Delights and jolts

Dear Editor,

ABR is always engaging, even when one disagrees with the thrust or standpoint of particular reviews, but surely the May issue is the most brilliant ever. An edition which has a poet (Peter Rose) reviewing David Malouf’s new novel, Brian Matthews on Henry Lawson, Elizabeth Webby on Xavier Herbert, and Robert Phiddian on Penny Gay’s monograph about Shakespearean comedies, has to be special, thoroughly deserving of the endorsements of literary luminaries with which ABR has promoted itself over the years. In fact, a writer who, as Dr Phiddian did, can use the phrase ‘industrial-strength literary-criticism’ in his first paragraph and one of my favourite words, ‘rebarbative’, in his second, has my unremitting admiration. And I haven’t yet mentioned the appearance of John Burnheim and Ian Britain on the Letters page.

Then there was Humphrey McQueen’s unexpected, if characteristically sharp-minded, essay on the new National Portrait Gallery. The enduring point about Humphrey’s writing is not whether one agrees with his arguments: it is his remorseless habit of compelling the reader to think that counts so strongly.

'It’s in your hands, Julianne,’ proclaims an e-mail from Barack Obama. So opens the latest Griffith Review, which explores the many ways that, across the globe, individuals and groups are taking social, political and environmental matters into their own hands. Addressee aside, the Obama e-mail sent to editor Schultz in the final week of the US election campaign landed in the virtual hands of millions. But as Schultz notes, the Obama campaign saw ‘social networking’ on a massive scale, made millions feel involved and, she posits, saw a concomitant end to the ‘era of mass media politics’. Marian Arkin’s memoir picks up on campaign engagement, recalling her involvement with a large-scale community of volunteer lawyers working to protect the integrity of the US election process. Arkin’s article provides a useful guide to those who find the US electoral college system a mystery.

Anna Coombs logs on to cyber activism via GetUp!, an organisation of 330,000 members who have become online activists. Coombs cites Howard government backdowns on the abortion pill, treatment of asylum seekers and ABC funding as examples of successful GetUp! actions, but acknowledges that measuring campaign effectiveness is difficult and that not all activists are progressives. Kate Cole-Adams’s wry account of Internet dating (‘like the first five minutes at an Ikea store – everything is possible and seemingly affordable’) and of observing her own ‘mating rituals’ makes engaging reading.

The principal essay, by Cheryl Kernot, moves offline and demonstrates the British origins of much ‘social entrepreneurship’. Kernot’s long enumeration of change driven by ‘third sector’ cooperatives, charities and volunteer schemes sometimes forfeits critical analysis, but her warning that worthy local innovations can become victims of their own success through adoption by centralised government is salutary.

Ideal climate for writing

Climate change poses undoubted challenges for science – and society – but what exactly does the phenomenon mean for Australian cultural life? The University of Melbourne’s inaugural Festival of Ideas, June 15–20, investigates the question, with a program featuring scientists, environmentalists, architects, commentators, gallery directors, novelists and poets. The director, Patrick McCaughey, has secured a keynote address from Miles Franklin winner Kate Grenville, as well as panel appearances from Steven Carroll, Don Watson, Barry Jones, and Lisa Gorton and more over the Festival’s five-day duration. All sessions are free. Full details are available at www.ideas.unimelb.edu.au.

Our fascination with Gallipoli is probably at a peak. Like other symbolic events, it rises, falls and rises again in public esteem and curiosity. In the last quarter of a century, beginning when Anzac Day was at a low ebb, books and documentaries about Gallipoli have flooded bookshops and television stations. This new book by Professor Robin Prior, a specialist Australian historian of World War I, argues that the flood tide has almost drowned us in myths. The subtitle of his book is ‘The End of the Myth’. It is doubtful whether one able historian can terminate the myths, but this is a brave attempt.