You Are What You Make Yourself To Be is the documented personal history of one Victorian Aboriginal family. The author’s story is interspersed with researched documented facts intended to authenticate and support the narrative but at times these lengthy italicized notes work against the continuity of the story.
Book 1 Title: You Are What You Make Yourself To Be
Book 1 Subtitle: The story of a Victorian Aboriginal family
Book Author: Phillip Pepper
Book 1 Biblio: Hyland House, $11.95 pb, 143 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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You Are What You Make Yourself To Be is the documented personal history of one Victorian Aboriginal family. The author’s story is interspersed with researched documented facts intended to authenticate and support the narrative but at times these lengthy italicized notes work against the continuity of the story.
In Papua New Guinea, no one dies from natural causes except, perhaps, some foreigners. At least, that is what every islander believes. Even a lifelong active Christian such as Mr Justice Narakobi’s mother, on her deathbed, attributed her fatal asthma to sorcery.
Book 1 Title: Powers, Plumes and Piglets
Book 1 Subtitle: Phenomena of Melanesian Religion, Australian Association for the Study of Melanesian Religion
Book Author: Norman C. Habel
Book 1 Biblio: Sturt CAE, $6.50
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: Kuru Sorcery
Book 2 Subtitle: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands
Book 2 Author: Shirley Lindenbaum
Book 2 Biblio: Mayfield, Palo Alto, $5.00
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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In Papua New Guinea, no one dies from natural causes except, perhaps, some foreigners. At least, that is what every islander believes. Even a lifelong active Christian such as Mr Justice Narakobi’s mother, on her deathbed, attributed her fatal asthma to sorcery.
As she did so vividly in Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson uses a returning expatriate woman to cast fresh eyes on the social and urban landscape of Australia. Here, it is Sylvia Foley who has spent some twenty years in Europe eschewing the comforts and constraints of suburban life, teaching Italian and conducting tours of the British Isles and the Continent. On a whim, she abandons her peripatetic life to return to Sydney for a few months prior to her plan to settle in Rome. Unbeknown to her, her autocratic father, Jack Cornock, is dying and she is immediately suspected by other members of her dislocated family of returning to benefit from the will – which she ultimately does as the recipient of her father’s vindictive gesture to spite his wife. And Sylvia’s ‘family’ is considerable. There is her illiterate mother Molly, now married to Ken, her brother Stewart, and her stepsiblings: Harry, Rosamond, Hermione, and Guy, the children of her father’s second wife, Greta.
Book 1 Title: The Impersonators
Book Author: Jessica Anderson
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $9.95, 252 pp, 0333299256
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As she did so vividly in Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson uses a returning expatriate woman to cast fresh eyes on the social and urban landscape of Australia. Here, it is Sylvia Foley who has spent some twenty years in Europe eschewing the comforts and constraints of suburban life, teaching Italian and conducting tours of the British Isles and the Continent. On a whim, she abandons her peripatetic life to return to Sydney for a few months prior to her plan to settle in Rome. Unbeknown to her, her autocratic father, Jack Cornock, is dying and she is immediately suspected by other members of her dislocated family of returning to benefit from the will – which she ultimately does as the recipient of her father’s vindictive gesture to spite his wife. And Sylvia’s ‘family’ is considerable. There is her illiterate mother Molly, now married to Ken, her brother Stewart, and her stepsiblings: Harry, Rosamond, Hermione, and Guy, the children of her father’s second wife, Greta.
This book must win the prize for the most lavish and the most amateurish book on an Australian artist. Not one of the 200 odd colour plates is dated; not even in the portentously titled Opus Index (a list of plates without page numbers!) do we get a single date or indication of present ownership. Where dates are given in the text, they are often vague and careless ‘... in the 1950s...’etc.
Book 1 Title: Charles Blackman
Book 1 Subtitle: The lost domains
Book Author: Nadine Amadio
Book 1 Biblio: Reed, $100 hb, 144 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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This book must win the prize for the most lavish and the most amateurish book on an Australian artist. Not one of the 200 odd colour plates is dated; not even in the portentously titled Opus Index (a list of plates without page numbers!) do we get a single date or indication of present ownership. Where dates are given in the text, they are often vague and careless ‘... in the 1950s...’etc.
Earlier commentators and critics swim in and out of the text without reference and there is no bibliography or biographical outline. Proper names are misspelt e.g. Barrett Reed (instead of Reid), Al Alvares (instead of Alvarez) as though the author had taken dictation faultily from the Master. The text is frequently unconsciously comic:
But why would anyone want to do it? This seems a reasonable question to ask about Robyn Davidson’s self-imposed ordeal: Davidson taught herself from scratch to tame and train camels, then travelled with four of them and one dog across 1700 miles of desert from Alice Springs to the coast of Western Australia. Tracks is the book she wrote about it.
Book 1 Title: Tracks
Book Author: Robyn Davidson
Book 1 Biblio: Jonathan Cape, $17.95 pb, 256 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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But why would anyone want to do it? This seems a reasonable question to ask about Robyn Davidson’s self-imposed ordeal: Davidson taught herself from scratch to tame and train camels, then travelled with four of them and one dog across 1700 miles of desert from Alice Springs to the coast of Western Australia. Tracks is the book she wrote about it.
