Quadrant articles from April 2001

Quadrant archives from April 2001

THE EROSION OF THE "STOLEN GENERATIONS" SLOGAN.
April 1, 2001... THERE IS NO PLEASURE in saying "We told you so" when it comes to human misery and unhappiness, so the admission of Lowitja O'Donoghue that she is neither a "stolen child nor a member of the "stolen generation" gives us no pleasure. But it does...

LETTERS.
April 1, 2001... THE HEAD OF STATE SIR: Your editorial, "Celebrating Federation" (March 2001), insults both the people supporting the forthcoming Corowa Conference and your readers' intelligence. Without offering any reasoned basis for your polemic, you...

CLIMATE CHANGE: A SHORT PRIMER.
April 1, 2001... THE FIRST CALCULATION of the effect of burning fossil fuel on the world s climate were made more than a hundred years ago. They suggested that the average temperature of the Earth would rise by a degree or more because extra carbon dioxide in...

THE ENGINEER FORMERLY KNOWN AS STRANGELOVE.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Mein Fuhrer, they called me Doctor Strangelove in the 1960s. This now they'd dare not do. Right and Left then thought in Perverts, like you but now it's Doctor Preference, Doctor Paralimbic-- I've also quit the White...

SIGNS OF MOTHERHOOD IN HUMAN AND CROCODILE.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... I looked into her far eyes for the signs of a mammal to draw out. I found spider, swamp, cycad. Within minutes it was ancient and she had departed, without movement to that land. Her nostrils like figs that draw and expel...

BUREAUCRACY VERSUS ART: ONE YEAR IN THE IRON CAGE.(Brian Kennedy, director of the National Gallery of Australia)
April 1, 2001... IN ONE OF HIS first public pronouncements upon taking the job as Director of the National Gallery of ustralia, Dr Brian Kennedy called for a debate on the le of a national gallery. His call was met with silence--the usual artworld response to...

THE AUTHORITY OF THE "I".(ethnic identity)
April 1, 2001... LIFE STORIES AND ETHNIC IDENTITY AS A RESEARCH fellow in the field of English, I have studied the multicultural literatures of Australia and Canada for several years. Although my work has varied in approach (thematic studies of texts,...

GREAT BRITISH HISTORY.(Review)
April 1, 2001... THEY WERE GOING to get Hampton High School in suburban Melbourne, because they still teach British History, a teacher acquaintance told me in the mid-1980s. Sure enough, a few years later the school, which I had attended in the 1940s, was...

UNFORGIVEN.(Review)
April 1, 2001... FOR YEARS after he had served in Vietnam, American lieutenant Nathaniel Tripp would dream he had returned to the war The dream was always the same. He is living on his Vermont farm with his children when he hears a distant noise, beating and...

LIFE ON EARTH.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... My copy's due back sooner than I'd expected I hadn't really finished I'm afraid I haven't taken good care of it it's got creased quite badly it's rather battered, bits are missing The middle was best ...

AT STONEHENGE.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Alone, I approach the roped-off part Where forty centuries are standing up. The stones are pocked, wind-bitten, mournful As baggage left behind in a retreat, As emblems of some piety or hope Finally abandoned on this...

IMPRESSIONS OF WALT WHITMAN.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Only an I but what an I

PARKED OUTSIDE A LITERARY DO.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Publishers limos poets bombs but which do the wheelies

A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND.(Review)
April 1, 2001... THE UNIVERSITY of Otago's Emeritus Professor of Politics, James Flynn, has never been one to heed advice to stick to his last, with the result that he has made lasting contributions to a number of areas outside political theory as narrowly...

TWELVE QUESTIONS FOR PAUL DIBB.
April 1, 2001... LAST WINTER, in the July-August issue of Quadrant, Paul Dibb had an essay under the title A Trivial Strategic Age?". It has not, to date, fetched a response. I believe that the subject he has raised is so important and his own standing in...

1. AN INTEGRATED TRANSPORT SYSTEM.(Melbourne, Australia)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... With its bleak tangle of freeways, yovers and ramps (and the occasional high-rise slum-in-waiting oking through), a large part of inner Melbourne has come to resemble, albeit four decades late, a 1960s vision of the city of tomorrow dreamt up...

Why I Like Argus.
April 1, 2001... "As a busy corporate chairman and friend of the PM my free time is strictly limited. I get one day off a week if I'm lucky and I want that to be quality time. That's where the ABC comes in with its wide range of programmes. I certainly wouldn't...

2. AN OFFER HE COULD REFUSE.(Lenny Sump refuses Con Pyorrhoea's request for donation)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... THE MELBOURNE GRAND PRIX has come and gone in a asma of petrol fumes and stale champagne. fortunately, connoisseurs of sleaze were denied this year the unappealing presence of world Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, Britain's pipsqueak-sized...

CRITIC BEWARE.(Mietta O'Donnell)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
April 1, 2001... The recent death of the Melboume restaurateuse Mietta O'Donnell may remind some readers that she was an early recipient of the Argus Pro Bono Publico Award for her courageous stand in refusing two prominent "food critics" admission to her...

HAYDEN AND HANSON REVISITED.(Bill Hayden, Pauline Hanson)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... IT WAS JUST AFTER nine on Monday morning, 7th April 1997, when the phone rang in Bill Hayden's Brisbane office. "I understand Bill Hayden is a supporter of Pauline's position. Is that correct?" This was no idle enquiry; nor was it the...

GREAT WHITE SHARK.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Which law protects this creature Whose tug is the guiding sea-- Whose silhouette is a white liner-- Whose teeth show tartar to a swimmer? Should we cull a once-in-a-lifetime killer? Seals to dance on his skeleton;...

THE JANET FRAME QUESTION.(Review)
April 1, 2001... IN THE CENTURY of materialisms and externality which have yet to escape, Janet Frame became one of the w major writers of the inner life. Born in Dunedin 1924, after much travel she now lives there quietly near her sister Her twenty-first book...

PHOTOGRAPH OF MY GREAT GRANDPARENTS 1880.(Poem)
April 1, 2001... My white great-grandfather is frightened of the camera's flash. You can tell by the way he is standing. Seconds before the photograph was taken, he would have faced the dark-sheeted box as if it were a one-man firing squad. ...

ON THE TIDES OF HISTORY.
April 1, 2001... CHRISTOPHER KOCH'S DIPTYCH IN THE BEGINNING, the two novels were one. Between conception and parturition, Christopher Koch separated Highways to a War (1995) from Out of Ireland (1999). Subtly but substantially, the books remain linked by...

DR LECTER, I PRESUME.(Review)
April 1, 2001... FILM-MAKERS saving a major writer from betraying his own creation? Unbelievable! Not really, because this is what screenwriters David Mamet and Steve Zaillian and director Ridley Scott have done in Hannibal for Thomas Harris, the author of the...

THE ANT GLOVE.(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Dear Father, after Mother's death, after I'd read all your letters to her and her letters to you and finally understood that I was the fruit of her rape, I walked into the forest. The tribe I met there helped me...

THE CAMELLIAS.(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2001... are floating in a shallow bowl, circles of pink layered petals that silence browns, saffrons, absorb our voices, the table, the whole room. No word for this pink which is kinder than red, warmer than rose, more...

The Eel.(Short Story)
April 1, 2001... The eel appeared on the third year of the drought, when the creek was so low that the swimming hole grew a green velvet lining of algae. It was winter, and even though the water was cold, there were no flies to swat, so it was a pleasant...

Mixed Identities.(Short Story)
April 1, 2001... The young lady with curly red hair entered the coffee bar, and immediately went to a small square table against the wall in the far right corner, where baskets of small tropical plants hung from the ceiling. She placed her black leather handbag...

Skipping Rope.(Brief Article)(Short Story)
April 1, 2001... As soon as they've finished their sandwiches, the children are allowed outside to play. Maisie catches up with Lydia at the bottom of the steps. Wanna play skippy?" she asks. "Uncle Ronnie came round last night and he brought me a new skipping...

28 THOUGHTS.(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2001... Barefoot, and wanting home. Coffee, rain, umbrellas, grass damp as the sea, shells washed in wind, trees sad as limbs we befriend. The white car, small as acceptance. The ocean, grey as a breathing, flurried, stone. ...

Hobbes: A Biography.(Review)
April 1, 2001... Hobbes: A Biography, by A.P. Martinich; Cambridge University Press, 1999, $65.90. BIOGRAPHY is no longer a service industry--according to Ray Monk, the widely applauded biographer of Wittgenstein. Not so long ago biographers were the...

Hegel: A Biography.(Review)
April 1, 2001... Hegel: A Biography, by Terry Pinkard; Cambridge University Press, 2000, $69.95. BIOGRAPHY is no longer a service industry--according to Ray Monk, the widely applauded biographer of Wittgenstein. Not so long ago biographers were the caddies...

Bertrand Russell 1921-70: The Ghost of Madness.(Review)
April 1, 2001... Bertrand Russell 1921-70: The Ghost of Madness, by Ray Monk; Jonathan Cape, 2000, $73.50. BIOGRAPHY is no longer a service industry--according to Ray Monk, the widely applauded biographer of Wittgenstein. Not so long ago biographers were...

Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe.(Review)
April 1, 2001... Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, by Martin Rees, Phoenix, 2000, $22.95. REVOLUTIONARY ADVANCES are now being made in science, particularly in fundamental physics and cosmology (two disciplines that are...

Auchmuty: The Life of James Johnston Auchmuty.(Review)
April 1, 2001... Auchmuty: The Life of James Johnston Auchmuty, by Kenneth R. Dutton; Boombana Publications (Mount Nebo, Qld), 2000, $49.50. THE LIFE of an Australian vice-chancellor would not seem the most promising subject for an enjoyable biography....

The Lecturer's Tale.(Review)
April 1, 2001... The Lecturer's Tale, by James Hynes; Picador, 2001, $50. READERS OFFENDED by the pretensions of academic claptrap will like this one. The Lecturer s Tale by James Hynes, a "tale of terror and tenure" manages to be both politically...

Frank Hardy and the Making of Power Without Glory.(Review)
April 1, 2001... Frank Hardy and the Making of Power Without Glory, by Pauline Armstrong; Melbourne University Press, 2000, $43.95. TO A CHILD of the late sixties like myself, Power without Glory reads mainly as a period potboiler operating at a fairly low...

The Colonial Earth.(Review)
April 1, 2001... The Colonial Earth, by Tim Bonyhady; Melbourne University Press (Miegunyah), 2000, $54.95. THE USUAL modern view of colonial Australians, according to Tim Bonyhady, is that they were antagonistic to the new land, exploiting it for all they...

THE DINING DECLINE.
April 1, 2001... THREE LITTLE WORDS often suffice to express much wisdom. How packed and pregnant, for example, was Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum". Kingsley Amis's "More means worse" has not been surpassed for predictive pith; he was speaking of universities,...