letters

From Helen Thompson

Dear Editor,
I do wish John Docker had attended the July Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference in Toowoomba. He might have reconnected with some old friends and come away with a more benign and accurate picture of the state of Australian literary studies in the 1990s.

Ken Stewart, one of ASAL's founders, gave a paper on twenty years of ASAL in which he made clear that the iconclasm and irreverence of the organisation was directed specifically at the professors of English whose assiduous and often culturally-cringing gatekeeping of the discipline had persistently refused entry to Australian literature. Since then, as Ken's very funny paper pointed out, seventeen ASAL members have themselves become professors. But the gate has been opened in other ways that John ignores. Australian texts, for example, are scattered through the majority of courses in my own department at Monash University, part of the study of different cultures, post-coloniality, gender issues, nationalism and various other intellectual themes that now constitute 'English'. In supporting Australian writing at the institutional level ASAL has surely not made it more parochial, but rather a broader church.

It seems inconsistent for John to fulminate about Australian literary parochialism and puffery on the one hand, and then attack the two writers who have achieved the most significant international recognition in the form of the Nobel Prize and the Booker Prize respectively.

ASAL conferences are distinguished by their inclusion of creative writers -- to do otherwise would be inconsistent with its aims of encouraging the study of Australian writing. But the line between academics and writers is not always clear-cut: this last conference for example included papers from Mudrooroo (writer and academic), Cassandra Pybus (writer and historian), and Robert Dessaix (writer and public broadcaster), two of whom also gave readings from their work. This was entirely consistent with the conference theme of Australian literature and the public sphere.

John missed some thoroughly irreverent papers: Mudrooroo's challenging 'Whatever Happened to the Great Australian Novel', Terry Threadgold's '''Legal Witchcraft'' and the Craft of Fiction' on Wik and its literary precedents, Cassandra Pybus' paint-stripping analysis 'The Devil and James McAuley', to mention just a few. But saddest of alll, John seems to have forgotten ASAL's Parody Nights. This year as usual saw both writers and paper-givers mercilessly ridiculed. You take yourself too seriously at your own peril at ASAL conferences. Alas, I think John has been guilty of this in his article.

ASAL's concerns have rapidly shifted to the threat to Australian publishing from international takeovers and the threat to arts and humanities in general from economic rationalist managerialism, hardly merely parochial matters. As Ken Stewart pointed out, we've survived fashion waves such as Theory, Feminism, Cultural Studies and taken them all on board. We've even survived some members entering the professoriate.

Give ASAL another go, John. We'd love to see you at the next conference in Sydney but can't guarantee indemnity on Parody Night.

Helen Thompson
President, ASAL
Clayton, Vic.

From Ken Gelder

Dear Editor,
What a sad article from poor old John Docker! But -- friendless as he appears to be -- he is almost right, at least, about one thing. A body like ASAL, set up to process and review a national literature, will no doubt always co-operate uneasily with internationalist trends. (There is, however, no need to turn nostalgically back to Leonie Kramer for guidance on this matter.)

Those of us who have been busily situating Australian literature in the framework of postcolonialism, global culture, Continental and American theory and sociology, and so on, will of course find Docker's ranting piece hard to take. But in fact his targets seem to be elsewhere: Australian writers rather than critics, it would seem, and something called 'mediocrity' which (like all the others who routinely speak against this thing) he never bothers to define. The incidental view that ASAL props up a couple of canonical authors for the sake of parochialism is quite wrong: ASAL actually supports an extraordinary diversity of literary interests. As for Patrick White, the monograph by Simon During does the required job -- and he was a guest speaker at an annual ASAL conference only a couple of years ago.

The debates over nationalism's entanglements with internationalism, and more locally about the role and nature of the canon in Australian literature, may well be more important now than ever before. But an article that wallows in its own abjection and righteousness and barely begins to emerge out of these things just aint the place to do it, I'm afraid.

Ken Gelder
Brunswick, Vic.

From Duncan Richardson

Dear Editor,
John Docker would have been right if he had argued that some critics and writers are too close but his sloppy, self-indulgent essay did little to explore the issue. Instead he devoted much of his ample space in ABR to reminiscences of the various slings and arrows meted out by his fickle colleagues and 'friends', or bald, unsupported attacks on Radio National and English Departments. What evidence does he have that academics in those departments are opposed to writers knowing about philosophy? Where are the details to support his idea that literary programs on the ABC are safe and boring?

He offers none. Instead we get memories of wine (whine?) and rage. He may be fascinated by how drunk he was at a certain conference but I doubt if anyone else is. Perhaps he should reassess his self-image as heroic maverick and iconoclast and face the fact that his ability to clear a crowded room may be due to his self-pitying anecdotes.

And what an irony to read this piece after your editorial on the risks in using unknown writers! Docker's verbiage is typical of the way, every month, one or more of your stable lets you down. Unless gossip and creating a stir are the real aims of ABR...?

Thank the gods for Jenny Pausacker's thoughtful and reasoned review of Stephen Matthews' book, which did much to remove the sour taste of an overdose of Docker.

Duncan Richardson
Brisbane, Queensland

From Stephen Matthews

Dear Editor,
Delegates at the recent CBC conference in Adelaide who heard her misrepresentations of one of my book reviews will have concluded that Jenny Pausacker is not an admirer of my work. Even I, however, was startled that, in July's ABR, she should indulge her wit in another public misrepresentation, this time in reviewing my book, The Eye of the Soul.

Reviewers can't be in sympathy with every book they read but they should be mindful, nevertheless, that they best serve the interests of readers when they engage with the book in front of them rather than vainly berate an author for not writing the book they would have preferred to read.

If she had engaged with the text, Pausacker could at least have avoided that other reviewing misdemeanour -- an error of fact. She asserted that, in my introduction to The Eye of the Soul, I nominated two themes, one of them 'the drawbacks of "extreme realism"'. In fact, I declared my themes in the book's Preface: there were three, none to do with extreme realism. I went on to note in the introduction that the concerns that were expressed about extreme realism arose insistently out of the conversations on which the book was based. They're concerns which won't go way just because Pausacker would prefer to dismiss their legitimacy.

May I suggest that Pausacker read The Eye of the Soul again -- with an open mind. She might find herself reflecting on its open-endedness rather than being disappointed by its failure to affirm her own apparently fragile certainties.

Stephen Matthews
Charnwood, ACT

From Paul J. Watson

Dear Editor,
The problem of the missing, next generation of Australian critics is not going away, as you point out in your July editorial. The solution, I think, can be more local than the vague 'collective' one proposed in your pointed and defensive editorial. Firstly, I have no doubt that ABR's current readership prefers well-known reviewers, but am puzzled as to the importance this assumes. Younger potential readers, I think, just prefer good writing. Are such readers that expendable for ABR?

Commissioning any review, from a known or unknown writer, involves risks. Having a close-knit stable of authors/reviewers -- most of whom themselves have books in the pipeline -- provides insurance against sledging reviews, but mainly by the cold war premise of mutually assured destruction. Otherwise, a risk-averse editor could well choose mostly unknown reviewers. Grossly vituperative or incompetent reviews could be more quietly pulled, and deadlines more scrupulously adhered to by those who really need the job, and possible repeat offers (yes, even the few hundred dollars). Nor does a reviewer's lack of profile necessarily mean a compromise on the quality of what is written. Australia's explosion in professional and creative writing courses may have lead to a log jam at the publishing houses, but it has also created a stable of excellent and committed (but often unpublished) freelance writers.

The other apparent problem with younger reviewers -- that they are too safe, particularly in lauding books by similarly young authors -- is sheer hubris. I agree that ABR's Shorts, as a dedicated nursery of new reviewers, rarely make points of great insight or opposition, but in a hundred words and in a hothouse temperature, how could they? If a proving ground for unknown writers/reviewers is needed, the monthly National Library essay would be a better place to start. John Docker's long essay on Australian literary critical culture from the 1890s to the 1980s, flagged as risk-taking and forthright, reads as nothing more than memoir of disenchantment. If our brightest young minds have been leaving literary critical culture, as Docker says, they have either done so with a surprising and uniform silence, or were just never heard in the first place. In either case, it is premature or in bad taste for someone else to be writing their epitaph.

Paul Watson
Fitzroy North, Vic.

From Tim Dunlop

Dear Editor,
I have just read your editorial for the July 1998 edition and it is another in a long list of chicken-hearted rationalisations for the protection of entrenched positions. It reminds me of nothing so much as the rantings of Hanson and the Hansonettes who are too scared to embrace risk, change and diversity.

On the one hand, John Docker is applauded for his 'critical' approach and we are told that 'Risk taking and forthright criticism are comparatively rare', something we are led to believe is a bad thing. But then the bulk of the editorial is a hand-wringing exercise, justfying why you will only use 'the same people repeatedly to review for the magazine'.

You tell us of the 'worrying responsibility' of entrusting 'a new book to an unknown hand'. You tell us of the 'chilling responsibility'. Come on! This is not brain surgery we're talking about here. You are not handing over the nuclear trigger to drunkards. We're talking about book reviews. Sensibilities and egos might be at stake, but lives aren't. Maybe someone unknown who reviews a new Thea Astley novel will bugger it up. But maybe they'll see something that someone who 'has had years of experience of Astley's work' has missed or not even thought about because they are so schooled in the received opinions and default positions of the chosen few.

If football coaches ran their teams like you run your magazine, Jack Dyer and Ron Barrassi would still be kitting up every Saturday morning. But footy coaches are smarter than literary editors because they know that not only do the young players try harder, attempting to emulate and perhaps outdo the senior stars, they know that if they don't blood some new talent, then the game doesn't have a future. I know you make the same point in the penultimate paragraph of the editorial, but when we turn the page to the table of contents we are confronted with the literary equivalent of the 1960 VFL premiership team.

If you ask me, any 'young inexperienced' reviewer would be trying so hard to do a good job -- if they were given the chance -- that the quality of magazines like yours would almost certainly go up rather than down. You might even find yourself with some new readers as new ideas and opinions get kicked around.

The thing that really gets me is that to hear people like you talk, you would think the overall standard of writing was unassailably high, and that this is why you can't risk an unknown. But as Docker has pointed out, the standard is crap, and reviews softly reverberate to the sound of piddle filling pockets. Did you read Docker's article? Can't you make the connection between what he says andwhat you are practising? It's one thing to say that 'we in the literary community must address' this problem, but I for one will believe it when I see it.

Instances of how unlikely change really is can be found in the current edition. Morag Fraser reviews Robert Dessaix after Robert Dessaix interviews Morag Fraser for the book she is reviewing for you. Stuart Macintyre reviews Robert Manne and discusses how he won't discuss the bits where Robert Manne discusses what Macintyre had to say about Peter Ryan. But gee, we editors, we're thinking hard about doing something about it. In the meantime it will be the same old same old and gutlessness will be its own reward.

Tim Dunlop
Downer ACT

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