Foster's art of excess

When applied to art and literature, the word ‘serious’ can be used to suggest a work is substantial and important, not necessarily that it is the opposite of humorous. There is a sense in which Rabelais and Cervantes are serious writers. But the slippage between these two meanings – the fact that our language permits a casual conflation of worthiness and sincerity – reflects a long-standing cultural prejudice which relegates comedy to a second tier, as if a talent for provoking laughter were somehow less praiseworthy than a talent for inspiring pity and terror. Tragedy is often assumed to be profound and ennobling, but comedy’s levelling tendencies, the anarchic implications of mockery and unbridled laughter, are apt to be viewed with suspicion.

Susan Lever’s David Foster: The Satirist of Australia, written with the cooperation of its subject, is welcome for a number of reasons. It is, firstly, a comprehensive study of a major Australian writer at a time when such extended critical works are relatively rare. Interestingly, it has an American publisher, which probably explains why Lever feels obliged to tell us that an RSL is ‘a social clubhouse, common in Australian towns’, and that rabbits and blackberry bushes are ‘signs that Australians recognise as ominous’.