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Absolutely Revolting

May 2020, no. 421

What a difference a month makes! Happily, the outlook looks so much brighter than when we published the April issue – here in Australia at least. In our May issue, the Editor updates readers on how ABR is responding and laments the Australia Council’s non-funding of ABR and other magazines. ABR Laureate Robyn Archer reflects on what Australia might look like after the crisis. ABR Behrouz Boochani Fellow Hessom Razavi writes from the frontline – as a clinician in Perth. He interviews senior clinicians, reflects on his family’s Iranian experience, and also prepares to become a parent. David Fricker – Director General of the National Archives – responds to Jenny Hocking’s attack on the Archives over the ‘Palace letters’ in our previous issue. We have reviews of novels by James Bradley, Polly Samson, Ronnie Scott, and Chris Flynn – and new poetry by Lisa Gorton, Gig Ryan, and Paul Kane.

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Andrew Ford reviews Irving Berlin: New York genius by James Kaplan
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At the end of 1910, Irving Berlin took a winter holiday in Florida. James Kaplan writes, ‘Here we must pause for a moment to consider the miracle of a twenty-two-year-old who in recent memory had sung for pennies in dives and slept in flophouses becoming a prosperous-enough business man to vacation in Palm Beach.’
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Book 1 Title: Irving Berlin
Book 1 Subtitle: New York genius
Book Author: James Kaplan
Book 1 Biblio: Yale University Press (Footprint), $49.99 hb, 424 pp
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At the end of 1910, Irving Berlin took a winter holiday in Florida. James Kaplan writes, ‘Here we must pause for a moment to consider the miracle of a twenty-two-year-old who in recent memory had sung for pennies in dives and slept in flophouses becoming a prosperous-enough business man to vacation in Palm Beach.’

In his new biography of the songwriter, Kaplan does a nice job of describing the vertiginous progress of Berlin’s early success. Israel Beilin was born in 1888, probably in Siberia, the eighth child of Lea and Moses Beilin. The family moved to Belorussia and then to New York in 1893. The spelling of their surname was changed to Baline, and Israel quickly became known at Izzy. Moses, a peripatetic cantor in Europe, found himself mostly unemployed in New York, so the teenage Izzy, who seems to have inherited his father’s singing voice, busked and sang at tables, plugged songs for publishers, and was a ‘slide singer’ – which is to say he led cinema audiences in singalongs, the lyrics projected on slides. In bars, he would sometimes substitute his own risqué words and before long was writing original songs – first words, then words and music – his name appearing as ‘I. Berlin’. By 1910 he was Irving Berlin. He still hadn’t written anything you’ve heard of, but was sufficiently well-off to take that Palm Beach holiday.

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Barnaby Smith reviews The Toy of the Spirit by Anthony Mannix
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Any definition of what constitutes ‘outsider art’, or art brut, is elusive. The boundaries of this ‘category’ are notoriously porous. There is no manifesto, no consistent medium, nor is it especially tied to any single period in time. However, it can be argued that outsider art is often regarded as art created by those on the margins of society, such as people in psychiatric hospitals, in prison, or the disabled. Outsider artists are also usually self-taught. For several decades, Anthony Mannix has been at the forefront of Australian outsider art, his particular qualification for the label being serious mental illness (though the term ‘illness’, as The Toy of the Spirit implores, is problematic). Mannix was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the mid-1980s, and spent periods as a patient in psychiatric hospitals over the next decade. Now based in the Blue Mountains, he has been free of schizophrenic episodes for many years.
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Book 1 Title: The Toy of the Spirit
Book Author: Anthony Mannix
Book 1 Biblio: Puncher & Wattmann, $25 pb, 239 pp
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Any definition of what constitutes ‘outsider art’, or art brut, is elusive. The boundaries of this ‘category’ are notoriously porous. There is no manifesto, no consistent medium, nor is it especially tied to any single period in time. However, it can be argued that outsider art is often regarded as art created by those on the margins of society, such as people in psychiatric hospitals, in prison, or the disabled. Outsider artists are also usually self-taught. For several decades, Anthony Mannix has been at the forefront of Australian outsider art, his particular qualification for the label being serious mental illness (though the term ‘illness’, as The Toy of the Spirit implores, is problematic). Mannix was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the mid-1980s, and spent periods as a patient in psychiatric hospitals over the next decade. Now based in the Blue Mountains, he has been free of schizophrenic episodes for many years.

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Open Page with James Bradley
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I’m always little uneasy about the edge of élitism underlying the policing of language, but I have to confess to a loathing for psychological banalities like ‘closure’ and ‘unconditional love’, most of which are actually worse than meaningless.
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James Bradley is a writer and critic. His books include the novels, Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, and Clade; a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus; and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia’s Critic of the Year. His latest novel, Ghost Species, is reviewed in the May 2020 issue.

James Bradley

 

Where are you happiest?
In the ocean at dusk or dawn – or at my desk.

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Julie Ewington reviews Mel O’Callaghan: Centre of the Centre edited by Talia Linz and Michelle Newton
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This beautiful book is ostensibly a conventional art monograph. In its innovative tweaking of the standard model, however, Centre of the Centre is one of the most rewarding publications about an Australian artist in recent years. Exploring two decades of ambitious work by Mel O’Callaghan, an Australian based in Paris, the book begins now, with her latest projects. In a quasi-geological enterprise, it then mines works whose interconnected seams comprise expansive video installations, sometimes including objects; wonderful paintings on glass; and, always, performed actions. Speaking about Parade (2014), Juliana Engberg noted the ‘ritualised, Sisyphean endeavour’ characterising O’Callaghan’s work.
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Book 1 Title: Mel O’Callaghan
Book 1 Subtitle: Centre of the Centre
Book Author: Talia Linz and Michelle Newton
Book 1 Biblio: Artspace Confort Moderne and UQ Art Museum, $60 hb, 200 pp
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This beautiful book is ostensibly a conventional art monograph. In its innovative tweaking of the standard model, however, Centre of the Centre is one of the most rewarding publications about an Australian artist in recent years. Exploring two decades of ambitious work by Mel O’Callaghan, an Australian based in Paris, the book begins now, with her latest projects. In a quasi-geological enterprise, it then mines works whose interconnected seams comprise expansive video installations, sometimes including objects; wonderful paintings on glass; and, always, performed actions. Speaking about Parade (2014), Juliana Engberg noted the ‘ritualised, Sisyphean endeavour’ characterising O’Callaghan’s work.

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Peter Mares reviews The Future of Us: Demography gets a makeover by Liz Allen
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In Australia, debate about population runs in well-worn grooves. The focus is on size – ‘big Australia’ versus ‘not-so-big Australia’ – and the tool used to regulate numbers is immigration. When politicians link population growth to excessive house prices, traffic congestion, unemployment, or crime, they call for immigration cuts, not for birth control.
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Book 1 Title: The Future of Us
Book 1 Subtitle: Demography gets a makeover
Book Author: Liz Allen
Book 1 Biblio: NewSouth, $29.99 pb, 240 pp
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In Australia, debate about population runs in well-worn grooves. The focus is on size – ‘big Australia’ versus ‘not-so-big Australia’ – and the tool used to regulate numbers is immigration. When politicians link population growth to excessive house prices, traffic congestion, unemployment, or crime, they call for immigration cuts, not for birth control.

Liz Allen wants us to think about population more broadly by introducing readers to the wonders of demography, which she calls a ‘superpower’. Its transformative possibilities operate at two levels in this book.

Read more: Peter Mares reviews 'The Future of Us: Demography gets a makeover' by Liz Allen

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