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Absolutely Revolting

March 1989, no. 108

Welcome to the March 1989 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Dennis Altman reviews Down Home: Revisiting Tasmania by Peter Conrad
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Back in 1964 before I left the University of Tasmania, Amanda Howard (now Lohrey) introduced me to a serious, nondescript first-year student who, she told me, would go far. Twenty years later Peter Conrad is a Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and author of a number of well-regarded books on literature, opera, and television, with a reputation established on both sides of the Atlantic.
Book 1 Title: Down Home
Book 1 Subtitle: Revisiting Tasmania
Book Author: Peter Conrad
Book 1 Biblio: Chatto & Windus
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Back in 1964 before I left the University of Tasmania, Amanda Howard (now Lohrey) introduced me to a serious, nondescript first-year student who, she told me, would go far. Twenty years later Peter Conrad is a Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and author of a number of well-regarded books on literature, opera, and television, with a reputation established on both sides of the Atlantic.

Down Home is Conrad’s record of a visit back to Tasmania to explore his own identity through a better understanding of the place from where he came. It contains some of the best descriptive writing to have come out of Australia; the Oxford don writes like a poet when seeking to describe the island. Even the disinterested reader who has no first-hand knowledge of Tasmania could read this book for the sheer pleasure of the language.

Read more: Dennis Altman reviews 'Down Home: Revisiting Tasmania' by Peter Conrad

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Helen Daniel reviews Under Saturn by Michael Wilding
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Often collections of stories seem to me idle gatherings of chance acquaintances, sometimes uneasy with their companions. While the random can offer pleasures of its own, it can mean narrow-minded stories offended by their wilder and noisier neighbours, together a matter of squabble and disharmony. The four long stories that comprise Michael Wilding’s new work, Under Saturn, have instead a creative discord. Each one is self-contained, yet the movement of counterpoint among the four brings to Under Saturn the unity of a single composition, a quartet of variations on a theme.
Book 1 Title: Under Saturn
Book Author: Michael Wilding
Book 1 Biblio: Black Swan, 239 pp, $12.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Often collections of stories seem to me idle gatherings of chance acquaintances, sometimes uneasy with their companions. While the random can offer pleasures of its own, it can mean narrow-minded stories offended by their wilder and noisier neighbours, together a matter of squabble and disharmony. The four long stories that comprise Michael Wilding’s new work, Under Saturn, have instead a creative discord. Each one is self-contained, yet the movement of counterpoint among the four brings to Under Saturn the unity of a single composition, a quartet of variations on a theme.

Read more: Helen Daniel reviews 'Under Saturn' by Michael Wilding

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John Macgregor reviews Memoirs of an Old Bastard by Jack Hibberd
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Contents Category: Memoir
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There’s nothing wrong with the idea of an affectionate look at Melbourne through the eyes of a drunken, literate, old member of its Establishment. There should, theoretically, be nothing wrong with the countless surreal situations which this takes us through in an effort to elucidate the soul of Australia’s most endearing city. There’s nothing wrong with a lost daughter sub-plot. There probably is something wrong with dragging in literati under such pseudonyms as F. Rank Morguehouse, Halloween Gurner, and Bob L. Arse – especially to those and of who believe Australian literature to be masturbatory enough already. But this element is merely a grain of sand against the reader’s neck. It is the whole uncomfortable yoke we must examine.
Book 1 Title: Memoirs of an Old Bastard
Book Author: Jack Hibberd
Book 1 Biblio: McPhee Gribble, 212 pp, $29.99 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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I tend to assess according to Australian literature according to four cruel criteria:

  1. Was it worth writing?
  2. Was it worth publishing?
  3. Is it worth reading?
  4. Is it worth reviewing?

Many books slip past criterion 1: getting a book out of the system can bring the ex-adman, single mother, or jaded journo – addled with years of quixotic literary imaginings – into a useful contact with exterior reality. But not many, in my estimation, get past criterion number 2. Memoirs of an Old Bastard, though written by one of our most distinguished playwrights, is no exception.

Read more: John Macgregor reviews 'Memoirs of an Old Bastard' by Jack Hibberd

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