The Australian Literature Resource
Welcome to the latest newsletter from the AustLit Gateway, bringing you up to date with information on new developments and services on AustLit and the latest literary news on the Australian scene.
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New AustLit Records
During July-August 2003, the AustLit Content Team added:
- 6 824 new works
- 1 504 new agents (individuals and organisations)
In addition to these new records, thousands of already existing work and agent records have been significantly upgraded and enhanced.
Growing Availability of Full Text Works via AustLit
AustLit provides access to a growing range of selected full text creative and critical works that are available online. In conjunction with the National Library of Australia's PANDORA Archive and the University of Sydney Library's digitising project, SETIS : Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service, AustLit's coverage of accessible full text is being progressively increased. AustLit currently has records relating to over 7 000 works and you can move from record to item view in a few clicks of the mouse. More than half the available works are poems and nearly 1 000 are short stories. There are also more than 70 novels and numerous reviews and critical works available through AustLit.
The Full Text help page provides access to these and other full text resources such as freely available ejournals, websites relating to authors, publishers and other relevant literary organisations. Use the AustLit Advanced Search to construct a search delivering access to Full Text by selecting the 'Full Text available' field from the Work attributes list. Refine the search by adding any of the range of Author, Work or Subject fields.
Scholarly Bibliography in the Electronic Age
Carol Hetherington, AustLit Content Manager based at The University of Queensland, presented a paper titled 'From Citation to Context and Beyond : Crossing Bibliographic Boundaries in the Electronic Age' at the recent Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference. The paper emphasised the work of bibliography as 'an essential underpinning of scholarly endeavour'. At its best, she said, 'it not only supports research but is part of the research process'. Commenting on the various types of available bibliographies, Carol noted that traditional 'Print bibliographies are inevitably imprisoned within limits of space, time and format'. They are 'diminished by their separateness; forced to be restrictive in order to be manageable, they are weakened by their isolation from each other'.
Carol contrasted the limitations of print bibliographies with the possibilities provided by the model implemented by AustLit - the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model. This model has given AustLit 'the capacity to combine the facility of on-line technology with the descriptive and annotative elements of traditional bibliography at its best'. Various versions of a work can be explained and elaborated on, but, just as importantly, AustLit 'can dynamically list contents of books and journals and treat these as separate works.'
Carol also referred to AustLit's capacity to bring together different aspects of works and their authors in order to enhance the context of the work. This feature includes the recording of author information such as gender, cultural heritage and sources of inspiration, as well as aspects relating to the work itself - 'its critical reception, its influence and relationship to other works, literary and social movements, publications and its life history'. AustLit can then reach further by providing links to digital resources.
Acknowledging the contribution of AustLit's already rich Specialist Research Subsets, Carol noted the capacity to add or identify further subsets as required. 'Four new research areas are currently in development - author-directed bibliographical work for future volumes of the Bibliography of Australian Literature; a comprehensive index of fiction published in The Australian Journal; a North Queensland bibliography including detailed information about the journalism of E. J. Banfield, particularly as published in The North Queensland Register; a specialised and detailed study of 100 Australian magazines and periodicals focusing on their publication history, range and focus of interests'. Through these projects, 'results of past research are being incorporated into [AustLit] and new research is being undertaken in a mutually beneficial and complementary environment'. To read the full transcript of Carol's paper, contact her on info-austlit@austlit.edu.au
Change of Content Managers
After almost one year as acting Content Manager, Edgar Crook has returned to the National Library of Australia and the PANDORA Archive. Annette Scarvell, who has been on maternity leave during this period, has returned to AustLit for the remainder of 2003.
AustLit greatly appreciates the work undertaken by Edgar, particularly his contribution to the expanding number of records providing contextualised access to electronic resources. The AustLit team wishes him well for the future and looks forward to an on-going relationship with Edgar via the PANDORA Archive.
A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers
Wenche Ommundsen advises that she has about 1 000 copies of
A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers
(1992) which will be pulped if she does not disperse them soon. These copies are available free to anyone interested in Australian multicultural writers and writing. If you would like to obtain a copy, please contact William Dolley at Deakin University by phone (03 5227 8235) or email (wildol@deakin.edu.au).
Nevil Shute on the UK's Most Loved Novels List - But Not on Australia's
Nevil Shute's 1950 novel, A Town Like Alice has been included in a BBC-sponsored UK survey of 100 popular novels, but has failed to make a similar Australian list. British readers nominated their 'best loved novel' in a poll conducted in April, while in Australia, Angus & Robertson conducted a similar in-store survey. Not surprisingly the works of J. K. Rowling featured prominently in both lists.
The highest ranked work by an Australian writer in A & R's top 100 was Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One (#6); followed by A. B. Facey's A Fortunate Life (#11). Courtenay had the highest representation of any author on the Australian list with seven works included, six of them in the top 40. Tim Winton's Dirt Music (#15) and Cloudstreet (#20) also made the list, while twelve other Australians had single works included. Sally Morgan's My Place just squeezed in at number 99.
Results from the two surveys can be viewed at the following websites:
Best Selling Non-Fiction
Sarah Turnbull's autobiography, Almost French - A New Life in Paris, evoking her life as an expatriate, has been on the Australian top 10 non-fiction best-seller list almost continuously since May 2002. Also ranking highly in the sales market is Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love : A Harrowing True Story of Love and Revenge in Jordan. Still in the top 10 after 31 weeks, Forbidden Love tells the story of Khouri's closest friend, Dahlia, a Muslim woman, who was murdered by her father in a so-called 'honour-killing' after her relationship with a Christian man was discovered. Khouri left Jordan and settled in Australia in 2002.
One Book One Brisbane
The second One Book One Brisbane (OBOB) event took place over a five-week period from 11 August to 14 September. The 2003 book was Rosamund Siemon's The Mayne Inheritance. Events associated with OBOB included evocative tours around the city to explore the 'scene of the crime' and a presentation by film producer Damien Parer and La Boite Theatre's Sean Mee about the adaptation of The Mayne Inheritance for a forthcoming film and play.
Book's Images of Uluru Cause Disquiet
The Australian government will not to pursue a literary legal test case against Alan Campbell and Patricia Campbell, the authors of the children's picture book Bromley Climbs Uluru which contains images of a teddy bear on Uluru. Taking photographs of Uluru, a sacred site of the Anangu people, is offensive to the traditional owners of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
When the photographs were taken in 1986 no restrictions on commercial photography applied, however permits are now required. The Campbells regard the new regulations as unjust. After selling 45 000 copies of the first edition they had planned to have it republished. The case, which rests on the rights of traditional owners to control the exploitation of images of culturally significant sites, has received wide media coverage in Australia and has reached the print media of New Zealand and the UK. The Central Land Council may still pursue legal action against the Campbells if they issue a second edition. If convicted they would be liable to a fine of $55 000.
Australian Opera Eternity Man Opens in London
Dorothy Porter and Jonathon Mills have once again teamed up to create an operatic work. The Eternity Man is based on the life of reformed alcoholic, Arthur Stace, who roamed the streets of Sydney chalking the word 'eternity' on footpaths and other surfaces. Mills described his approach to the story as intentionally 'mysterious, evocative, archetypal' and depicted Porter's libretto as 'a series of hymns, a la William Blake'. (The Age, 15 July).
However, the new opera opened at London's Almeida Theatre on 23 July to unenthusiastic reviews. Stephen Pritchard (The Observer, 27 July) wrote that the opera was 'often hauntingly lyrical but rarely engrossing'. Unimpressed with both the score and the performance, Pritchard conceded 'what musical interest there is here is inspired by the poetry of Dorothy Porter's libretto'. Robert Thicknesse (The Times, 25 July ) found the libretto 'doesn't explain itself, and even the bits you can hear are tiresome enough', concluding that the opera is 'too pretentious, the scenes are too long [...] easy to listen to but of limited theatrical interest'.
Porter and Mills previously collaborated on an adaptation of Barbara Baynton's short story, ' The Tramp', for the opera The Ghost Wife.
Clive James Back Down Under
Clive James and his British colleague, singer and songwriter Pete Atkin, are touring Australia to perform their collaborative work, Clive James and Pete Atkin : Words and Music. The show, in which James contributes the anecdotes, song lyrics and poems and Atkin the musical backing on piano and guitar, tours most Australian states and territories from mid-September to early October.
James is the 2003 recipient of the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, awarded to an Australian writer whose work reflects 'the distinguished accomplishment' of Hodgins' poetry. Speaking to Jane Cornwell in The Australian, 19 July ('Bard to the Bone') James declared the award was 'the biggest honour I've had in Australia. Equal to my member of the Order of Australia and my honorary doctorate from The University of Sydney. It means I'm being recognised for my poetry at the 11th hour and 59th minute.'
Children's Book Council Book of the Year Awards
Reaction to the announcement of this year's Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award was varied. Meg Sorensen in The Sydney Morning Herald, 16-17 August wrote 'The high moral ground is familiar terrain for books singled out by the Children's Book Council of Australia in its annual awards, but this year it has been taken to the pulpit of preposterousness'. Sorensen declared the winner of the Younger Readers Award, Rain May and Captain Daniel, 'incredibly dull' from a child's perspective and suggested that Markus Zusak's The Messenger, winner of the Older Readers category, 'reads like a pamphlet on good citizenship that might have gone out to all households with their "Be alert" fridge magnet'. Sorensen's opinion of In Flanders Fields, the Picture Book of the Year, was that it 'makes the fatal mistake of telling the reader exactly how they should feel'. Overall, she thought that children's imaginations would be restricted by a collection of books in which characters and themes came 'already roped, gagged and depressingly tame'.
Michelle Hamer in The Age, 16 August was more positive in her response to the award winning books. She wrote that, with the exception of Zusak's The Messenger, 'The doom and gloom themes that pervaded many previous years' shortlists have dissipated and quirkiness and a celebration of life seem to have taken its place'. Hamer commented that the Award judges had 'embraced quirkiness' in Rain May and Captain Daniel and had responded to a theme of hope promulgated by In Flanders Fields. Winners in each category for 2003 are:
- Older Readers: The Messenger by Markus Zusak
- Younger Readers: Rain May and Captain Daniel by Catherine Bateson
- Early Childhood: A Year on Our Farm by Penny Matthews and Andrew McLean
- Picture Book: In Flanders Fields by Brian Harrison-Lever and Norman Jorgensen
- Eve Pownall Award for Information Books: Iron in the Blood : Convicts and Commandants in Colonial Australia by Alan Tucker
- Chrichton Award: The Dugong Meadow by Naomi Mairou
and
The Age Book of the Year Award
Now in its 30th year, The Age Book of the Year Award was announced on 22 August. Ann Galbally won The Non-Fiction Prize for her biography, Charles Conder : The Last Bohemian and the Dinny O'Hearn Poetry Prize went to Laurie Duggan for his collection, Mangroves. The Fiction Prize, and overall Book of the Year award, was presented to Sonya Hartnett for her novel, Of a Boy, which has won three major awards for a tale of childhood fear and alienation.
Australian Writers' Guild Awards
Playwright, scriptwriter and film director, Tony McNamara has taken the Major Award and the Film Award (Adaptation) at this year's Australian Writers' Guild AWGIE Awards. McNamara's film The Rage in Placid Lake, adapted from his earlier stage play, The Cafe Latte Kid, explores the life of a young man moving away from the eccentricities of his family's alternative lifestyle in the pursuit his own dreams and relationships. In other categories, Hilary Bell's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Ruysch won Music Theatre, Mavis Goes to Timor won the Stage award and the final part of Peter Copeman's Asian-Australian Trilogy, Sinakulo, was awarded the Community and Youth Theatre award.
Bob Graham Collects Kate Greenaway Medal but Gives Away the Prize Money
Bob Graham was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal for his picture book Jethro Byrde Fairy Child in July and promptly donated the prize money to assisting refugees and asylum seekers in Australia and the United Kingdom. In his acceptance speech, delivered at the British National Library, Graham referred to restrictions experienced by children in today's urban societies as a result of parental concerns about safety. While acknowledging the realistic nature of such concerns, Graham decided to 'turn this trend on its head in a minute way and to actually welcome a stranger or two'. He observed that 'if this "Stranger Danger" fear is left to progress down the years and become cumulative, it can turn in to national xenophobia [...]. We should be celebrating differences as well as cosy home grown certainties'. If this could occur, children may be able to 'imagine what it might be like to be in someone else's shoes [...] Then they may have a world with some of the fear taken out of it.'
The full text of the speech is available at the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children's Book Awards website.
Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing
Winners of this year's Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing, announced by the Crime Writers' Association of Australia (CWAA) in Melbourne on 28 August, are:
- Best Novel: White Dog by Peter Temple
- Best First Novel: Blood Redemption by Alex Palmer
- Best True Crime: Blood Stain by Peter Lalor
- Lifetime Achievement: Kerry Greenwood
Colin Roderick Award to Multi-Prize Winning Author
Don Watson has taken out the 2002 Colin Roderick Award for Recollections of a Bleeding Heart : A Portrait of Paul Keating PM. It is the sixth major award received by Watson for his biography of his former boss.
The Colin Roderick Award has been presented annually since 1967 by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies. It is awarded to 'the best book published in Australia which deals with any aspect of Australian life.' The award currently attacts a monetary prize of $5 000 and, since 1980, the winner has also received the H. T. Priestley Memorial Medal.
Stirring the Cultural Pot
Several important lectures have been delivered in recent months, some touching off further debate on the Australian cultural scene. On 24 August, Stephen Page delivered the Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture in Sydney and, on the same day, Peter Carey presented the James McAuley Memorial Lecture in Hobart. Earlier in the year, David Marr gave the Colin Simpson Lecture in an event sponsored by The Australian Society of Authors.
Speaking at the Belvoir Street Theatre, Stephen Page (who is the director of both the Adelaide Festival and the Bangarra Dance Theatre) spoke of his role as 'the caretaker of the culture' when presenting new works for the stage. Page highlighted the process of lengthy consultation and negotiation that takes place when presenting artistic work that draws on Aboriginal culture and heritage - a process not undertaken, he pointed out, when adapting the work of long-dead writers from western civilisations.
At the Stanley Burbury Theatre in Hobart, Peter Carey began his James McAuley Memorial Lecutre by saying 'I have a very strong feeling I shouldn't be here. But I am'. Carey's latest novel, My Life as a Fake, had its genesis in the 1944 hoax perpetrated by James McAuley and Harold Stewart. McAuley and Stewart wrote 17 poems under the fictitious name 'Ern Malley' and presented them, through the guise of a letter from Malley's sister, to Max Harris, editor of the Adelaide literary journal Angry Penguins. Harris duly published the poems under the collective title The Darkening Ecliptic and, in addition to facing ridicule when the poems were exposed as a hoax, was charged with printing 'indecent, immoral or obscene' material. (Harris was found guilty of the lesser charge of publishing indecent matter.) In the presence of McAuley's widow and children, Carey stated that his discomfort in presenting the lecture was due to the fact that his sympathies lay firmly with Max Harris in the whole affair and confessed himself pleased that 'the poems of Ern transcend their malicious origins'. (The complete publication history of The Darkening Ecliptic is fully revealed in Austlit.)
In the Redfern Town Hall, Sydney, David Marr's Colin Simpson Lecture, delivered on 29 March, was titled 'The Role of the Writer in John Howard's Australia'. Marr observed that 'few Australian novels [...] address in worldly, adult ways the country and the time in which we live. It's no good ceding that territory to people like me - to journalists. That's not enough. Even the best journalism dies because so much journalism is written in the air. But fiction lives - an essential in a country with a dramatically short attention span'.
Countering Marr's opinion, Sylvia Lawson replied in The Financial Review, 6 June that journalists and biographers also had a role to play. She cited some of Marr's own work such as The High Price of Heaven and, more recently, Dark Victory as well as the work of Heather Tyler in Asylum : Voices Behind the Razor Wire. Acknowledging that the process of 'getting a book reviewed and discussed is much harder than getting it published', Lawson suggested that 'Marr's challenge should therefore be not only to writers, but equally to agents, publishers, commissioning editors, critics and reviewers, the whole writing-publishing network'.
Crime Figures Return
Several familiar Australian sleuths and crime figures have re-appeared in recent publications:
Kerry Greenwood's early twentieth century flapper, Phryne Fisher returns in The Castlemaine Murders - the thirteenth volume in the Phyrne Fisher Mysteries series. Greenwood is an unabashed proponent of the happy ending in her stories. She enjoys the sense of comfort and order - 'Someone's cooking something, the door is shut, the bad guys are gone and everything is back where it ought to be' (The Sydney Morning Herald, 28-29 June).
Sydney detective, Cliff Hardy makes his twenty-sixth appearance in Peter Corris's Master's Mates. The Cliff Hardy series has been running since 1980, usually at the rate of one book per year. Corris freely admits that his books are genre-based, pulp fiction, but gets annoyed when 'reviewers want books not be the kind of books they are' ( The Sydney Morning Herald, 16-17 August).
After a break of twelve years, Robin Wallace-Crabbe's Essington Holt series returns with The Forger. Holt, the European-based art forger, has become a father in the intervening decade and now needs to protect his son while pulling off his art scams. Publisher, Duffy & Snellgrove, notes that as part of the scam Holt 'hires models to pose for him and the resulting pictures are reproduced in the book'. Coinciding with the book's launch, Wallace-Crabbe will open an exhibition of his drawings at New Contemporaries gallery in the Queen Victoria Building, Sydney.
Overseas Endorsements Precede Australian Publication
John Murray's first collection of short fiction, A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies, has been widely acclaimed since its publication in the USA and the UK earlier this year. A Few Short Notes has now been published in Australia. Murray grew up in Adelaide, and undertook basic medical training there, before re-locating to the USA for further study, developing expertise in disease control and prevention. He has worked in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Burundi and other developing countries. Murray turned to fiction as a means of understanding the experiences he had undergone in these places.
Murray's collection has attracted favourable reviews in overseas newspapers. In The New York Times, 16 May, Michiko Kakutani noted that many of the stories 'pivot around a similar set of themes and motifs [...] Within this narrow array of ideas, Mr Murray has worked a remarkable series of variations [...] the tales fluently cut back and forth in time to create telling portraits of people, as vivid and intimate as those found in a full-length novel.' In The Daily Telegraph (London), 31 May, Claire Messud declared the stories a 'dazzling, rich, debut collection' and their author a 'serious, vivid and urgent' writer of fiction. Also from London, Chris Power in The Times, 21 May described Murray's stories as 'an affecting blend of the maudlin and the squalid'.
Call for Greek-Australian Theatre Projects
Take Away Theatre is running a national competition for a play that explores ' issues of relevance to contemporary Greek Australians [...] The play must be full length and can be in English or bi-lingual Greek and English [...] and be able to be performed by a maximum of eight actors'. Take Away Theatre's mission is to undertake projects that 'explore multicultural Australia with particular reference to the Greek-Australian community and to increase the participation of Greek Australians in all aspects of the professional theatrical process'.
The competition closes on 10 October. For further information contact Take Away Theatre via email takeaway@optusnet.com.au or phone (02) 9990 4980.
New Poetry ejournal seeking submissions
Foam:e a new bi-annual international poetry journal with a strong Australian focus is seeking submissions for the inaugural issue. New work from both emerging and established poets is sought by the editors of the first and later issues will also consider previously published poems. There is no size or word length. Foam:e will be launched in November 2003. For more information on submissions, contact the editor, Angela Gardner, at: http://www.poetryespresso.org/foame.html
George Sprod
Adelaide-born cartoonist George Sprod died in Kings Cross, Sydney - the area he identified with closely throughout his adult life. Leaving home as a teenager, Sprod moved to Sydney where he lived briefly before enlisting with the AIF. Sprod spent over three years as a prisoner of war, both in Changi and working on the Thai-Burma Railway, an experience he recalled in Bamboo Round My Shoulder : Changi, the Lighter Side. In an attempt to generate a humorous spirit amongst the war prisoners, Sprod regularly circulated his cartoons round the sick bays.
After the war, Sprod returned to Sydney, but soon moved to England where he achieved considerable prominence as a cartoonist with Punch magazine. Returning to Australia in 1969, Sprod settled in William St at the top end of Kings Cross and remained in the area for the rest of his life. He continued to publish cartoons and some of his illustrated, humorous poetry appeared in Quadrant in the 1980s. He also wrote book reviews and short newspaper articles. Sprod's autobiography, Life on a Square-Wheeled Bike : The Saga of a Cartoonist was published in 1983.
100 Years Ago
AustLit records 18 novels with a definite publication date of 1903, the most notable of these being Joseph Furphy's Such is Life. In the same year, Rosa Praed published two novels, The Other Mrs. Jacobs : A Matrimonial Complication and The Ghost; Randolph Bedford published True Eyes and the Whirlwind; and Louis Becke saw the publication of Helen Adair. Over half of the 18 novels were published in London. Of the seven Australian publications, four were published in Sydney. The majority of the novels are set in Australia and depict various aspects of life in the bush. An exception to this theme is one of the two novels published by Joyce Vincent; The Celestial Hand : A Sensational Story details a Chinese prophecy about the invasion and destruction of Sydney.
Also in 1903, two autobiographies appeared. Ada Cambridge's Thirty Years in Australia and William Craig's My Adventures on the Australian Goldfields.
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