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Absolutely Revolting

April 1996, no. 179

Tina Muncaster reviews ‘Love Takes You Home’ by Julie Capaldo and ‘Eating Out and Other Stories’ by Natalie Scott
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Edges Melt Away
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Fact or fiction, cookbook or novel, the recipe is a unique discourse, embedded within other discourses, with its own narrative relationships with those discourses. The giving of a recipe is important, as is the sharing or, indeed, the unauthorised acquisition. The author of the recipe is equally important, as is the response elicited by the author for that which is desired. It is a social exchange, above all; some would say one that is exclusively feminine, but not necessarily so for Julie Capaldo in her first novel, Love Takes You Home.
Book 1 Title: Love Takes You Home
Book Author: Julie Capaldo
Book 1 Biblio: Reed Books, $14.95 pb, 240 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Fact or fiction, cookbook or novel, the recipe is a unique discourse, embedded within other discourses, with its own narrative relationships with those discourses. The giving of a recipe is important, as is the sharing or, indeed, the unauthorised acquisition. The author of the recipe is equally important, as is the response elicited by the author for that which is desired. It is a social exchange, above all; some would say one that is exclusively feminine, but not necessarily so for Julie Capaldo in her first novel, Love Takes You Home.

Read more: Tina Muncaster reviews ‘Love Takes You Home’ by Julie Capaldo and ‘Eating Out and Other Stories’...

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Thérèse Radic reviews Playing the Past, edited by Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg, The Gap by Anna Broinowski, and The History of Water by Noëlle Janaczewska
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Contents Category: Theatre
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Article Title: Five plays by women
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Katherine Brisbane’s Currency Press is the major play-publishing house in the country and no stranger to the snap-freeze process of producing program play texts by women as well as men. The women have a fair representation in Currency’s general range, but they proliferate in the Current Theatre Series, those pre-first production texts so impossible to follow up with the writer’s post-natal reconsiderations.
Book 1 Title: Playing the Past
Book Author: Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg
Book 1 Biblio: Currency, $10 pb, 54 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 2 Title: The History of Water
Book 2 Author: Noëlle Janaczewska
Book 2 Biblio: Currency, $14.95 pb, 56 pp
Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
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Katherine Brisbane’s Currency Press is the major play-publishing house in the country and no stranger to the snap-freeze process of producing program play texts by women as well as men. The women have a fair representation in Currency’s general range, but they proliferate in the Current Theatre Series, those pre-first production texts so impossible to follow up with the writer’s post-natal reconsiderations.

Read more: Thérèse Radic reviews 'Playing the Past', edited by Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg, 'The Gap' by Anna...

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Essay Collection
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Article Title: Debasing Debate
Article Subtitle: Hugh Mackay’s Rebuttal of Richard Hall
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Richard Hall, in ‘Debasing Debate: The Language of the Bland’, had neither the grace nor the courtesy to contact me when preparing his essay on ‘the language, methods and findings’ of The Mackay Report. Had he done so, I might have been able to caution him against publishing such false and misleading material. I could certainly have asked him to correct several errors of fact but, more importantly, I could have alerted him to the many misconceptions, misrepresentations, and untruths in his article which would inevitably destroy any value it might otherwise have.
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Richard Hall, in ‘Debasing Debate: The Language of the Bland’, had neither the grace nor the courtesy to contact me when preparing his essay on ‘the language, methods and findings’ of The Mackay Report. Had he done so, I might have been able to caution him against publishing such false and misleading material. I could certainly have asked him to correct several errors of fact but, more importantly, I could have alerted him to the many misconceptions, misrepresentations, and untruths in his article which would inevitably destroy any value it might otherwise have.

Read more: Debasing Debate: Hugh Mackay’s Rebuttal of Richard Hall

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Editorial
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Article Title: Editorial
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In this issue, Hugh Mackay replies to Richard Hall’s essay in last month’s issue and his reply is printed here in full, unedited, at his insistence – which was communicated to me by his lawyers. As a matter of principle, of course, ABR offers right of reply, which is indeed a regular feature of the magazine, most commonly through the letters to the editor. On this occasion, given Hugh Mackay’s insistence, ABR includes his 3,300-word reply as a special feature.

In his reply, which he calls a ‘rebuttal’, Hugh Mackay points out that The Mackay Reports are not ‘books’ and therefore wonders ‘why they got a run in ABR’. I am interested that Hugh Mackay appears puzzled that matters not in ‘book’ form should come into the domain of ABR.
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In this issue, Hugh Mackay replies to Richard Hall’s essay in last month’s issue and his reply is printed here in full, unedited, at his insistence – which was communicated to me by his lawyers. As a matter of principle, of course, ABR offers right of reply, which is indeed a regular feature of the magazine, most commonly through the letters to the editor. On this occasion, given Hugh Mackay’s insistence, ABR includes his 3,300-word reply as a special feature.

In his reply, which he calls a ‘rebuttal’, Hugh Mackay points out that The Mackay Reports are not ‘books’ and therefore wonders ‘why they got a run in ABR’. I am interested that Hugh Mackay appears puzzled that matters not in ‘book’ form should come into the domain of ABR.

Read more: 'Editorial' by Helen Daniel

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Andrew Peek reviews The Sunken Road by Garry Disher
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Contents Category: Fiction
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The Sunken Road is an ambitious novel which sets the crisscrossing lives of families in the northern highlands of South Australia against a temporal panorama of a century and a half and forces that extend far beyond state and continent. It is a compassionate but never sentimental account of a collective experience full of hope, pain, exploitation and double standards. At its centre is a strongly rendered character called Anna Antonia Ison Tolley.
Book 1 Title: The Sunken Road
Book Author: Garry Disher
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $19.95 pb, 224 pp
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The Sunken Road is an ambitious novel which sets the crisscrossing lives of families in the northern highlands of South Australia against a temporal panorama of a century and a half and forces that extend far beyond state and continent. It is a compassionate but never sentimental account of a collective experience full of hope, pain, exploitation and double standards. At its centre is a strongly rendered character called Anna Antonia Ison Tolley.

Read more: Andrew Peek reviews 'The Sunken Road' by Garry Disher

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