Quadrant articles from September 2001

Quadrant archives from September 2001

Books, publishing and book reviews. (Editorial).
September 1, 2001... THERE HAS BEEN for years an unedifying campaign of self-interested propaganda mounted by local publishers, writers, and their friends in the international book publishing industry against the proposed government legislation to permit parallel...

The gallery and the assassins. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: Anyone who writes criticism for a living must be prepared to take it, not merely dish it out. I usually let the most appalling insults go through to the keeper, but in the case of Gerard McManus's article (July-August 2001) a reply is in...

Balibo burdens. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: I am intrigued by the letters (July-August 2001) from George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe regarding Balibo. Allow me to explain why. Last year in Quadrant ("Balibo: Murdani and the Memory Hole", November 2000) I took some pains to try to...

Clyde Packer and Gorton. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: For the record, please allow me to make a correction. In my tribute to the late Clyde Packer at St James' Church, Sydney (July-August 2001), I repeated Clyde's account of his role in the fall of the Gorton government in 1971. As he had...

The NCC and the ADA. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: Paul Ormonde (letters, July-August) accuses the Australia Defence Association of guilt by association with the National Civic Council because of my personal involvement with both. The reality is somewhat more complex. Val Hancock (in...

Anticommunism and Vietnam. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: Since I am mentioned in two letters in the July-August Quadrant--from Stuart Macintyre and Paul Ormonde--I trust I may reply. Dealing with Mr Macintyre in the context of Manning Clark, I do not suggest criticism of the dead is wrong as...

Not quite James McAuley. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: I have just caught up with the March issue of Quadrant (my own nomadic habits to blame; no fault of Quadrant) and have read with approving interest the strictures Michael Ackland levels at Cassandra Pybus, author of The Devil and James...

The postmodern bogeyman. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: Scott Campbell (June 2001) takes aim at "relativism", invoking the by now familiar nemesis of Quadrant contributors--postmodernism--as the bogeyman himself. It is difficult to be sure exactly what the term "postmodernism" signifies when...

Bioethical dilemmas. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2001... SIR: Russell Blackford's review (May 2001) of Margaret Somerville's recent book The Ethical Canary was for me a disappointing critique, the more so because the issues Somerville raises are important. Mr Blackford calls Dr Somerville a...

How not to run a museum: people's history at the postmodern museum. (History).
September 1, 2001... ONE OF THE EXHIBITS at the new National Museum of Australia is called "Snapshots of Australian History". It is a long display containing objects and documents about twenty-five significant historical events from the arrival of the First Fleet...

Black dogs.
September 1, 2001... ON A QUIET DAY in April 1968, Peter Haran woke early in his tent at the Australian base at Nui Dat, and went to shave and shower. His shaving mirror hung from a tree. The face in the mirror had hollow, sunken cheeks. The eyes were ringed with...

The bias of Australian journalists. (Media).
September 1, 2001... I have rarely attended elections in any country, certainly not a democratic one, where the newspapers have displayed more shameless bias. --W.F. Deedes WHEN I GAVE a paper on "How the News is Made in Australia" at the beginning of May,...

Bush Versifying (Male).(Poem)
September 1, 2001... BUSH VERSIFYING (MALE) run begun, when up pen-up, fleece release. runt punt--swagger snigger stager wager. tall sprawl sturdy moody heady steady. ...

On the Intended Sacking of a University Chancellor.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... ON THE INTENDED SACKING OF A UNIVERSITY CHANCELLOR With robes and titles scattered across the years, She had more kudos than she could recall; But now, as the fateful ballot nears, There comes the truest honour of them...

Bush Versifying (Female).(Poem)
September 1, 2001... BUSH VERSIFYING (FEMALE) meet seat display play touch clutch hold mould flirt flit hurt split sorrow mistake tomorrow retake.

Bottle babies. (Society).(ethical questions concerning artificial human reproduction)
September 1, 2001... Honour your father and mother That your life may be long in the land. IF A MARRIED COUPLE adopt an orphan baby and rear it with care and kindness do they deserve to be honoured? Yes indeed--usually. But not always. For suppose the natural...

Gifts of Rain.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... GIFTS OF RAIN for Stan Sanvel Rubin I'd wait for hours under the tin-roofed shelters, head tucked well in from the runnels of warm water coursing down the sides of colonied black umbrellas. Week on week, the monsoon's...

Goa.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... GOA My land of first summers. Candles in coconuts, winking down red-earth roads. Air thick with cashews roasting. Land of long beaches. Rainbows of periwinkles scooped up for broth. June-frogs, small crabs...

Australia's tragic choice. (Rational Economics).
September 1, 2001... DE TOCQUEVILLE, writing at the dawn of the modern democratic age, asserted that: the sight of such universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am tempted to regret that state of society that has ceased to be. When the world was full of...

Greenham common, England: from burning Babylon.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... SYMPTOMS Once, when fevers here were scarlet, they were healed in deep seclusion in a sullen limewashed hospital folded into alder, beech and gorse. Now, in this our atom triangle --Greenham, Burghfield,...

A pilot's coat.
September 1, 2001... Its cloth was so beautifully brushed and cut that he had to have it. The tunic was a parting gift to Lisa Jones from her pilot boyfriend, when his F1-11 squadron went home to Arizona. The missiles were coming, and missiles need no pilots. On...

A Ghost-Tree.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... A GHOST-TREE When the Common bore no trees-- all runway, hangar, mound, Jason glimpsed one night a ghost-tree --a leafless, towering ash-- a shade caught in his headlamps on the wrong side of the wire. ...

Melissa Jones.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... MELISSA JONES Once, they found a schoolgirl in a pillbox hermitage by Guyer's Lock, curled inside the concrete snail-shell built to quash invasion by canal. She had told friends that she never slept. Her ears...

The Wanderer.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... THE WANDERER On a still October day--when bonfires spin the summer into cloud-- Jason Jones, back after a decade, takes time out at Blue Gate on his way to Pyle Hill woods. Blue camp-site is black with mud ...

Overcoming the Confucian: a modern reflection on Chinese classicism. (Philosophy & Ideas).
September 1, 2001... IN THE ANALECTS we read: "The Master said: `I lighten only the enthusiastic; I guide only the fervent. After I have lifted up one corner of a question, if e student cannot discover the other three, I do not repeat.'" In the spirit of the...

The politics of friendship. (Argus).(satirical piece)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... HUMAN RIGHTS in China are not a problem. The problem is people demanding them all the time," says Councillor Len Hoxha, leader of Ghasthurst Council's far-left Labor group. He was speaking at a media conference on his return from Beijing...

All must have prizes. (Argus).(satirical call for Australia's own Nobel Prizes)
September 1, 2001... In a visionary leap into the future, ALP Knowledge Nation strategists have proposed that the standards of Australian research and development should be instantly raised to the highest in the world by the award of Australia's own Nobel Prizes....

The feminine touch.(women bishops and the Anglican General Synod)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Ghasthurst's controversial Bishop Owen Featherhead has announced that he's "fed up" with waiting for the Anglican General Synod to legislate in favour of women bishops and has decided to "go it alone". "In Ghasthurst Cathedral next Sunday...

What's wrong with teachers today. (First Person).(ex-teacher on why he left profession)
September 1, 2001... I USED TO BE PART of the teaching "brat pack" at my first school. There were four of us: young, male, sporty, energetic. We had a healthy disdain for the school administration and the lively staff politics but worked extremely hard nonetheless....

Sayings.(Short Story)
September 1, 2001... SOYEZ ATTENTIF!" Nazareth. A cold, clear Christmas Day. During the lengthy Byzantine liturgy, Archbishop Maximos Hakim turns repeatedly to the faithful to invite them to "pay attention". Melchite Catholics in Israel must draw all their faith...

Binoculars.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... BINOCULARS 1 My sons, like possums, climbing in the loquat tree-- I pause to watch them through the small binoculars they gave me for Father's Day. 2 Unable to leave my computer, I pick up...

The Night Sky.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... THE NIGHT SKY why do i search the night sky why do i seek the dark spaces between the stars are they safe places where I might hide or do i believe that there is someone out there who knows me better than I...

Spring Haiku.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... SPRING HAIKU 1 Spring. In the fork of a branch, a pair of doves playing fiddlesticks. 2 Bride with confetti-- the aged almond tree standing in her strewn flowers. 3 Walking with my son--...

Bioethics versus liberal society: a reply to Margaret Somerville. (Argument).
September 1, 2001... IN DEFENDING HER BOOK The Ethical Canary and her general approach to bioethical issues, Margaret Somerville (Quadrant, July-August 2001), protests my use of robust language such as "superstition" to describe certain of her views. She alleges,...

The next technological revolution. (Science).
September 1, 2001... EVEN SHORT-TERM technological prediction is a notoriously risky business: I vividly recall a number of articles appearing in the late sixties and early seventies bemoaning the absence of any major new marketable product on the horizon--the last...

Reverse Vineyard.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... REVERSE VINEYARD I climb over the low wall. Every stone is warm. It's been sunny all night like those negatives left unprinted for thirty years, everything in reverse-- the orange sky, white vines with lilac...

The Songs of Insects.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... THE SONGS OF INSECTS for my mother This is your sleep-cure, your wild acre-- Move in closer, with micro-camera and amplifier. Thrust a crystal microphone into the vines. Shine mirrors on the...

How much growth is enough? (Economics).(analysis of economic growth as a policy objective in postwar world)
September 1, 2001... AT THE END of the Second World War, public and official opinion in Western countries, with the Great Depression of the 1930s in mind, gave top priority among economic policy objectives to full employment. In England, the Beveridge Report on...

Submarine.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... SUBMARINE Medication is a life vest You know the calm surface from the depth only when you have let the drug go and your chemistry begins the suck back under. Good things there though. This...

February Shack Song: Overheard.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... FEBRUARY SHACK SONG: OVERHEARD I don't see myself forgiving you, maybe sometimes forget, but no not never, damn cheat hog. Down to lard, beans and a land drift of snow, and you hoarding jerky and chocolate....

Kipling's "Mary Postgate" reconsidered: an example of critical obtuseness. (Literature).(Rudyard Kipling's short story reconsidered)
September 1, 2001... THE SHORT STORY "Mary Postgate", written by Rudyard Kipling early in 1915, before his own son was killed in the First World War, has been subject to the most extraordinary amount of fundamental misinterpretation. Few short stories can have been...

STD in the Family.(Poem)
September 1, 2001... STD IN THE FAMILY Skulking in the base of her little Spine; it's a sweet gangrene eating Away her childhood. Not making Her crumble, but providing her with The sensation of being chewed at. Under-age hope...

James Devaney.(work of Australian poet considered)
September 1, 2001... ENID MOODIE HEDDLE'S Boomerang Book of Australian Poetry, one of the better and more enjoyable anthologies of its time, begins with a poem that many contemporary readers are unlikely to be familiar with: Dirrawan went into the bush to...

Literature's afterlife.
September 1, 2001... After great pain, a formal feeling comes.--Emily Dickinson I ADMIRE a certain tone in modern literature--the voice of those who have been through the traumas of contemporary life--stress, disturbance, manipulation and suffering--and who...

The neighbour's dog. (Story).(Short Story)
September 1, 2001... The small window of the shed, hung on either side with gingham curtains, looked out onto the neighbour's back yard. Apart from the window the walls of the shed were almost completely lined with books. They were second-hand books; hardback and...

Songs in the English tongue.(A History of English Literature)(Book Review)
September 1, 2001... A History of English Literature, by Michael Alexander; Palgrave/Macmillan, 2000, $46.20. MY FATHER had a tiny version of this sort of book at Auckland Training College in 1923. They're still going strong. His was Stopford A. Brooke's...

A magic pudding of a book.(Gallipoli)(Book Review)
September 1, 2001... Gallipoli, by Les Carlyon; Macmillan, 2001, $45. HORRIBLE AND STRANGE debut though it was, Anzac saw Australia s first appearance on the world stage as a nation, fifteen years old. From today's ever-swelling public enthusiasm which rises on...

The London Freddy Ayer.(A.J. Ayer: A Life)(Book Review)
September 1, 2001... A.J. Ayer: A Life, by Ben Rogers; Vintage Books, 2000, $21.90. A.J. AYER: ("Freddie" to all who knew him, and many who did not) was not a great philosopher. But he was a distinguished one, and well worth a biography. He had an interesting...

Bowled over.(Any Old Eleven)(Book Review)
September 1, 2001... Any Old Eleven, by Jim Young; Cape Weed Press (PO Box 63, Warburton, Vic.), 2001, $16.95. RECENTLY, on a flight from Melbourne to New York, a director of BHP, not known for his unruly behaviour on long-haul flights, was politely requested...

Third person to herself.(Margeurite Duras: A Life)(Book Review)
September 1, 2001... Margeurite Duras: A Life, by Laure Adler, translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen; Victor Gollancz, 2000, about $75. HER LIFE was her best novel, and MD--or "La Duras" as even she referred to herself in old age--knew it. She kept ransacking it,...

A bad idea, for 854 reasons.
September 1, 2001... IN ANY CONTEST between ideology and common sense, put your money every time on a victory for ideology. From Papua New Guinea comes news of the latest example of a fad running wild and roughshod over good sense, over what is in the public...