John McLaren

Bookends – September 1978

September 1978, no. 4 • 16 September 2022

During next month – October – we celebrate Australian Book Week, and during this week the winners of the National Book Council 1978 Australian Literature Awards will be announced. As one of the judges, I have been forced by this contest to think not only about the value of competitions in the arts, but also about what we might mean by giving any book an award for ‘best of its kind’. Certai ... (read more)

John McLaren on the 1980 federal election

October 1980, no. 25 • 16 September 2022

The most imaginative, although in all probability the least politically effective, of the campaign badges produced for the current Australian elections is the ALP Badge, ‘the light on the hill’. The badge, a simple cloisonne in blue and red with gold wire, symbolises the hopes of that great Australian, J.B. Chifley. It is accompanied by a card with his words: We do say that it is the duty a ... (read more)

John McLaren reviews 'Toil and Spin' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

April 1980, no. 19 • 01 April 1980

In a world which has lost its faith and its standards, the situation of the creative artist is both central and precarious. As Wallace­Crabbe sees it, he must stand inside and outside society at once, be both totally involved with himself and totally responsive to his society. While doing this, he must create not only his own audience but even his own language. In this series of essays, Walla ... (read more)

'Bookends' by John McLaren

June 1980, no. 21 • 08 August 2022

The federal government’s proposal for a multicultural television network has sparked off once more a row about the nature of the Australian national identity. The opponents of the network seem to fear that it will cause all kinds of divisions in our community by emphasising the different places and cultures to which we owe our origins. They would like to restore the myth of a single nation, bou ... (read more)

'Bookends' by John McLaren

June 1979, no. 11 • 08 August 2022

While the art of the ghost writer has a long and honourable history, the court case concerning the extent of Graham Yallop’s responsibility for the book on the recent test series raises a number of general issues apart from the outcome of this particular dispute. At its best, the practice of ghost writing enables the general public to share the experiences of people who have had interesting live ... (read more)

Bookends by John McLaren | May 1979

May 1979, no. 10 • 01 May 1979

Although the policy of the Australian Book Review is to review only Australian books, every now and then a publisher sends us a book which is so important or so relevant to issues of current concern that it cannot be ignored. Recent debate in Australian newspapers makes The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, by Yehuda Bauer (published in Australia by ANU Press), such a book. The book consists o ... (read more)

John McLaren reviews 'Angry Penguins: 1944 Autumn Number to Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern Malley' and 'Poetic Gems' by Max Harris

February–March 1980, no. 18 • 01 February 1980

In his introduction to The New Australian Poetry, reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Thomas Shapcott, John Tranter declares that this poetry has no allegiance except to itself. Some characteristics of works regarded as modernist are: ‘self-signature’ – the work validates its own technical innovations – and self-reference, where the ‘method’ is reflected consciously in the ‘medium’ ... (read more)

John McLaren reviews 'The Australian Encyclopedia', Third Edition by the Grolier Society of Australia

September 1978, no. 4 • 01 September 1978

The first edition of the Australian Encyclopedia was published by Angus & Robertson in two volumes in 1925, under the general editorship of Captain Arthur Jose. The second edition, completely revised and rewritten, was published in 1958 and ran to ten volumes, including an index. The editorial team was headed by Alec Chisholm. This edition was later sold to the Grolier Society, which has now p ... (read more)

John McLaren reviews 'Persistence in Folly' by Les Murray

April 1985, no. 69 • 01 April 1985

The heat of recent controversy in Australia about the meaning and value of multiculturalism in education, in history and in society at large is an indication of the tenacity with which a dominant culture, in this case that of British Australia, clings to its privileges. However, to the extent that these cultures come to recognise the differences and tensions existing within the dominant culture i ... (read more)

John McLaren reviews 'An Imaginary Life' by David Malouf

October 1978, no. 5 • 01 October 1978

The title of David Malouf’s novel, An Imaginary Life, must be read three ways. Most obviously, the novel is an imaginative recreation of the last years of the life of the Roman poet, Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), who was exiled to a village on the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus in the last century BCE. The life is imaginary because it imagines – most successfully – the circumstances of thi ... (read more)