AustLit logo

AustLit

y separately published work icon Antipodes periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... vol. 30 no. 1 June 2016 of Antipodes est. 1987 Antipodes
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2016 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
“The Distance between Them” : Sheep, Women, and Violence in Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing and Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies, Lucy Neave , single work criticism
'In recent years, animals in contemporary Australian writing and culture have been of considerable interest to scholars and writers. Anna Krien and Delia Falconer have raised questions about their ethical treatment and the preponderance of animal metaphors in Australian fiction and poetry in essays for general readers, while J. M. Coetzee's representation of dogs has been a significant area of recent inquiry in academic scholarship. Dogs' salience as metaphors in Disgrace (1999) has been noted by James Ley, as has the relationship between human and animal rights, embodiment and belief in Elizabeth Costello (2003) in essays by Elizabeth Anker and Fiona Jenkins. The recent interest in animals in the Australian context has also become manifest in a series of novels, many of them by women, such as Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog (2007), Eva Hornung's Dog Boy (2009), Gillian Mears's Foal's Bread (2012), Carrie Tiffany's Mateship with Birds (2012), and Charlotte Wood's Animal People (2011). ' (Introduction)
 (p. 125-136)
Bush Strangersi"Women work the shoulder.", Anders Villani , single work poetry (p. 156-157)
AC/DC as First Emu Prime Ministeri"First, they made Canberra into actual", Michael Farrell , single work poetry (p. 158)
Enemies of Honor : Heroes and Prisoners of War in Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Tom Keneally’s Shame and the Captives, Fiona Duthie , single work criticism
'The heroism of the Australian soldier abroad is a subject often explored by Australian writers. Representations have fluctuated somewhat from the time of the First World War, but tales of valor and stoic endurance have elicited a potent fascination from this time. Among many examples is Frederic Manning's The Middle Parts of Fortune (1929), throughout which, despite the hardships and privations of the Western Front and the various enticements to accept commissions elsewhere, the protagonist prefers the lot of the everyday soldiers, among whom heroism is "a common thing" (94). The serving men are presented not as types but as individuals, but each is secure in the conviction that "one must not break" (13). The tradition continues in A. B. Facey's memoir of Gallipoli, A Fortunate Life (1981), in which "despite the fear men mostly took everything that was thrown at them" (260) and bonded together in "love and trust" (278), and more recently in Christopher Koch's Highways to a War (1995), which tells of a combat cameraman who joins the struggle against the Khmer Rouge. Mike Langford is athletic and charming, he is preoccupied with "the outcast and the vulnerable" (159), and he saves many lives ultimately at the cost of his own. He is portrayed indisputably as a "hem" (342). Clam Rhoden argues that Australian war literature "diverges from its international counterparts chiefly, but not solely, because most Australian accounts use a classical heroic tradition that others have abandoned for a disillusioned style of narration." Similarly, Robin Gerster notes that Australian writers are "critical of war but almost blindly impressed by warlike achievements" (257). However, there has long been a definitive thread of dissent interwoven into the heroic tradition, in which Martin Boyd's When Blackbirds Sing (1962) is one of the most notable examples. In Boyd's novel, Dominic Langton feels "a common humanity" with the German soldiers he is required to destroy (75). He sees "suicidal futility" where others perceive a glorious defense of civilization (114). Similarly, David Maloufs Fly Away Peter (1982) describes senseless carnage in another country's war. Like Langton, however, Jim Saddler sees the Germans as individuals, as "something more than the enemy" (80).' (Introduction)
 (p. 159-171)
All This Struggle for Her?, Enzo Condello , extract drama (p. 172-181)
Very Queer Indeed : Martin Boyd’s Nuns in Jeopardy, Greg Hughes , single work criticism
'Although Nuns in Jeopardy (1940) is one of several of Martin Boyd's books that lave received relatively little critical attention, and even more so in relation to its queerness, it is one of if not the most erotically charged, queer or otherwise, of all Boyd's novels. Although there is a lack of attention to the novel, several reviewers have appreciated its merit. The Advertiser (1940) described it as "a most unusual story, wittily and sometimes brilliantly told" (Rev. of Nuns 8), while it was also regarded as "a tragic-comedy of good and evil" (Brighouse 2). A lack of recognition by literary commentators of the queerness of Boyd's work is not unusual, and his Anglo nostalgia was alienating for nationalist critics. It might be argued that this absence has begun to change only relatively recently with the publication in 2008 of Robert Darby's "The Outlook and Morals of an Ancient Greek (Homoeroticism in the Fiction of Martin Boyd)." However, Darby's article is but a brief introduction to the eroticism of Boyd's work, including an even briefer mention of homoeroticism in Nuns in Jeopardy. In this article, I attempt to counter the absence of overtly queer readings of Boyd's work by providing a close queer reading of Nuns in Jeopardy. ' (Introduction)
 (p. 182-194)
Communism Usurping Fascism : Political Propaganda in Jean Devanny’s Roll Back the Night and Dymphna Cusack’s Heat Wave in Berlin, Kirril Shields , single work criticism
'This essay explores two specific literary and thematic tropes apparent in Jean Devanny's Roll Back the Night (1945) and Dymphna Cusack's Heat Wave in Berlin (1961): first; depictions of the fascist victim and perpetrator that act as a means of didacticism and political pontification in an Australian context; second, each author's belief that the threat of fascism would engulf Australian and/or European politics post-Second World War. While the publication of the two texts is separated by almost two decades, I argue that their similarities highlight an Australian cultural naivety promoted by a geographic and socially removed Australian understanding of the Third Reich. This cultural specificity becomes apparent in Roll Back the Night and Heat Wave in Berlin through the texts' depictions of the Nazi period and the period's ensuing after-effects, drawing one-dimensional character representations of the communist victim and fascist perpetrator that serve not as a means of remembrance or understanding but as Communist propaganda aimed at an Australian audience. Similarly, the cultural and geographic distancing in the two texts is further noted—however influential these stories may or may not have been—in each author's attempts to combat what they suggest is the encroaching threat of the political Right in both Australian and European contexts. It is this lack of character development, alongside each author's political tone and their similar political concerns, that will be explored in this essay. ' (Introduction)
 (p. 195-205)
“Not Me Go to England No More” : Michael Farrell’s Writing Australian Unsettlement, U.S. Dhuga , single work essay

'In this significant critical work, Michael Farrell offers up a dialectical method (not announced as such), which I daresay is not unworthy of such a one as Lionel Trilling. In chapter 1, "The Hunted Writer," Farrell provides a bracing reading of unsettlement through both The Jerilderie Letter by Ned Kelly—"the notorious bushranger" (I1)—and also Bennelong's "Letter to Lord Mr Philips, Lord Sidney's Steward." By pairing these particular texts—so historically fecund as regards the discursivity of settler-hunter (Kelly) vis-à-vis Indigenous travel (Bennelong)—in a poetics of unsettlement, Farrell maintains that "these two colonial writers were participants, as both protagonists and victims" (13). The integrity of Farrell's readings stands on their own merits: there is no need to "pun"—for Farrell has already criticized others for exploiting the "affective, punning quality" of the word "unsettlement" (7)—to tell us that that the protagonist/victim synchronicity that Kelly and Bennelong apparently sham is an "unsettling fact" (13) that informs Farrell's readings. Indeed, to unsettle so iconic a figure as Kelly is not just a dialectic but also a dialogue among genres: cinematically, as Farrell points out, Kelly has been played on film "by both Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger," while culinarily Kelly's "image is used to sell pork in Castlemaine" (13). (Introduction)

' (Introduction)

 (p. 206-220)
Cynthia Vanden Driesen and Bill Ashcroft, Eds., Patrick White Centenary : The Legacy of a Prodigal Son, Carolyn Bliss , single work review
— Review of Patrick White Centenary : The Legacy of a Prodigal Son 2014 anthology criticism ; (p. 221-227)
The Vladimir Nabokov Book Club, Katy Crane , single work essay
— Review of A Guide to Berlin Gail Jones , 2015 single work novel ;

'“The past is a foreign country,” as L. P. Hartley once famously wrote, and Gail Jones’s novel A Guide to Berlin suggests that Hartley’s famous dictum can also be inverted: that we see foreign countries mainly through the prism of the past and that to travel to another country is thus to immerse oneself in history. Certainly, the lonely expatriates who make up Jones’s cast seem more at home in the past than in the present.' (Introduction)

 (p. 227-228)
Growing up in Murky Water, Eric-Alain Parker , single work essay
— Review of Ghost River Tony Birch , 2015 single work novel ;

'There are many books that kindle nostalgia for the pleasures of childhood, but there is also the rare book that does the same for its calamities. Tony Birch’s Ghost River is a novel that paints young lives, then dangles them perilously close to booze, neglect, corrupt police, a Greek gangster, and the silt- and body-clogged river that runs through their backyards. The pages are lean and read quickly, like some cinematic current or the fleeting attention spans of the young, and though you do not have to be young or old or even Australian to enjoy the meanders of Birch’s plot, you must have immense reserves of your own imagination to endure its drying up in the final stretches of the book. Luckily for Birch, Ghost River builds enough momentum through its little protagonists’ immense charms to leave readers focused on them and not the lulls in narrative weight. ' (Introduction)

 (p. 228-230)
In the Quiet Company of a Dreamer, Jennifer Popa , single work single work essay
— Review of Alfonso Félix Calviño , 2013 single work novel ;

'The four walls he had washed and painted twice as a gesture of friendship would have captured, as a mirror would, his frustration at trying to sew on a button, or trying not to scorch a new shirt; his clumsy attempts at cooking dinner with half of the ingredients missing until he trained himself to write a shopping list before going shopping; his relentless learning and relearning of English words; his chores of washing, cleaning, daily bed-making, and weekly changing of the bed sheets. (33) For the reader, the tangible objects in Alfonso's home take center stage: the carrots and potatoes he is cooking for dinner, the cabinets he restores, and the telephone that does not ring.' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 230-231)
Idealism and Guns, Victoria Avery , single work essay
'The particular tensions of the community reflect how people would react anywhere to the threat of economic security. [...]each public protest against the constraints placed on the community ends in confusion at best and violence in the most extreme cases. While Judith tries to feel empowered through her artwork, once again her efforts ultimately prove ineffectual in the long term. [...]the book raises concerns over the value of art during economic hardships as Judith herself begins to question whether art can influence material conditions during trying times.' (Publication abstract)
 (p. 230-231)
A Poetry Mixed Bag, Carolyn Stice , single work review
— Review of Dark Cupboards New Rooms Adrian Caesar , 2014 selected work poetry ;

'The second stanza of the poem "What's in a Name" contains the lines, But at the Foundling Hospital Museum I find a clue in names inscribed of orphans left by desperate women with no choice; it's easy to imagine I'm descended from rough trade to Muddle Lane, for beside Ms. Plantagenet and Master Tudor, Ollie Cromwell and Alexander Pope, the moniker of my own great forbear, Augustus Caesar is plainly blazoned, a long way from court and the affairs of state. Section 2, "Shots in the Louvre," is the shortest of the collection and is not especially compelling because in the poems the speaker's voice has a heavy-handed element that leads readers to suspect he is attempting to moralize the paintings he is observing.' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 231-233)
Careful Clarities, Dan Disney , single work review
— Review of The Ladder Simon West , 2015 selected work poetry ;

'In the book's second poem, "Climbing the Tower of Babel," the poet talks us through his learning of the Italian language, echoing how "this isn't yours to call your own," and this, coming from a Caucasian poet in Australia, is perhaps a subtly intentional, pointed image; the point is that West is finding a way to talk within (and perhaps from beyond) a country of "death-tinged colors" (29): It was love that kept me going despite myself, that and the elusive charity of words.' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 235-236)
Undernotes of Desire, Dan Disney , single work review
— Review of Exhumed Cassandra Atherton , 2015 selected work poetry ;

'Cassandra Atherton's Exhumed is a book of intertextual echoes in which, as Lisa Gorton asserts in the cover blurb, "the speaker [can be] characterized by desire-alike for love, glamour, sex, food, consumer goods and a life as real as it seems in fiction." In another collection of prose poems (Trace, Findlay Lloyd, 2015), Atherton is described as "a poet, critic, and balletomane" (n.p.); what seems clearest is that in her dance with language and canon, identity and affect, Exhumed harnesses and displays canny powers of both precision and grace.' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 236-237)
A Precious Gift, Airica Parker , single work review
— Review of Walking with Elephants Christine Townend , 2015 selected work poetry ;

'Townend is unafraid to enter the world as an equal, even as a form of prey as she disappears "through a keyhole" embracing the lesson of a tearing bite that shows her "how the deer" can "sing" her way to "the stars." A sense of being held and witnessed extends to readers and makes this collection shine, for Townend expands limited notions of "us" with resolve and empathy. Because the voice of the poet wants to see and share from a place of wise and responsible generosity, Walking with Elephants offers all of us a precious gift.' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 238)
Missed Opportunities in Myanmar, Natalie Taylor , single work review
— Review of From Burma to Myanmar : On the Road to Mandalay Lydia Laube , 2015 single work prose ;

'In Lydia Laube's latest volume, From Burma to Myanmar, the writer sets out on an entertaining weeks-long escapade through Burma, negotiating confusing train and bus schedules, chasing down nonexistent boat rides, and making deals with trishaw drivers. With Laube's endless recounting of how much every meal and hotel room cost her-"For thirty dollars I got a real hotel"-the oddities of her journey lose all their momentum, and so does her story (42).' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 239-240)
A Zoo Is Not a Zoo, or, Ecopoetics for Children, U.S. Dhuga , single work review
— Review of The Poetry of Queensland Mark Riordan , 2016 selected work poetry ;

'As with "Australia Zoo," "Brisbane River" invites us not only to praise our now tamable, now untamable, above all coeval, ecosystems but also to consider how we have-at best poorly repaid, at worst bankrupted-our squarings (to adapt the title of Seamus Heaney's finest sonnet sequences). (10) The dialectics of "Australia Zoo," "Brisbane River," and "The Flood"-and Riordan's poetry as a whole-invites an ecopoetically foundational question: did nature hit us, or did we hit nature?' (Publication abstract)

 (p. 240-242)
X