I recalled Rabelais while reading the first third of The Best Australian Essays 2001, which editor Peter Craven begins with an uninspired and uninspiring allusion to the ‘Chinese curse of interesting times’. Distinguished writers such as Raimond Gaita, Robert Manne (our country’s conscience), John Martinkus, David Marr, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre contemplate the enormity of the events of September 11, of the Tampa affair, of exclusionary nationalism, of dispossession, of challenges to multiculturalism in forceful, cogent, passionate essays. But there are times when one, and they, call up the shade of Rabelais’s Diogenes or of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert — ‘O my Lolita, I only have words to play with’. Norman Mailer, a formidable essayist, once wrote that he wanted nothing less than to effect a ‘revolution in the consciousness of [my] time’. Feminist Kate Jennings, then an undergraduate, once shouted at a public gathering that, whereas I was interested in criticism, she was interested in revolution. Yet what can writing do, other than — and if not — effect a revolution in consciousness? But there are limits to writing.

Peter Mares: ‘On September 11, I did not want to be a journalist … Journalism, for me at least, is about trying to make sense of the world. It consorts with an old-fashioned enlightenment notion, the idea that progress comes through understanding, that civilisation can advance if we clear a path through ignorance … On September 11, it seemed that rationality and reason were dead.’ Recall Mailer in the 1950s, claiming to be obliged to write in the shadow of the camps and the bomb; recall Adorno on the inheritance of Auschwitz; recall Steiner on language and silence. As the language animal, man (and woman — fourteen of this volume’s fifty contributors are women) must perforce speak and write, even if about the inexpressible. Otherwise, there are only armaments.

‘Why are we so unnerved by suicide bombers?’ asks Raimond Gaita, observing that, long before September 11, many people, especially young people, ‘already felt that in the future politics will be dominated by crises that are caused and inflamed by the shameful gap between the rich and the poor nations, aggravated sometimes by ecological crises’. And, to avoid Islam-bashing, attend to Peter Mares: ‘As Stephen King noted: “The boys who shot up Columbine High School planned to finish their day by hijacking a jetliner and flying it into — yes, that’s right — the World Trade Center”.’

Arnold Zable: ‘I am alive today because my mother was a “queue jumper”.’ John Hirst: ‘As I was walking up Martin Place, I saw a Vietnamese busker playing a didgeridoo.’ (Sounds like an updated version of a famous Les Murray poem.) These, and other crises in contemporary Australian life — consider the Ansett crash, the HIH low — lead Arnold Zable sagely to conclude: ‘More than ever, we need to maintain a sense of compassion and calm reflection.’ That is called, among other things, writing.

The first third of this collection is outstandingly strong and consistent. Then the curate’s egg appears on the plate. Peter Craven’s insufficiently agonised ‘reappraisal’ of the essay form in his Introduction is either too catholic or insufficiently critical, and this is borne out by the exceeding length of this volume. He writes that it is his intention ‘to make yet another stab at what that form can sustain if it is taken — as I think it must be — with maximum latitude to include every viable form of nonfiction’. By what is that ‘must’ guaranteed? (There is no poetry in the volume. Does this signify the death of A.D. Hope’s beloved discursive mode? Are there no verse essays anymore?)

Peter Craven trusts that the collection is ‘some kind of monument to the best of our journalism as well as our journals’. It is ‘monumental’ in an unfortunate sense: marmoreal, too massive, the product of a dilation that loses sight of the virtues of editing, where a commitment to variety loses sight of integrity, cogency, force. While very happy to see the Town vs Gown dichotomy broken down in choice of material, I seriously question whether colour-supplement journalism based on interviews constitutes essays. This volume would have been much more persuasive had it been half, or at most two-thirds, its present length. As it stands, the weaker contributions are embarrassed by the stronger, the stronger vitiated by the presence of the weaker.

The year 2001 may well have been a bumper one for the essay in Australia. The first two hundred pages of this collection patently establish this. There are strengths throughout. Richard Hall’s ‘Windschuttle Rebuttal’ is a magnificent piece of provoked and provocative writing based upon hard yakka in the State Library. I am reminded of Northrop Frye’s assertion, of the tone of which I have never been certain: ‘There are critics who spend their lives in the Public Records Office. There are others, like myself, who could not find the Public Records Office.’ I immensely respect poor Richard’s labours ‘under a sky of uncreated mud’. David Marr, doyen of journalists, yet again evinces his tone of reasoned high moral indignation. Stewart Rintoul demonstrates qualities to celebrate in Australian journalism at its best. I am moved to see that John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre yet believe that literary paradigms can serve history and civics. Margaret Scott is wonderful on ageing, offering a rebuttal of conventional wisdoms no less scholarly or trenchant than Richard Hall’s, though I am uncertain whether she realises that Cher’s ‘youth’ is a tribute to extensive plastic surgery. Clive James sets such a high standard for literary journalism that several of the lesser contributors to this volume look Lilliputian in comparison. Jim Davidson on ‘Parsifal in Adelaide’ strikes the true note of larrikin criticism, though whether this relates in any way to the second half of his contribution is open to question. The same might be said of the collocations of Mungo MacCallum, Patrick McCaughey, among others.

As well as the dilated editorial eye which begets a bloated book, there are several minor, though significant, editorial glitches. (I am writing this review from page proofs, so they may have been corrected between cup and lip.) Virginia Spate, in a printed version of a lecture, speculates: ‘If it is true that Turner liked to juxtapose certain Turners with certain Claude Lorrains, one could imagine placing certain Monets next to certain Turners.’ Doubtless one could have imagined more readily when Professor Spate was projecting slides. Colour plates were, one assumes, economically out of the question.

Paul Davies’s contribution bears comparison with Virginia Spate’s. Professor Davies, whose essay originally appeared in the Bulletin, writes apropos wormholes: ‘the details are depicted in the diagram.’ But no diagram is depicted. Then there is the curious case of Anne Summers, who asserts: ‘One of John Howard’s first acts as prime minister was to abolish the “Keatings”, the Creative Fellowships that had enabled established and usually impoverished [sic] artists to work for two or three years without financial anxiety. … (The Emeritus Scheme which has in some ways replaced the Keatings, is less generous.)’ But the Emeritus Fellowship scheme was established by the Literature Board of the Australia Council in 1979. Literary Pensioners (in existence for most of the century), or Emeritus Fellows since 1973, have included Marjorie Barnard, Dorothy Green and Christina Stead. (See Tom Shapcott, The Literature Board: A Brief History, 1988.) Now Dr Summers is a busy woman, but surely her editor, particularly one as conversant with Australian literary life as Mr Craven, ought to have picked up on this.

There is a peculiar absence from this anthology. There is no humorous writing. Whatever has happened to the Australian sense of humour, or does Mr Craven lack one? Guy Rundle and Mungo MacCallum are here, but as sobersides. Imre Salusinszky is rumoured to be a satirist, but may be alone in finding himself funny; anyway, he is here in hagiographic mode. Where are Patrick Cook, Don Watson, John Clarke, Flacco, Roy and H.G.? If colour-supplement journalism constitutes essay writing, then their scripts certainly do. There are, however, many bons mots, coined or reported, and perhaps these are peculiarly appropriate to discursive, argumentative prose. ‘Good government is no substitute for self-government.’ (Ben Chifley quoting Campbell-Bannerman.) ‘The Confederate flag is the Swastika of slavery.’ (Patrick McCaughey.) ‘To die before forty shows great consideration for your biographer.’ (Peter Robb.) ‘It is the professional curse of historians, that they shall grope through many dark paths and read many worthless books.’ (Edmund Campion quoting Lord Acton.)

The Best Australian Essays 2001 is by no means a worthless book, but it is a flawed one. This is not an essay; this is a review.