Especially grotesque is the spectacle of an older generation of writers, dramatists, and broadsheet columnists that possesses enormous journalistic, intellectual, and literary power bellowing that it is being silenced by the young, postmodernism, and feminism. A generation – my generation – most of whose media commentators are sadly ageing so gracelessly, terrified of an idea, incapable of responding to the new, striking out against anyone, especially the young whom they exclude, and anything, especially new cultural theory they are pathetically incapable of understanding. A generation of media pundits notable for its insensitivity, lack of generosity, lack of any desire to encourage, lack of delight that the young might be different. All infused by fearful, unrecognised, sexual jealousy.

Now these emperors have been shown shivering in the winds of change, we might seize the moment and create a public culture more plural, diverse, heterogeneous, surprising.

John Docker works at the Humanities Research Centre, ANU.

Don Anderson

Let’s hear it for Laius! I enjoy a good piece of Oedipal Politics as much as the next chap, but Mark Davis’ generational account of Australian Cultural Mafia is so confused, illiterate, and downright silly as to provoke me to take out a subscription to The Oldie. And speaking of Mafia, as one man’s Gangster is another’s Culture-Hero, I plan to stick to Gatekeepers.

Gangland begins: ‘Has an older generation of cultural apparatchiks … set out to discredit young people and their ideas … ?’ Though the answer is ‘No!’, and the book might profitably have ended there, the avid Mr Davis claims: ‘Often it seems the case’, and cites, inter alia, ‘the editors of a student newspaper being prosecuted for publishing an article on shoplifting’.

Leave aside that the article in Rabelais was not merely ‘on’ shoplifting, but commended it as a social action and offered detailed ‘How-To’ information. Let us attend, rather, to that fifty per cent of the ‘expert witnesses’ from the ‘literary culture’ who submitted statements on behalf of the editors of Rabelais to the Classification Review Board last June – Literature Fund Chair Edmund Campion (born 1932), former Literature Board Chair Tom Shapcott (1935), broadcaster Terry Lane (1939), publisher Richard Walsh (1941), editor Morag Fraser (a gentle man doesn’t enquire, but she is included in Gangland’s ‘over-40’ villains), and yours truly (1939).

The point, simply, is that one of the responsibilities of an older, ‘empowered’ generation is to come to the aid of their youngers and betters when the occasion arises. That is why those born after 1965 ask us oldies to recommend their books to publishers, launch their books, review their books, provide blurbs for their books et cetera. That is why Gangland might have ended before it began. Gatekeepers are not merely Cerberean; they may also be benignly welcoming. QED.

 Don Anderson is a columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and writes regularly for 24 Hours.

McKenzie Wark

Of course there are gangs and gatekeepers in public intellectual and cultural life. Anything based on the circulation of opinion will tend to generate clumps of like-mindedness, and filterers charged with meting out scarce space between minds. The questions of the moment are whether some of our current crop of gangs have been out in the public sun too long, and whether our current run of gatekeepers is really up to the job.

I belong to that emerging gang that believes it’s high time to call some of the old gangs on some of their self-indulgence and lazy-mindedness. Readers can judge the merits of those charges for themselves – provided we have gatekeepers who can allot space fairly and intelligently between claims and counter-claims. This we lack. The result is that opinion is turning as much against out of touch gatekeepers as it is against brain-dead old gangs.

Standards have improved. Having written one good book or edited one fashionable magazine twenty years ago is no longer necessarily an everlasting qualification. Not everyone holds their place in public life forever. Opinions change. Tastes change. The passing of a few literary and intellectual fads from the recent fast is not the end of Western civilisation. It is, on the contrary, its ongoing renewal.

McKenzie Wark’s most recent book is The Virtual Republic (Allen & Unwin), reviewed by Gerard Windsor in this issue.

Kathy Bail

Trying to assign particular values to generational camps creates as many exceptions as rules. I regard some of the people on Davis’ hit list of gatekeepers as mentors who have given me great support as a writer and editor. But it is constructive to draw distinctions between the ways that different groups create and consume culture.

My interest is mainly in the stories of my contemporaries. I’m turned on by their inventiveness and the way they open up new avenues. I’m not saying the cultural gatekeepers should shut up; I’m just more interested in other territories being explored.

I’ve worked with many people who are finding smart ways to use technology to create new kinds of media. They rarely look at Australian broadsheet newspapers (and take no notice of the personal rivalries of book review pages). What sets these younger writers and editors apart is their understanding of cultural production. They assume that their readers know how a publication is made and how an agenda is constructed. It represents a more general shift in attitudes to media: this generation is more likely to keep the gates open than change the locks. Thirtysomething commentators use satire and comedy to communicate their views about contemporary issues – think of Andrew Denton, Magda Szubanski, Kaz Cooke, Lisbeth Gorr, and Paul McDermott. Some of the sharpest social and political critiques are now found on television programs such as Frontline rather than in op-ed pieces.

Gangland has sparked a valuable debate, one which I’ve been looking forward to for years. At least the reaction of some old farts has given a diverse group of younger players one issue on which they can all unite. 

Kathy Bail is the former editor of Rolling Stone and is now editor of HQ.

Bernard Cohen

My first impulse was to say, no, it’s not an age thing; it’s a humanist thing. There’s space in the media for liberal humanists and conservative humanists, but only for humanists. Although disallowed ideas belong disproportionately to younger people, this exclusion is on the basis of ideology, not age. The humanist monopoly (‘bias’ is too weak a word) militates against those of us educated in the post-disciplinary humanities.

Nonetheless, my experience and that of many writers of my generation is that our licences to speak are conditional, and case by case. Davis notes that almost all regular columnists are ‘of a certain age’. Older media contributors are permitted to opine on a wider range of subjects, are allowed to speak for more people, and tend to receive the more important space in the papers.

When I have had stories accepted by mainstream media, I’ve often had to rework them towards the standard ‘strong opinion’ format. Sub-editors’ introductory paragraphs have sometimes recast the pieces to fit humanist outcomes. Most editors don’t understand the value of uncertainty or of equivocation to reflect contemporary experience of culture.

Mark Davis’ description of baby-boomer response to threats entirely predicts some columnists’ responses to Gangland. While Davis says he doesn’t want anyone excluded, one columnist – who admits, ‘I haven’t actually read his book’ – rehearses the you-have-it-better-than-we-ever-did-what-about-Vietnam? argument. Another dismisses Davis as ‘a 38-year-old Melbourne graphic designer’ whose subjects suffer from ‘Dalek syndrome’ (only wish to destroy) and have nothing to say that isn’t said by Phillip Adams.

According to the columnists, the trouble is that whingers of Davis’ ilk never come up with solutions. Here’s one: newspapers should simply list well-known commentators whose always-predictable opinions they have purchased the right to publish. Readers could skim the list and would instantly know the ‘range’ of views canvassed. Column space could then be filled with something of interest – maybe something surprising.

Bernard Cohen won The Australian/Vogel award for his novel, The Blindman’s Hat.

Virginia Trioli

Is it my own vanity or my naivety that prevents me from succumbing to the current rage against the writing establishment in Australia? Overly familiar names on our opinion pages? Of course. Same old suspects on the air waves, on the bookshelves, in the magazines? Yes – but isn’t that the natural outcome of a writing life? Notoriety, prominence, established professionalism, reliability (they can deliver what they say they will and on time) will mean that you will be called on and called on again.

Since when should the hard work, the attention to detail, and the ability to deliver become conflated with a simplistic notion of age equalling use-by date? The most difficult aspects of this anti-baby-boomer discussion rests, for me, on this almost offensively ageist point.

Some of the writers corralled in this discussion are dull and have always been dull. They have become competent at their craft and have snowed a few editors who don’t have the energy or wit to look further afield. But this goes double for the tedious music reviewers, the worn out radio presenters, and film writers I have read for the last five years and who supposedly belong to the younger-and-oppressed category. I can no more support these younger writers than I can the dreary writing of the Bettina Arndts and Paddy McGuinnesses of this constructed world.

We should be in no great hurry to storm these supposedly reinforced gates. The fate of my generation will be a bittersweet one. Whether we like it or not, we will inherit all that space, all that air time. Whether we can do anything wiser, smarter, and more intelligent with it will be our challenge. 

Virginia Trioli is a senior writer with The Age and the author of Generation F: Sex, Power and the Young Feminist (Minerva).

Andrew Riemer

Do gatekeepers dominate our culture? Of course; how could it be otherwise: could ABR survive without its editor? The real question is: how many gatekeepers and how many gates are there? According to some people, the gates will only open for ‘old farts’. Others will assure you that they are accessible only from Melbourne, or Sydney at a pinch (or the other way round if it comes to that). There are those who are convinced that the gatekeepers insist on your producing your membership card for the Labor Party – or is it the Liberals or the Democrats? All and none of these are arguable: it all depends on where you look. And besides the gatekeepers aren’t always successful (thank heavens) in keeping undesirables out. For a small and scattered population we do well enough on the whole in providing a reasonable range of opinions, points of view, and priorities.

The one thing missing, it seems to me, has little to do with gatekeepers and nothing with gangsters. It is this: with the disappearance of The Independent Monthly and Voices (with both of which I was associated at one time, I have to stress) there are significantly fewer opportunities for longer, more reflective, and non-academic cultural or literary essays. That seems to me a great pity. The 1000 word review is important as a first bite, but our culture should be able to maintain other modes of critical writing. Perhaps the real villain is the public which seems increasingly reluctant to tolerate anything but the quick grab. I’d be inclined to blame our educational system for that, but then I’ve been told more than once that I’m an old fart.

Andrew Riemer is the chief reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald.

Matthew Condon

If it were a gangster film, the control of Australian cultural and public space would be more Bugsy Malone than Goodfellas. The machine-guns fire cream pies. The big black Buicks are pedal-powered by children.

They do exist, these gangsters and gatekeepers, if you perceive their numbers and strength. They can be obstructive, if you step onto their playing field. But if you choose to ignore them, they become irrelevant, weak, powerless and, ultimately, non-existent.

The perception is that these cliques – perhaps a better description – can exclude artists from their chosen arena because they are not: of-the-right-school-or-university; sexual persuasion; café set; philosophical or political leaning; suburb/city etc. There is a perception that certain Melbourne academics and critics rule the literary scene there, that certain Sydney writers and publishers dictate the agenda there, that certain Brisbane novelists control the forum there. There is a perception that if you take a particular magazine journalist to a boozy lunch you are guaranteed page space. That if you are sycophantic to publishers at festivals and readings you are guaranteed publication. That if you are nice to critics they will be nice to you. Sometimes this happens, as in every industry. Most of the time it does not. To say there is an organised infrastructure of these gangsters and gatekeepers is simply wrong. To suggest that they control public space is ludicrous.

If you allow these transparent cliques to affect you, they will. In the end and if it is good enough, your work stands on its own and makes its way into public space accordingly. In the end, your work is the only trench-coated figure in the alley.

Matthew Condon’s most recent book is The Lulu Magnet.

John McLaren

Mark Davis’ Gangland – opinionated, provocative, exhaustively researched, polemical – is in the best traditions of the neglected art of pamphleteering. He is an Oedipus with eyes, a Samson sighted in Gaza, felling the complacent ranks of our cultural commentators and exposing the conspiracy of a generation against its juniors.

Yet the gale that blows from his pages is undiscriminating. Peter Craven is one of the elders rebuked, particularly for attacking Simon During on Patrick White, yet Simon and Peter would seem to be rocks of the same generation. As one born in the year 2684 AUC I expected to be immune from criticism, or even notice, but I find that I am cited for hostility to Christos Tsiolkas for remarking that his hero seems to lack any sense of ‘common obligation’. Davis is not interested in whether this is an accurate reading of the work, or whether it identifies the book’s indictment of the society bequeathed to the author by his elders. Similarly, he does not consider whether others who have been critical of particular members of a younger generation, such as Robert Manne or Helen Garner, may have been accurate in their criticisms. For Davis, the point is that they criticised.

Nevertheless, the book does point to a conformity among critics that has led, by way of the anti-intellectualism of the anti-theorists, and cowardice on the part of some Labor politicians, to the deadening conformity, fear, and bullying of the Howard government. Davis shows himself a critic who may help us all, of all generations, find a way out of our present mess. But only if he learns to listen.

John McLaren is a professor at VUT and former editor of Overland.

George Papaellinas

The very notion of a ‘public’ space in a late-twentieth century industrialised country such as ours that isn’t hotly contested fills me with a … disbelief, to be sure; but a very amused one. Is any fuddy-duddy out there, blissfully ignorant of a couple of centuries’ local history, actually arguing so? Is it possible to insist still that ‘public’ space is untrammelled, arcadian, and merely policed by commentators whose natural ownership rights are free to be expressed unchallenged by virtue of their natural ability to interpret such a homogeneous space naturally? In solid King’s English, naturally?

Did colonisation or immigration – the inadequately realised suppression of one culture-group by another, the importation of multiple, differently-valuing culture-groups into Australia – make no difference? Does twentieth-century monopoly capitalism – gangsterism writ large and officially – make no difference? Do cultures of class, geography, ethnos, race, gender, generation make for no impact? Do all of these value systems not contest public space?

Isn’t culture by definition the contest of public space? And if so, aren’t gates (and gatekeepers) not inevitable? The issue isn’t the Cosa – everyone holding any value would nominate one and tend the gate. The issue is how the Nostra is defined and policed, how gates are kept. Monsieur Craven’s Cosa Nostra, as demonstrated in his review of Mark Davis’ Gangland, a work which only offers that public culture is both hotly contested (i.e. multiply value-ridden) and sometimes defended as exclusive and homogeneous (i.e. not multiply value-ridden), is not to my cultural taste. I would like to contest the nature of Craven’s gangsterish gatekeeping. 

George Papaellinas was the editor of RePublica. His novel, No, was reviewed in October’s ABR.

Delia Falconer

I have certainly experienced the type of generationalist moment described by Mark Davis in Gangland. A couple of years ago at the Tasmanian Writers’ Festival, in Hobart, on a panel with Fotini Epanomitis and Justine Ettler (the ‘three chicks under thirty session’, I remember we called it, anticipating the worst), a (male) baby-boomer academic who should have known better asked us if we all shared the same ideological viewpoint because of our age and our university education. I seem to remember that we had all mentioned feminism somewhere along the line, but in different ways. I know that there was some discussion about the difficulties of writing against certain traditions of the novel, a task we had all tackled in very different styles. But the inference of the question was that contemporary ‘theory’ within the universities in monolithic, and that some mammoth effort of self-censorship had been required on our parts to stop ourselves from writing in other ways which were not marred, apparently, by ‘Ideology’.

On the other hand, while these moments occur from time to time they have been outweighed, in my experience as a younger writer, by the extraordinary generosity and support and welcome I’ve received from baby-boomers who have been eager to open gates.

While I found the naming of names in Gangland immensely enjoyable, I’m more interested, personally, in material history – in mapping the circulation of money and power through institutions. I’m also interested in tracing the ways of speaking which emerge from these institutions, and are adopted by individuals, than in the individuals themselves. And this, I think, although it has been largely ignored in the media hype, is what Gangland actually does best. For me, the most valuable aspect of the book is in the way Davis tracks the importation and circulation of the PC debates and victim feminism from overseas.

I also wonder, reading Gangland, and thinking about my own experience above, if the anti-‘youth’ generationalism which Davis identifies isn’t often a subset of the widely circulating hostility in Australia, since the 1980s, to universities and students as products of them, by gatekeepers who benefit from the ideas and audiences hungry for ideas generated in the academies at the same time as they deride them.

Delia Falconer teaches creative writing at RMIT. Her first novel, The Service of Clouds, was published this month by Picador.