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Absolutely Revolting

July 1994, no. 162

Welcome to the July 1994 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Katharine England reviews Drift by Brian Castro
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: White drifts towards black and becomes technicolour grey
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You can’t help wondering which came first for Brian Castro – the theme/structure of his new novel or the M. C. Escher woodcut reproduced on its cover. It doesn’t seem possible that such an organic match should be fortuitous, although one of Escher’s soubriquets is ‘the poet of the impossible’, and among writers Castro is a prime candidate to share the title. Now that it has been drawn to my attention it is also of course obvious that the seaside hotel in After China was built to Escher specifications.
Book 1 Title: Drift
Book Author: Brian Castro
Book 1 Biblio: WHA, $24.95hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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You can’t help wondering which came first for Brian Castro – the theme/structure of his new novel or the M. C. Escher woodcut reproduced on its cover. It doesn’t seem possible that such an organic match should be fortuitous, although one of Escher’s soubriquets is ‘the poet of the impossible’, and among writers Castro is a prime candidate to share the title. Now that it has been drawn to my attention it is also of course obvious that the seaside hotel in After China was built to Escher specifications.

Read more: Katharine England reviews 'Drift' by Brian Castro

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Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews Dark Places by Kate Grenville
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Contents Category: Fiction
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It seems like a slender connecting thread, but reading Kate Grenville’s new novel, Dark Places, reminded me of an experience I had hoped I’d forgotten: reading American Psycho. Reading stories with repellent narrators is like being left alone in a locked room with somebody you’d edge away from if you met him, or her, in a bar.
Book 1 Title: Dark Places
Book Author: Kate Grenville
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $34.95 hb
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It seems like a slender connecting thread, but reading Kate Grenville’s new novel, Dark Places, reminded me of an experience I had hoped I’d forgotten: reading American Psycho. Reading stories with repellent narrators is like being left alone in a locked room with somebody you’d edge away from if you met him, or her, in a bar.

Such stories are unsettling in the way that good satire is unsettling; for, with an unpleasant (or indeed any unreliable) narrator, the reader’s own position is repeatedly dislocated and destabilised. No coherent, controlling point of view over the material can be safely either deduced or assumed – or, as a friend of mine once complained about a movie, ‘I couldn’t figure out whose side I was supposed to be on.’ Such narratives force us to abandon the comfortable assumption that we will all, writers and readers, more or less agree on what the writing ‘means’. It doesn’t necessarily take an unreliable narrator to produce this kind of effect, either; witness the wildly differing audience responses to The Piano or, 150 years earlier, Wuthering Heights.

Read more: Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews 'Dark Places' by Kate Grenville

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Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews Doc Evatt: Patriot, Internationalist, Fighter and Scholar by Ken Buckley, Barbara Dale and Wayne Reynolds
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Contents Category: Biography
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In his foreword to Doc Evatt, Jim Hagan claims that this is the fourth full-length biography of Dr. H.V. Evatt and suggests that only one other Australian politician has scored as many. Leaving aside the fact that Allan Dalziel never pretended that his book, Evatt the Enigma, was anything more than a profile of the man he worked with for twenty years, these assertions create the misleading impression that a substantial body of literature on Evatt exists. Academics have long lamented the lack of a comprehensive and scholarly biography of one of Australia’s most important and complex judicial and political figures. The very recent appearance of Peter Crockett’s Evatt: A life, characterised by wide-ranging research but a crude psychoanalytical approach, chronic disorganisation, a weakness in the analysis of international affairs, and a lack of historical perspective, disappointed in many ways.
Book 1 Title: Doc Evatt
Book 1 Subtitle: Patriot, Internationalist, Fighter and Scholar
Book Author: Ken Buckley, Barbara Dale and Wayne Reynolds
Book 1 Biblio: Longman Cheshire, $34.95
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In his foreword to Doc Evatt, Jim Hagan claims that this is the fourth full-length biography of Dr. H.V. Evatt and suggests that only one other Australian politician has scored as many. Leaving aside the fact that Allan Dalziel never pretended that his book, Evatt the Enigma, was anything more than a profile of the man he worked with for twenty years, these assertions create the misleading impression that a substantial body of literature on Evatt exists. Academics have long lamented the lack of a comprehensive and scholarly biography of one of Australia’s most important and complex judicial and political figures. The very recent appearance of Peter Crockett’s Evatt: A life, characterised by wide-ranging research but a crude psychoanalytical approach, chronic disorganisation, a weakness in the analysis of international affairs, and a lack of historical perspective, disappointed in many ways.

Read more: Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews 'Doc Evatt: Patriot, Internationalist, Fighter and Scholar' by Ken...

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Noel King reviews Bertolt Brecht: Journals 1934–1955, edited by John Willett, translated by Hugh Rorrison
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Contents Category: Diaries
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Article Title: Brecht epicised
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Bertolt Brecht’s poem, ‘To those born later’, contains the following line: ‘For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes.’ The publication of this translation of Brecht’s Journals 1934-1955 (written in an e.e. cummings-style lower case throughout) provides an abundant fleshing out of that line, giving a detailed sense of what it meant to Brecht to be an artist in exile, denied the comforts of his culture and language, denied the possibility of seeing the plays he was writing rehearsed or run-through, a process he always regarded as the final stage of writing: ‘all the plays that have not been produced have something or other missing. no play can have the finishing touches put to it without being tried out in production.’
Book 1 Title: Bertolt Brecht
Book 1 Subtitle: Journals 1934–1955
Book Author: John Willett, translated by Hugh Rorrison
Book 1 Biblio: Methuen, $75 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Bertolt Brecht’s poem, ‘To those born later’, contains the following line: ‘For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes.’ The publication of this translation of Brecht’s Journals 1934-1955 (written in an e.e. cummings-style lower case throughout) provides an abundant fleshing out of that line, giving a detailed sense of what it meant to Brecht to be an artist in exile, denied the comforts of his culture and language, denied the possibility of seeing the plays he was writing rehearsed or run-through, a process he always regarded as the final stage of writing: ‘all the plays that have not been produced have something or other missing. no play can have the finishing touches put to it without being tried out in production.’

Read more: Noel King reviews 'Bertolt Brecht: Journals 1934–1955', edited by John Willett, translated by Hugh...

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Nancy Phelan reviews Heddy and Me by Susan Varga
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Heddy is a survivor. She is good looking, intelligent, strong, determined, businesslike, materialistic, positive, rather like those formidable Middle-European ladies who run dress shops and control their customers with a mixture of bullying and continental charm. She has tremendous vitality, guts and initiative, has taken great risks and worked hard to ensure freedom from fear and material security for herself and her family.
Book 1 Title: Heddy and Me
Book Author: Susan Varga
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $16.95 pb
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Heddy is a survivor. She is good looking, intelligent, strong, determined, businesslike, materialistic, positive, rather like those formidable Middle-European ladies who run dress shops and control their customers with a mixture of bullying and continental charm. She has tremendous vitality, guts and initiative, has taken great risks and worked hard to ensure freedom from fear and material security for herself and her family.

Read more: Nancy Phelan reviews 'Heddy and Me' by Susan Varga

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