Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Skip to main content
Absolutely Revolting

December 1997–January 1998, no. 197

Welcome to the December 1997–January 1998 issue of Australian Book Review.

Subscribe
Buy this issue
Read the facsimile edition
Guy Rundle reviews Remaking Men: The revolution in masculinity by David Tacey
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Society
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: Men and Myth
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

Whatever happened to the men’s movement? Was it only a few years ago that we all gathered in the Dandenongs to bang drums, fashion spears, and – I quote from a flier advertising one such event – hug all night in ‘greased cuddle piles’. Now the tribes of management consultants, computer programmers and, well, wimps have retreated from view (to the chagrin of stand-up comedians everywhere) and the copies of Iron John litter the twenty cent tables of the second-hand bookstores.
Book 1 Title: Remaking Men
Book 1 Subtitle: The revolution in masculinity
Book Author: David Tacey
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $19.95 pb., 222 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/DVrJZ2
Display Review Rating: No

Whatever happened to the men’s movement? Was it only a few years ago that we all gathered in the Dandenongs to bang drums, fashion spears, and – I quote from a flier advertising one such event – hug all night in ‘greased cuddle piles’. Now the tribes of management consultants, computer programmers and, well, wimps have retreated from view (to the chagrin of stand-up comedians everywhere) and the copies of Iron John litter the twenty cent tables of the second-hand bookstores.

Read more: Guy Rundle reviews 'Remaking Men: The revolution in masculinity' by David Tacey

Write comment (0 Comments)
Peter Pierce reviews Lines of Fire: Manning Clark and Other Writings by Peter Ryan
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Selected Writing
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

This collection of Peter Ryan’s writings, Lines of Fire, is no grab-bag of oddments. The pieces included here are given an impressive unity by the author’s imposition of his presence, by his trenchancy, elegance of expression, a desire to honour the men and women of his younger days and to excoriate a present Australia in which too many people wallow in ‘an unwholesome masochistic guilt’. The finely designed cover shows a wry, ageing, wrinkled Ryan smiling benignly over his own shoulder, or rather that of his younger self, in uniform, in late teenage, during the Second World War. What happened in between is richly revealed in the elements of Lines of Fire.
Book 1 Title: Lines of Fire
Book 1 Subtitle: Manning Clark and Other Writings
Book Author: Peter Ryan
Book 1 Biblio: Clarion Editions, $19.95 pb, 256 pp
Display Review Rating: No

This collection of Peter Ryan’s writings, Lines of Fire, is no grab-bag of oddments. The pieces included here are given an impressive unity by the author’s imposition of his presence, by his trenchancy, elegance of expression, a desire to honour the men and women of his younger days and to excoriate a present Australia in which too many people wallow in ‘an unwholesome masochistic guilt’. The finely designed cover shows a wry, ageing, wrinkled Ryan smiling benignly over his own shoulder, or rather that of his younger self, in uniform, in late teenage, during the Second World War. What happened in between is richly revealed in the elements of Lines of Fire.

Read more: Peter Pierce reviews 'Lines of Fire: Manning Clark and Other Writings' by Peter Ryan

Write comment (0 Comments)
Jenna Mead reviews Greer, Untamed Shrew by Christine Wallace
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Biography
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

Christine Wallace’s book, in twelve chapters, is actually two books. Chapters 1-7 deal with Greer’s childhood and family, secondary and university education including MA and PhD theses, her sexual history and engagement with the counterculture in Britain which pivots around writing for Oz, her career as a groupie and membership of the Suck editorial team. Events are arranged chronologically but it’s often hard to work out the date (and thus Greer’s age), whether she’s in Melbourne or Sydney and, since the chapters are of very different lengths, how much has been included or omitted.
Book 1 Title: Greer, Untamed Shrew
Book Author: Christine Wallace
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $35 hb, 386 pp
Display Review Rating: No

Christine Wallace’s book, in twelve chapters, is actually two books. Chapters 1-7 deal with Greer’s childhood and family, secondary and university education including MA and PhD theses, her sexual history and engagement with the counterculture in Britain which pivots around writing for Oz, her career as a groupie and membership of the Suck editorial team. Events are arranged chronologically but it’s often hard to work out the date (and thus Greer’s age), whether she’s in Melbourne or Sydney and, since the chapters are of very different lengths, how much has been included or omitted.

At page 78 the genesis of The Female Eunuch is set out and the book shifts in style and orientation. The remaining five chapters deal with the first famous book and a number, but not all, of Greer’s subsequent output as a polemical and academic writer counterpointed against her realisation of her own infertility, the onset of menopause, recurrent depression and a truly consummate ability to deal with the media. These chapters return to The Female Eunuch as though returning to the scene of the crime.

Read more: Jenna Mead reviews 'Greer, Untamed Shrew' by Christine Wallace

Write comment (0 Comments)
Cathrine Harboe-Ree reviews Fellow Passengers: Collected stories by Elizabeth Jolley
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Short Stories
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

Elizabeth Jolley is quoted in this volume saying that ‘Writing for me is a ragged and restless activity with scattered fragments to be pieced together rather like a patchwork quilt.’ To a degree this is an apt metaphor, suggesting as it does careful attention to the particular and the gradual accumulation of the discrete parts into a whole. It also suggests the contrast between light and dark that is the feature of many quilts and of Jolley’s writing. However, patchwork is altogether too domestic an activity to contain the driving intelligence and iconoclasm that are dominant elements in Jolley’ s work.
Book 1 Title: Fellow Passengers
Book 1 Subtitle: Collected stories
Book Author: Elizabeth Jolley
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $16.95 pb, 371 pp
Display Review Rating: No

Elizabeth Jolley is quoted in this volume saying that ‘Writing for me is a ragged and restless activity with scattered fragments to be pieced together rather like a patchwork quilt.’ To a degree this is an apt metaphor, suggesting as it does careful attention to the particular and the gradual accumulation of the discrete parts into a whole. It also suggests the contrast between light and dark that is the feature of many quilts and of Jolley’s writing. However, patchwork is altogether too domestic an activity to contain the driving intelligence and iconoclasm that are dominant elements in Jolley’ s work.

A more helpful metaphor, which was suggested by Helen Daniel in Liars, is that of Jolley’s literary offering being one extended fugue, made up of constant and varying parts, a collection of contrapuntal treatments of the fundamental themes, and accommodating the parody and humour that this form of music allows.

Read more: Cathrine Harboe-Ree reviews 'Fellow Passengers: Collected stories' by Elizabeth Jolley

Write comment (0 Comments)
Carmel Bird reviews Collected Stories by Thea Astley
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Short Stories
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

One of the principal characters in much of Thea Astley’s writing is Queensland. ‘An intransigent fecundity dominated two shacks which were cringing beneath banana clumps, passion-vines, granadillas.’ There’s a lot of sad poetry about the place; and the distances that separate us, I mean the physical distances, are like verse-breaks in a ballad; and once, once we believed the ballad might never end but go on accumulating its chapters of epic while the refrain, the almost unwordable quality that mortises us together, retained its singular soul. How express the tears of search?
Display Review Rating: No

One of the principal characters in much of Thea Astley’s writing is Queensland. ‘An intransigent fecundity dominated two shacks which were cringing beneath banana clumps, passion-vines, granadillas.’

There’s a lot of sad poetry about the place; and the distances that separate us, I mean the physical distances, are like verse-breaks in a ballad; and once, once we believed the ballad might never end but go on accumulating its chapters of epic while the refrain, the almost unwordable quality that mortises us together, retained its singular soul. How express the tears of search?

Read more: Carmel Bird reviews 'Collected Stories' by Thea Astley

Write comment (0 Comments)

More Articles ...