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Absolutely Revolting

June 2001, no. 231

Welcome to the June 2001 issue of Australian Book Review.

Edmund Campion reviews The Mansions of Bedlam: Stories and Essays by Gerard Windsor
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Contents Category: Essay Collection
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Gerard Windsor had a rocky start to his writing life. Out of the Jesuits after seven years, he scored a contract with his old school, Riverview, in Sydney, to write its centennial history. I was one of the alumni he interviewed; I remember suggesting that he take steps to guarantee the publication of his text. After all, I argued, a school run by a religious order was like a family commissioning its history: it would have tender feelings towards its dead and be wary of any diminution of their legends.
Book 1 Title: The Mansions of Bedlam
Book 1 Subtitle: Stories and Essays
Book Author: Gerard Windsor
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $22.95pb, 416pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/mansions-of-bedlam-gerard-windsor/book/9780702231964.html
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Gerard Windsor had a rocky start to his writing life. Out of the Jesuits after seven years, he scored a contract with his old school, Riverview, in Sydney, to write its centennial history. I was one of the alumni he interviewed; I remember suggesting that he take steps to guarantee the publication of his text. After all, I argued, a school run by a religious order was like a family commissioning its history: it would have tender feelings towards its dead and be wary of any diminution of their legends.

Read more: Edmund Campion reviews 'The Mansions of Bedlam: Stories and Essays' by Gerard Windsor

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Isobel Crombie reviews Ghost Nation: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture 1901–1939 by Laurie Duggan
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Contents Category: Art
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Laurie Duggan’s study of ‘imagined space’ in Australian visual culture arrived on my desk, with a certain synchronicity, the day after I saw the film Memento. In their distinctive ways, both these works seem indicative of our age, offering unstable and fractured accounts of space and time at a moment when virtual reality seems to be untying our formerly fixed Western notions of these concepts.
Book 1 Title: Ghost Nation
Book 1 Subtitle: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture 1901–1939
Book Author: Laurie Duggan
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $22.95pb, 292pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/ghost-nation-laurie-duggan/book/9780702231896.html
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Laurie Duggan’s study of ‘imagined space’ in Australian visual culture arrived on my desk, with a certain synchronicity, the day after I saw the film Memento. In their distinctive ways, both these works seem indicative of our age, offering unstable and fractured accounts of space and time at a moment when virtual reality seems to be untying our formerly fixed Western notions of these concepts.

Read more: Isobel Crombie reviews 'Ghost Nation: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture 1901–1939' by...

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John Mateer reviews Ultra: 25 poems by John Tranter
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Many see John Tranter as an important, if slightly peripheral, figure in contemporary Australian poetry. He is well known for his long involvement in the Sydney poetry scene, as well as for his role as an editor, particularly for his editing, with Philip Mead, of the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991) and, more recently, of the internet poetry journal Jacket.
Book 1 Title: Ultra
Book 1 Subtitle: 25 poems
Book Author: John Tranter
Book 1 Biblio: Brandl & Schlesinger, $21.95 pb, 60 pp
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Many see John Tranter as an important, if slightly peripheral, figure in contemporary Australian poetry. He is well known for his long involvement in the Sydney poetry scene, as well as for his role as an editor, particularly for his editing, with Philip Mead, of the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991) and, more recently, of the internet poetry journal Jacket.

Tranter’s prominence in the history of Australian poetry is related to the institution of a largely American-inspired late modernism which introduced Australian readers to certain innovative devices – among them, Olsen’s projective verse and the casual, ‘jazzy’ freev-erse voice – but also to the relationship between popular culture and the politics of personal experience. It is partly thanks to the Tranter/Mead anthology, its emphasis on the precedent of the ‘hoax’ of Ern Malley, that the many (post or hyper) modernist poets presently writing are able to see themselves within a tradition of modernist experiment, within a context in which Australian poetry is more or less a product of the same factors that produced modernist, and hence ‘post’-modernist, poetry elsewhere in the world.

Read more: John Mateer reviews 'Ultra: 25 poems' by John Tranter

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La Trobe University Essay | A BIG LIE: Manning Clark, Frank Hardy and Fictitious History by James Griffin
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Contents Category: Australian History
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‘People are not entitled in a civil society to pursue a malicious campaign of character assassination based on a big lie.’ This was Andrew Clark, son of the historian Manning Clark, expressing understandable outrage on behalf of his family. The issue was the infamous allegation, based on nebulous evidence, that Manning was ‘an agent of Soviet influence’ and had been awarded the Order of Lenin. Unfortunately, as the Clarks will know, the big lie, even when refuted, spreads across generations. Although the onus is supposed to be on the accusers to prove their allegations, in reality it is easily, plausibly reversed.
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‘People are not entitled in a civil society to pursue a malicious campaign of character assassination based on a big lie.’ This was Andrew Clark, son of the historian Manning Clark, expressing understandable outrage on behalf of his family. The issue was the infamous allegation, based on nebulous evidence, that Manning was ‘an agent of Soviet influence’ and had been awarded the Order of Lenin. Unfortunately, as the Clarks will know, the big lie, even when refuted, spreads across generations. Although the onus is supposed to be on the accusers to prove their allegations, in reality it is easily, plausibly reversed.

Read more: La Trobe University Essay | 'A BIG LIE: Manning Clark, Frank Hardy and "Fictitious History"' by...

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David Reeve reviews South-East Asia: A political profile by Damien Kingsbury
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: Ringing the Changes
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How different South-East Asia looks in 2001, compared with just four years ago. The economic crisis of 1997 gave the region a terrible shock. There is an entirely new country, Timor Loro Sa’e. Indonesia, that former bastion of stability and economic powerhouse, is now racked with unrest. It may well no longer exist in its present form a few years from now. The Philippines has just ejected another president, although its eternal problem of a landowning elite and an impoverished populace never seems to get addressed. Colonial borders are a problem everywhere in the region, incorporating tribes and peoples that would likely be better off if the whole map were redrawn.
Book 1 Title: South-East Asia
Book 1 Subtitle: A political profile
Book Author: Damien Kingsbury
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $44.95 pb, 461 pp
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How different South-East Asia looks in 2001, compared with just four years ago. The economic crisis of 1997 gave the region a terrible shock. There is an entirely new country, Timor Loro Sa’e. Indonesia, that former bastion of stability and economic powerhouse, is now racked with unrest. It may well no longer exist in its present form a few years from now. The Philippines has just ejected another president, although its eternal problem of a landowning elite and an impoverished populace never seems to get addressed. Colonial borders are a problem everywhere in the region, incorporating tribes and peoples that would likely be better off if the whole map were redrawn.

There are also positive signs in systems that looked intransigent. Cambodia seems to be settling down under its particular version of authoritarian leadership with occasional elections. In Vietnam, greater openness and tolerance has become a theme, of government rhetoric at least. Even the Burmese government may be making tentative moves to-wards an accommodation with Aung San Suu Kyi. Everywhere in the region, the pressures of globalisation and CNN put governments under the spotlight. A lot is going on.

Read more: David Reeve reviews 'South-East Asia: A political profile' by Damien Kingsbury

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