November 2002, no. 246
Welcome to the November 2002 issue of Australian Book Review!
- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Gay Studies
- Review Article: Yes
- Article Title: Eschewing Jouissance
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
I approached rom Camp to Queer with some trepidation. The author, Robert Reynolds, and I are roughly contemporary products of the same history department. The book itself covers much the same territory as the first few chapters of my Living Out Loud, but does so with a very different conceptual framework. This was compounded by a profile piece in a Melbourne gay paper, in which Reynolds was favourably contrasted with gay male academics like myself who look as though their gym membership cards disappeared down the back of the couch a few years ago.
- Book 1 Title: Gender Trouble Down Under
- Book 1 Subtitle: Australian masculinities
- Book 1 Biblio: Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, $39.95pb, 199 pp
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- Book 1 Cover (800 x 1200):
- Book 2 Title: From Camp to Queer
- Book 2 Subtitle: Remaking the Australian homosexual
- Book 2 Biblio: MUP, $34.95pb, 207 pp
- Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
- Book 2 Cover (800 x 1200):
I approached rom Camp to Queer with some trepidation. The author, Robert Reynolds, and I are roughly contemporary products of the same history department. The book itself covers much the same territory as the first few chapters of my Living Out Loud, but does so with a very different conceptual framework. This was compounded by a profile piece in a Melbourne gay paper, in which Reynolds was favourably contrasted with gay male academics like myself who look as though their gym membership cards disappeared down the back of the couch a few years ago.
- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Language
- Review Article: Yes
- Article Title: Ozymandian Lesson
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
These two books differ greatly in scope and style but they are both highly interesting and enjoyable. Tore Janson is concerned with the history of languages over the past 40,000 years and (in a brief coda to his argument) into the next two thousand years. Kate Burridge deals primarily with the present state of English, although, on many occasions, when she is explaining the present state of things, she examines the English of earlier periods. For example, two separate Old English verbs ended up, in a later period, being pronounced the same way, so that let meant both ‘to permit’ and ‘to prevent, stop’. Once this kind of thing happens, it is normal for English to discard one of the meanings. In this case, we discarded the sense ‘to prevent, stop’, although we have retained relics of it in the legal phrase without let or hindrance and in the tennis term let ball.
- Book 1 Title: Blooming English
- Book 1 Subtitle: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language
- Book 1 Biblio: ABC Books, $24.95pb, 259pp
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- Book 2 Title: Speak
- Book 2 Subtitle: A Short History of Languages
- Book 2 Biblio: OUP, $49.95hb, 301pp
- Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
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These two books differ greatly in scope and style but they are both highly interesting and enjoyable. Tore Janson is concerned with the history of languages over the past 40,000 years and (in a brief coda to his argument) into the next two thousand years. Kate Burridge deals primarily with the present state of English, although, on many occasions, when she is explaining the present state of things, she examines the English of earlier periods. For example, two separate Old English verbs ended up, in a later period, being pronounced the same way, so that let meant both ‘to permit’ and ‘to prevent, stop’. Once this kind of thing happens, it is normal for English to discard one of the meanings. In this case, we discarded the sense ‘to prevent, stop’, although we have retained relics of it in the legal phrase without let or hindrance and in the tennis term let ball.
- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Politics
- Review Article: Yes
- Article Title: What’s So Special?
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
‘Queensland is different’, overseas commentators would mutter sagely when the media ran yet another story on Joh Bjelke-Peterson, premier of that state from 1968 to 1987. Authoritarian without generosity, self-servingly ignorant of the decent checks and balances usual in the Westminster style of government, prejudiced and inarticulate, Joh was impossible. And yet Queenslanders went on voting for him. His provincialism evidently appealed to their provincialism. Eventually, like the big frog in the small puddle of Aesop’s fable, Joh puffed himself up into believing that, at the age of seventy-six, he could become Australia’s national leader. Like Aesop’s frog, his bubble burst and, before the year was over, he was out of office. During his later years as premier, he was the subject of three biographical studies, written by Derek Townsend, Hugh Lunn and Alan Metcalfe. Joh’s own memoirs followed in 1990. With the lapse of another decade, it was time for a reassessment, and Rae Wear has provided it.
- Book 1 Title: The Federation Mirror
- Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $30pb, 267pp
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- Book 2 Title: Johannes Bjelke-Peterson
- Book 2 Subtitle: The Lord’s Premier
- Book 2 Biblio: UQP, $35pb, 249 pp
- Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
- Book 2 Cover (800 x 1200):
‘Queensland is different’, overseas commentators would mutter sagely when the media ran yet another story on Joh Bjelke-Peterson, premier of that state from 1968 to 1987. Authoritarian without generosity, self-servingly ignorant of the decent checks and balances usual in the Westminster style of government, prejudiced and inarticulate, Joh was impossible. And yet Queenslanders went on voting for him. His provincialism evidently appealed to their provincialism. Eventually, like the big frog in the small puddle of Aesop’s fable, Joh puffed himself up into believing that, at the age of seventy-six, he could become Australia’s national leader. Like Aesop’s frog, his bubble burst and, before the year was over, he was out of office. During his later years as premier, he was the subject of three biographical studies, written by Derek Townsend, Hugh Lunn and Alan Metcalfe. Joh’s own memoirs followed in 1990. With the lapse of another decade, it was time for a reassessment, and Rae Wear has provided it.
- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Sport
- Review Article: Yes
- Article Title: A Matter of Gravitas
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text: In early 1993 I was several months into a new job at the University of London. I must have been very preoccupied by my unaccustomed responsibilities because, when I ducked home to an empty flat at round about midday for a quick sandwich, I suddenly realised that the First Test was more than an hour old and that I’d completely forgotten about it. Naturally, all thoughts of hunger shelved, I turned on the television – to see Shane Warne tossing the ball from hand to hand and conferring with Allan Border. You needed only thirty years of cricket watching and playing experience to realise instantly that Warne was about to bowl his first over of the match. And that was how – settling in to sneak a look during my lunch break – I saw that ball.
- Book 1 Title: Don Bradman
- Book 1 Subtitle: Challenging the myth
- Book 1 Biblio: CUP, $29.95hb, 223 pp
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- Book 2 Title: Warne’s World
- Book 2 Biblio: Duffy & Snellgrove, $19.95 pb, 248 pp
- Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
- Book 2 Cover (800 x 1200):
In early 1993 I was several months into a new job at the University of London. I must have been very preoccupied by my unaccustomed responsibilities because, when I ducked home to an empty flat at round about midday for a quick sandwich, I suddenly realised that the First Test was more than an hour old and that I’d completely forgotten about it. Naturally, all thoughts of hunger shelved, I turned on the television – to see Shane Warne tossing the ball from hand to hand and conferring with Allan Border. You needed only thirty years of cricket watching and playing experience to realise instantly that Warne was about to bowl his first over of the match. And that was how – settling in to sneak a look during my lunch break – I saw that ball. Words probably can’t do it justice, but Louis Nowra’s description comes impressively close:
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