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Absolutely Revolting

February–March 1980, no. 18

Dymphna Cusack reviews Caviar for Breakfast by Betty Roland
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Contents Category: Memoir
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The publisher did scant service to the author by putting a ‘blurb’ before the book, emphasising ideas that are neither implicit nor explicit in it. Betty Roland does not claim to be a prophet.

The old cliché ‘I couldn’t put it down’ was literally true when I read her Caviar for Breakfast, the account of her year in the Soviet Union in 1934.

We all do silly things when we are young!
Book 1 Title: Caviar for Breakfast
Book Author: Betty Roland
Book 1 Biblio: Quartet, 196 pp, illus, index, $11.95
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The publisher did scant service to the author by putting a ‘blurb’ before the book, emphasising ideas that are neither implicit nor explicit in it. Betty Roland does not claim to be a prophet.

The old cliché ‘I couldn’t put it down’ was literally true when I read her Caviar for Breakfast, the account of her year in the Soviet Union in 1934.

We all do silly things when we are young!

Read more: Dymphna Cusack reviews 'Caviar for Breakfast' by Betty Roland

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Satirical fables
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Peter Murphy is one of the very best poets under forty writing in Australia today. He also works in the theatre. His play Glitter was performed at the Adelaide Arts Festival, and he has written the libretto for an opera with music by Helen Gifford. Black Light, his first published book of short stories, shows him to be a craftsman of the first order in yet another field.
Book 1 Title: Black Light
Book Author: Peter Murphy
Book 1 Biblio: Hawthorn, 125pp, $7.50pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Peter Murphy is one of the very best poets under forty writing in Australia today. He also works in the theatre. His play Glitter was performed at the Adelaide Arts Festival, and he has written the libretto for an opera with music by Helen Gifford. Black Light, his first published book of short stories, shows him to be a craftsman of the first order in yet another field.

Read more: Frank Kellaway reviews 'Black Light' by Peter Murphy

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Geoffrey Radcliffe reviews Confederates by Thomas Keneally
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Contents Category: Fiction
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On one of the early chaotic army days of World War II in France, I was combining the disagreeable tasks of eating and censoring letters home written by the men in my section.
Book 1 Title: Confederates
Book Author: Thomas Keneally
Book 1 Biblio: Collins, 427 pp, $16.95 pb
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On one of the early chaotic army days of World War II in France, I was combining the disagreeable tasks of eating and censoring letters home written by the men in my section.

One letter was of the ‘hope-this­finds-you-as-it-leaves-me’ variety, but it contained five words that stood out in the surrounding illiteracy: ‘War is a be bleed in bastid’. It was a statement that became an epitaph because a few days later the writer was blown to bleeding pieces during a dive-bombing attack.

Read more: Geoffrey Radcliffe reviews 'Confederates' by Thomas Keneally

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Thomas Shapcott reviews The New Australian Poetry edited by John Tranter
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Contents Category: Poetry
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The intention of this anthology is to sharpen our understanding of what was distinctive in the poetry of ‘the generation of ‘68’ (Tranter’s label).
Book 1 Title: The New Australian Poetry
Book Author: John Tranter
Book 1 Biblio: Makar Press, 330 pp, $12.75 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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The intention of this anthology is to sharpen our understanding of what was distinctive in the poetry of ‘the generation of ‘68’ (Tranter’s label).

Though he himself, as well as Robert Adamson, Michael Dransfield, and Tim Thorne, were publishing before 1968, and the ‘senior’ figures (Bruce Beaver, Ken Taylor) were certainly fully formed, the tag is useful. It raises more questions, but they are potentially fruitful ones: ‘What really happened in the decade preceding 1968?’, or ‘How much of the new movement’s innovations were fully laid down in the first three years, say by Charles Buckmaster’s death in 1972?’

Read more: Thomas Shapcott reviews 'The New Australian Poetry' edited by John Tranter

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John McLaren reviews Angry Penguins: 1944 Autumn Number to Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern Malley and Poetic Gems by Max Harris
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: The mastery of words
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In his introduction to The New Australian Poetry, reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Thomas Shapcott, John Tranter declares that this poetry has no allegiance except to itself. Some characteristics of works regarded as modernist are: ‘self-signature’ – the work validates its own technical innovations – and self-reference, where the ‘method’ is reflected consciously in the ‘medium’. He contrasts this modernism with such work as Vincent Buckley’s ‘Golden Builders’, which elicits a response of ‘quasi-religious rhetoric . . . a natural outgrowth of Australian university English departments’, and one sufficient to explain the ‘anti-academic bias’ evident in much of the work of the new poets.
Book 1 Title: Angry Penguins
Book 1 Subtitle: 1944 Autumn Number to Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern Malley
Book Author: Max Harris and John Reed
Book 1 Biblio: Limited facsimile edition, $5.95
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 2 Title: Poetic Gems
Book 2 Author: Max Harris
Book 2 Biblio: Mary Martin Books, 50pp, $4.95
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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In his introduction to The New Australian Poetry, reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Thomas Shapcott, John Tranter declares that this poetry has no allegiance except to itself. Some characteristics of works regarded as modernist are: ‘self-signature’ – the work validates its own technical innovations – and self-reference, where the ‘method’ is reflected consciously in the ‘medium’. He contrasts this modernism with such work as Vincent Buckley’s ‘Golden Builders’, which elicits a response of ‘quasi-religious rhetoric . . . a natural outgrowth of Australian university English departments’, and one sufficient to explain the ‘anti-academic bias’ evident in much of the work of the new poets.

Read more: John McLaren reviews 'Angry Penguins: 1944 Autumn Number to Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern...

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