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Absolutely Revolting

June 1980, no. 21

Andrew Taylor reviews Greenhouse by Dorothy Hewett
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Refusal to concede defeat
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In a talk she gave recently at Writers’ Week in Adelaide, Dorothy Hewett praised Gwen Harwood as:

Working in isolation as the woman hero, charring like a cartographer the uneasy, shifting, violent, broken world of Australian women and finally, in the teeth of all opposition. proclaiming the right to love and be a hero.

Dorothy Hewett identified several other roles or figures for women writers of poetry in Australia, most particularly:

The woman as loser, lover, bleeder, the victim figure, at once perverse and self-exacting, who refuses to be second-best.

But it’s clearly Harwood’s heroic proclamation of ‘the right to love’ that Hewett admires.
Book 1 Title: Green House
Book Author: Dorothy Hewett
Book 1 Biblio: Big Smoke Books, $8.50pb, 104 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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In a talk she gave recently at Writers’ Week in Adelaide, Dorothy Hewett praised Gwen Harwood as:

Working in isolation as the woman hero, charring like a cartographer the uneasy, shifting, violent, broken world of Australian women and finally, in the teeth of all opposition. proclaiming the right to love and be a hero.

Read more: Andrew Taylor reviews 'Greenhouse' by Dorothy Hewett

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Jim Davidson reviews Port Phillip Gentlemen: Good society in Melbourne before the gold rushes by Paul de Serville
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: Snobs and mobs
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One of the most interesting developments in recent Australian historiography has been a pushing back of the frontiers, a recovery of times or phases which seemed quite beyond recall, even when remembered. Such history-writing bears something of the character of sounding in archaeology.
Book 1 Title: Port Phillip Gentlemen
Book 1 Subtitle: Good society in Melbourne before the gold rushes
Book Author: Paul de Serville
Book 1 Biblio: Oxford University Press, $27.50, 256 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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One of the most interesting developments in recent Australian historiography has been a pushing back of the frontiers, a recovery of times or phases which seemed quite beyond recall, even when remembered. Such history-writing bears something of the character of sounding in archaeology.

Read more: Jim Davidson reviews 'Port Phillip Gentlemen: Good society in Melbourne before the gold rushes' by...

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Derek Duke reviews Anatomy of an Election, edited by P.R. Hay, I. Ward, and John Warhurst
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: How the donkeys voted
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For many years there has been little study of politics and elections at the state level in Australia. It seems to have been assumed that only national politics is really important, and that voters made very little distinction between state and federal politics. Thus, the conventional wisdom on electoral behavior had it that voters reacted fairly predictably on the basis of their early political socialization and in response to a set of vague images of the parties which was generated largely at the national level and changed only slowly.
Book 1 Title: Anatomy of an Election
Book Author: P.R. Hay, I. Ward, and John Warhurst
Book 1 Biblio: Hill of Content, $8.95, 268 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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For many years there has been little study of politics and elections at the state level in Australia. It seems to have been assumed that only national politics is really important, and that voters made very little distinction between state and federal politics. Thus, the conventional wisdom on electoral behavior had it that voters reacted fairly predictably on the basis of their early political socialization and in response to a set of vague images of the parties which was generated largely at the national level and changed only slowly.

Read more: Derek Duke reviews 'Anatomy of an Election', edited by P.R. Hay, I. Ward, and John Warhurst

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Thomas Shapcott reviews Modern Australian Poetry 1920–1970 edited by Herbert C. Jaffa
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Contents Category: Australian Poetry
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Article Title: Belated but essential
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This book, researched, written, and published in the United States, fulfils an immediate Australian need. Sweat on that you local academics, publishers, and timid promoters of the Oz product. It is called ‘A guide to information sources’, which makes it sound very ‘Australian Literary Studies’, but in fact it is an eminently readable, browsable volume.
Book 1 Title: Modern Australian Poetry 1920-1970
Book 1 Subtitle: A guide to information sources
Book Author: Herbert C. Jaffa
Book 1 Biblio: Gale Research Company, 241 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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This book, researched, written, and published in the United States, fulfils an immediate Australian need. Sweat on that you local academics, publishers, and timid promoters of the Oz product. It is called ‘A guide to information sources’, which makes it sound very ‘Australian Literary Studies’, but in fact it is an eminently readable, browsable volume.

Read more: Thomas Shapcott reviews 'Modern Australian Poetry 1920–1970' edited by Herbert C. Jaffa

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John Stubbs reviews Truth Will Out: ASIO and the Petrovs by Michael Thwaites
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Article Title: The Petrovs – a new dimension
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When I was in London working on a book that Nicholas Whitlam and I wrote on the Petrov Affair, I became friendly with Dr Michael Bialagouski. Bialagouski and I went out several times with our wives to places selected by Michael; a gambling club that had once been run by George Raft, a Chinese restaurant that had a reputation in intelligence circles, that sort of thing.
Book 1 Title: Truth Will Out
Book 1 Subtitle: ASIO and the Petrovs
Book Author: Michael Thwaites
Book 1 Biblio: Collins, 214 pp, $14.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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When I was in London working on a book that Nicholas Whitlam and I wrote on the Petrov Affair, I became friendly with Dr Michael Bialagouski. Bialagouski and I went out several times with our wives to places selected by Michael; a gambling club that had once been run by George Raft, a Chinese restaurant that had a reputation in intelligence circles, that sort of thing.

Read more: John Stubbs reviews 'Truth Will Out: ASIO and the Petrovs' by Michael Thwaites

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