AustLit

'Joe was convinced, or claimed to be convinced, which was far from necessarily the same thing, that Sam Samson was much older than he said he was. Twenty years older. What Sam claimed was to be younger by a few years than us. Joe was not having it. Whether he was threatened, or annoyed, by Sam’s rapid acceptance and success in the literary world or just perceptive, I could not tell. Certainly it was not a journalistic desire of setting the record straight and getting to the truth that motivated Joe’s insistence. Such alleged desires were one of the lies about journalism we were fed in those years. But Joe had not been a journalist for nothing. He had no more commitment to the unvarnished truth than any other journalist still in the business. Nor, for that matter, did Sam.' (Introduction)