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Absolutely Revolting

December 2018, no. 407

Welcome to the December issue of ABR! Highlights include:

• Books of the Year: 34 critics and authors, including Michelle de Kretser, Fiona Wright, Beejay Silcox, Gregory Day, and Gideon Haigh, nominate their favourite books of 2018.
• Review of the Month: Glyn Davis on David Marr’s new collection of speeches, essays, and stories, My Country.
• Peter Goldsworthy lauds the Collected Poems of Les Murray.
• Professor Joy Damousi on the controversial vetoing of eleven ARC grants, and brief statements from a further thirteen academics.
• Andrea Goldsmith’s tribute to her late partner and poet Dorothy Porter.

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Open Page with Anne Summers
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Our reading needs change, and the books we revisit constantly grow in number, but if I must choose, I will nominate Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics (1970) for the way it forced me to confront the ugly fact that the works of so many of the (male) writers I admired – specifically Norman Mailer, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry Miller – were predicated on a deep hatred of women. This changed me forever.
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Why do you write?

I have things I want to say and I am bold enough to hope that people may be interested in these things, and what I think of them.

Are you a vivid dreamer?

My dreams are extremely vivid, often upsetting, usually in full colour, but not always able to be summoned back to consciousness the next day. Which may not be a bad thing.

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Michael Sexton reviews Stern Justice: The Forgotten Story of Australia, Japan and the Pacific War Crimes Trials by Adam Wakeling
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Contents Category: History
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Justice or vengeance? This is always the question raised by war crimes trials, although it might be noted that they are a relatively recent historical phenomenon. Some were proposed at the end of the Great War but never eventuated. The original and best known is, of course, Nuremberg at the end of World War II ...
Book 1 Title: Stern Justice
Book 1 Subtitle: The Forgotten Story of Australia, Japan and the Pacific War Crimes Trials
Book Author: Adam Wakeling
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $34.99 pb, 390 pp, 9780143793335
Book 1 Author Type: Author

Justice or vengeance? This is always the question raised by war crimes trials, although it might be noted that they are a relatively recent historical phenomenon. Some were proposed at the end of the Great War but never eventuated. The original and best known is, of course, Nuremberg at the end of World War II. Over the decades, there have been various prosecutions by the International Criminal Court, particularly concerning events in the Balkans in the 1990s, and by some one-off tribunals, such as in relation to the killings in Rwanda in 1994.

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Nick Haslam reviews Out of My Head: On the trail of consciousness by Tim Parks
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Contents Category: Psychology
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How does consciousness, the feeling of what happens, emerge from the object that Tim Parks describes in this engaging book as ‘a gruesome pinkish grey, vaguely intestinal lump’? Is mind identical with brain, is it secreted by it in some fashion, or does it, as some philosophers suggest, mysteriously ‘supervene’ on ...
Book 1 Title: Out of My Head
Book 1 Subtitle: On the trail of consciousness
Book Author: Tim Parks
Book 1 Biblio: Harvill Secker, $35 hb, 312 pp, 9781911215714
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How does consciousness, the feeling of what happens, emerge from the object that Tim Parks describes in this engaging book as ‘a gruesome pinkish grey, vaguely intestinal lump’? Is mind identical with brain, is it secreted by it in some fashion, or does it, as some philosophers suggest, mysteriously ‘supervene’ on neural processes? Dualism is deeply unfashionable, and the rise of brain science has made materialism the new common sense, but how can the wisps of subjective experience be tethered to the electrochemical fizz inside our skulls? These questions define the mission of the many psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who study consciousness, but the prospect of a mutually satisfying answer continues to recede into the future.

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Kate Murphy reviews Shifting the Boundaries: The University of Melbourne 1975–2015 by Carolyn Rasmussen
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During the 1960s and 1970s, student radicals protested that their places of learning were getting too close to industry and government. In 1970, Monash University students occupied the university’s Careers and Appointments Office to oppose the use of the university as a recruiting ground for companies ...
Book 1 Title: Shifting the Boundaries
Book 1 Subtitle: The University of Melbourne 1975–2015
Book Author: Carolyn Rasmussen
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $49.99 hb, 411 pp, 9780522872460
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During the 1960s and 1970s, student radicals protested that their places of learning were getting too close to industry and government. In 1970, Monash University students occupied the university’s Careers and Appointments Office to oppose the use of the university as a recruiting ground for companies profiting from the Vietnam War, and to protest its outreach to industry in the ill-fated Monash University Scientific and Industrial Complex. Universities could not pretend to be dedicated to truth and free enquiry, students argued, while operating hand in glove with capitalism and the ‘military-industrial complex’ that they ought to be critiquing.

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Billy Griffiths reviews Burning Planet: The story of fire through time by Andrew C. Scott
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A few years ago I walked through a burning landscape with a young archaeobotanist, Xavier. We were in Arnhem Land, and the local Indigenous landowners had lit a low-intensity fire – a cool burn – to encourage new growth and reduce the fuel load around nearby settlements. The newly blackened landscape looked clean, even beautiful ...
Book 1 Title: Burning Planet
Book Author: Andrew C. Scott
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Press, $40.95 hb, 256 pp, 9780198734840
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A few years ago I walked through a burning landscape with a young archaeobotanist, Xavier. We were in Arnhem Land, and the local Indigenous landowners had lit a low-intensity fire – a cool burn – to encourage new growth and reduce the fuel load around nearby settlements. The newly blackened landscape looked clean, even beautiful.

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