I want to pick up some of the good points made by commenters on ‘The Daily Latho‘ thread in a longer piece reviewing The Latham Diaries, after I’ve read and digested the book. Reading the book is a funny experience, I must say. Often I feel it should have come in a plain brown paper bag. Anyway, Dr Watson, here I just want to pick up a few points on the threshold question of whether the work is a genuine diary. I’ve been puzzling as I read through. Clearly, there has been editing. Is it serious tampering after the events it purports to represent? Below is some early reasoning to consider.
The most obvious doubts arise over the stuff shoved in brackets. Latham says at the outset that the diaries “were not originally written for publication” (when publishing was first considered, and specifically when the book contract was first discussed, are pertinent questions, but let’s leave them aside for the mo). Because the diary was not written for publication, Latham explains in his “Author’s Note”, he has annotated people’s full names and titles and translations of shorthand, etc, to assist readers. The annotations are clearly distinguished throughout the book, in being presented as footnotes. This is obviously good publishing practice.
Yet, it is clear that ongoing reader assistance is also provided in brackets within the text itself. Sometimes this is in square brackets and in the context of quotes (e.g. p. 29). It is clear enough that the material in square brackets is editorial additions, even though this form of intrusion isn’t mentioned in the “Author’s Note”, which is poor publishing practice. Still, square brackets are something of a convention in such contexts, and so I can live with this.
Where the editorial insertions start to get murky is at other places in the book, where information is inserted in ordinary brackets. Most, or at least much, of this material has the same status as that within the acknowledged annotations and the unacknowledged square brackets, even though the material is not mentioned in the “Author’s Note” either.
For example, when Stephen Smith’s home State is mentioned (p. 28), the author or editor has inserted “(WA)”. As this insertion is something no private diarist with even a modicum of political knowledge who is not aiming for publication would ever bother doing, there’s therefore little doubt that this is also a later editorial addition to assist the reader. There are numerous examples of these unacknowledged and barely signaled editorial insertions (e.g. there is no need to mention that Ted Grace is “one of the Opposition’s Deputy Whips” on p. 49 in brackets if you’re writing for yourself; or to bracket the fact that Ross Free is “the former Labor member” on p. 51; or to add in brackets on p. 71 that “Kernot” - for godsakes! - is the surname of “Princess Cheryl”; or that Burnie is in “Tas”; that Brighton-le-Sands is in “Barton”; and so on, blah, blah).
OK, in summary so far, dear Watson, there is at least one form of acknowledged editing and two forms of unacknowledged editing going on in the book. Why do I have a problem with this? The fact that the textual insertions (as distinct from annotated footnotes) are not mentioned in the “Author’s Note” is poor form, and especially poor when highly derogatory material is presented in a context where its authority derives largely from its contemporaneous status. Both the integrity of the “Author’s Note” and the assertion in the introduction that, apart from some modifications to protect privacy and reputations(!), “the original entries have been preserved”, are, in a technical sense, bogus.
OK, so what? Who apart from Tim Blair cares about these sorts of minor technicalities, so long as the non-bracketed text itself hasn’t been tampered with? Maybe the dog edited the thing when Latho wasn’t looking and the fact that these minor edits are unacknowledged is the publisher’s fault.
Well, if these unacknowledged and barely signaled editorial assists can permeate the book in ordinary brackets, what do we make of other stuff that also appears in ordinary brackets, like this: “(And I’m a slack bastard.)”? This example is from p. 74, and is inserted with its brackets at the end of one of the first paragraphs to start to get heavily stuck into Beazley (it immediately follows: “That settles it: he’s [i.e. Beazley’s] a weak opportunist”). There is no apparent reason for the comment, apart from, I suggest most likely, the strategic post-insertion of a self-slur, used by Latham as a small credibility enhancing staging post on his way to making his bigger, later slurs against Beazley: ‘Look, I’m fair, I also criticise myself’, Latham effectively added in brackets, as he edited the thing into his computer a few months ago.
Too suspicious? Who knows what people write in their diaries? Well, the question of strategic tampering is begged because the bracketed self-criticism is otherwise utterly unattached. Not only doesn’t it otherwise connect with the substance of the paragraph it concludes, it is an incredibly odd self-criticism in the context of the book as a whole, where throughout Latham is always working his clacker off, running round the country, writing himself into the grave, ruining his health with work, and constantly bumping into all the other slack bastards always getting in his furious way.
Now, I’m not saying the diaries are not genuinely contemporaneous; only that they have not been presented in a way that makes it at all clear that you can feel confident that they are genuinely contemporaneous. This in turn creates all sorts of problems for anyone who might wish to seriously review the book. It’s very hard to judge any document without a clear definition of its status. In this case, without secure contemporaneous status, the big bleedingly obvious explanation for the whole extraordinary thing is the bitterness of election defeat. Latham says in his introduction that he expects the “important events and conversations” he has captured will “one day assist in the writing of Labor history”. Unless he opens the originals for inspection, he might find that footnotes to his tome are scarce, except in studies on Labor losers.
I don’t know that you can necessarily assume that the ordinary brackets are subsequent insertions. I think his statement in the Author’s note that they were not originally intended for publication is a little disingenuous. In his introduction he states a number of reasons why he kept the diaries, including that they would one day contribute to the “writing of Labor history”.
So why he might not expressly have decided that they were to be published, it seems clear that from the beginning he anticipated that someone else would read them, be it authorised biographer or whatever. These were not private diaries as they clearly project the identity he wants to adopt in the writing of Labor history. They are written for people to read. So I had assumed that the round brackets were his own contemperaneous explanatory notes to a notional future reader, while the square brackets were subsequent editorial additions.
I agree though that it is unclear what changes have been made. And his catch all statement at the end of the introduction that some changes have been made to protect reputations etc confuses the matter even further.
Where the fault lies, in the misrepresentation of his publishing intentions or his misrepresentation of the editorial intrusions, obviously I cannot say. Either way, the lack of integrity in this throws doubts on the status of the whole.
Chris, as a good (ish) postmodernist I am a great admirer of Jean Baudrillard. A couple of decades ago, he controversially argued that ‘Watergate was not a scandal’. I took him to mean that what Watergate did was expose what politics was really like - that a window went up, and for once we saw what the real business of power was really all about.
Is it possible that Latham’s diary is something similar? That here is a guy that cuts through our comfortable illusions about the practice of politics and shows us what it is really like out there? Spite, hate, vengeance, retribution, payback, uncluttered by exculpatory nicenesses?
Maybe this is one of those rare windows - something that shows us what really happens on the inside, absent the spin-doctoring we are accoustomed to thinking of as ‘the reality’.
It might be, if Latham didn’t have such a solipsistic view of reality. Anyway, I think I’ll buy the thing soon. My curiosity is piqued.
Rob, I’ll write a review when I finish it, but pro tem - no. To the extent that he’s opened a window on politics, it so far reads to me that he has only opened a window on life at large, as seen from the perspective of an immature and ambitious young man.
I’m more surprised by what I take to be your implication that a book of this kind might ever be published without editorial contributions of the kind you’re identifying. Having done quite a lot of textual editing myself it runs deep, changes one makes putatively for reasons of style etc inevitably alter the meaning of what’s written (even seemingly tiny changes like “corrections” to punctuation) and it is an incredibly time-consuming and technically demanding procedure to produce a readable text in which editorial conjecture and repair is clearly marked out (is Ampersand Duck anywhere around?)
The most important thing - the only thing that can be verified and acted upon - is who signs off on the text in its final form, who takes responsibility for authoring it. There can’t be any doubt about that in this case.
As for latham’s belief that he’s produced a key document in the future history of the Labor Party, wouldn’t you agree that there’s a sense in which that is obviously a very reasonable belief irrespective of the veracity of what is actually claimed in the book, since the book is an intervention in that history, one which is going to have repercussions and probably far-reaching consequences?
I haven’t read the book and I probably won’t. But right now the Latham phenomenon is very much more than the text of the book. The book has provided the occasion for Latham to have his say via TV and radio and hasn’t he been enjoying it!
Whatever its merits as a diary and a critique of politics, the media etc it has certainly been received in the main as a diatribe, a chance to tip a vengeful bucket on just about everyone except Gillard.
I have been inclined to think that he has a personality disorder and may be in need of psychological help. There was a clinical psychologist on one of the Radio National programs who seemed to say that he was not psychologically ill as he had not suffered a breakdown of normal daily functioning. This guy pointed out that a personality disorder is one that conflicts with the societal norms but as such does not constitute an illness.
Yesterday on ‘Life Matters’ Sandy McCutcheon talked to Julian Short a Sydney based psychiatrist where they addressed the questions:
Dr Short said that bitterness is born out of anger and to lash out with bitterness is an attempt to regain potency, to build oneself up after defeat. Unsurprisingly Short does not think it’s a good move.
The problem stems from a view that came out of the American behaviorists, as far as I can see, where we are seen as captive to our emotions and it is better to externalise the inner pressure. These days, God knows, some see it as their right to lash out if they are hurt.
The problem is, of course, that the rage and bile comes back as blowback, sometimes with interest.
Recently there has been talk on ‘Life Matters’ about the propensity of the elderly to speak their minds, as in grumpy old persons of either sex. This is thought now to be caused by the deterioration of the frontal lobes, the rational filter that prevents us from saying exactly what we think and substitutes a bit of diplomacy.
Dr Short speculated that Latham’s frontal lobes were probably as good as ever, but we are all different and perhaps Latham’s lobes never conformed with the norm in this regard.
It’s probably just another way of saying that Latham lacks a lot of judgement in interpersonal relationships, doesn’t really understand how people react to him. Maybe muscling up and dishing it out worked for him in the schoolyard and in early political stoushes. But it was an aspect of his personality he saw the need to repress in his leadership phase.
Now that he is no longer aspiring to higher honours he’s relaxing back into his old ways. Maybe he is not even trying to rehabilitate his reputation having found a new vocation in a domestic role. But then why would be bother to give his side of the story? I tend to think he is trying to upgrade his place in history (he said he was doing it for his sons). If so he’s making an awful hash of it.
The problem is that you can change the past in a sense by investing new meaning in it. Latham is in fact doing this, but not in a way that will work in his interests. A better way, perhaps, may be to forgive those who have hurt him, try to understand their motivations, and to reach out to them with humanity and understanding. Or just bugger off and let it be until wisdom came. Instead Latham is demonstrating why he never would have made it as a leader.
laura, I’m just doing what any trained historian does, having come upon a potentially significant document, i.e. you walk around the thing giving the tyres a right good kicking to test how well its claimed status might stand up. I have absolutely no problem with the thing being changed for all and any sort of reasons, provided these changes are openly acknowledged.
In this case, all the editorial changes clearly haven’t been acknowledged. At a minimum, either the claim that the diaries “were not originally written for publication” is a falsehood (as commenter gm has suggested above), or both the integrity of the “Author‚Äôs Note” and the assertion in the introduction that, apart from some modifications to protect privacy and reputations, “the original entries have been preserved”, are, in a technical sense, bogus. gm is quite correct, in that in the post I had taken the first claim on its face, but it is equally open to being false (as I said in the post, the timing of the publication decision is pertinent, but this wasn’t further explored).
For a historian, the more important thing is not who signs off on it (although this is important), but whether it is a contemporaneous account or not. More to the quick, if it is not genuinely contemporaneous, there is an obvious explanation for the whole thing, i.e. the guy lost, and now he is engaged in dispersing the blame and getting at people he doesn’t like. If this is indeed the case, then we can basically file the thing away under ’sour grapes’. There may still be useful stuff in it, of course, but the status of everything goes onto the back foot - requiring at a minimum other supporting evidence for its status as a record of factual truth to stand.
On the other hand, to the extent that the thing is genuinely contemporaneous, the obvious explanation for the production of the document falls away, and its status becomes more problematic, and potentially more historically useful - as well as more politically difficult for Labor to manage (as Kevin Rudd discovered the other night).
How far can it be supposed to be “a key document in the future history of the Labor Party”? The truth is that participant accounts of labour (and Labor) history have proved to be of remarkably little account in influencing the history of the Labor Party, as remembered and recorded, and are generally so self-serving as to be more usually sentenced to become the butt of historian’s jokes. This is not to say that I and many others haven’t found them useful, but generally this is not for reasons the author’s intended. If Latham’s account is most accurately defined as a memoir, written - or retrospectively calculatingly constructed as contemporaneous through deletions and additions - out of malice, it’s authority as a source falls away, not completely, but dramatically.
Brian, I want to pick up on some of those points in a review after a complete reading. To me so far, it absolutely reeks of someone incapable of interacting with other humans in a way that even shows the slightest curiosity to “understand their motivations, and to reach out to them with humanity and understanding”, i.e. plain old fashioned immaturity appears to be the most constant ‘hallmark’. The Tories were, or seem to have been, right on the mark (and the Mark) to target the “L” learner plates (we picked the potency of this line at BP at the time, I’m consoled in recalling - maybe I’ll chase the links to these observations when I get a mo).
That’s interesting and important, cs. I see Latham now as a different person from the Latham who led the party, and far less interesting until he gains some wisdom. But we do need to know the difference between the text created by the present, self-justifying Latham and the one who was presenting himself as a potential PM.
But of course there are always continuities in any personality. We all hoped he had matured from the earlier political persona when he was leader. He is now revealing that he hadn’t, and that too is significant.
Chris, my last comment was in response to your earlier one to Laura. Your diligence is admirable (not to mention your insights and competence as an historian!) and I look forward to reading your review.
re “the guy lost, and now he is engaged in dispersing the blame..”
But surely it wasn’t ‘the guy’ who lost, it was the Labor Party and so the blame [or preferably, the cause] was dispersed in reality anyway… and of course the other side - both the political parties and their backers in the media - was to blame in a big way for the loss. If we’re going to look at this on the level of psychodrama, perhaps Latham’s role in refusing any blame to himself is an extreme rejection of everyone else’s wish to see him as almost-solely to blame, a wish and an assertion which is ratcheting up by the minute.
[No doubt he would have been pleased to take most of the credit if they’d won. I understand that.]
suzoz, IMHO he almost won it then lost it in the last two weeks.
1. By not countering the interest rate scare campaign (I understand his idea was to concentrate on positive messages)
2. By not advocating some of Labor’s best policies well enough (the campaign was very presidential)
3. By making an awful hash of the Tasmanian forests thing.
That’s quickly from my faultering memory, but, yes, it was mostly his fault. The other guy played well, if dirty, but it was eminently winable, I think, at least from two weeks out.
You are quite right suzoz. The reasons why Labor lost is an argument all to itself. This doesn’t really take away from the credibility problem that any leader will face if the loss occurs on his/her watch, i.e. leaders will always have a vested interest in attributing the loss to other people/forces etc. Because this is well known, we are again taken back to the genuineness of the book’s contemporaneous status - for this is what rescues Latham from the credibility question. To put this another way, if Latham wishes to place the contemporaneous question beyond argument, and thus enjoy the authority of speaking before not after the event in any historically enduring way, he should make his originals open to inspection. This could be done quite simply and discretely, and would unquestionably be in his interest if indeed there has only been understandable, reasonable tampering. On my reading so far, there is no way this will happen. I hope I am wrong, oddly. I mean, if there has been significant tampering, then we are talking about Latham having to make an actual book title change, and the thing would be killed stone dead (except among historians, who search for incidental evidence of the times in general in these sorts of things).
Well yeah Brian, I reckon he blew stuff too, but was also impressive in other respects. Yet its a seperate argument. How much an advantage is incumbency these days? What about Ratty’s interest-rate stunt? Who was responsible for the advertising? Etc. Another time.
I know you know all this etc, but it’s nice to be clear for your, I mean my, own sake. The point is, in this sort of stuff, to the extent that the leader blames him/herself, he/she is believed and perhaps forgiven and even relieved of blame; and the reverse occurs to the extent that he/she blames others. The generous spirit will go out of his/her way to defer the blame from others (when the leader is retiring, that is), suffering historians to rescue their reputations from themselves, and they are usually pretty content selves. Latham has struck an extraordinarily defensive stance. This doesn’t mean he’s automatically wrong of course, but it puts his account under close scrutiny - and if its contemporaneous status was destroyed, so I suspect would almost the whole thing.
Some technicalities aren’t so minor, are they, Chris? (Also: good to see Latho’ become Latho.)
Anyone watching the AFL Footy Show? Closing sequence is always great.
A person’s diary is eesentially what that person makes it.
They can do whatever they wish to it.
however if it is published then the adopted proctocals should be made entirely clear.
Thus if it is a diary it is rather silly for people to say Latham should sunstantiate his allegations.
That is the province of an actual book on the events.
A diary is what the person briefly writes usually at the end of the day.
Thanks, Chris - points all taken. My last remark was supposed to suggest that the book is a speech act as well as (more than) a chronicle, and it’s probably going to influence the fortunes of Labor over the runup to the next election. Its validity as a source of information about the last five years is obviously questionable.
Brian, I think you’re right that Latham is acting like an unhinged person.
Further on from the issue of editorialising, my reading last night produced a further thought. One of the round brackets insertions I read (don’t have reference sorry) identified an individual as a “NSW Right enforcer”. It would be pretty unusual for an editor to insert a description such as this as an explanatory text. So if the round brackets insertions have been done subsequently, they have either been done by Latham himself or by someone who wants to preserve that style.
Interested in your thoughts about the content of the diaries generally. I am doing some reviews as I go along and I have found the Diaries show Latham as a flawed individual, but think that the content they reveal is going to be significant not just for the Labor party but for politics generally as they seek to engage with the public.
Interesting thoughts Chris. Like Mark, all this chatting by people about the content is piqueing my curiosity to a fairly healthy extent. I wasn’t going to get the book until sometime in the remaindered future, but now I might renege on that intention…
I’m still resisting. Spent my $40 on the way home from work on cds by Jollie Holland and Gillian Welch instead!
In a nice piece in today’s SMH (no link), Rod Cavalier completely disses Latham’s work as a diary (although not entirely as a book). He disqualifies it as a diary simply on the basis that it is written after the events, “one suspects long after the events”. Latham is writing “from a fallible memory about selective events.” The “book is a series of vignettes, short essays, memoirs in haste.”
Rod’s got this just about right, I suspect.
you pseudo intellectuals are so far up your own clacker you’ll never see daylight (frontal lobe problem)
Lo and behold, a contribution from Latho himself.
Luogo interessante, buon disegno, lo gradisco, signore! =)