Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Skip to main content
Absolutely Revolting

August 1988, no. 103

Welcome to the August 1988 issue of Australian Book Review!

Subscribe
Buy this issue
Read the facsimile edition
Richard White reviews A Nation at Last? The changing character of Australian nationalism 1880–1988 by Stephen Alomes
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Australian History
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: The question of a national identity
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

The dilemma for confessedly nationalist intellectuals has always been what to do about their strange bed-fellows, the scoundrels who have sought a last refuge under the same patriotic blanket. Generally they have distanced themselves with glib distinctions between good and bad nationalisms, left and right nationalisms, radical and conservative and larrikin and respectable nationalisms. Often, too, they looked back – radicals to the 1890s, conservatives to the Great War – and contrasted an idealised past nationalism with contemporary selfishness. How often does discussion of Australian nationalism not get past the 1890s?
Book 1 Title: A Nation At Last?
Book 1 Subtitle: The changing character of Australian nationalism 1880–1988
Book Author: Stephen Alomes
Book 1 Biblio: Angus and Robertson, $24.95 pb, 408 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Display Review Rating: No

The dilemma for confessedly nationalist intellectuals has always been what to do about their strange bed-fellows, the scoundrels who have sought a last refuge under the same patriotic blanket. Generally they have distanced themselves with glib distinctions between good and bad nationalisms, left and right nationalisms, radical and conservative and larrikin and respectable nationalisms. Often, too, they looked back – radicals to the 1890s, conservatives to the Great War – and contrasted an idealised past nationalism with contemporary selfishness. How often does discussion of Australian nationalism not get past the 1890s?

Read more: Richard White reviews 'A Nation at Last? The changing character of Australian nationalism...

Write comment (0 Comments)
Sue Murray reviews Big-noting: the heroic theme in Australian war writing by Robin Gerster
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Literary Studies
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: Mythology in the making
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

At a time when critics are becoming increasingly interested in Australia’s war literature, Robin Gerster turns to it for an understanding of how national legends are created and perpetuated.
Book 1 Title: Big-noting
Book 1 Subtitle: The heroic theme in Australian war writing
Book Author: Robin Gerster
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, $34.95 hb, 294 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Display Review Rating: No

At a time when critics are becoming increasingly interested in Australia’s war literature Robin Gerster turns to it for an understanding of how national legends are created and perpetuated.

With World War I, European and English writers recognized that the development of technology in weaponry and munitions enabled military bureaucrats to destroy on a dimension never before envisaged. The historical concept of dying for the honour and glory of one’s country was abandoned in literature about ‘the common soldier’ where the individual was seen as passive rather than active, a victim rather than a hero. Australian writing was also anti-war but the individual was given a heroic dimension. He too was a victim but his individuality, his Australianness, was celebrated. The collective result is a literature which, if not actually propagandist in tone, is the stuff from which mythologies are made.

Read more: Sue Murray reviews 'Big-noting: the heroic theme in Australian war writing' by Robin Gerster

Write comment (0 Comments)
D.J. OHearn reviews The Motorcycle Café by Mathew Condon
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Fiction
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: Of bikies and the soul
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

All those years ago when the Literature Board was set up and given a moderate budget, taking over the excellent work of the Commonwealth Literature Fund, many sceptics expressed doubt that our small nation had enough spread of writing talent to warrant what they considered excessive expenditure on books and writers. The record stands for itself and, even if we consider only the established writers who have so far showered us with their works in the 1970s and 1980s, the scheme must be reckoned highly successful. The wonder is, however, that each year new writers spring up with works of high quality as though talent has bred talent or we have established a cultural climate which has allowed the muse ample room to breathe and take flight. Who had heard of Kate Grenville five years ago, Rod Jones or John Sligo three years ago, or Mark Henshaw before April of this year?
Book 1 Title: The Motorcycle Café
Book Author: Mathew Condon
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $10.95 pb, 170 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Display Review Rating: No

All those years ago when the Literature Board was set up and given a moderate budget, taking over the excellent work of the Commonwealth Literature Fund, many sceptics expressed doubt that our small nation had enough spread of writing talent to warrant what they considered excessive expenditure on books and writers. The record stands for itself and, even if we consider only the established writers who have so far showered us with their works in the 1970s and 1980s, the scheme must be reckoned highly successful. The wonder is, however, that each year new writers spring up with works of high quality as though talent has bred talent or we have established a cultural climate which has allowed the muse ample room to breathe and take flight. Who had heard of Kate Grenville five years ago, Rod Jones or John Sligo three years ago, or Mark Henshaw before April of this year?

Read more: D.J. O'Hearn reviews 'The Motorcycle Café' by Mathew Condon

Write comment (0 Comments)
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Anthology
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: A bicentennial offering
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

Although this is not the first selection of Greek-Australia literary works to be published in book form – George Kanarakis’s Logotechniki parousia ton Ellinon stin Australia (1985), which was recently published in English as Greek Voices in Australia: A Tradition of Prose, Poetry and Drama, lays claim to this honour – the introduction to Reflections does claim that it represents the ‘first attempt to select, to choose, to say these (Greek-Australian works) … have quality’, ‘these are significant as works of literature’. In contrast, it is argued that Kanarakis’s collection is ‘not an anthology in the normal sense’ because Kanarakis’s aim was to present a sample of the work of all the authors who can be considered Greek-Australian.
Book 1 Title: Reflections
Book 1 Subtitle: Selected works from Greek-Australian literature
Book Author: Thanasis Spilias and Stavros Messinis
Book 1 Biblio: Elikia Books, $13.95 pb, 292pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Display Review Rating: No

Although this is not the first selection of Greek-Australia literary works to be published in book form – George Kanarakis’s Logotechniki parousia ton Ellinon stin Australia (1985), which was recently published in English as Greek Voices in Australia: A Tradition of Prose, Poetry and Drama, lays claim to this honour – the introduction to Reflections does claim that it represents the ‘first attempt to select, to choose, to say these (Greek-Australian works) … have quality’, ‘these are significant as works of literature’. In contrast, it is argued that Kanarakis’s collection is ‘not an anthology in the normal sense’ because Kanarakis’s aim was to present a sample of the work of all the authors who can be considered Greek-Australian.

Read more: Pavlos Andronikos reviews 'Reflections: Selected works from Greek-Australian literature', edited...

Write comment (0 Comments)
Inez Baranay reviews Fox by Bruce Pascoe
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Fiction
Custom Article Title: Inez Baranay reviews 'Fox' by Bruce Pascoe
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: Enigma and Aboriginality
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

It opens with an enigmatic statement – ‘It might take two hundred years’ – (what might?) – and then presents an enigmatic situation. Amidst Australian bush images and scraps of Aboriginal sounding stories, there is someone called Fox wandering around.

Fox, we soon learn, is a young chap called Jim Fox who is making a mysterious trip to Sydney from a farm he once lived on somewhere up the Murray.

He’d expected to be able to just go to places and remain anonymous, for people to just accept his presence as easily as he did theirs, with only the questions which could be answered by your own observations.

He was wrong, of course. People do ask him where he’s from and where he’s headed for and why he’s going there. Fox never says much, but no one minds; people only say affectionately ‘you’re a strange bugger, Fox’ and buy him beers, and give him rides, jobs, money, places to stay, and all the best advice they know.
Book 1 Title: Fox
Book Author: Bruce Pascoe
Book 1 Biblio: McPhee Gribble, $11.95 pb, 167 pp
Display Review Rating: No

It opens with an enigmatic statement – ‘It might take two hundred years’ – (what might?) – and then presents an enigmatic situation. Amidst Australian bush images and scraps of Aboriginal sounding stories, there is someone called Fox wandering around.

Fox, we soon learn, is a young chap called Jim Fox who is making a mysterious trip to Sydney from a farm he once lived on somewhere up the Murray.

He’d expected to be able to just go to places and remain anonymous, for people to just accept his presence as easily as he did theirs, with only the questions which could be answered by your own observations.

He was wrong, of course. People do ask him where he’s from and where he’s headed for and why he’s going there. Fox never says much, but no one minds; people only say affectionately ‘you’re a strange bugger, Fox’ and buy him beers, and give him rides, jobs, money, places to stay, and all the best advice they know.

Read more: Inez Baranay reviews 'Fox' by Bruce Pascoe

Write comment (0 Comments)

More Articles ...