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Absolutely Revolting

April 1981, no. 29

Welcome to the October 1983 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Jennifer Strauss reviews The Poetry of Judith Wright by Edward Walker
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: A Poet in Philosophy
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In one way, this is a book to unnerve the teaching academic: it is so eminently cribbable. As a ‘handbook’ of Wright’s poetry, it ranges widely rather than intensively, offering lucid expositions and firmly delivered judgements. If these latter are sometimes, by the nature of the book, more asserted than demonstrated, they nonetheless seem usually sound and sensible: the lines quoted from ‘The Watcher’ do indeed ‘attempt, and fail, to wrest a response from the stereotyped symbols of the matriarchate’; ‘Christmas Ballad’ is banal; Fourth Quarter does represent ‘a newer and more vigorous poetic world’ than Alive.
Book 1 Title: The Poetry of Judith Wright
Book 1 Subtitle: A search for unity
Book Author: Shirley Walker
Book 1 Biblio: Edward Arnold $14.95 pb, 194 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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In one way, this is a book to unnerve the teaching academic: it is so eminently cribbable. As a ‘handbook’ of Wright’s poetry, it ranges widely rather than intensively, offering lucid expositions and firmly delivered judgements. If these latter are sometimes, by the nature of the book, more asserted than demonstrated, they nonetheless seem usually sound and sensible: the lines quoted from ‘The Watcher’ do indeed ‘attempt, and fail, to wrest a response from the stereotyped symbols of the matriarchate’; ‘Christmas Ballad’ is banal; Fourth Quarter does represent ‘a newer and more vigorous poetic world’ than Alive.

Read more: Jennifer Strauss reviews 'The Poetry of Judith Wright' by Edward Walker

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Don Grant reviews Winner Take All? by Donald Horne
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Contents Category: Non-fiction
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Article Title: The Power and the Culture
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Don’t judge Donald Horne’s books by their titles.
Book 1 Title: Winner Take All?
Book Author: Donald Horne
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $2.95 pb, 132 pp
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Don’t judge Donald Horne’s books by their titles.

The Lucky Country, he now tells us, is not so much about the good fortune ofAustralia as about Australia as a derivative society. But even that, he said in the preface to the second edition, is misleading, for the central theme is the subtitle: Australia in the Sixties. ‘The Lucky Country theme is really a sub-plot’.

Read more: Don Grant reviews 'Winner Take All?' by Donald Horne

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Memory Holloway reviews The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes
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Contents Category: Art
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Article Title: The Modern Imagination
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Custom Highlight Text: Turn The Shock of the New over and on the back cover Robert Hughes stands in a mirrored room, looking out at the spectator, infinitely reflected in a light filled glass box that looks like one of Portman’s new hotels. The choice of photograph is a key to Hughes and the pages within, for in the text, Hughes describes this Mirrored Room by Lucas Samaras as:
Book 1 Title: The Shock of the New
Book Author: Robert Hughes
Book 1 Biblio: British Broadcasting Corporation, 423 pp
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Turn The Shock of the New over and on the back cover Robert Hughes stands in a mirrored room, looking out at the spectator, infinitely reflected in a light filled glass box that looks like one of Portman’s new hotels. The choice of photograph is a key to Hughes and the pages within, for in the text, Hughes describes this Mirrored Room by Lucas Samaras as:

a small space, but big enough to stand, move, and sit in ... To enter the Room and close the door is to see one-self reflected to infinity, fragment by fragment, never whole, but infinitely expanding in de tail; to be multiplied thus... is a strange feat of narcissism. At the same time the mirrors compose something very much larger than the self.

Read more: Memory Holloway reviews 'The Shock of the New' by Robert Hughes

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Russel McDougall reviews Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country by John McLaren
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: The Enigma of Hebert
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Custom Highlight Text: John McLaren’s contribution to the new series titled ‘Essays in Australian  Literature’ is, as the editorial page proclaims, ‘the first extended study of the two major works by Xavier Herbert - his first novel, Capricornia, and his last, Poor Fellow My Country.
Book 1 Title: Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country
Book Author: John McLaren
Book 1 Biblio: Shillington House, $3.70 pb, 48 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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John McLaren’s contribution to the new series titled ‘Essays in Australian  Literature’ is, as the editorial page proclaims, ‘the first extended study of the two major works by Xavier Herbert - his first novel, Capricornia, and his last, Poor Fellow My Country. There has been a handful of articles concerning each of these books individually, and almost a whole chapter dealing with both novels in Healy’s recent work, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia. It is not only for its dual focus, however, that McLaren's study is long overdue, but also for its refusal to pigeon-hole Herbert’s writing in the manner typified by the title of Healy’s chapter, ‘Indignation and Ideology’.

Read more: Russel McDougall reviews 'Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country' by John McLaren

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Contents Category: Publishing
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Article Title: Downhill All the Way
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In 1972 I gave a paper at Writers’ Week in Adelaide on the future of publishing in which I pointed out that there had occurred in the 20th Century an explosion of knowledge which had accelerated after World War II, and that, collectively, we really know more than any one person can absorb in a lifetime – we have seen the last Renaissance Man. I went on to say that it is not surprising that as technology learned how to entertain us we turned from books as a primary source of entertainment to books as instruments of specialized learning which our formal education had not been capable of supplying. The second half of my 1972 talk was devoted to pointing out that technology, having moved into the entertainment area, was now poised to move on to the education and information arena with far-reaching ramifications for both authors and publishers.
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In 1972 I gave a paper at Writers’ Week in Adelaide on the future of publishing in which I pointed out that there had occurred in the 20th Century an explosion of knowledge which had accelerated after World War II, and that, collectively, we really know more than any one person can absorb in a lifetime – we have seen the last Renaissance Man. I went on to say that it is not surprising that as technology learned how to entertain us we turned from books as a primary source of entertainment to books as instruments of specialized learning whichour formal education had not been capable of supplying. The second half of my 1972 talk was devoted to pointing out that technology, having moved into the entertainment area, was now poised to move on to the education and information arena with far-reaching ramifications for both authors and publishers.

Read more: ‘Downhill All the Way’ by Frank Thompson

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