Joel Deane replies:

Patrick, you’re right, ABR is a key platform for review and thought. You’re dead wrong about everything else, though. Our media is dangerously inbred and, as a group, Australian voters are anything but indifferent. You should get out more.

Patrick Hockey replies:

Few things strike me as more intellectually bankrupt than the commonplace practice of turning to the partisan media as a protest against a perceived lack of balance on the part of the so-called mainstream media. As soon as someone tells me they read The Guardian, I switch off involuntarily. A certain Saturday national print newspaper on the left comes to mind also. Page after page of laments about the bad actors – turgid nonsense. So facile and so unhelpful.

Joel Deane replies:

Patrick Hockey appears to be a master of presumption. It is as much a mistake to judge someone by the newspaper they read as it is to judge them by the clothes they wear. As for me, I read a wide range of newspapers and periodicals (including The Guardian and the Murdoch press), not to mention books. I rarely agree with everything and sometimes agree with nothing, but that is not the purpose of reading. Reading should not be comfort food. The purpose of intrepid reading should be to have beliefs challenged and minds expanded – or, as they say on The Simpsons, ‘embiggened’.

A final thought: I am a journalist by training. I grew up in a newsroom and love Australian newspapers and believe our democracy is strong when they are strong. Right now, though, Australian newspapers are anything but strong – and that is dangerous.

A disappointing companion

Dear Editor,

Unlike Frank Bongiorno, I was disappointed with the new edition of The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History (ABR, March 2025). It offers little more than a summary of European items of interest and of Eastern European artists. Native Title doesn’t get a guernsey, let alone particular cases, and the Aboriginal references are of those with Adelaide exposure. The section on Harold Thomas (designer of the Aboriginal flag) is thin and lacks any understanding of the period.

Bob Ellis

Andrea Goldsmith

Dear Editor,

I hope that Andrea Goldsmith will persevere with Vasily Grossman (‘My Unread Books’, ABR, March 2025). No books have meant more to me than Life and Fate and Stalingrad. The harrowing description of the young boy and the middle-aged lady meeting their fate in the gas chamber affected me more than any other passage of literature.

The 1985 UK hardback edition of the Chandler translation of Life and Fate comes with a handy insert referencing all the characters. Mind you, this edition also has blank pages between pages 725 and 736 (I had to buy a paperback edition to fill in the gap). I have checked other copies of the hardback first edition at book fairs, and the same pages are blanks.

Most people I know agree that Ulysses is unreadable, but Grossman is better than Tolstoy in my eyes. I’m no professor, just a reader.

Will Roseff

Whither Opera Australia?

Dear Editor,

Thank you, ABR Arts, for this splendid and helpful series of analyses. But what depressing reading it makes, especially for a Melburnian.

Barney Zwartz

Dear Editor,

One of the most beautiful opera houses in the world. Wonderfully talented local artists. International recognition. Overseas artists willing to come. What indeed is wrong? After reading this feature, it’s clear that the problem must lie with the board and the management. Although I am not wealthy, I fly down from Brisbane to attend operas in Sydney as often as I can. But I will not go for a musical!

Edeline Byrne

Dear Editor,

Michael Halliwell correctly notes the importance of training young artists in good technique for opera in the tertiary institutions. However, in the postgraduate space, privately supported groups such as the Acclaim Awards and the Melba Opera Trust are vitally important in a singer’s career. Mentoring in all aspects of a career, as well as performance opportunities, is important.

Margaret Knight