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Absolutely Revolting

April 1994, no. 159

Welcome to the April 1994 issue of Australian Book Review!

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David Gilbey reviews New and Selected Poems 1945-1993 by David Rowbotham
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Contents Category: Poems
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Article Title: The age of vigilance
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... Be tough
And dream. It's your only chance.
Imagination precedes fact.

Born in Toowoomba in 1924 and serving in the RAAF in the Second World War, David Rowbotham has produced nine books of poems, four of prose (stories, novel, monograph), worked collaboratively on an autobiography while employed at the Brisbane Courier Mail for thirty­two years, partly as the arts editor and partly as founding literary editor.
Book 1 Title: New and Selected Poems 1945-1993
Book Author: David Rowbotham
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $16.95 pb
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... Be tough
And dream. It's your only chance.
Imagination precedes fact.

Born in Toowoomba in 1924 and serving in the RAAF in the Second World War, David Rowbotham has produced nine books of poems, four of prose (stories, novel, monograph), worked collaboratively on an autobiography while employed at the Brisbane Courier Mail for thirty­two years, partly as the arts editor and partly as founding literary editor.

Read more: David Gilbey reviews 'New and Selected Poems 1945-1993' by David Rowbotham

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Bronte Adams reviews Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture by John Carroll
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Contents Category: Philosophy
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When Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth appeared in Britain, British feminists asked, ‘where has Naomi Wolf been for the last 20 years?’ The same question might well be asked of John Carroll. His assessment of humanism seems imperiously oblivious to structuralist and poststructuralist critiques of the humanist edifice.
Book 1 Title: Humanism
Book 1 Subtitle: The Wreck of Western Culture
Book Author: John Carroll
Book 1 Biblio: Fontana Press, $16.95pb
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When Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth appeared in Britain, British feminists asked, ‘where has Naomi Wolf been for the last 20 years?’ The same question might well be asked of John Carroll. His assessment of humanism seems imperiously oblivious to structuralist and poststructuralist critiques of the humanist edifice.

Read more: Bronte Adams reviews 'Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture' by John Carroll

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Contents Category: Commentary
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Despite the protestations of my close friends I choose to regard myself as a normal person. Only at certain times of the year do I realise how tenuous are my links with the mundane world.

One of these trou­blesome occasions is when I prepare my income tax form.
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Despite the protestations of my close friends I choose to regard myself as a normal person. Only at certain times of the year do I realise how tenuous are my links with the mundane world.

One of these trou­blesome occasions is when I prepare my income tax form.

Read more: 'Poems against economics' by Laurie Duggan

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Mark O’Flynn reviews Dispossessed by Philip Hodgins
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Contents Category: Australian Poetry
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With unsentimental compassion and irony, Dispossessed tackles the weighty topic of the rural crisis. In a sense the title of Phillip Hodgins’s verse novella gives too much away, casting a deliberate shadow over all that follows. Yet the manner in which Hodgins spins his yam is constantly engaging.
Book 1 Title: Dispossessed
Book Author: Philip Hodgins
Book 1 Biblio: A&R, $14.95pb
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With unsentimental compassion and irony, Dispossessed tackles the weighty topic of the rural crisis. In a sense the title of Phillip Hodgins’s verse novella gives too much away, casting a deliberate shadow over all that follows. Yet the manner in which Hodgins spins his yam is constantly engaging.

Read more: Mark O’Flynn reviews 'Dispossessed' by Philip Hodgins

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At the end of the march by Dorothy Hewett
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Contents Category: Biography
Custom Article Title: At the end of the march
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Article Title: At the end of the march
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His extract from the 1940 New Zealand Police Gazette reproduced on the back cover of this splendidly designed biography acts as a striking metaphor for the life and times of Noel Counihan, artist and revolutionary.
Book 1 Title: Noel Counihan
Book Author: Bernard Smith
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $59.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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On the 28th ultimo, a warrant under the Undesirable Immigrants Exclusion Act, was issued by the Attorney General for the arrest of Noel Jack Counihan pending his deportation to Australia. Description: Age about thirty, height 5ft. 10in., native of Australia, slight build, dark-brown hair, thin features: usually well-dressed in a navy-blue suit; sometimes draws caricature sketches for newspapers; he is a very active member of the Peace and Anti-conscription Council in Wellington, and is also actively associated with the Communist Party. He was recently married to Treasur Edwards, and it is thought that they may endeavour to leave New Zealand.

His extract from the 1940 New Zealand Police Gazette reproduced on the back cover of this splendidly designed biography acts as a striking metaphor for the life and times of Noel Counihan, artist and revolutionary. The subtitle encapsulates the story for, unlike most Australian artists, Counihan was both artist and active political revolutionary and in the story of his life it is impossible to separate the two. In Bernard Smith, art critic and historian, he has found the perfect biographer, both sympathetic to his point of view as an artist and a man but with a comprehensive critical understanding of the limitations and strengths of that ideology. It is a valuable biography illuminating a turbulent time not from the more fashionable viewpoint of the Modernists collected around their patrons, the Reeds of Heide, but from the vantage point of the Marxists and the Realists.

Read more: 'At the end of the march' by Dorothy Hewett

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