Quadrant articles from June 2005

Quadrant archives from June 2005

Government, publishing and the information revolution.(Editorial)(paper versus electronic information)
June 1, 2005... ONE OF THE PARADOXES of the huge information explosion of the last decade or two, at least as far as general availability is concerned, is that some kinds of information have suffered, have become if anything less easy to access than used to be...

Ovoid and polyhedral republican wheels.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... SIR: Your May editorial ("What Kind of Republic?") prompts me, a roving Briton who has kept an eye on this long-running saga, to a few observations. Seldom can a country have spent so long on such a matter with so little to show for it....

Pagans and Christians.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... SIR: Nigel Jackson's anti-Christian diatribe (Letters, May 2005) manages to mix the standard village-atheistic historical revisionism with one of the loopiest books around. Where to start? Relying on The Pagan Christ by the non-scholar Tom...

Archbishop Jensen and Anglican doctrine.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... SIR: All that James Franklin (Letters, May 2005) has demonstrated in his fulminations against the so-called "Jensenism" is that Peter Jensen is an Anglican. In teaching that human beings--though they do have an inherent worth and dignity--are...

The Dismissal.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... SIR: David Smith's "The Truth about the Dismissal" (March 2005) promised much from the point of view of a player in that historical chapter, but appeared to falter in the delivery. A rehearsal of who said what to whom and when, and where the...

Peron, Whitlam, Argentina and Australia.(History)
June 1, 2005... SINCE ABOUT 1900, Argentina and Australia have convincingly re-enacted the roles so memorably performed centuries earlier by their respective British and Spanish imperial progenitors. At the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee it would...

Winter Recap at 55.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... WINTER RECAP AT 55 This silverhead in spectacles once said, "I wish to be a sharpish first lieutenant in the British infantry." So where's he now in the dark and wind? Shrunk to a small medallion in the...

Three Haiku.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... THREE HAIKU snow past midnight-- her breath takes up the hotel room no warning to the rain-the weeds in her garden big enough to drip the ocean stops where the last wave ends-her jump back in...

Jim McClelland.(Disagreeable Portraits)(Biography)
June 1, 2005... JIM MCCLELLAND was born on June 3, 1915, and died on January 18, 1999. A full account of his life, not unskewed by bias, is contained in his autobiography, Stirring the Possum. It is a typical enough rags-to-riches tale. From a...

Mugged by reality again?(Foreign Affairs)(the democratising of the Middle East does not mean pro-American)
June 1, 2005... WHEN NEOCONSERVATIVES rose to intellectual prominence in the 1970s, they were invariably described--not least by themselves--as "liberals mugged by reality". Three decades later, that definition will acquire even more resonance if the...

Prodigal Son.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... PRODIGAL SON The frantic hullabaloo began with you galloping up the steps to our waiting door. Your talk was fast and flash, it rattled and flew from roof to rafter, from window back to floor. Hardly a word escaped our...

Forget-Me-Nots.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... FORGET-ME-NOTS A constellation of blue eyes that cannot look this way Insistent names, calling out with nothing at all to say A frilled and speckled counterpane with no small soul asleep A...

The Tories' long road back.(Foreign Affairs)
June 1, 2005... THE LAST GREAT Tory rally before the May 5 election was in London's East End, in the Docklands. It was on the May Bank Holiday and the faithful of all ages and ethnicities from all over London assembled to cheer their leader, Michael Howard. He...

Zzzzziiip! The Modern World.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... ZZZZZIIIP! THE MODERN WORLD will leave is leaving has left me for dead I think as I draw near a woman walking toward me on her own talking to who-knows who with a wire hanging down her blouse this sunny...

Colour Charts.(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 1, 2005... COLOUR CHARTS Squares of colour shining out of frames each christened by an artist or a poet or the stitcher of a cathedral window quilt calico is on the chart burnt sienna terracotta ...

Land rights--the next battleground.(Australia)(Australian Aborigines)(land tenure)
June 1, 2005... IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1961, on the last day of sitting of the twenty-third federal parliament, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Voting Rights for Aborigines, George Pearce, tabled his Committee's Report in the House of Representatives. It...

The Passenger.(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 1, 2005... THE PASSENGER (Tram 112, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy) Dilatorily she wades (to stop now were as tedious as to go over) through some over-cooked tome, Chick Lit., recommended by her ambition and The Age. She wonders...

Land rights and Aboriginal development.(Australia)(Aboriginal people and economic development)
June 1, 2005... THE CENTRE for Independent Studies recently published an issues paper entitled "A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities", by Helen Hughes and Jenness Warin. It is a significant paper, not least because of...

The disputed curriculum.(Education)(education and commonly held values)
June 1, 2005... We offer little general guidance about the relative value of different areas of the curriculum apart from a broad injunction concerning literacy and numeracy. We are, characteristically of this point in cultural history, almost unable to make...

Photographs the Size of Poems.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... PHOTOGRAPHS THE SIZE OF POEMS In our family album, you are the lost city, the spot marked with an x. Here in sepia you're nineteen, just out of the army, bent to attention, as seamless as your uniform. At your wedding,...

Daffodils.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... DAFFODILS 1 First daffodils-- she worries they will be hurt by the hard rain. 2 The daffodils-- my wife goes after the rain to pick me some. 3 Three daffodils-- reluctantly, she...

Rape, murder and song.(Music)(theme of vice in operas)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2005... WHILE OPERA PLOTS can rarely be regarded as models for ethical, moral or socially acceptable behaviour, they can often raise controversial issues either deliberately or by coincidental inference. These issues are rarely original with a...

Still Life with Portrait.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... STILL LIFE WITH PORTRAIT I make a still life, set out on a shelf: glass vase shaped like a trumpet, white wind-flowers on green stems. In the glow of the lamp these flowers lift your eyes to creams and greens in...

Night-Shift.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... NIGHT-SHIFT Waiting for light I breathe in, and out. There was a nightmare riding hard its neck all flecked with sweat, hoof-beat and heart-beat racing past my severed head face upwards in a swamp. I...

The Copernican Constitution.(The Constitution)(Honorary President Republican Model)
June 1, 2005... When CAPTAIN COOK from Albion sailed, his primary mission was to observe the Transit of Venus, predicted to be visible over the Pacific on June 3, 1769. The Endeavour went on to chart the east coast of Australia, successfully claiming half the...

Dr Kakatoscopy.(Universities)(The Anal Imagination: Psychoanalysis, Capitalism, and Excretion, seminar)(Dr Alison Moore)
June 1, 2005... THERE HAS BEEN reckless talk about a decline in Australian academic standards. Nothing could be further from the truth. Everywhere university teachers with bold imaginations are adventurously at work--and there can be none bolder or more daring...

Macassan Discovery.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... MACASSAN DISCOVERY Pobassoo had made six or seven voyages from Macassar to this coast, within the preceding twenty years... but had never seen any ship here before. --Matthew Flinders, Cape Wilberforce, 17 Feb. 1803 I'd assumed...

The Semi-Arid Country.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... THE SEMI-ARID COUNTRY The blue ball of the sky balances on the long broads, flats where green and oatmeal grow desperately. Creeks are empty, and the long columns floating from the pipes that swing in arcs of...

The Idea of Evil.(Society)(Column)
June 1, 2005... RECENTLY, the media drew attention to an interesting new development in psychiatry--the possible rehabilitation of the word and concept of evil in the evaluation of particularly sadistic and vicious killers. Dr Michael Stone, a Columbia...

At the Sibelius Monument, Helsinki.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... AT THE SIBELIUS MONUMENT, HELSINKI Let me hear that self-determination, even in defeat, like the end of the first. And the end of the fifth: those vast triumphant chords, to which assent is all that's not absurd. Let me...

Mr Tung's Fox Tenants.(Literature)(short story by Yu Yueh)(Chinese writer of the Manchu Dynasty)(Chinese Literature and symbolism)
June 1, 2005... FOR THOSE who like reading, there can be few greater pleasures than the unexpected discovery of a new and eminently readable volume at that very moment when one is faced with the difficult task of filling in some idle time. Recently, in just...

Mr Bellow's Planet.(Literature)(Saul Bellow)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2005... WE ARE ALL propagators of modernity as well as its victims--it's not something outside us. To condemn it is to condemn ourselves. Saul Bellow did not condemn it; rather he revelled in it, but he was never an eager trendy and always exercised...

In Her High Room.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... IN HER HIGH ROOM In her high room my darling keeps a grand cane chair, and negligently throws or drapes her zebra dresses there. But now she's angry with the times, electorates smug as sheep who...

In the bunker.(Film)(Downfall)(Movie Review)
June 1, 2005... "IN THE BUNKER you see the real Hitler: the nihilism, the need to destroy for its own sake," argues Joachim Fest, author of Inside Hitler's Bunker--one of the sources of Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, the first German film since G.W. Pabst's...

The quiddling pirates.(Story)
June 1, 2005... Alas, the quiddling pirates and the pretty pranks they played, Have all been put a stop to by the naughty Board of Trade. The skippers and their merry crew have long been laid to rest, A little south of Sunset, in the Islands of the Blest......

Lanarkshire, January.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... LANARKSHIRE, JANUARY low sun-- late winter afternoon-- the shadows stroll and stretch themselves across the green fields and the iron earth-- the widescreen light is cold and clarifies on paths white with frost,...

Shopping for father.(Story)(Short Story)
June 1, 2005... "Well, I'm finally getting him into church," Mum says as she puts her arm around me. "He needs a shirt and a tie. I looked through his wardrobe and he doesn't have anything suitable. He does have a black suit which will be fine." Despite...

The Grouch.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... THE GROUCH Why in any block of flats do those who're in the greatest haste to crank their CDs up the loudest display the most appalling taste? Dub-dub basses, cowboy bleatings, two chords' worth of rock 'n...

Four Haiku.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... FOUR HAIKU nothing keeps the morning snowfall cold-- her name in the bad news Dad's funeral-- the same knot in my tie long after sunset-- darkness not stopping the odor of fallen leaves ...

Coconut Slice.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... COCONUT SLICE Trish Love turned up on the verandah with a coconut slice she said it was a coconut slice we wouldn't have known, it was three layers of brown stuff Dad never thought much of slices he said they were...

Reappraising Curtin.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Curtin's Gift: Reinterpreting Australia's Greatest Prime Minister, by John Edwards; Allen & Unwin, 2005, $35. FOR A NATIONAL LEADER there can be no greater challenge than to lead a country during a time of war, particularly a war when the...

In search of a poet.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Victor J. Daley." A Life, by Frank Molloy; Crossing Press (Sydney), 2004, $24. THE POET Victor Daley was famous in Bulletin circles in late nineteenth century. Since then his reputation has faded gradually, but he is still featured in most...

Messing about in dictionaries.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language, edited by Jack Lynch; Atlantic Books, 2004, $49.95. "BELIEVE ME, my young friend, there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half as much worth doing...

Replete with verities.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Old School, by Tobias Wolff; Bloomsbury, 2004, $27.95 THERE ARE BOOKS you regret will end, even as you begin them. Tobias Wolff's Old School is one such work. English novelist Sybil Bedford (who also wrote a biography of Aldous Huxley in...

Compassion, not belief.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... The Spiral Staircase, by Karen Armstrong; Harper Perennial, 2004, $24.95. THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE is an autobiography by an English scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong. It tells the story of her movement away from the life of a nun to her...

Le jazz hot.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Dancing with de Beauvoir." Jazz and the French, by Colin Nettelbeck; Melbourne University Press, 2004, $45. AS A PROFESSOR of French at the University of Melbourne and as a longtime jazz fan, Colin Nettelbeck in Dancing with de Beauvoir has...

The crow in the black hole.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Kafka on the Shore, by Hamki Murakami; Harvill, 2004, $34.95. HARUKI MURAKAMI became an international cult hero with his evocation of a sinister parallel universe in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He also sold over four million copies of...

Not a bad rogue.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... The Bohemian Bourgeois: The Confessions of Benjamin B, by David Myers; Central Queensland University Press, 2004, $25.95. I REMEMBER ONCE asking an Oriental academic of my acquaintance about the tradition of the wandering, drunken scholar...

Great scot.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... A Cow's Life: The Surprising History of Cattle and How the Black Angus Came to be Home on the Range, by M.R. Montgomery; Allen & Unwin, 2005, $35. A SHAMED, I must admit that one reason for wanting to review this book was a not-quite-dead...

Not the greatest evil.(Ryan)(Commentary on war)(Column)
June 1, 2005... SIXTY YEARS AGO, in the hot, fever-rotten Markham Valley of New Guinea, I looked into the calm, wide-open eyes of a man who was dying. He was a Japanese infantryman captured by our commandos, mortally wounded in the battle of Kaiapit. From his...