...

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John Tranter reviews The Long Game and Other Poems by Bruce Beaver
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Contents Category: Poetry
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The Sydney poet Bruce Beaver died in February 2004 after a long struggle with kidney failure that kept him on dialysis for more than a decade. He was seventy-six years old. Beaver was seen as a sympathetic older figure by many poets of my generation, born a dozen years later. I met him when I was in my twenties, and found him to be a generous friend. When the poet Michael Dransfield, younger still, called on him in the early 1970s, it was a natural meeting of minds. In one poem in The Long Game and Other Poems, Beaver says that ‘poor Dransfield draped / me with a necklet of dandelions / once and kissed my forehead / in what must have been / a satirical salute’. I have a feeling that the salute was heartfelt, but Bruce was painfully modest.
Book 1 Title: The Long Game and Other Poems
Book Author: Bruce Beaver
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $22.95 pb, 186 pp, 0702235091
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The Sydney poet Bruce Beaver died in February 2004 after a long struggle with kidney failure that kept him on dialysis for more than a decade. He was seventy-six years old. Beaver was seen as a sympathetic older figure by many poets of my generation, born a dozen years later. I met him when I was in my twenties, and found him to be a generous friend. When the poet Michael Dransfield, younger still, called on him in the early 1970s, it was a natural meeting of minds. In one poem in The Long Game and Other Poems, Beaver says that ‘poor Dransfield draped / me with a necklet of dandelions / once and kissed my forehead / in what must have been / a satirical salute’. I have a feeling that the salute was heartfelt, but Bruce was painfully modest.

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Read more: John Tranter reviews 'The Long Game and Other Poems' by Bruce Beaver

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