Years ago, I used to read Quadrant – incidentally before Robert Manne became editor, if I recall correctly. Back in the day, there was a sense that there was some sort of contest of ideas, and thus there was some purpose to reading, or at least casting a glance across a range of “little magazines”. I think that time ended a long while ago. Certainly, I stopped reading Quadrant over a decade ago, and I can’t say I feel there’s some huge gap in my life.
After all the brouhaha about the Katherine Wilson/Keith Windschuttle hoax dies down, I suspect the most lasting insight to be derived from all the kerfuffle is that Wilson’s target had already disappeared into a long twilight of irrelevance. For mine, John Quiggin’s point about the saga is among the most telling – Windschuttle’s own credibility on the issue which has been central to the recent stages of his career – Indigenous history – lies in tatters because of his own inability to substantiate the claims he made many years ago now with further research. The biggest hoax, Quiggin argues, is Windschuttle’s own contribution to “the history wars”.
After a number of folks actually had a look at what’s published on Quadrant’s website these days, it’s painfully obvious that there’s very little credibility there to be undermined. Egregious grammatical errors, bizarre rants with scant evidence of an elementary ability to construct a coherent argument, to be sure.
So the other motto we might draw from the hoax affair is that it’s drawn attention to the absence of both standards and relevance in most of what Quadrant has to offer. Now that the mag, and its writers, no longer have their great patron John Howard sitting in Kirribilli, the phrase “paper tiger” comes to mind. Certainly that appears to be evident from this truly bizarre piece just posted on the magazine’s website by Michael Connor, referencing a comment made here at LP by Pavlov’s Cat – “the Left totalitarianism”, “the Left establishment”, “Hatred blows in from the Left”… etc. Perhaps Connor was rankled by his writing being described as “half crazed”. But what can all this hyperbole and nonsense mean, and does anyone bar Connor and his ilk really care? I think he and the rest of Windy’s wingnut stable’s response to the hoax contains an element of schadenfreude. They’ve been rescued – I strongly suspect temporarily – from their own feelings of relevance deprivation. It might have been better, I think, if the windmills had been allowed to fall over of their own accord, without the need for any tilting at them.
Update: Margaret Simons wraps up the reaction to the hoax at Crikey, and Graham Young provides a publisher’s perspective at On Line Opinion.
Manne became editor in 1990. I hope the lesson Quadrant draws from this is that they are better off publishing fewer but higher average quality articles. Windschuttle expanded each issue from 96 to 128 pages, but there is not the material to justify it. The Gould/Wilson piece should have been rejected on quality of writing grounds even if it did have valid points to make.
I used to read it in the Uni library in the late 80s when I was an undergrad.
Nitpicking, but isn’t Schadenfreude supposed to be delighting in the misfortune of others rather than (as I understand what you wrote) of oneself?
Mind you, if there isn’t a word for self-Schadenfreude, there should be. (I suppose in German you can just make one – Selbstschadenfreude?)
Hmmm, yes, good point! No doubt there is a suitable German compound word! Though arguably Wilson visited some misfortune on herself with the hoax.
Ah, Michael Connor … it seems that Quadrant repeats itself, the first time as parody and then forever after as farce.
By the ‘left establishment’ he seems to mean you, Mark. Don’t that make you proud? Actually I can think of at least half a dozen denizens of the left who would be truly horrified by the idea that I represented them in any shape or form.
Connor would probably be astonished to learn that I was a regular reader of Quadrant, something I regarded as part of my brief as a teacher and scholar of Aust Lit, from about 1980 right up to the departure of Robert Manne as editor, after which I still picked it up frequently in the library or looked at it online (what on earth did he mean by ‘made their way with difficulty’, does anyone know?) in order to read Les Murray’s poetry — of which I am, I repeat, a major fan — and the other Australian poets he included, who were always good poets whatever their politics.
I also read every issue of all the Australia Council funded literary magazines from cover to cover as they came out during my three years on the Lit Board, and as a so-called ‘gatekeeper’ there, one of the things I did was argue in favour of maintaining funding for the literary content of all the little magazines that had any and otherwise met the guidelines, one of which was Quadrant.
There is, in fact, quite a good chance that I know more about the magazine and its history than Connor does. So my prejudices are not ‘frozen in time’; au contraire, they have only developed over the last few years.
I don’t mind being identified as someone who thinks that what little she’s seen of Connor’s writing (nowhere apart from Quadrant itself) is ridiculous and indeed this latest effort lavishly further demonstrates my point, not to mention the pleasure of being in excellent company, but I hope Mark will forgive me correcting a few of its more egregious inaccuracies here. Yet again, Windschuttle has been the editorial proprietor of something full of mistakes.
(Pls xcuse violation of 3-para rule above.)
I’m rather more horrified at the thought of being “establishment” anything than proud, Dr Cat!
Also, I certainly wanted to provide you with some space to reply to Connor, since there’s no facility for commments on “Quadrant Online”. However, I’d also observe that the way in which he frames his comments is self-refuting.
But I suppose I’m displaying “hatred” by saying that, or trying to “suppress dissent” or something – it really is absurd, isn’t it?
Connor’s little piece does seem to exude weird triumph. He does not seem to be able to distinguish between hatred and contempt.
I used to read quadrant for the poetry, and may do so again, once I’m near a copy I don’t have to pay for. I must say I was absolutely gobsmacked by the poor standard of the hoax article. It had some very weird leaps of logic, and varying levels of coherence and register. More bemusing still was Windshuttle’s response, which was some drivel about references. While less rigour might be allowable with respect to references, rotten writing is rotten writing.
As for the value of the hoax, I think John Quiggin has called it correctly. The hoax will make it difficult for anyone to rely on Windshuttle’s work when constructing an argument.
I for one welcome our new left establishment overlords.
There does seem to be a distinct case of ‘hoax on you, fraud/failure on me’ going around the traps, from all sides, on all the various hoaxes that have been raised in the wake of the latest exercise in the genre. While hoaxes can be better or worse (and Ern Malley, to my mind, remains the Gold Standard of hoaxes), if they expose a pretension (KW’s obsession with footnotes, say), then they have succeeded. I am getting ever so slightly annoyed at the word ‘fraud’ being bandied about so loosely by all sorts of people (including, at one point, by Wilson herself; very ignorant coming from someone in her position).
I see from the main menu that there is a thing called “Quadrant TV” which is “under development.” FSM save us all!
Really, I think LP-ers need to examine the more lousy language some posters used about Quadrant, especially the generalisations made about it and women (before I even weighed my ‘quite disturbed’ way into the other thread again, if you’d prefer). And perhaps ask yourselves if there might be call for a few explicit wihdrawals, or at least an acknowledgement of a few evidence-free assertions and combatative excesses here-abouts.
Relax, Mark, I’ve got my own place again. One spruik post if that’s OK and you’re rid of me. (klaus, you’re wrong, by the way: I know how this biz works and it’s not ‘false humility’ when I say thanks for the space. Thanks for the space, LP.)
Perhaps a direct feed to Fox News? Nothing like a little fact-based journalism.
Replays of B.A. Santamaria’s “Point of View”, perhaps?
If Quadrant gets another govt handout or some more plain brown envelopes from the CIA, they may even get Santa’s performances colourised.
Certainly, Jack. Having now made a thorough investigation of the Quadrant website (which contrary to Michael Connor’s assertions I had no trouble at all in finding), I see that the ‘Fiction’ section lists eleven stories by men and twelve by women. This, at least with regard to fiction, would seem to give the lie to the notion that Quadrant doesn’t often accept submissions by women and that women wouldn’t submit material to it in the first place. About that, I was clearly wrong — misled, no doubt, by the massive gender imbalance in the nonfiction featured on the home page — and I retract.
I just read that Connor piece over at Oddrant, and I strongly wish to register the following comment:
Huh?
I think they’re now trying their hand at irony:
A gazette?
http://australianconservative.com/main-site/2009/01/journalism-the-loser-in-quadrant-con/#more-6597
The Quadrant “on line opinion” page redirects to that url.
When they’re not engaging in word-coinage:
That’s from Peter Ryan’s 567483th article about Manning Clark.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/1-2/hollow-man-of-yesterday
Then there’s the “series of articles” which will be a “critical appraisal” of the Howard government:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/1-2/growth-jobs-and-prosperity
Ha! That comes on like some “Dear Leader” essay competition for Nth Korean schoolkids. Or perhaps more kindly, like some fin-de-siecle Boys Own – “who was the greatest white man in Africa: Rhodes, or Livingstone? There is fierce debate in scout halls all over the Empah!”
And… now Ive lost interest. Sorry Pedrant, only dropped by to make WIndy look a goose – not actually interested in your cruddy mag, which Ive never read before – or since.
Jack, your intentions are largely irrelevant: the ‘falseness’ of any humility you display can be easily demonstrated by reading the rest of your comments on that thread. Great to see you’ve gone ahead and got yourself another blog though, and I’ll certainly be adding it to my list…
I have always read Jack as sincere, even if I dont agree with him on occasion. He says what he means. And I think he raised some interesting points on Murray and his politics.
I think Murray’s politics make his poetry crap, no matter how good it is, but hey, thats me. I think the Buladelah Holiday Song Cycle is one fine example. He slaps a Christian white dreaming over the cycle – song cycles are used for dreaming narratives of Aboriginal peoples. There are many versions of the same cycle, some so secretive, very few know them. Murray adopts the cycle, using the cadence and rhythym of an ancient sacred Aboriginal form of storytelling – but he takes out Aboriginals and puts whites in there instead. I could go throught he whole poem but that would be boring. But one thing stands out – The dreamtime creation snake for example becomes queues of cars on a highway heading home for Xmas. Its clever indeed. But for me, its an erasure of stupendous proportions – a recolonisation in writing as it were. As for his Athenian and Boaetian divide, well you know, he should go to Greece and be done with it!
Jack I never said you were sexist. I said the stereotype you used was. And I stand by it. I feel you write out of a masculinist discourse which has a long tradition Australia’s (war) literature. Given your background, thats not surprising. (How’s that for biocriticism Jack!) For instance, you describe the stoush as ‘dirt pissing’. Half your readers cant dirt piss, not easily Jack. And the ones that can, well some would choose not to do so. So when all the man dust settles, have a think about it.
When I read your stuff I am reminded of all the war lit i did as an undergrad, – My Bro Jack, and the Odd Angry Shot, etc. You remind me of those writers and their elegiac lament for the lost Australian male (Im thinking of the Anzac Day piece you wrote a while back here). But you know, I found those texts (not your writng thought) to be mysoginistic in impulse, even as there was beauty in the elegy for the lost mythical Australian. Dominic La Capra suggests that there is a difference between absence and loss. Absence being that which never was – often a story of origin – like the Fall. Loss is grounded in history – like the loss of the Stolen Gens. I might suggest to you that the mythical Australian (and the mythical white Australia) never was, and Les Murray and John Howard’s and Quadrant’s insistence on his and its return Jack, was always going to fail and result in a national stasis, where (white) mourning, which rightfully should be about its own violent history, is now displaced onto spaces where we have created a loss – like Anzac Day (as I heard Brian Castro say recently).
But if this situation created your own blog site, rest assured, I will be visiting!!!
Cheers
L.
Yes I know that was the longest most contorted sentence in the history of the blogosphere, but Im on the run….sorry
Left Establishment?
In terms of my personal politics, I doubt that one would accurately call Socialist Alliance “Left Establishment”.
In terms of my only major work so far, on the Brisbane line Controversy, I was criticised by a colleague on the Left in print and on-line as being an empiricist – a philosophical approach to history which I cheerfully admit to.
Left Establishment. Jesus!
What is it about Quadrunt that they so readily appear to resort to ad hominem {sp?] arguments. Its one of the first things you learn is a no-no when you go to uni. One debates ideas, not the personality of the person who makes them.
I was wondering what the world would look like like when the shouting stopped.
It’s funny all those ideas and passionately held beliefs seemed so important at the time.
Everyone has retired to separate rooms. Just need some volunteers to help clean up the mess.
Oh yes…”George! Your taxi’s here.”
“I have always read Jack as sincere, even if I dont agree with him on occasion. He says what he means. And I think he raised some interesting points on Murray and his politics.”
Jack’s sincerity is not at issue for me. It is the appropriateness of taking on an explicit position of humility when everything about his critique of Dr Cat was the opposite of humble. I’m asking him to reflect on this ambivalence with respect to her in particular.
BTW I think your analysis of Murray has a great deal of merit Casey, but I’m sticking with appreciating Murray ‘in spite of’ it.
Can we draw a line under the Les Murray/Dr Cat/Jack R discussion please? Or perhaps it can be continued on the other thread where it began.
Apologies, Mark. Feel free to remove my comments that are off topic (and this one referring to them).
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“Ern Malley, to my mind, remains the Gold Standard of hoaxes”
I’m not quite sure what the pegging of currencies to the market price of the yellow metal has to do with hoaxes. On the assumption you’re using ‘gold standard’ as a synonym for ‘acme’, I have to disagree. Piltdown Man has no peer in the realm of mischievous fabrication.
That’s not how you do a Gold Standard thread. In the absence of its much-mourned predecessor, this is Gold Standard.
I don’t want to continue the stoush. But I do want to say, fascinating comment Casey.
Great piece by Rundle in today’s Crikey. hehehe.
Damn it, Lefty E — I’ve let my sub lapse, but I think I’m going to have to renew it now.
I got a 3-week complementary one to follow the hoax news (mine had also lapsed) – but Im enjoying it on the whole, so might sign up again at the end of that.
Update: Margaret Simons wraps up the reaction to the hoax at Crikey, and Graham Young provides a publisher’s perspective at On Line Opinion.
Hatred blows in from the Left:
Indeed that’s up there with Hitler’s speeches. I’m surprised P Cat hasn’t been charged with a hate crime.
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Hatred does blow in from the Left and out from the Right and around and around. Hate! We;; at least now it’s regular shouting matches instead of the good old days when it was pikes up yer gullet. Still I think it might be useful to consider the source.
Re Hoaxes: Ossian is my personal favourite.