Quadrant articles from May 2008

Quadrant archives from May 2008

Australia's war effort.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: I was delighted to read Peter Ryan's insightful review of Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Sir Max Hastings (March 2008). For some years I have been studying the Australian home front, making use of a number of little-known US...

Pius XII and the Jews.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: 1. To Damien Freeman (April 2008): Love didn't invite Marvell, he invited George Herbert. 2. To Bill James (April 2008): "Clear your mind of cant" is familiar to me from Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma, although I suppose Shaw might have...

The trouble with the Blake Prize.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: Two things might be added to Patricia Anderson's incisive article "The Struggle to Keep Faith in the Blake Prize" (March 2008). The first is that the chief reason for the hallowed status of the Blake Prize on the national art scene...

Jews and the early Christians.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: From Michael Giffin's review of Yoder's The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited (March 2008), it seems more than likely that Yoder, as in so many cases of historical revisionism, is merely reconstituting a set of facts which were formerly,...

On English teaching.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: I could not help but be wryly amused as well as slightly affronted by Dr Mark Lopez's lambasting (March 2008) of the English teacher who could possibly be one of the square pegs forced into a round hole by a frustrated principal who finds...

The origins of the movement.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: Simon Caterson's article on Monash and Mannix (April 2008) is quite enlightening. However, for the sake of historical accuracy his claim that the Movement was "founded in 1939" by Mannix needs to be challenged. B.A. Santamaria in his...

What we should do about climate change.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... SIR: With regard to climate change and the IPCC, Ray Evans (March 2008) is sceptical and Chris Cuthbert (Letters, April 2008) is a believer in the IPCC report. And, indeed, those of us who are not scientists have a hard time deciding whose...

Securing Australia's "special intersection".(How Good Was Howard?)(Company overview)
May 1, 2008... SINCE FEDERATION Australian defence policy has oscillated between two contradictory schools of thought: continental defence (the security of home territory) and expeditionary defence (the security of vital interests). The intellectual...

The TUMP in Love.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... THE TUMP IN LOW (TUMP stands for Totally Useless Male Poet, according to Wendy Cope. I am not a TUMP, Wendy says, because I have a car.) Boy poets have these little beards And most of them wear specs. Though only...

Faith Zone.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... FAITH ZONE We hurl the homosexuals from cliffs, Being enjoined to do so by religion That scours our souls of maybes and what ifs. Such wanton decadence is not our pigeon. The Word is firm and clear and unambiguous. ...

America as the new Rome.
May 1, 2008... FOR AT LEAST 240 YEARS Western societies have been fascinated by two inter-related events, one located in the distant past, and the other in the near but ever-receding future: the fall of the Roman empire with its causes and consequences; and...

Stilla natt, heliga natt!(Poem)
May 1, 2008... STILLA NATT, HELIGA NATT! Way down south I'm watching them, the Swedes at Advent with "Lucia"; blonde children in a double file trailing in an edge of summer. The leading girl, perhaps thirteen, wears steadily...

Two Weeks On.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... TWO WEEKS ON HMP 1914-2007 Each, time, it was the "last goodbye"... that slight wave as we drove away, the talk all "done with" now, your sense of something to get back to. And now; at 92, it's happened. The...

The brave new conformity.
May 1, 2008... THE CULTURE WARS are over, and the Left won. For proof, look no further than the winners of three of Australia's most prestigious annual art prizes, currently exhibiting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The best-known of the three is...

The chipped Limoges plate.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... THE CHIPPED LIMOGES PLATE Because of the chip that mars its border a midday sandwich can sit on it, a pear or a slice of cheese, several cream crackers and I can eat off it happily, aristocratically. It is the...

Sigmund Freud's antique gods.
May 1, 2008... ART SHOULD NOURISH privately, not collectively-and it is one of the most satisfying of the private preoccupations. Thus it comes as no surprise that Sigmund Freud, that unraveller of the subterranean and thwarted instincts of others, should not...

Ibis.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... IBIS What are you writing so intently in the grass as your stylus beak moves this way and that? Or is it a secret tattooed on the earth that keeps you searching first here, then back?

Mango.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... MANGO Look at the galaxies speckling your pregnant skin luscious with the taste of distilled temptation like sunsets within.

The Tropical Paradise of Margaret Mead.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... "As the dawn begins to fall among the soft brown roofs and the slender palms stand out against a colourless gleaming sea, lovers slip home from trysts beneath the palm trees or in the shadow of the beached canoes, that the light may find each...

Thought Crimes and Other Themes in Commonwealth Literature.
May 1, 2008... MY TITLE--"Thought Crimes and Other Themes in Commonwealth Literature"--has an ominous sound, as if (to echo George Orwell again) our only hope in the era of climate change is to keep the aspidistra flying for a bit longer. Let me put such...

Things Diana Mosley told me.(First Person)
May 1, 2008... I WAS WORKING at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for a few weeks in the early spring of 1990. I d flown across alone from Virginia after staying with friends on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. Chatsworth is the home of the Dukes of...

Alexander, Baches, Baras ...(Short story)
May 1, 2008... ALEXANDER WAS his surname and I don't remember his given name. He was a handsome boy with dark curly hair. His father was a professor at the Lwow University, his parents knew mine and I was encouraged to play with him. Baches, again a surname,...

Should the church apologise to atheists?
May 1, 2008... NATIONAL APOLOGIES have become a feature of political life around the world. Believing that they have a positive therapeutic effect on those who have been wronged, and claiming that the national conscience (if one can be said to exist) will be...

Legacy.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... Because his father was an initiate, my father learned things that many people have forgotten: why you should sit and wait for the elders to invite you into camp; that a good layer of river clay will confound mosquitoes; how to...

Inflation: who's to blame?
May 1, 2008... WITH THE RUDD GOVERNMENT'S first Budget almost upon us, how will it approach the inflation situation now confronting it? Much time since Labor's victory last November has been devoted to charges and counter-charges about the economic...

The bad guy gets booed. Understood?
May 1, 2008... DURING THE 1960S, in Japan, with an American friend, I planned the perfect crime. The use of shipping containers had just become universal but the management of their use was still pretty informal. Bill's and my plan was to register...

Rooster.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... ROOSTER Once all pomp and strut and splendid crown, you ruled the yard like a petty chieftain. At your approach every dust-colored hen genuflected. Your stiff comb fluttered little hearts and eyelids. ...

Tartuffe at the Malthouse.(Theater review)
May 1, 2008... BARRY OTTO was kissing Marcus Graham. Which, I thought, was an odd way for adults to make a living. Behind me the kids went "Yuuuckk". It was the most sensible thing they said all day. The play was advertised as Moliere's Tartuffe, at...

Dictionary Certified.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... DICTIONARY CERTIFIED I have checked out my dictionary's 22 definitions of love and matched them with the meanings in my heart-- they all fit as they ought! All, that is, but one-- in tennis a...

Pluto Deposed.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... PLUTO DEPOSED One moment I was riding wide at the rim, youngest of nine brothers, circling our fiery dad. Now it seems I'm not even a bastard, son of a sun--rather it seems, a grey sludge of dust and ice ...

Gorgeous George.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... GORGEOUS GEORGE Sometimes I think that people are dead and they're not --George Melly (1926-2007) Standing under the light you were, your hair plastered flat on your head, Standing there plain in the rain, and looking...

Fascism and the Left.
May 1, 2008... ONE OF THE CURSES of our time is people trying to turn "Left" and "Right" into moral categories on their own, as if very broad beliefs about the ends and means of politics are so morally determinant that further attention to details, specific...

"Unswerving loyalty": Moscow and the Communist Party of Australia, 1920-40.
May 1, 2008... THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL (Comintern) was intended by its founders to be the world party of socialist revolution. It was formed in 1919 and dissolved by Stalin in 1943. Its sections, the communist parties of many countries around the world,...

Cannibalism: a white colonist fiction?
May 1, 2008... RECENTLY IN THE Weekend Australian Philip Jones, a distinguished scholar and curator at the Adelaide Museum, deplored Daisy Bates' "insistence on the prevalence of cannibalism in Aboriginal society". He claimed that she "conflated Aboriginal...

Last sister.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... LAST SISTER Least and last and now, as the last illness comes and she takes to bed, largest. The only one with lungs still breathing faintly on this earth. The rest in their sequence, like birth spaces, ...

All Saints and the day of an operation.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... ALL SAINTS AND THE DAY OF AN OPERATION for Beth By midnight, All Souls, you will be sleeping the sleep of the drugged, wake in a grey light and wonder where you are, touch your wound think the bed lamp is a moon. Above ...

Portrait of a Coast Redwood Forest with Mandolin.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... PORTRAIT OF A COAST REDWOOD FOREST WITH MANDOLIN When the first ray pierces my canvas I breathe on its shaft, make Solar music. It's in these early hours of a painting's life that my palette becomes a mandolin, its...

The University among the Redwoods, Santa Cruz.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... THE UNIVERSITY AMONG THE REDWOODS, SANTA CRUZ They're up there--the students, in their high halls, sleeping among the redwoods, in the university of leaves. The sky is a blue-bound volume of flickering white pages...

Manning Clark's anti-semitism.
May 1, 2008... That night tears came not only to my eyes when we stood and clapped and stamped and cheered Gough Whitlam... at long last we had a teacher who had a chance to lead us out of darkness into light, always provided that THEY did not pull him down,...

Late October Hexameters.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... LATE OCTOBER HEXAMETERS After Miklos Radnoti, "Oktobervegi Hexameterek" In its dancer's channel the white-laughing creek sprints down off the mountain, the autumn leaf dances and, smoothing itself on the wave-crest, ...

A cribber and a fibber.(plagiarism)
May 1, 2008... IN 2005 ROBERT MANNE edited a collection of his political essays entitled Left Right Left. It is a large book of thirty-eight works, ranging from those published as long ago as 1977 to as recently as 2005. The turning point within them, Manne...

Audiology.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... AUDIOLOGY The winter shrubs are crisp with wrens. Wire brushes on a snare are suddenly a well-heard whisper. It's not a miracle exactly but something very close. The world retrieves its ...

Searching the past.(Charlton Heston)
May 1, 2008... BY A SAD IRONY the arrival of the newly released DVD of El Cid coincided with news of the death of its star, Charlton Heston, on April 5. I had been planning a retrospective article on the way his work in El Cid and The War Lord are among...

Hard times.(Short story)
May 1, 2008... Jacob stood in the barn mouth and watched Edna leave the hen house. Her lips were pressed tight, which, meant more eggs, had been taken. He looked up at the ridge top and guessed eight o'clock. In Sylva it d, be full morning now, but here light...

Sunset stroll with retriever.(Short story)
May 1, 2008... It's all a wonderful improvisation!" said Prof, sucking on his pipe and pouring himself a second glass of Armagnac. "What?" asked William. "Huh, pardon?" coughed Prof. "What... is a wonderful improvisation?" They had...

Paperbarks.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... PAPERBARKS Such comfortable trees, those old melaleucas. They look at themselves on the shores of lakes, or get their feet wet in treacle-brown creeks. You see them too in suburban avenues. With their generous...

Getting China wrong.(Will China Fail? The Limits and Contradictions of Market Socialism)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Will China Fail? The Limits and Contradictions of Market Socialism, by John Lee; Centre for Independent Studies, 2007, $24.95. JOHN LEE NEEDS to get out more. More travel in China would be a good start. Although he argues well and strongly...

Encyclopedic task completed.(Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940: Continental Exploration)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940: Continental Exploration, by Raymond John Howgego; Hordern House Rare Books, 2008, $295. THE LITERARY UNDERTAKING that the distinguished critic Alberto Manguel described as "The definitive reference...

The reading poor.(The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, by Jonathan Rose; Yale University Press, 2003, US$23. THE WORKING CLASS--steeped in darkness, ignorance and bad taste--or downtrodden nobility? A bit of both, according to this book, an...

The Gifford lectures.(Book review)
May 1, 2008... The Measure of God, by Larry Witham; HarperCollins, 2006, US$15.95. SINCE QUADRANT prides itself on respecting differences of opinion, without prejudices for or against religion, "judging material by the importance of ideas rather than...

Two naked emperors.(confessions)
May 1, 2008... PERHAPS I SHOULD begin with a warning--you know the sort of thing; we see them at the start of certain television programs: "Viewers are warned that this presentation contains expressions so disgusting that a bullock-driver might blush". Or:...