Not to be outdone by The Australian, Quadrant has launched its own series on the left. This time with non-leftists writing it… And writing about the Australian‘s articles. Jason Soon, for instance, along the way to arguing that social justice is a “category mistake” and the basis of “the left’s form of creationism”, takes a swipe at LP as “postmodernist”. News to me. The mis-en-abyme of Quadrant’s deconstruction of putative lefties writing for a right wing op/ed page strikes me as much more properly po/mo. Or maybe it’s a piece of pure Dada-ist modernist absurdism.
It’s hard to conclude otherwise when the now compulsory comparisons of Julia Gillard et al with the North Korean regime are wheeled out once more, coupled with crazed elisions of a bunch of rather mild social democrats with Stalin and Mao, and paeans to the millions of dead, etc, etc. There’s a certain irony in one of the contributors accusing critics of writing conspiracy theory. Not to mention the argument, if that’s the word for it, that concern with narratives is evidence of postmodernism (evil!) sitting uneasily next to attacks on social democrats for not having a narrative. Anyone remember when the teaching of narrative history was supposed to be a touchstone of John Howard era approved political correctness? Contradiction piled on contradiction…
There’s lots more. Should you not wish to read all of the series, Gary Sauer-Thompson has devoted some time to analysing the introductory piece by Mervyn Bendle. Bendle contributes another article, damning Julia Gillard among others, complete with another clever pun in the title. I thought that was the sort of Derridean wordplay he despised. But anyway…
Related LP posts: Here, here and here.
Elsewhere: Catallaxy.
Update: Skepticlawyer.
Well, I did glance at some of the stuf. (So LP is post-modern? News to me. I despise post-modernism, uinsofar as I understand it because it tends to write usinhg language people can’t understand. Can’t say I’ve noticed that here.) And I though teh Internet and teh Left were phrases that sent up the phenomenon and ideology (if that’s the right word?) and in fact didn’t have any particular significance attached to them. And, of course, the whole series of articles sound like some desperate scream in the night lamenting teh Left in whatever form is finally supplanting Howardian Fascism.
Christ almighty that ‘essay’ by Soon is terrible. What is it with right-wingers using words they don’t understand? You don’t see me chucking off about – I don’t know – equilibrium models or whatever. Pathetic circle-jerk, as ever.
Actually, for his info, “teh left” is meant to be shorthand for wingnuts taking shots at straw people and ideas. Which the Quadrant series sorta exemplifies. Andrew Norton’s is really the only measured contribution. Some of the rest are totally getting into crazed territory. And what’s their obsession with Julia Gillard? Is it so threatening that the public actually like her? And/or that she’s a very effective politician?
The rightards considering “social justice” a category error… not unexpected. The only form of equity they consider valid is equity in a public listed company.
All they are doing is creating straw men.
And if, as stated, the best idea “the left” can put up is “equality” (and for me, it /IS/ a GOOD idea, but certainly not the only one, sustainability being another), then I wonder what is the best idea the rightards have.
Sure, accuse “the left” of being nothing but a “sensibility”… but what’s wrong with that? It’s a sensibility, not a dogma, and much better than the insensitivity or insensibility of “the right”.
I’m already LMAO
and I haven’t even finished the first para. BRB 
Ok I get it, Jason and Catallaxy don’t like LP. Talk about late to the party
However, I think his argument on prometheanism is lost on me and his distinction between justice and social justice conveniently assumes that the legal system, the basis for Jason’s notion of justice, is actually fair and just in the first place. However I note also that Jason is an economic consultant, perhaps he has an explanation for the global financial crisis that lays the blame at the feet of social justice advocates as well.
“Yet left-wingers are usually happy to perpetrate the most blatant strawmen on their philosophical rivals as evidenced most recently in the celebration of Kevin Rudd’s essay on ‘neoliberalism’, which was long ago taken apart by Henry Ergas, though this has not stopped the sycophantic celebrations of the Prime Minister as a contemporary philosopher-king.”
Dan Brown wrote this didn’t he?
coupled with crazed elisions of a bunch of rather mild social democrats with Stalin and Mao
I’m confused. As an ignorant artisan, I had to Google “elisions”, but I still couldn’t find a meaning that made sense in this context.
Is this the result of an incontinent SpellChecker? A typo? Or something to do with the comparisons made between Bush, Howard and Hitler?
laura @ 7 Oh that’s just too much….I just about wet myself when I read that :-0
To elide something with something else is normally to make an identity out of two different things. It’s a sense of the word used in some English speaking philosophy, taken from the French, I believe. I used that particular sense of the word, because I knew all the experts in postmodernism writing for Quadrant would immediately get it!
This, it appears, is the core of Soon’s argument:
What the hell is Soon on about?
Perhaps I just haven’t read enough leftist thought, but if I may draw a very broad brush the point of “left” critiques of market capitalism is that such systems “spontaneously” result in less than optimal distributions of income and wealth.
(*&(&*. There goes my dream of becoming an expert in postmodernism writing for Quadrant.
Yes, Quadrant is fizzing with ideas…like a gnat’s fart in a glass of bubbly.
@13 – “some strange anthromorphic conviction”, “can be laid at the feet of some single entity with one will of its own, it is the left’s form of creationism.”
I haven’t the foggiest what this might mean (if anything).
At Catallaxy, the dialogue continues. Teh left is “put under the microscope”. A sample:
Classical liberalism is in safe hands.
Dave Bath above, and again on his site, has acknowledged that the difficulty in putting a definition on social justice stems, at least to some extent, from the fact it’s a sensibility and not just a rationally defined concept.
Is this the common understanding on the left? Does someone want to have a go at defining social justice or link to a previous article or post. My response at Dave’s site is that it’s true, the right-wingers don’t ‘get’ this concept because they’re trying to understand it rationally, and that “your feelings are a reaction by your subconscious to your values. If your values are screwed up then there’s nothing I can do about your feelings. You need to sort our your value system, and really, if you want your values to guide you through life (which should be their purpose) they’re not going to be much good if they’re irrational and contradictory.”
Michael, it’s not a concept that can be rigorously defined, but neither is Jason Soon’s so-called “Plain old ‘justice’” which is “about due process and equal treatment before the law”. You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand that as soon as one starts to attempt to apply “due process” and “equal treatment” you’ve got all sorts of hermeneutic problems applying such maxims to particular cases. Justice, by its nature, is a universal, as Aristotle recognised in discussing its several senses – the primary one being, according to him, something like the summit of excellence or of virtues. Incidentally, he also talked about distributive justice, in effect, which is probably the philosophical predecessor of the idea of “social justice”. For a number of reasons, I don’t find it a particularly useful concept politically, precisely because it’s a bit vague and contentless. Others may disagree.
Personally, I think that what we’re seeing at the moment is a return of a questioning of the concept of value and its measure – and the supposed occlusion of inputs to value by market exchange is what’s coming under criticism. I think this has more so been the case (so far) in popular discussion about the GFC and the market economy than in scholarly or political analysis. But, among other things, it’s one of the views that makes Rudd’s discourse viable, if not coherent.
I’d add that I don’t see any problem with seeing being on the left as a matter of sensibility. Affect is important as a foundation for political values. But it’s the same for the right, of whatever stripe. Underlying every political ideology is a philosophical anthropology, or in simpler terms, a view of human nature.
Incidentally, both Soon and Norton fall into unremarked contradiction by defending markets ideologically. You can’t have it both ways. If liberal economics is a science, then there’s no need to represent it as an ideological position in contrast to others. I leave aside the other contributors, who are probably conservatives, insofar as they have a coherent political philosophy.
Seeing I consider myself a Lefty,and have often seen here,the evidential presentation that others may think otherwise,then I find his writing very difficult.If being a Lefty is a self-description or identification from a individual to a series of like minded views,there is something totally implausible in the outcome of what he then considers are the mind set in the setting of the failures of Capitalism.I cannot figure out wether in his mention of philosopher-king as Rudd that he has actually in anyway described the more prominent individuals here[at LP] in any form of his description in anyway whatsoever.I have never come across a sort of ringing endorsement of the philosopher-kings wordly presence here in unadultered admiration.So the Quadrant must have a special pair of glasses for their commentators.Perhaps they look like things horses used to wear so that traffic coming from left or right doesn’t stop the horse from being given instructions to proceed!?Or someone hasn’t removed the kitty litter!?
It’s quite simple—the ‘Oddrant’ Right supports a human rights agenda. Just as long as it’s an agenda that complies with their interpretation of the ideas of dead men who, (a.) could never ever have dreamt of modern Western Society, regardless of how worthy their ideas were during their own time, or (b.) is Friedrich von Hayek, aka that ungrateful Hun who thought the good guys in WWII were serfs.
The best I can say about this pompous BS is that it was pretty cutting edge when they used to write it back in the days when they never criticised the vision of Bob Menzies, aka Mr “There shall be more government, not less”.
Bendle’s whole schtick is a kind of un-self-aware cold war liberalism.
In fucking 2009.
And to think he used to be a Lacanian!
I dunno, I think there’s room here for an interesting discussion (maybe even… ‘dialogue’?!?) and it’d be a pity if the whole thing collapses into just exchanging mutual cannon fire so quickly. OTOH I didn’t read the original series in The Australian, maybe it was just a lot of pot-shots which may have pre-set the tone. I looked over the Quadrant pieces which were of course (as you’d expect) critical, but they didn’t seem as snipey to me as the reaction they’re getting here. (I think I even understood Jason Soon’s creationism remark which has so bewildered people here.) You can’t expect people who fundamentally disagree to not, well, disagree.
There was an interesting aside in one of the pieces, where some critic or thinker was referred to (self-referred perhaps?) as a “political romantic”, and I think the question of the Romantic urge or style in politics might be a useful thing to consider.
At bottom, many more political-economic issues than we might like to admit to, could be dealt with more productively if we assigned them to have the emotional valence of say, a good job of plumbing, or air-conditioning/refrigeration, or electrical wiring. There’s stuff that can be seen to work or not work well, and then choosing amongst the options that do work, you just tailor them to best suit the circumstances. Clay pipes are not as good as brass pipes, but they are still better than an open latrine, and so forth.
In the future I think that perhaps our mighty struggles with these great big words like “equality” and “justice” will be seen to be rather a wrong-headed method for grasping many a question; in the same way that we read of the ancient and medieval medical practices, which say of this or that medicinal herb or nutritious plant that it “hath a virtue,” meaning they knew it was useful but couldn’t say why. Nowadays more particular study has enabled us to know about things like vitamins and anti-oxidants, and so to say that an orange or a potato “hath a virtue” is not particularly useful to us.
Plato begins the Republic by having Socrates ask various citizens what is their definition of ‘justice’. And then Socrates, having found all these various definitions lacking in some respect or other, launches into 400-odd interesting but rather peculiar pages of examining the meaning of the word; his findings are, well, fascinating, but by no means any more definitive than any other smart fellow’s intricate musings. The larger social lesson that very quickly gets lost is the obvious fact that a cross-section of perfectly productive, non-insane citizens each had a very different idea of the word’s meaning. That alone ought to give us pause.
It’s been a long time since the last intra-blog round of nasties, good to see hostilities recommence.
Ah, Catallaxy, the Jackson’s On George of the Australian blogosphere. It’s the place you go when everyone else’s kicked you out.
Japerz, Quadrant is very well known to most of the posters here – bearing in mind it’s an Australian blog – and there is a lot of unspoken background here which might take you a long time to catch up on but to us is a given.
One small detail is that in its early days in the 50s it was funded by the CIA via the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Since then, barring a short rather-less-wingnutty period under Robert Manne (IMO, YMMV, etc) it has been a reliable part of the right wing noise machine.
Jason Soon, the expositeur of category errors, commits a category error:
Seems that sometimes “two legs are good”.
Equally serious is Soon’s characterisation of justice that doesn’t encompass social justice as “plain old justice”.
Well, Jason, perhaps you are unaware of the fact that the notion of “justice” a very old notion indeed, encompassed the notion of “social” for centuries before proto-liberals and their successors (Locke, the Girondistes, Bentham, Mill) attempted to divorce the idea of justice from social justice.
Even the US Constitution, enshrining slavery as an institution, treated a whole category of people as different based on a notion of social justice. This notion of social justice is inimical to the sensibilities of our present age, but social justice it was.
Thus, in using the term “plain old justice” Jason Soon is committing a major act of historical falsification. He may simply be ignorant of historical facts. More likely, he is using the term for a polemical purpose. He is implying that the notion of “social justice” is some modern invention.
In fact “social justice” is a very ancient principle. It is an organic part of our culture.
And as I have suggested above, the principle has very ambiguous consequences when applied to public policy.
But the salient point is that Jason Soon and the neoliberals cannot lay claim to the past. At a very important juncture in world history their ideas became insurgent. They wanted to re-invent the world at their own Year Zero. As we have seen, Year Zeros can be very dangerous moments.
Any movement that attempts to falsify the past is a movement that must be scrutinised with the deepest suspicion.
Applied to the fact of not stringing up certain US (category mistake) derivatives traders, Jason has a point.
If Marc Faber is correct:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/25/marc-faber-capitalistic-s_n_299720.html
It will methinks undoubtedly be teh left’s fault for the policy of “no banker left behind.”
[If an example of the lack of "justice" is required then we need look no further than the institutional religulous' "no child's behind left".]
(As for North Korea, as Lewis Black so eloquently puts it, you can only see black and white video of the place: it’s so EVIL, they have NO colour.)
And this time we’re keeping Upper Silistra, dagnabit!
This inter-blog stoush needs a bit of firing up, however, to match the cage-fights of yore. Japerz is obviously unaware of the personal animus “informing” [eek! PoMoOMGWTFetc!] both Jason’s sniping at LP and the return fire from Herr Bahnisch.
I do love this epigram. I’m picturing the wretched hive of villainy and scum from Star Wars, with Graeme M. Bird rolling in to the acclaim,
“Norm!”“Birdy!”.That’s pretty bullish for Faber, Pete. You should read him when he get pessimistic.
Jason Soon has confirmed yet again that the term “postmodernism/ist” is the ultimate floating signifier.
Trackback
Skepticlawyer, while you’re here, how likely is it that a libel suit against Mervyn Bendle by someone traduced in his QuadRANTS would fail on the grounds that a normal right-thinking person couldn’t possibly take him seriously?
@Skepticlawyer: Err, thanks, I think…:-) but it is a mischaracterisation to describe my comment above as “defending Robert Manne, the rankest intellectual bully”… Describing someone as causing a far-right magazine to be somewhat less wingnutty hardly constitutes a glowing, jumping-up-and-down endorsement. On the other hand, “rankest intellectual bully” is a little OTT! I think you need a disclaimer as to why you might have an animus against Manne – or just ignore references to him if that makes you uncomfortable.
Further to Helen’s comment #32, when Manne was editing Quadrant I generally found most of the articles to be interesting and able to be engaged with even when I didn’t agree with them. The standard Quadrant article under the current editorship of Windschuttle and the previous editorship of McGuinness comes across to me as a more prolix version of the Liberal students’ “Fuck Off Lefty Scum” stickers of the early years of this decade.
So Robert Manne is the ‘rankest intellectual bully’? Care to elaborate on this rather extreme, not to mention paradoxical statement.
Gawd Mark – those articles by Merv Bendle are incredible. Is he really an academic? Batten down the hatches Merv!
Mr Bendle is indeed an academic, at James Cook University.
Regarding the nature of “social justice”, skepticlawyer and others: it’s a misunderstanding to see it as fundamentally an aspect of legal justice. It’s a political concept first and foremost, and it’s not even a particularly radical or revolutionary one. Over to you, “Lefty” Leo XIII:
Emphasis mine.
PLAY FREEBIRD
Bendle is… drum roll… a recovering postmodernist!
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/08/02/anti-americanism-rife-in-academia-america/
Kim @ 38,
That he might be kim. But he seems to have disappeared into cyberspace.
{Mumbles: Or maybe its just my computer.]
You can check out some of his back catalogue on Google Scholar, Paul. Take a look at some of the older articles.
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=mervyn+bendle&hl=en&btnG=Search
Oh dear me he is too – call me old fashioned but I thought academics (of any political persusion)could through their training provide a unique and educated insights into the debate at hand. You learn more about Bendle’s personality in his fulminating, spluttering diatribes than what he is writing about.
japerz @ 22, I think the only sense in which any of us could be said to be bewildered by Soon’s snark about creationism is: “WTF? Can I get an introduction to Jason Soon’s drug dealer, please?”
Beyond satire, you just couldn’t make this shit up.
I don’t wish to cast aspersions, and this comment shouldn’t be taken personally, but Bendle is one of the cohort who entered academia at a time when the system was expanding rapidly, and it wasn’t difficult for anyone with a PhD to get a tenured gig. Of course, many of those academics are very bright indeed, and are now at the top of their profession. But I think it would be fair to say that the expectations of research output and quality are now much more demanding. Having said that, though I used to take issue with some of Bendle’s work when he called himself a sociologist, what concerns me now is the total lack of measured judgement in his writing.
Paul Norton @ 29, is a floating signifier anything like a floating turd? If so, that’d explain a fair bit about Jason Soon’s piece.
If everything that isn’t 100% committed positivist is bound to attract the lable ‘postmodernist’, then I’d probably just embrace it as a compliment.
“Well yes that right. Its just JUSTICE. Its really only JUSTICE. Big J and everything else JUSTICE. And justice is most assuredly anti-cronyist.”
Peter Paul and Mary called, they want their bell and hammer back.
“There is no reason why in a free society government should not assure protection against severe deprivation in the form of an assured minimum income, or a floor below which nobody need to descend. To enter into such an insurance against extreme misfortune may well be in the interest of all; or it may be felt to be a clear moral duty to assist, within the organized community, those who cannot help themselves.”
Oops, who’s anthropomorphising here, Hayek/his intellectual vassal, the word-for-word, phrase-for-phrase, caveat-for-caveat, regurgitating from “The mirage of social justice”, Jason Soon?
If there’s felt to be a clear moral duty to assist, within, and by, the organised community, those who cannot help themselves, one would have to conclude it would just as equally felt to be an immoral neglect of duty, within, and by, the organised community, or ‘socially unjust’, as it were, not to assist those who cannot help themselves.
Which immediately has very little to do with his “plain old ‘justice’” of “due process and equal treatment before the law”.
Two legs baa-d, Jason.
A little confused there, Nick. The quote isn’t from Hayek but Pope Leo.
Probably
but which quote?
I give up! Going out for a drink now!
Ahh, I see. So Bendle is what his fellow compatriots in the right would call a ‘tax-eater’…
I wonder, does this make him a self-hating tax eater?
But you need laws to make it work, Liam. I may not be able to comment on Pope Leo’s social justice schema (although the piece you’ve excerpted strikes me as moralizing right-wing pie in the sky), but I can comment on the laws drafted to bring it about. Get those wrong and you’ll have a lot worse than just social injustice.
Mark, Bendle’s PhD was submitted in 1996, not a period of specially rapid expansion surely?
HD doesn’t like anyone saying her debut novel has anti-Semitic overtones, Adrian. It doesn’t matter that it was the most dispassionate, restrained egghead in the public eye who made the case against her (the case that brought her down, I suppose) he was a ‘bully’.
I’m wondering what’s going to happen when some politically conservative, highly observant Jewish writer dredges up HD’s novel (Manne is very atheist & ratted on his erstwhile allies, remember).
Then we’ll see if “Ozblogistan’s favourite [`nice'] libertarian” can stop herself from flaming out completely.
Martin Krygier, formerly on the Quadrant Board, and son of Quadrant founder Richard Krygier, wrote this excellent essay in the Monthly on what Quadrant has become, a couple of years ago. It is worth reading in its entirety.
For those not in the know, Krygier is a very distinguished Professor of Law at UNSW. There was a time when Quadrant had first rate academics in its orbit.
Gimme a link Fyodor, but it can’t be as interesting as when the said “Birther” Birdy lands here and tells Dr Bahnisch of his inalienable libertarian right to tunnel under his condo for coal.
(With a side serving of that other lefty “category mistake”: voting in a non-citizen president who should personally be digging that coal when the cotton’s too wet to pick.)
Nickws @54, were you around and paying attention in 1996/7, the year Helen won the Miles Franklin and everything else happened? Genuine and not loaded question. I ask because, whatever one thinks of the novel, there were significant elements of Manne’s campaign against HD that it’d be pretty hard not to describe as bullying. It certainly wasn’t dispassionate. He was at the head of a large, distinguished mob, actually.
laura, I was just coming of age then intellectually, and in fact went out and bought a brand new Helen Demidenko ’95 copy of The Hand That Signed The Paper without doing so for any English lit course (I’ve maybe bought one other non-second-hand, non-genre novel since then for personal reading—the fiction on my shelf is very pre-loved).
I know there was a lot of sound and fury, coming from many points, and that not all of it was aimed at HD. Most of the controversy was really broadly about the yartz sector supposedly being inward looking and too fond of minorities, that much I remember.
But… I have always agreed with the analysis of that book that says it creepily alludes to the blood libel through it’s Humane Ukranians & Nazis vs Der ewige Jude-style caricatures. Robert Manne is the loudest voice for that reading outside the Australian Jewish community press, I suppose.
(Heh, I remember a Frank Devine column at the time placing the blame squarely on the pervasiveness of ‘dirty realism’ in modern fiction. That’s before the late Frank
decided that not only was it unfair to criticise the well-rounded characters Helen Dale had invented, but that she and Jason Soon were the shiniest lights in Australian letters. How’s that for returning on topic?)
@54,
Are you being disingenuous? She set out to defraud, i.e. willfully profit from a lie. And the person who brings her down is the villian? Your reality is skewed.
Skepticlawyer, now I think it’s you who’s committing the legal category mistake. It’s true that legislation (and the regulation that goes with it) is necessary to achieve the kinds of broadly-defined social aims falling under “social justice”, and if poorly drafted or conceived can have unintended consequences, as both you and Hayek argue.
But laws aren’t the only way political power is enforced. Both powerful and disenfranchised groups have access to extrajudicial means to get their way, up to and including political violence; and a State with any pretence to legitimacy has to limit and decide what those extrajudicial means are. Protests, strikes, graffitti, the odd bread riot? If a State fails to protect its most vulnerable members with the laws it has it can’t be surprised if those people rationally decide to go outside the law for their justice. As every classical nineteenth century political theorist feared (or hoped)
[In the voice of Captain Jack Sparrow]: Duh. Pope.
Thanks Nickws @54 – the comment makes sense now.
It was a genuine question BTW – I’d either forgotten about Manne’s involvement, or wasn’t paying atention at the time.
Aye, true: I reckon Bird needs a vlog to really get his birther/truther/denialister freak on.
Anyhoo, Faber’s such a media whore you’d drive yourself mad looking for the perfect quote, but Ali Moore got a great interview out of him earlier this year.
[link]
The money’s a bit after 8:15:
“My advice to you is to go and buy a farm and a shotgun, because things will get very bad in the world.”
Mind you, the twisted gnome is laughing while he’s saying this. I frackin’ LOVE the way Faber says “eKAHnamee”.
Sam #55, that essay by Martin Krygier is excellent. He also deserves a full measure of credit for having a strong enough stomach to read through all the editions of Quadrant that he must have done in order to provide the illuminating quotes.
“She set out to defraud, i.e. willfully profit from a lie. And the person who brings her down is the villian? Your reality is skewed.”
I am sorry then all fiction is lying and all authors who perform identity defraud. You can’t use the word ‘defraud’ without imputing a crime has been committed. Perhaps it is your reality that may be skewed. She wrote a piece of fiction, and she both performed an identity and harnessed the power of that performativity. And Manne got really upset about the ethics of all that. However, for whatever reason she did this, on a discursive level she illumined more about us and our culture, than about her. I like this line very much:
“Hoaxes are like those old black and white films where a bolt of lightning illuminates for a split second the murderer in the upstairs bedroom with the knife raised above his head. The weird light they cast allows us to glimpse the cultural weather that let them happen. They’re like a polaroid of the period.”
http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/demidenko/heyward.1.html
Whatever you may think of the ethics of the text, or of the performance of identity and the discursive power of that performativity at that time, she committed no crime. Mostly she blew apart the literary scene and opinions remain deeply divided all these years later. Not bad for a book, a lot of people reckon is not even that good. Read this, if you are interested in performance of ethnicity and writing.
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sgunew/HDDUP.HTM
And whether you like it or not, her name will go down in Australian literary history and remain there alongside the Ern Malley hoax long after we have disappeared into the ether, unknown and forgotten. David Manne has also carved his space alongside her in this and with his own book, has enshrined himself as the defender of all the people that she outraged and offended. Remember she was only 23 years old when she did all this. For me she raised up the fetishisation of ethnicity by the Left beautifully – that is in her performativity as Demidenko. Beyond the ethics of the text (which I personally have very deep problems with), I marvel that a girl on the brink of adulthood was able create a furore of such magnitude, and raise questions of such profundity within the literary academy. PhD’s have been written and research projects done on the outrage a reading public feels on these matters. And for all this self examination that she provoked, she will be regularly defending herself for the rest of her life. I have read Manne’s work and he makes some compelling points. But there was no defrauding in the legal sense of the term. You may wish to retract that.
*Nods*
“Demidenko” caught the gatekeepers napping.
Unforgivable.
My memory of the whole Demidenko debate is quite hazy. But didn’t Manne write against the novel on the basis of its anti-Semitism and factual inaccuracy before the whole hoax stoush started? I don’t remember him being bullying, but I wasn’t paying that much attention at the time.
I have a lot of time for Manne because of his writing during the Stolen Children debate. Of course, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a bully in a different context.
For what it’s worth this article by Manne would be difficult to describe as bullying. Maybe there are others.
FWIW Adrian’s ref provides Robert Manne’s intelligent, non-bullying explanation of how the gatekeepers were caught napping:
Here’s the first substantive critique by Manne of the book which I could find via Factiva, which was published on 26 August 1995 in the Age.
Yes, some of that could just as legitimately be said of ‘Inglourious Basterds’, and perhaps should be, I don’t know. The Humanities Review essay is one thing, but the whole book Manne wrote about HD – The Culture of Forgetting – made absolutely no sense to me as an engagement with a literary text. It’s very hard to say whether Manne deliberately misread the novel as lying history, or whether he was just not equipped to recognise how ficiton works, I don’t know either. Ultimately, his intentions matter just as little as HD’s did – it’s what’s they actually wrote that counts.
I’m pasting in a long quotation from an essay by Ken Stewart in Australian Literary Studies (1997) which pinpoints exactly the problem with Manne’s reading.
Leaving my own mixed and various sympathies completely out of it, to me Manne’s pronouncement that this exposure was ‘inadvertent’ undermines the reliability of everything else he says (as does his Clive James-like reliance on the reactions of ‘London or New York’ as the last word in judgement on all things Australian). I remember reading about the revelation of HD’s real identity and thinking that the novel (which I’d read and which had puzzled me up till that point as to its real intent) must have been at least as much an attack on ‘the pretensions of academic post-modernism and sentimental multiculturalism’ as anything else and no ‘inadvertence’ about it.
Um. When I say ‘undermines the reliability of everything else he says’, I mean, and should have said, ‘everything else he says about this book‘.
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t have an opinion as to its anti-Semitism, or not. Reading through those articles, Manne may have got it wrong, but I don’t see his writing as being bullying.
No, the charge of bullying has been laid by those who see criticism of the young and female by the old and male as necessarily so, IMHO.
PC is correct about the question of inadvertency. HD’s effort was a deliberate hoax.
No one likes being hoaxed. It is nevertheless hugely amusing for the rest of the world.
At the very least in the quoted text Manne provides the key to how to avoid being hoaxed.
That is a useful skill.
Well, I though Helen Demidenko – the character- was a brilliant creation. I thought the hoax was a hoot when it was unmasked. I loved the woman’s total disrespect for our literary elites and the way she took them all for a ride.
The book, however, was another question. Now, admittedly I don’t read novels much, and haven’t for some considerable time, but back then I thought it was very jejeune, historically inaccurate – you do have to get the basic history right in an historical novel even, otherwise it doesn’t work. Its a long time since I read it but the anachronisms of Fantasia being screened,(if I recall my WW2 cultural history correctly, it wasn’t released in Europe till after the war, and having cappucino in Prague (or was it Warsaw) during WW2 really got to me.And the allegations of plagiarism were quite disturbing.
But, at this point in time, shouldn’t we be leaving the poor girl alone about it?
He wrote eight articles and a full length book about it, which I think is a little extreme, personally. (source: Austlit db.)
Again though, prolix ? bullying.
Paul, Quentin Tarantino’s last movie has Hitler and Goebbels and all that delightful crew being burned to death in a Parisian cinema. Historically inaccurate, I understand. But I wouldn’t say it doesn’t work, because of this. I’d ask, what it’s doing this for?
Also, further to FBD #78, in one of his articles (published in his anthology The Way We Live Now) Manne states that from his perspective the most disturbing aspect of the whole affair wasn’t Helen or the book itself but the problem of Holocaust amnesia and Holocaust trivialisation which he perceived in the idolisation of the book and the continued defence of it by, to borrow Laura’s phrase, a large, distinguished mob, at least one of whom (Lucy Sullivan) resorted to anti-Jewish stereotyping in a letter to Quadrant critical of Manne’s criticism of the book and its supporters.
A Jewish anti-postmodernist and a long-standing culture-warrior was understandably interested in this fascinating moment in Australian cultural history.
Events that highlight intellectual and aesthetic currents so starkly occur very infrequently.
“No, the charge of bullying has been laid by those who see criticism of the young and female by the old and male as necessarily so, IMHO.”
When has your opinion ever been humble? Now tell us it’s all a feminist plot too.
Heh.
In my defence, I am sufficiently self-aware to have nearly written “IMNSHO”.
By “feminist plot too“, do you mean to suggest I see them everywhere? Clearly, you and other feminists are conspiring to paint me as some sort of extreme anti-feminist. Don’t think you can get away with it.
Meanwhile, no actual evidence of bullying has come to light…
Paul B #76:
If the “poor girl” had left her differences with Manne alone, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The trigger for all this is that the “poor girl” (now a 37 year old professional) responded to a fairly unexceptionable comment by Helen #24 by describing Manne as “possibly Australia’s rankest intellectual bully” and, in the absence of any specific explanation of her reasons for this characterisation, people not unreasonably assumed that this remark had its roots in the argy-bargy over The Hand That Signed the Paper.
Windschuttle is worse.
I thought Tarantino was pointing out another kind of truth. In the mish mash of genres he finishes by burning them to death with particularly inflammable film reels while watching a nazi propaganda film. And thus gestures to the power of film itself.
There is history and then there’s history.
“By “feminist plot too“, do you mean to suggest I see them everywhere?”
Well you tell me, you are the one who brought gender into it. There are men and women on both sides of this beyond the people talking about it here.
“Don’t think you can get away with it”
You spent too much time telling Daggett he had poo on his face, and now look what’s happened.
QHoFC #86, I’d say it’s a close run thing between Christopher Pearson and H. G. P. Colebatch for the title which HD has tried to bestow on Manne. It’s Colebatch first and daylight second for the title of Quadrant’s worst poet.
“you are the one who brought gender into it”
Yes, in order to respond to those who had brought “bullying” into it. I don’t know why they did – no evidence of bullying has seen the light of day as yet – but had a theory of my own.
Do you have another?
Oh I dunno, James Rice (and FDB), my definition of bullying is that, like other forms of abuse, it’s to do with power imbalances and the abuse of power imbalances, with the bullies making the initial attack for reasons that have far more to do with them than with the victims, and then persisting, pushing the attacks further and further, as though unable to stop themselves.
What would you accept as evidence? Videotape? If you require “evidence” that in general the older have more power than the younger, the male have more power than the female and the culturally influential have more power than the previously unknown, then there is clearly no common ground on which to argue with you.
FDB, I wouldn’t call you actually antifeminist but much of what you say here, especially lately, reminds me of older male friends of mine (older than me, that is, and therefore much older than you) who genuinely cannot get their heads around the concept of the level playing field and all its myriad implications for both public and private behaviour.
Can I also point out that the so-called gatekeepers, tiresomely constructed by those who accept this appellation as some sort of groupthinking mob, and here presumably referring to people like critics and the judges of literary prizes, were bitterly split into far more than just two groups over this novel, producing such strange combinations of allies as David Marr and Les Murray coming out in defence of Helen, putting the various judges of literary prizes at loggerheads with each other, and causing the Aust Lit academics (of whom I was one at the time and therefore witnessed many such debacles) to come almost to blows at seminars and conferences.
Laura’s point about whether Manne is properly equipped to understand the subtleties of how fiction works is a good one, since like many other commentators he appeared to be treating the novel as though it were claiming to be nonfiction. Ken Stewart is (as he usually is) quite right.
One major difference between IB and THTSTP is that Hitler’s and Goebbels’ fate are well known.
Any person who accepts IB’s narrative as literally true deserves nothing but ridicule. IB never intended to portray actual events in the past. They were real people acting out fictional events.
Conversely, THTSTP presented its narrative as events that happened within the context of WWII events. The characters were fictional people acting out real events, or at least events that self-deceiving people could persuade themselves were real.
Any person who accepts THTSTP’s narrative as archetypically true has fallen for a clever trick. Your average punter could be forgiven for being tricked. A cultural gatekeeper who is tricked merits ridicule and contempt.
“If you require “evidence” that in general the older have more power than the younger, the male have more power than the female and the culturally influential have more power than the previously unknown, then there is clearly no common ground on which to argue with you.”
I require none, and have seen plenty. What you describe is a generalisation, which I attempted to suggest doesn’t apply here.
“FDB, I wouldn’t call you actually antifeminist but much of what you say here, especially lately, reminds me of older male friends of mine (older than me, that is, and therefore much older than you) who genuinely cannot get their heads around the concept of the level playing field and all its myriad implications for both public and private behaviour.”
I’d be interested (really) to hear which of my musings have given you this impression. The impression I have occasionally garnered has been that as a man, my opinions on feminism – even gender – are simply not wanted.
Manne himself stated (in the text I dumped at #69) that:
The substantive point is that whilst the Kovalenko family members and other characters in the story may be fictitious, the story is set, not in the Third Age in Middle Earth, but in a specific historical context (Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s) and in the context of specific historical events and places (the Holomodor, the Babi Yar massacre, the Holocaust, Treblinka), and one of the central themes of the story is the supposed role of the Jews in the oppression of the Ukrainians as an explanation (if not justification) for the willing participation of the Kovalenko men in the Holocaust. How, in this light, is the lay reader expected to discern which of the claims about the Jews are part of the fictional narrative about the Kovalenko family, and which are part of the non-fictional historical context of the fictional narrative?
It’s not that simple Katz. For one thing, to say “They were real people acting out fictional events” needs a lot of hedging, greying and qualification given that we’re talking about a movie with actors in it.
This cannot possibly apply to me (the person who introduced the offending word into this thread) because self-evidently Robert Manne was at the time as an editor of a leading periodical of ideas a cultural gatekeeper. He clearly disagreed with the majority of perhaps deeply divided judges who awarded prizes to THTSTP.
Some gatekeepers were tricked. Others weren’t. No groupthink here.
Paul, “How, in this light, is the lay reader expected to discern which of the claims about the Jews are part of the fictional narrative about the Kovalenko family, and which are part of the non-fictional historical context of the fictional narrative?”
1. listening to internal textual cues, like the status of the various voices which are the sources of that narrative,
and
2. going to the library.
Easily fixed:
They wereActors playing famous historical figures depictedLaura – many folks’ views of history are primarily formed via historical fiction. They don’t want or expect to have to do their own fact-checking.
Unless a work of historical fiction is set in some self-consciously bizarro counterfactual world, the degree to which its author manages to fit their narrative with known facts is one measure of their success [and thus a perfectly valid angle from which to criticise, or "bully" them].
Secondly, the ways in which the author’s account differs from, elides or contradicts known facts can be a useful window into their intentions – analysis of which is the core business of the literary commentator.
Equally FDB many people’s views of crime and police procedure are primarily formed via crime novels and CSI. It doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t educate themselves.
Of course there are actual and prospective readers of The Hand who did, or will do, their due diligence as suggested by Laura at #96, or who (like Manne) will have the prior historical knowledge to pick the wheat from the chaff. There are, however, likely to be at least as many readers who belong to one of the categories identified by FDB #98. And then there are people who have not and will not read the book, but who will pick up memes about what the Jews are supposed to have done to the Ukrainians from those who have read it without doing their due diligence.
FDB I know only too well that most people are allergic to library air, which is why ‘literary commentators’ make it their core business to understand and convey what fiction does and how it operates. Not analysing intentions which was rendered felonious by New Critical fiat in about 1956. Also, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but ‘historical fiction’ just is a self-consciously bizarro counterfactual world.
FDB
Trafalmadore.
Counterfactual … bizarro … elides … contradicts
Brilliant literature.
Mindy – I’m not saying people shouldn’t educate themselves (although you seem to be saying that they should – why? As prophyllaxis against dubious historical fiction? Cart before horse, I’m afraid.)
In any case, if you’d seen the episode of CSI Auschwitz where the Herr Kommandant waxes sentimental about his traumatic upbringing while gassing babies, you might not use that analogy, hmmm?
Um, no it isn’t.
Recommended introductory reading, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1946) by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, reprinted in David Lodge (ed), 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader (1972), a book easily found in, erm, the library.
I think that even when a there’s a power differential, harsh criticism isn’t necessarily bullying. I don’t read Manne’s words in the articles pasted here as being bullying. That’s my documentary evidence, but interpretation is going to vary.
How people read historical fiction is very dependent on context. I think IB is read in the context of Tarantino’s well- known style, that of grotesque comic violence and exaggeration. When you see a Tarantino film, you’re not expecting any form of historical truth.
Ernst Lubitsch made a great comedy in 1942, ‘To Be or Not To Be’, about the Nazi invasion of Poland. Not generally a subject for comedy at that time, but Lubitsch was well known as a purveyor of very dry satire and that is how it was read. It also has a denouement in a theatre and I bet Tarantino has borrowed heavily from this, being the magpie that he is.
Fair crack of the whip Laura, not everyone has an english major, or stayed awake for it. “Internal textual cues” is a bit unreasonable – and moreover undermines the point that it was a hoax, readers were supposed to think it’s real. So surely, wouldn’t the internal textual cues have been leading to that conclusion?
Try as they might to find another core business [perhaps thus to validate themselves as more than mere spectators - who knows?] those who comment on literature spend an astonishing amount of their time discussing the intentions of the author. As it happens.
Just sayin’
No, FDB, I wasn’t trying to suggest that readers should educate themselves because many don’t as we both know. I was saying that you can’t say that everything written should be historically accurate because people will believe it. You’d have to ban the bible then.
I must have missed that episode of CSI. I think I stopped watching when CSI Maroochydore started.
Patrickg, you are getting two aspects of the Demidenko affair mixed up, as did so many other people at the time. The hoax was about the identity of the author, not about the novel as such.
Hardly; movies are full of them, for a start. You appear to be arguing that literary writers should write for the lowest common denominator of reader. For all I know, this may be what you believe, but thank God it’s not actually the case.
Fine, that’s a good point about reader expectation and context; it speaks to the nature of the implicit contract between writer and reader in any given text. The recent clash between Kate Grenville and Inga Clendinnen (among others) over the relationship between history and fiction is very pertinent to this part of the debate.
And PC – I’m not sure the authors of “The Intentional Fallacy” intended what you think they did. Does it matter in the end?
FUCKING YES.
Also to act like bloody Wimmsat and Beardsley are the be all and end of literary criticism – coming from you two – is disingenuous in the extreme. They are merely one of a toolbox full of approaches, and no more or less valid than Barthes, Leavis, Schliermacher, Heidegger, Ingarden, Gadamer, etc etc. etc.
Patrickg, I mean the internal textual cues in the novel like the narrator repeatedly drawing attention to the fact that she’s writing this story, on one hand, and on the other her very openly stated personal stake in the story she’s constructing. In other words, she’s an unreliable narrator and you don’t need an English major to notice that, you just need to take in what you’re actually reading and join the fairly large and noticeable dots.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘it’ when you say readers were supposed to think it’s real. Surely not the story the narrator tells? It sounds like you’re talking about the author’s theatricals. If readers are naive enough to think that the narrator of a novel and the ‘author’ are one and the same, then that’s a basic problem no author can be held responsible for, or should be expected to take into account.
Patrickg I just think they happen to have been right in that instance (I don’t think they were even remotely right about the affective fallacy) and the toolbox analogy is not one I like much, I don’t think all theories of literature are created equal. Just my opinion, because you said I was being disingenous.
In the manuscript submitted to the Vogel judges, the main characters were not named “Kovalenko” but “Demidenko”. There is also a deleted author’s note in an earlier draft:
(http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/researcharchive/conferences/calp/papers/china.pdf)
I should disclose I was somewhat friendly with Helen for a number of years at Uni, back in the day, though I’ve nether seen nor spoken to her since about the time the book was published and I never spoke to her about the book.
I can’t accept the use of the word ‘hoax’ to describe what Helen did, as I don’t believe there was any ‘point’ she was trying to make or goal she was trying to achieve or even a plan she was trying to follow. I had heard a number of somewhat contradictory stories about Helen’s life and adventures, and I knew some of the work she had previously submitted to the Union newspaper. This deception took on a life of it’s own, driven along by remarkable external circumstances and once it really got going she had no way out.
d
Part of this is true.
This is precisely what the judges who awarded THTSTP did when they voted the novel the winner of their prizes.
However, the term “responsible” is a slippery one:
1. Surely the author claims the credit for creating a work that appears to have integrity.
2. However, if this apparent integrity is in fact a deliberate hoax, while the author correctly claims credit (a synonym for responsibility) for literary success, the author has done nothing blameworthy (another synonmyn for responsibility) unless the fiction intends to defraud, which self-evidently THTSTP did not.
Yeah but in the absence of evidence, you have to concede they were just advancing an opinion, not ‘proving’ anything? And they have copped plenty of flak since; they represent orthodoxy I grant you (in this respect), but only one orthodoxy of many. So I would say the validity of FDB et al is not hinged upon consistency with them (may be hinged to other things, certainly)?
and
This take on the “hoax” has never rung true for me. That is, I think the hoax was far more inadvertent than intentional.
I remember the kerfuffle at the time and noting that there was no acknowledgement of a hoax from HD, no grand denouement or gotcha, suckas! moment from her, just a rather tragic and pathetic shell-shock at the realisation that, to many people, her ethnic identity turned out to be more important than the novel she’d written. I also find it hard to believe that anyone would slave away over an historical novel, with all the work it entails, just for a shot at embarassing these fearful “gatekeepers” mentioned above. It doesn’t make sense, at least not for someone so young, with no leverage (e.g. connections/accomplices) into the game, to invest so much in a supposed hoax that had a low probability of being realised.
The alternative interpretation, i.e. that HD was living [or "performing", as one of the texts above would have it] a somewhat delusional fantasy ethnic identity while earnestly – if not naively – trying to crack the writing game with a genuine novel, seems much more likely to me. It doesn’t change the fact that a number of cultural bigwigs and poobahs were hugely embarassed by what followed, but I think it lends a bit more humanity to what was actually a tragedy for HD’s career as a writer, and not a fun prank for the punters.
Well, it’s the amount of words Manne produced in response to HD’s novel that is relevant. When one looks at how much he wrote – a whole book, double the size of her novel, and many articles in response to it, that one starts to wonder where all the angst is coming from. And, I do not have it before me, but I remember the text of his book was far from dispassionate. I suppose being the grandson of Holocaust victims didn’t have anything to do with his zeal? If that is the case, it is understandable. But let’s not pretend it is a dispassionate appraisal of history and fiction. HD wrote a novel. And you know what yes, the novel has anti semitic overtones in my opinion. Did the author hold the opinions of her characters? That is what is up for grabs. But, if we take her at her word, that she got this oral history from Ukrainians here in Australia, then she was only articulating what she heard from some Ukranian somewhere. Unpalatable as it is. There you have it. It blew multicultural feel goodness out of the water. I know Italians who still love Mussolini and defend him to the hilt. And I love how Chris Tsiolkas revealed how racist Greeks can be about Anglo Australians in The Slap. Welcome to the real world of multicultural Australia. There is truth and then there is truth. IMO.
But Radio Gogol, a delusional person is no less capable of attempting to construct a hoax than a ruthless grifter. Indeed, the delusional person is more wedded to confabulations, if usually less likely to be successful.
It is entirely possible that Darvil’s hoax arose out out her ethnic fantasy. It certainly did take on a life of its own and spun out of control. In that sense the bigwigs were collateral damage rather than the targets of the hoax.
“Well, it’s the amount of words Manne produced in response to HD’s novel that is relevant. ”
Never mind the quality, feel the bullying!
“There is truth and then there is truth.”
Nope, there’s only truth. That’s what the word means. You want it to mean something else – get another word.
Casey, Manne’s book was titled “The Culture of Forgetting” and he made it clear on more than one occasion that his main concern in that book was not so much the novel itself but the reception of it in the literary and wider intellectual community, and what he perceived to be a deeper cultural malaise underpinning that reception. Tonight I’m going to re-read the relevant chapter/s of The Way We Live Now to jog my memory some more.
Have you read his book FDB?
The question is, Katz, did HD intend to deceive, i.e. was the embarassment of others intentional? I don’t think she did; I don’t think it was.
It’s the lack of clear intent that makes the label of “hoax” problematic, IMO.
“Nope, there’s only truth. That’s what the word means. You want it to mean something else – get another word.”
Bullshit. Go see Balibo. Tell me if you think it conveys “truth”. Then look up what really happened and ask yourself if a simple accretion of facts throughout the film would have conveyed the truth as much as the partially fictive screenplay did.
No I have not Casey. I was merely pointing out the strangeness of your assertion that “it’s the amount of words Manne produced in response to HD’s novel that is relevant”.
I would say that, on the contrary, this is not at all relevant. And you’ll note that to make this claim authoritively, I need not have read any of the words in question.
“Then look up what really happened and ask yourself if a simple accretion of facts throughout the film would have conveyed the truth as much as the partially fictive screenplay did.”
Conveyed what truth?
Have you read The Hand that Signed the Paper?
Patrickg I read your comment 117 about five times and this is the best I can do:
I can’t speak for Pav, but my mentioning the new critics to FDB wasn’t meant to challenge the validity of what he was attempting to argue, because I don’t think he would listen to me, but it was supposed to indicate that he’s actually woefully ill-informed about what professional critics do. If there’s any one thing critics don’t do, speculate about intention is probably it. That’s just how the discipline rolls. Contra your take on things, I think there aren’t that many orthodoxies in literary criticism – thanks to the self-sabotaging tendencies of the disciplinary conversations we’ve had – but this would be one of the few serious candidates.
The anti-intentionalist position has got such purchase because it overlaps so neatly with the Barthesian theorem of the death of the author, which dissolves into poststructuralism.
You talked about the absence of evidence and that confused me a bit, because I don’t know what can count as ‘evidence’, in the context of a critical method, except whether it produces good results or bad ones. So to reply to your point in those terms, my experience from reading and thinking about literary criticism is that mobilising authorial intention as a critical index usually produces very bad results. Actually, I agree with William Dowling* that there is something fundamentally incoherent in any attempt to treat ‘intention’ as independent of meaning. Information about ‘intention’ almost always turns out to be information about an internal speaker in a literary work.
the Dowling essay ‘Intentionless Meanings’ is in a collection called ‘Against Theory: Litwerary Studies and the New Pragmatism’, and I really recommend this book.
I don’t accept (for a start) that there is a “core business” to literary commentary, by which I mean that the “core” trope isn’t a helpful one in this instance. Not to mention its having been horribly devalued by Ratty. I think of literary activity in all its forms as being more of a spectrum of activities.
Well, I’m using this discussion as displacement activity to avoid writing one long and four short book reviews as we speak, and I can assure you that speculation about the writers’ intentions are not part of what I’m saying in any of them. As it happens. Lots of other stuff though, along the lines mentioned by Laura at #102.
I’d be interested to know which literary commentators you have been reading, and to see some examples, if what you say about their attempts to discover authorial intention is true. Analysing a text is not the same thing as saying that any particular interpretation was the author’s intention, though many’s the author who has protested ‘No, that was not my intention, therefore your interpretation is wrong’, when what is actually wrong is the writer’s assumption that said guessing is the critic’s ‘core business’.
It’s a very common perception that reading literature is a kind of guessing game that has only one right answer, but most of the literary commentators I know worth the name do not do that or anything like it. And if, as you imply, you don’t value the reading of literary commentary as a worthwhile exercise, there is a very simple solution.
*Nods*
I further note that FDB is a musician, and am wondering whether he thinks the business of the music critic is to analyse the musicians’ intentions, or, failing that, the composers’ intentions. If not, what, and why is it different?
I am still wondering FDB if you have read “The Hand that Signed the Paper”?
Casey – yes.
PC and Laura – you have clearly taken my comments personally (as in, to the extent that they relate to you). I can assure you that extent is minimal.
I’m quite aware of (though VERY shallowly-read in) trends in literary critical theory. I wasn’t referring to professional lit crit academics, nor ‘literary critics’ even, but those-who-comment-on-matters-to-do-with-texts-and-shit. There is a lot to be gained from other ways of reading, but what most people do, most of the time, is try to work out what the author means. This goes for readers, “commentators” and also, in their most secret of hidey-holes, under the blanket with the torch on, I suspect the theorists too.
Radio Gogol.
What do you make of the information noted by DR @ 115.
Interestingly, according to the original source, Darville removed that claim from her final submitted draft.
The author confidently asserts that it indicates her intentions.
But what were her intentions when she removed it? Did she no longer believe it? Did she think that the text could stand on its own as a representations of “actualities” without it? Did she no longer think that the book represented “actualities”?
However, the fact that the submitted version used the name “Demidenko” for the family in the action adds some weight to the second of these three possibilities.
This is by no means certain, however.
@53 – Laura, I think he’d been working for a couple of decades though before he finished his PhD. That’s my recollection – from talking to people who know or knew him. Could be wrong!
PC – for the lyrics, sure.
But with (most) music tilted so far from the intellectual and towards the aesthetic, analysis of intentions just isn’t so applicable. A music critic describing the musicians aesthetic intentions would be perfectly valid, but in the end pretty boring. “When she played that high note after that low one, she was clearly aiming to blah blah”
Like a lit review that touched on nothing but the author’s prose style, or the way the words felt to read, the review would be worthless.
I hadn’t seen his comment before I posted mine, but I think a lot of what he said rings true, particularly this bit:
As to why HD changed her text, I don’t see any necessary conclusion that she did so to “hoax” anyone. My interpretation is similar, I think, to yours, in that I think she wanted to distance herself from the narrator, perhaps to reduce the element of (apparent) autobiography, and felt comfortable doing so because she had greater confidence in the text.
Perhaps her editor dictated that change. I don’t think ‘hoax’ is quite the right word either for, for the reasons Fyodor gave, but the Michael Heyward image of the maniac illuminated by a flash of lightning that Casey quoted is such a perfect way to express the nature of what the whole affair revealed about Australian society.
“the Michael Heyward image of the maniac illuminated by a flash of lightning that Casey quoted is such a perfect way to express the nature of what the whole affair revealed about Australian society.”
On that at least, I hope, we can all agree.
“No I have not Casey. I was merely pointing out the strangeness of your assertion that “it’s the amount of words Manne produced in response to HD’s novel that is relevant”.
I would say that, on the contrary, this is not at all relevant. And you’ll note that to make this claim authoritively, I need not have read any of the words in question.”
Of course be authorative while not having read it. It’s a good look. The no of words is relevant. Look at Laura’s stats up there. It is the amount of words he devoted to it that gives credence to the bullying that people are talking about here. Paul Norton is correct. The book relates to holocaust denialism. Dale, for whatever reason, decided to perform an ethnicity that did not belong to her and perhaps she inhabited her characters to such a degree that she ended up believing it for a time and then in that she ended up sympathising with her characters. Who knows. But hoax or not, the oral history of the novel that she claimed belonged to her family actually belonged to someone out there. That much I believe. Why? I have heard people articulate what the Kovalenkos said and how they framed their involvement. She didn’t dream it up out of thin air. Whether it was palatable or not is another issue. Whether she sympathised with the Kovalenkos she had created is up for grabs as well. But, regardless, she did not orchestrate the holocaust. She merely put into fiction what she had heard or read from some migrant, somewhere. Manne was over the top in his response to it, though I can understand why he would be.
The truth of Balibo?
Go see the film and then read about its fictive portions. Ask if the fictive is a more powerful vehicle to meaning than simple facts piled on top of one another. You can arrive to a truth through a no of avenues. That was my point.
In this discussion, the interest for me is in the meaning to be made from Dale’s novel as it relates to Australia and its constructions and performances of ethnicity. I have no argument with the sense of unease which has resulted from her reframing of the history of the Jews in the Ukraine to lend sympathy to her Ukranian characters.
PN 2 68,
all right, I’ll grovel.
Laura, while historical inaccuracies in an historical novel annoy me, I usually make allowances because it is, after all, fiction. However, when those inaccuracies destroy the illusion of reality, as did the anachronosms of Fantasia and the cappucino, then the illusion the book is creating for me is destroyed and the novelist has lost track of what their supposed to be doing. At least that’s what I reckon.
(Your critiques, PN and Laura were accepted gently btw.)
Yes. I think she made it up as she went along.
When her personae started a cultural chain reaction she didn’t know how to turn it off.
“The no of words is relevant. Look at Laura’s stats up there. It is the amount of words he devoted to it that gives credence to the bullying that people are talking about here.”
I see. You gonna leave this poor assertion swinging naked in the breeze like that?
Again?
How heartless.
At least I make a show of backing mine up with some kind of blustery hoopla or other.
“You can arrive to a truth through a no of avenues. That was my point.”
Which truth? You said there was truth and then truth. So which one are you talking about?
That was my point.
I guess the illusion of reality effect is the interesting issue for me, Paul. The best historical fiction I’ve read tends to find ways to question that illusion, to help the reader stand back and consider what the smoke and mirrors are all in aid of.
It’s the stuff that tries really hard to present a seamless & perfect illusion that makes me suspicious.
This is a very good and important point. Historical accuracy is, strangely enough, important to successful historical fiction. Even Tarantino cops to this in IB with his introduction to the moofy*.
“Borodingo”
LOL, Katz, LOL.
* BTW, IB is a must-see, if only for Christoph Waltz’s performance. In fact, you can probably ditch the movie after the first scene. If he doesn’t get an Oscar there ain’t no justice.
Look, if someone hammers you relentlessly over a period of time and does not cease, then you can say that is bullying. It’s the amount of hits you get as well as the quality of the hits. I can’t put it any more simply than that. For example, if I say to you consistently for the next five years every time we cross swords that you are paranoid about feminism, you will start to feel a little opppressed by teh wimmins, like we – what was it? are not interested in your opinion on gender or something.
Balibo Spoiler Warning – Do not read if you want to see the movie:
There are whole parts of Balibo the movie which never happened. One for instance, where Jose Ramos Horta (who looks like Che Guevara) leads Roger East all over the country. Finally Roger East arrives to see where the Balibo 5 died. This never happened. But without that fictive piece we do not see the devastation wrought upon the people of East Timor, and without Roger as a guide into the story of the Balibo 5, we would not get such a powerful representation of how they died and of the wider story of East Timor.
There is truth: All that never happened.
And then there is truth: the fictive can convey it in a more powerful way that a simple accretion of facts.
The “truth” or rather meaning to be made from the Dale novel that I refer to relates not to the representation of Ukranian history, but about us, Australia and to the permormativity of ethnicity and its fetishisation of migrants at that time. I worked at SBS around the time SBS got really really cool and being a migrant was the new black, so to speak, in more ways than one. Its about the commodification and marketing of the exotic. Graeme Huggins wrote a book about it. Read it if you are interested.
And the fact that this book can excite such a discussion so many years after its initial appearance suggests that the book holds some importance in Australian history (and outside its literary history) beyond the hoax and the way in which she framed her characters sympathetically. It speaks about our conception of what literature is, what it should be. The outrage over the hoax relats to how we want to see migrants in this country. Or rather, not see them.
Don’t listen to her, Efdeebee – it’s not paranoia if teh wimmins ARE out to get ya.
On a lighter note, FDB @ 136, two of my favourite Zappa quotes are:
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
and
“Rock journalism is written by people who can’t write for people who can’t read.”
(I may only have the intent of the second one – my memory isn’t what it was, and I don’t have the authorised biography to hand.)
Well alright, if you are going to be on his side. You may be right. It’s not paranoia with you lot. Its vanity.
Jesus, I head out to a long meeting and when I come back the most interesting stoush here in ages has erupted. Fantastic f’n work, LP. I salute you and will shout youse all a round of Campari no ice.
Philistine leftist that I am, and having not read Helen’s book, I can only comment that if you replaced “Dale” with “Kate Grenville”, “Ukranian” with “Australian colonial”, and “migrants” with “family trees”, you’d have a crackingly good condemnation of current trends in Australian historical fiction.
/slinks
Y’all don’t wanna get started on The Secret River do ya? Do ya really?
As literature, certainly not. As history, what is there to start?
Mwahahahahah. Liam there is always a start. We can start with Inga. Did Inga bully Kate?
Oh my God. I’m feeling sick now.
I’d rather not… At least not unless we can establish that areasonable number of folks have actually read the novel, the quarterly essay, and the exegesis-cum-book club bait. Even then I have vowed never to discuss IC’s comments in public.
Heh. If a historian bullies you, man, you stay bullied.
Comments crossed Casey. I’m feeling your sick.
“I salute you and will shout youse all a round of Campari no ice”
Awesome. Can I have a poke in the eye with a sharp stick with that?
Myeah, you may have a point.
P.S. please use better clips for Carly in future. You’re riffing on a woman I love.
Only if there’s a pink umbrella on the end of it.
You, sir, love too many wimmens for your own good. Like how many do you have to love? It’s not an egg and spoon race you know.
Enough of you and egg races. Let’s all stare at Aragorn.
I know Helen, she’s a friend of mine, and knew her at uni at the time all this happened, so I should declare that.
Manne also interviewed me for his book, and to be honest, I had the impression he’d made up his mind before talking to me what he wanted to hear.
I think I read pretty much the whole dossier or archive of the controversy – but a long time ago.
I’d simply remark that I’m 100% with Casey. “Piling on” – which is a form of bullying – undoubtedly has a quantitative element.
I also think that the stuff in Manne’s book about a so-called culture of forgetting is deeply speculative, and largely impressionistic. Nor is it convincing.
Julie Gillard spelt the end for the meth-headead-mealy-mouthed Liberal voting metrosexuals of this land! It’s over now… they realise that interest rates can never be talked about again with the same stratospehric ignorance that they so recently were: atleast, not in their precious lifetimes! Ha, suffer I say! Seriously, tho: they know she has captured the attention of the majority and know that they are at a complete loss as for how to combat it!
Yeah hold on, we’re doing Ganglands next up
This is worrying.
We just missed out on an early Norma Khouri? Or, perhaps, there is a real Helen Demidenko out there, and our ‘Helen Demidenko’ copied her book word for word, like the Borges’ short story about the early post-modernist (sorry, can’t avoid using that word) who replicates ‘Don Quixote’ as ‘Don Quixote‘ and calls it his own?
No.
I normally wouldn’t respond to such an innocuous point, particularly as it’s obviously not about Quentin-motherfucking-Tarantino, instead being about the reading of texts in general.
But I think there’s a weird underlining irony in you bringing up the director whose one explicitly political act in his career is presiding over the jury at Cannes that awarded Michael Moore the Palme d’Or.
I think everyone can agree about exactly what truth was being spoken to exactly what power there. This compares to the debate about THTSTP, where too many actors are happy for no sunshine to come through. Hence people here with false memories of Robert Manne somehow being a literati ‘gatekeeper’ who wrote a book persecuting Anne of Green Gables, or something.
Casey @ 146 re:
Oh so true. “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The scene where the kids roll up and join Atticus in front of the lynch mob. Innocence juxtaposed with fecking unadulterated evil–and I cannot help the tears every time I watch that scene.
[By the way, Helen, if you are reading this, I want to do a novel about DOCS (novel cos of C&YPC&PA s.105) and kids ripped unnecessarily from their parents.
Waddya say--JV?]
I’m corporatised, lex congregatio/easy to find, state of der spiegel man.
]
And a line from that Gino
bearbaiting recluse wouldn’t be amiss, either.I thought Pav had already made the point that the “gatekeepers” were thoroughly split on the whole question.
Really? Damn…is there a limit of some kind? You know, “max. of 10 per customer,” that sort of thing? I must have been away when it was covered in sex ed.
Besides, what’s not to love? I blame the Matriarchy.
Truth? Novelists can’t handle the truth.
Well as it turn out, Fyodor, you win this battle of numbers. It seems that I am being compelled to accept quantity does not count by a no. of my interlocutors on this thread.
But feck that for a joke. As I have to stick to my original point about Manne, you get win with the wimmin lovin en masse. Love as many eggs and spoons as you like. It just proves my point. Sort of.
Laura @ 146,
Illusion od reality in historical fiction. Not sure what you mean there. I do know that when it comes to actual history frequently the evidence is so fractured one knows one can never really get to the actual reality, only a semblance of it. If that’s what you mean and your’e applying it to historical fiction, then I probably understand you. I just love things coming at me out of left field (so long as its not in real life.
Full marks for this tremendous stoush. To which I can only contribute this side note: the (relatively few) fictive aspects of the Balibo Film ,as against the historical record, are documented here: http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/hass/Timor/3/index.html
Casey, of course quantity counts. Piling-on, by either reinforcement or repetition, or both, is an essential element of bullying. I don’t understand why Nickws at #165 thinks ‘No’ is an argument.
That’s not the best reading of the Borges story! It’s not about post-modernism, but about narrative and interpretation. Among other things, it draws attention to the complex structure of narration in Cervantes’ book. And how Menard’s text in 1939 necessarily differs in its reception from the original Don Quixote. There’s also a bit of a point in that Borges’ story takes the form of a supposed critical essay.
I will grant you that the Wikipedia entry on the story claims it exemplifies post-modernism (though whether reader-response theory can be accurately described as post-modern is, to me, very doubtful).
Pavlov, Casey had expanded his point by writing, “When one looks at how much he wrote – a whole book, double the size of her novel, and many articles in response to it, that one starts to wonder where all the angst is coming from”.
As has been explained by others here the book in question is as much about the remembrance of the Holocaust as it is about Demidenko.
Forget about my pithy response, all you need to know is that I sincerely believe Robert Manne is neither angsty not bullying on this subject.
I read it years ago. It’s a piece of humour, that’s as much as I remember. I suppose it was written between the wars, so is really (much less controversially) modernist.
Last time I dare raise the spectre of p___ m________ in this place.
(BTW, Mark, you don’t think I learned of the story via wikipedia, do you? I didn’t realise I give off the impression of being someone who’d google the plot of a five page story. I’ve forgotten the name of Borges’ tale yet can’t even be bothered looking it up online.)
For the purpose of illustrating the point I was making at 123, I’m reproducing the following paragraph from “Reflections on the Demidenko Affair” in Manne’s The Way We Live Now.
Earlier in the same chapter Manne states that he did not read The Hand until after it had been lionised by so many. What all this underlines is that Manne’s primary concern was not Helen D herself or The Hand itself, but the reception of it by a large part of Australia’s intelligentsia and literary establishment. I hope nobody is going to complain that these people have been “bullied” by the likes of Manne, Peter Christoff (in Arena Magazine October-November 1995) or Jeremy Jones.
Of course, in order to explain what he thought was wrong with the reception of the book by its supporters, it was always going to be necessary for Manne to explain in some detail what he thought was wrong with the book itself. Given the obtuseness and stubbornness of some of The Hand’s supporters, it is not surprising that critics of the book found it necessary to labour some points. Does this constitute “piling on”?
Nice work Paul Norton.
Manne:
If true, this is a disturbing insight.
Correctly, Holocaust deniers are condemned.
Manne is describing something even worse. For an absentminded moment in Australian culture, Manne alleges, influential voices accepted the notion that Holocaust victims deserved their fate.
Can this be true?
Having posted lots of Manne’s stuff from this debate, I’m now going to post the text of an article by Helen D in her defence. Note the text I’ve highlighted.
This is Darville continuing her imposture as Helen Demidenko.
The Demidenko character defends her project as one that seeks the truth of the matters addressed in her novel. Specifically, this truth concerns the nature of the relationship between Jewish Ukrainians and non-Jewish Ukrainians to the advent of the Final Solution.
But this Demidenko character, now drawn from behind the veil of the writer of fiction into the glare of public scrutiny, is the creation of Helen Darville.
Perhaps at the time of submission of the manuscript to the Vogel Prize, Helen Darville may have been enveloped by the romance of her assumed ethnic identity.
But after that moment then water flowed under the bridge. Darville chose to buy into the controversy not by owning up to the imposture but by reinforcing the imposture.
Darville’s performance in the article cited by Paul represents a clever and premeditated hoax.
Just teasing, Nickws. I found it curious that Borges’ story could be described as post modern, is all.
I don’t think so. I think you were right earlier: “When her personae started a cultural chain reaction she didn’t know how to turn it off.”
Further to #180, I also think Darryl Rosin #116 is likely to be close to the mark.
As a matter of interest, does anyone know of the work of Leaonard Schapiro?
“For the record, I believe that brutality begets brutality, and that people do become trapped by historical circumstances into committing appalling acts. Note that my emphasis here is on people.”
You might have highlighted this also. This might be a good summation of what she may have set out to do as a writer. If it is what she set out to do, then some could suggest she failed in that, and that the failure was an artistic one, not an ethical one which involved holocaust denialism.
To continue the innocuous commenting, ad nauseum, it also applies to Inglourious Basterds.
And Liam who didn’t even read the book, made what is perhaps the most pertinent argument on this thread. Talk about lightning bolt illuminating the scene.
Replace author name and history with any recent white fiction writing on the frontier in this country and we may say that apologia and denialism is well and alive right amongst our liberal white writers (except for Gail Jones and Sorry – you can’t touch that). Secret River, The White Earth, Journey to the Stone Country, Landscape of Farewell. They are all deeply contentious in the way they appear to let white people off the hook at the last moment. Apart from Clendinnen, who took offense to Kate’s ferry ride across the harbour as a way into the past or summat, why isn’t anyone going these authors the way they went HD?
Leonard Shapiro was one of the most prominent historians of the Soviet Union. To call him a “British-Jewish historian”, while literally correct, suggests that he had parochial interest in the history of the era.
In reality, his interests and researches were very broad, notably a massive history of the Communist Party.
There are several moments of choice in this story.
I would suggest by the time she wrote the Age article, Darville chose not to turn off the chain reaction.
She could have gone to ground.
She could have owned up to the imposture.
Instead she elaborated the hoax.
It seems to me that the element of elaboration is the crucial one here.
No, of course not. ‘These people’ were the equals or indeed in some cases the superiors of Manne et al in terms of cultural power and influence, not hitherto-unknowns in their early twenties, and there were, altogether, at least ten of them, not just the one. Abuse of a power imbalance therefore does not, in this case, apply. And Jones and Christoff, unlike Manne, did not go on and on about it.
Can I just make it clear here that I regard this issue of bullying and non-bullying as a totally separate question from the interpretation of the novel. But I’m guessing that this is one of those topics where it’s simply not possible to have a rational discussion about facts and not be assumed to be taking sides.
“Apart from Clendinnen, who took offense to Kate’s ferry ride across the harbour as a way into the past or summat, why isn’t anyone going these authors the way they went HD?”
I think there is still a very large element (not w/r/t Manne though, IMO) of feeling cheated by the identity fraud bit. Of simple personal/professional embarrassment.
More seriously, (and part of what got under Manne’s skin) is that some of the ickiness of appearing to justify or mitigate Holocaust collaborators might have been less if Helen Demidenko did actually exist, and was telling the story of her actual family.
For that would be understandable – many of us are compelled to explore and record our ethnic/family histories, so Demidenko could hardly be blamed for bringing the story out, as fiction, in just the way people thought she had (to which we can add the frisson of suspicion that Demidenko was the actual narrator).
But for a young, educated, middle class anglo-Australian to want to tell this story raises much more uncomfortable questions.
“I’m guessing that this is one of those topics where it’s simply not possible to have a rational discussion about facts and not be assumed to be taking sides”
Polanski lover!
‘It seems to me that the element of elaboration is the crucial one here.’
Indeed. In retrospect so brazen is the deception that it’s hard to take any of it seriously.
Can you expand on this FDB. I’m interested to know what your thoughts are. I feel uncomfortable about it as well, but does that mean that the story shouldn’t be told?
To make the same point w.r.t. another issue which has transported us all this year, if someone claimed to have lost friends, family and/or property in the Black Saturday fires as a result of policies pursued by “the greenies”, and they did in fact lose friends, family and/or property in the fires, we would respect the sincerity of their grief and not be too hard on them for repeating ex-urban myths about “the greenies”. We would not be angry with them. On the other hand, if their claim to have lost friends, family and/or property was found to be a concoction, we would be very angry with them.
Certainly not Mindy – just working through it in me noggin, trying to work out why the whole shambling fiasco went the way it did.
Basically I’m saying that a personal stake in a history opens various avenues for defending the author’s motivations in telling it. The author is presumed to be telling it for partly personal reasons, and whether their story reflects well or badly on the people in it – it can be assumed that some degree of bias is present.
Whereas we’re expected to be more rigorous and impartial when we come from a far-off place and time, and have the benefit of a well-rounded and recourced education.
So no, it should never mean a story shouldn’t be told, but it’s going to change how people read it.
Because, believe it or not, lots of people care about what the author intended to achieve by telling their story.
I think that Paul really nails it @ 189, and this highlights the reason why a lot of people were so distressed or annoyed at the deception when it eventually came to light.
Me at comment 85:
Pavlov’s Cat at comment 91:
All this in response to my contribution to this thread of a sum total of one sentence?
Anyway, no, Pavlov’s Cat, you might be disappointed to hear that no videotape is required. I don’t even require evidence of the latter claims – I’m sure there were power imbalances in this case. But was there an abuse of power and bullying?
All of this happened a long time ago, and I’m hardly an expert on this case in any event, so I’m largely going on what’s come to light in this thread. (And bear in mind that my contribution to this thread up until now has consisted of a sum total of one solitary sentence.)
Nevertheless, going on what’s come to light in the thread so far, all of the documents written by Manne which have been copied into this thread have seemed fairly measured to me. According to Laura, Manne wrote eight articles and a book about The Hand that Signed the Paper. This is the sum total of the evidence presented so far in support of the claim that Manne was a bully.
But, to my mind at least, this evidence is weak. Eight articles and a book might seem excessive to some, but it doesn’t to me. Firstly, Manne’s job is to write articles and books. Secondly, The Hand that Signed the Paper had been awarded a number of major literary prizes. Moreover, Manne felt the book was anti-Semitic and trivialised the Holocaust and, as Casey says, Manne’s grandparents were killed in the Holocaust. And no doubt in the back of Manne’s mind was the fact that millions of people died in the Holocaust. Given all these things, to me eight articles and a book does not seem excessive.
What would I accept as evidence of bullying? As I say, all of the documents written by Manne which have been copied into this thread have seemed fairly measured to me. Maybe not all his writings on this case have been so measured? Did he launch forth with a series of vindictive and abusive personal attacks? I’d count evidence of attacks of this kind as supporting your claims that Manne was a bully. I’m hardly an expert on this case, as I said, and for all I know evidence of this kind is out there.
Thanks FDB and Paul. At the time, being a young 20 something myself, and not having read the book (still haven’t) I assumed the issue was all about the taking of an ethnic identity not belonging to her and using it to sell the book. Obviously that was not the case.
As Laura says, the Austlit database includes one book and 8 articles written by Robert Manne which discuss The Hand that Signed the Paper. All of these were published in 1995 and 1996. Three of the eight articles, though, are simply extracts from Manne’s book, so they hardly constitute separate pieces of work. Since Manne’s job, needless to say, is to write articles and books, it’s worth comparing this output with Manne’s overall output.
According to the Factiva database, Manne wrote 32 articles during 1995 and 1996. So, during the years in which he was most focused on The Hand that Signed the Paper and the Holocaust – 1995 and 1996 – it’s true that Manne did write a book on this case. As to articles, though, 75 per cent of his overall output, at least, was on other topics. On the basis of these databases, he has apparently written little on this case since 1996.
I suppose people will differ as to whether this constitutes “going on and on about it”.
With all due respects to HD, whom I actually quite admire, and wish she had published more novels, because she showed promise in THTSTP, the thing that annoyed me most about the novel (and mind you, I’ve read very few Vogel winners, one other whose name I can’t remember)was, that I thought it didn’t exactly deserve the prize.
[Should I run away?]
But James were 25% or more of those other articles about just one subject or on a wide range of subjects? If 1/4 of his total output for the year centred solely on HD but his other 3/4 were on widely differing topics then I think a case for piling on has been made.
If say 25% were on HD, another 20% on someone else, 33% on another topic etc. then you could say it’s just his style.
Pavlovs Cat says:
“If you require “evidence” that in general the older have more power than the younger, the male have more power than the female and the culturally influential … ”
If males have more power than females why is that girls have now outperformed boys in schooling for over a decade now and why is that females now signficantly make graduates in prestige courses like law and medicine? Moreover, why do female diseases like breat cancer attract so much more funding and publicity than male diseases like prostate cancer?
Like Sam Tyler, you appear to be stuck in the 1970s
Oh dear, that should be:
why is it that females now signficantly outnumber male graduates in prestige courses like law and medicine?
Mindy,
To be honest, I have no idea what the subjects of those other articles were. In any case, I’m less convinced than you that this really makes much difference.
Incidentally, the Factiva database is undoubtedly incomplete. For example, it only includes three articles written by Robert Manne which discuss The Hand that Signed the Paper in any depth, rather than the eight which the Austlit database includes. So the 32 articles I mentioned earlier is a lower-bound estimate, which means that the 25 per cent in an upper-bound estimate (the 25 per cent also includes extracts from Manne’s book as separate pieces of work).
We’ll have to agree to differ then James. I think 25% of your yearly ouput on one topic is a big chunk. But as the figures are rubbery then this may not actually be the case.
Casey, I do not deserve credit for displaying my literary ignorance and my narrow reading, but cheers for the comment. Illuminating lightning flash or royal fool’s licence?
I was re-reading Clendinnen’s QE last night and on the train this morning, and it’s clear that it was Grenville’s comment in Ramona Koval’s interview about her novelist’s privilege in standing above the feuding historians on a stepladder that caused the greatest offence—IMO, for good reason. If Helen in The Hand had claimed a profession instead of an ethnicity it would have been a very different hoax-troversy.
Back onto the original topic, I’m reminded of a series on the Left which the Australian ran in the mid-1980s, which was written by Greg Sheridan and informed heavily by Sheridan’s interviews with a range of people on the Left including my then boss Brian Aarons who was the Sydney-based National Organiser for the CPA. When the articles were eventually published we were pleasantly surprised and genuinely impressed by the fairness of Sheridan’s reportage and the thoughtfulness of his analysis.
It is in the light of comparison with Sheridan’s effort in the mid-1980s that the current round of rants at Quadrant stands condemned in my mind.
I was in the audience at two different forum / seminar type things in 96 / 97 where Manne spoke – other people talking that I remember were Helen Daniel, Pamela Bone, and Louise Adler. It wasn’t just writing, and I don’t think it was just quantity. That some of the pieces he published were extracts from the book (which I didn’t notice yesterday) doesn’t alter the fact that he did publish them.
More to the point, I also think, and I can’t stress this strongly enough, with Manne it was a steadfast refusal to recognise & acknowledge that fiction is epistemologically different from history. Excuse me for putting it so ridiculously bluntly, but fiction typically shows, and history typically tells. This isn’t about postmodern narrative tricks, it’s just about the fundamental and basic fact that fiction gets inside the attitudes and worldviews it describes, it dramatises them, and history maintains the distance that temporal and spatial separation impose.
When the history narrated is traumatic, then historical distance creates a moral buffer, as well. Manne felt that the novel should have observed a more distinct equivalent moral buffer, I think. I understand that, and as it happens, good writers usually do use a variant of irony for this purpose (irony = detachment, distance, between the narrating voice and the subject under narration.) But he wanted to judge the novel as if it was history writing, not to engage with it and critique it as literature. I’m all in favour of subjecting fiction to stern scrutiny on ethical grounds but it’s got to happen within the broader acknowledgement that it is actually fiction.
(James, I quoted an essay by Ken Stewart above at #71 which shows Manne extracting one phrase out of a paragraph and entirely twisting its meaning. It’s hard to believe he did that in good faith.)
As far as I can understand the reason Manne felt that this novel should be treated as something other than a novel was because of its subject matter. With the greatest respect for that subject matter, I don’t think any topic should be off-limits for fiction, but that’s a matter of personal opinion.
Liam @201, the image of the novelist on the ladder looking down at the historians was extremely unfortunate but I think, I hope, the essential idea there was not the Olympian elevation but the distance, the bystander or spectator element. I think that’s not unreasonable. The question and answer were specifically about the history wars, but Clendinnen made it into an issue about history & historical fiction tout court.
“I was re-reading Clendinnen’s QE last night and on the train this morning, and it’s clear that it was Grenville’s comment in Ramona Koval’s interview about her novelist’s privilege in standing above the feuding historians on a stepladder that caused the greatest offence—IMO, for good reason”
Indeedy. I remember carefully putting back my eyeballs into their sockets that cold winter morning in PG Arc at uni when I first read it, and thinking – “that way lies madness Kate”. And so it was.
So its a bit fecking hilarious to realise that I have made the same claim for the fictive as she did right on this thread. But not while standing on a ladder. These days my views allign with Laura’s – Fiction shows. History tells.
And though he speaks on Aboriginal history, regarding the traumatic and history, I very much like Bain Attwood’s take:
“The concept of trauma has very important implications for historical work. It suggests that contemporary sources – upon which historians traditionally rely – are inadequate, as they cannot register the event properly. It also means that any memories of the event will be flawed in any empirical sense since the psyches of the witnesses have been disturbed by it. Encountering unbearable pain, the mind constructs an alternative story. It might coincide at some points with the original event but for the most part this story will be a very different account of what happened, one marked by amnesia, exaggerations, chronological errors, repetition…Paradoxically then, the fact that a memory misrepresents traumatic events can actually suggest that it is in some sense a truthful rather than a false account. As this suggests, the relationship of traumatic memory to events tends to be significatory rather than referential. Truth is rendered in figurative rather than literal terms”
“Telling the truth about Aboriginal History”, 177.
I agree with you Laura, but also feel this was compounded by both Dale’s (and the book’s many champions) treatment of it as such. With all the hoopla of the costumes, the essay, the sketchy, never-recorded interviews that may or may not have happened, the author and her (or the book’s) fans was begging for versimilitude, and also hopelessly infusing the text with co-signs that screamed “this is more than fiction!”
I feel like Manne was responding to that, as much as anything in the novel.
I’ve got time for New Criticism, but the idea of divorcing the text from all else – whilst valuable at times – is one that’s (for better or worse) rarely adopted with the reading public I would argue, nor should we necessarily expect it to be.
Thus I feel Manne’s approach was justified, in that it was either responding to or mirroring (whichever you prefer) the terms which Dale herself, et al. had set for discourse on the novel.
To be wounded in a duel, when you yourself have chosen the weapons, demonstrates more a lapse in your own judgement than the vindictiveness of your opponent, I think.
“With the greatest respect for that subject matter, I don’t think any topic should be off-limits for fiction, but that’s a matter of personal opinion.”
Certainly not.
But as a feminist, what would your reaction be to a book investigating the mindset of a serial rapist, were it to win a major literary award, be substantially wrong in its treatment of the facts, and offer a version of the events it fictionalises that casts the rapist himself as a victim whose actions are to be understood as such?
But this presupposes that the duelists are equal, which PC demonstrated above was not the case.
“Fiction shows. History tells. ”
Sure.
What about “historical fiction” for fuck’s sake?
Really, this rigid dualism surprises and disappoints me.
I teach a novel exactly answering that description in my women’s writing course, FDB. It didn’t win any prizes, but it was circulated by Gollancz’s Left Book Club, went out of print for decades, and was rediscovered by The Feminist Press, NY.
So, what’s your answer to my question?
I have to make it simple and said as much FDB, because I’m talking to a lot of people who are not as well familiar with the trends in literary theory as you are.
Laura, I think Clendinnen made it into a political matter, which I don’t think Grenville appreciated at any point.
Here’s Koval’s eye-popping interview:*
The practice of history always has very specific political consequences, in the case of Australian colonial history, in Aboriginal land rights and native title. When she said that she didn’t care whether the history wars were “won” it was a fairly flat declaration of a political position: that the past its a mine for narrative and stories, not a battleground on which contemporary struggles are still being fought. I agree that she was putting herself in the role of spectator but don’t agree about the value of such a role.
*PGARC in winter? I’m surprised you could turn the pages with your fingers frozen.
My answer to your question – ‘what would your reaction be’ to a book you imagined up, aiming to push as many buttons in its description as you could (I assume the reason you asked about a book about a rapist because I’ve mentioned online that I’ve been raped, twice) – was to think around for a book I’ve read which answered that description, and I came up with Katharine Burdekin’s ‘Swastika Night’, which I thought was good enough and important enough to be included in a survey course on 20thC women’s writing.
Okay, snipe away – I really don’t know much about lit crit hahaha!!!
And by all means, ignore the fact that I’m presenting you with a hypothetical that your anecdote doesn’t fit in crucial ways. Make fun of me instead!
But anyway, what’s your answer to my question? How does that (hypothetical) book grab you? Do you think that (had you been around as a lit academic at the time of its hypothetical release) you might have felt like penning an article or two, maybe a book, about how it’s ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE that this book had recieved any critical acclaim whatsoever? About how it’s grossly inappropriate to falsely assume and doggedly cling to an identity claiming a confused and conflicted personal history w/r/t sexual violence? About how it more-or-less explicitly gives succour to men who feel rage against women and want to act it out?
I really really hope that you would have acted, in my hypothetical scenario, pretty much exactly as Manne did. It would be your job to do so.
I don’t think so Mindy. Manne didn’t go looking for fight, he just responded to provocation.
Dude. FDB. Turn it down from 11.
Historical fiction shows, too, and it is not historical fiction’s job to tell. If, as someone further upthread remarked, lots of people get their history from reading fiction and then don’t take it any further, that is not the novelist’s responsibility; it’s the reader’s responsibility, for not being able to tell the difference or for being too lazy to verify. If the history is falsified in historical fiction, either deliberately or out of ignorance, then it’s bad fiction and possibly bad faith as well, but it shouldn’t bear the burden of being called bad history.
If it’s fiction, of whatever kind, then it is, as Laura says, epistemologically different, and the nature of the implicit contract between writer and reader is quite different from the one an historian makes with her or his reader.
I was not aware you’d been raped Laura, and would certainly not have used that example had I known.
It was only intended to be a topic central to what I (admittedly dimly) perceive to be your feminist outlook. I mean, most feminists are concerned from time to time with the abuse of power and its expression in sexual violence, right?
Please, let’s keep duelling out of this.
Burdekin’s novel was first published under a male pseudonym, I just remembered – ‘Murray Constantine’ – and the author’s real identity was kept a secret for decades.
Not a good example in any circumstance, Efdeebee. And what Haiku said.
A lot of women have been raped FDB. A lot. If I were you, I wouldn’t assume that whoever you’re talking to about rapey scenarios hasn’t been a participant in one at some point.
However, that unpleasant little diversion into RL aside, you’re quite right of course that “most feminists are concerned from time to time with the abuse of power and its expression in sexual violence.”
But when you got to work to imagine the most antifeminist-sounding book you could think of, bizarrely you came up with a description that fits one of the most insightful diagnoses of the inner workings of patriarchy that I’ve encountered. The only point I care about is that with fiction, execution is everything, and the raw materials of the story don’t determine what it becomes. Books can’t be judged by their covers or by their plot summaries.
FDB, I know it was actually Laura you asked this question, but I wonder if you could clarify its terms. You’re not making it clear what kind of book you’re talking about — whether you’re talking about fiction or nonfiction here.
Are you referring to a novel, whose characters are or should be essentially imaginary, or to a nonfiction book about a real serial rapist? Or — the third possibility, and the one you seem to mean; I was only offering the other two to point to the differences — you may be talking about what is to me the deplorable contemporary fashion of writing a ‘novel’ that is actually a made-up story about — not just ‘based on’, but openly about — real individual people, the facts of whose lives are already generally known. I think the writing of that sort of so-called fiction, even on far less contentious topics than real-life rapists, should be punishable by having to read the entire oeuvre of Dan Brown aloud to a captive audience of literary critics heavily armed with rotting prawns. That kind of ‘novel’ is usually rife with the sorts of confusions and conflations that this thread is trying to untangle, and tends to further confuse fiction with nonfiction in the minds of readers. Compared with this kind of epistemological chaos, doing a feminist reading of Lolita would be a walk in the park.
PC – THTSTP was written in such a way that this was part of the draft’s author’s note:
“The things narrated in this book really happened. Its characters are all real people, the things they did historical actualities.”
Sure, this was removed for one reason or another. But the intention of the author was, intitially, to publish a book to which that note would be attached.
Quick thought experiment – who here believes that there exist rigid categories called “fiction” and “history”, such that the business of one can reliably be said to differ from that of the other?
Liam – I’m a tad fired up, sure. But I’m actually arguing for nuance, not dogma.
History doesn’t tell.
The practice of history is about showing with evidence.
The historian shows that her explanation is the best available answer to a question by showing how she uses the best available evidence in the most effective way.
Only after this work is done does a textbook writer synthesise this work into an homogenised text which is often mistaken for a history book.
FDB, I hope this signals the end to your litany of ever more bizarre hypotheticals.
@ patrickg – yes but in that scenario he was the big kid in the playground and HD was the snotty little kid from kindergarten.
Casey – can you explain what was “bizarre” about my one and only hypothetical?
And for the love of cream cake, was it not obvious enough that I was positing a hypothetical where the book shared every relevant characteristic of THTSTP except subject matter?
I thought you guys could read and shit.
I can read, yes.
History happened and fiction didn’t, something like that. I think that’s a pretty silly question.
Before it got yuck there I meant to reply to Liam’s part about the political effects of history. Yes, you’re absolutely right. In defence of literature, I thik it often has demonstrable political cosequences too but that’s absolutely not what Grenville was saying.
Don’t worry FDB.
We live in the age of hyperbole where an academic response to a book based on a fraudulent identity to add weight to its scenario, is called bullying, even though much of that response was only tangentially related to the actual book itself.
Thus your one hypothetical becomes a ‘litany of ever more bizarre hypotheticals’.
Laura, at the considerable risk of boring everyone, I’ve really got to repeat myself.
“Quick thought experiment – who here believes that there exist rigid categories called “fiction” and “history”, such that the business of one can reliably be said to differ from that of the other?”
It was obvious that you were trying to, yes. But I think one fictionalised real-life rapist (let’s assume that’s what you meant) is a qualitatively different proposition from a sequence of historical events involving a number of years, several countries and millions of people. The cases are too different to compare in any meaningful way. What you seem to be wanting to make Laura and a whole bunch of other people do is to join in the piling-on of outrage by questioning our sincerity as feminists, in much the same way, and forgive me the comparison but it must be made, as certain well-known feminists-of-convenience try to guilt real feminists into Loudly Condemning certain races, religions and nationalities wholesale. I’m also quite curious about why you think it appropriate to inject into a discussion about representations of WW2 an analogy that involves feminism at all.
Ooh, way to weasel your words there, FDB. Substituting the phrase ‘clear epistemological boundaries between’ for ‘rigid categories called’, I would say yes to the first half of that. To the second half, sure, the ‘business’ of both is to tell stories, and in terms of subject matter and narrative method you could probably draw some interesting Venn diagrams. But the responsibilities, the conventions and the expectations of writing history are quite different from those of writing fiction, with regard to truths demonstrable and otherwise. And I would not waste five minutes reading any historian or any novelist whose writing demonstrated that they didn’t properly understand what the differences are, because that would mean they were writing either bad history or bad fiction.
“It was obvious that you were trying to, yes.”
Ah, so the attempts to make it out as something else were what? Vexatious?
“What you seem to be wanting to make Laura and a whole bunch of other people do is to join in the piling-on of outrage by questioning our sincerity as feminists, in much the same way, and forgive me the comparison but it must be made, as certain well-known feminists-of-convenience try to guilt real feminists into Loudly Condemning certain races, religions and nationalities wholesale.”
Yes, vexatious.
I can’t read, but I’m good at faking it.
At the risk of repeating Mme. Pav, no, it’s not obvious enough, and the situations aren’t analogous. For one thing, the historical setting of THINGY is a well-documented, famous historical event and is of great interest to professional historicans, if not the general public. Novels on the subject can be, and were, readily factually audited. Your hypothetical…not so much.
Sorry Laura—that Grenville was not saying she was above the politics of history or that she was not saying that literature had a political effect? I don’t mean to nitpick but I’m interested in literature folks’ thoughts on the matter, having thought about it a bit more and realising I’m not entirely settled on it myself.
I recall Fred Schepisi being interviewed about filming The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (a film of a novel based on a popular-history book based on journalists’ “true” accounts of Jimmy Governor’s murders) and saying that his production of the story in the cinema could politically affect many more people about Aboriginal dispossession than any novel or history textbook. Of course I agree with everything Casey said at #182 (not just what she said about me).
Yaah. Yaah.
Whoops. There’s that illiteracy again.
“Historicans” = historians who can earn a living from history. Windy, f’rinstance.
Hi Liam, I’m not settled in some of my thoughts about ut either but for lots of reasons I don’t wAnt to discuss it publicly. I’d love to know more about Casey’s perspective on it though.
Geez Fyodor. I’m going to be nice and assume that you and others really do understand what a hypothetical is, and that you’re just pretending otherwise.
In case that’s too charitable, here’s how not to do it.
For the sake of argument, let’s just say that my “hypothetical” relates to Polanski, and a novel written about those events.
*cue sound of can of worms being opened*
But FDB, you still haven’t answered my question at #224 (which was perfectly genuine and not vexatious, BTW) about what you mean by ‘a novel’. Because at this point I honestly don’t understand what you think a novel is.
Fixed – AW
I can haz HTML skillz?
Sheesh.
I don’t think that a novel can be reliably and meaningfully separated from other texts. By definition it must be new, but other than that…
I don’t subscribe to the notion that there’s a ratio of fantasy to reality that will necessarily make something a novel.
As such, we should look at each text on its own terms. If a book comes along that stirs up passions about the boundary between the two, that’s a pretty good sign that speaking of it as one or the other will give an incomplete and unsatisfying picture.
I wasn’t expecting ever to have to give lit academics a sermon on the folly of overcategorisation, but here we are…
No historian would ever mistake THTSTP as a history.
This has nothing to do with the subject matter.
Nor is the book disqualified from being history by virtue of the picture it paints of the past. Indeed, it is entirely likely that many Ukrainians had murderous thoughts about their Jewish neighbours.
Nor is the book disqualified from being history by virtue of the evident sympathy of the authorial voice for certain attitudes expressed in the book. Empathising with willing enablers of genocide is a matter of choice that does not necessarily detract from the truthiness of the piece of literature.
No, the definitive difference between this book and history is the assumed ease with which the book, either through the narrator or by a number of other devices, enters the minds of personnae in the book.
R.G. Collingwood, a leading exponent of idealist history, argued that the highest ambition of historians is to think the thoughts of actors in the past. This may or may not be possible. It may or may not even be desirable. If it were possible, to do it properly would involve enormous research and scholarship. The novelist on the other hand is allowed to intuit that inner life.
Demidenko does a lot of intuiting. NTTAWWT.
TIPWRT
“Quick thought experiment – who here believes that there exist rigid categories called “fiction” and “history”, such that the business of one can reliably be said to differ from that of the other?”
*raises hand*
Fiction and history do share some similarities: they are both generally published on white paper with black typeface.
However, in tone, style, structure, and purpose, they differ completely. There is no overlap. If you don’t see this, FDB, promise me that you’ll never become a historian.
Oh, and ‘historical fiction’, for what it is worth, is not some mutant hybrid of the two. It is purely a genre of fiction.
Well, if nothing else this thread has demonstrated how easy it is to pile on when you’re passionate about an issue. Not sure I’d describe it as bullying.
Re Balibo: the (modest) extent of filmic licence v actual historical record is detailed here.
Well if nothing else this thread demonstrates how easy it is to pile on when you’re passionate about an issue. Not sure I’d describe it as bullying.
Oh, and there’s an excellent website detailing the (relatively modest) extent of filmic licence v known historical record in the film Balibo – but LP keeps spaminating it whenever I link.
So if anyone’s interested i suggest you google “fernandes balibo adfa” and you’ll find it top of the list, then check left hand menu.
#23 Liam Sep 29th, 2009 at 7:05 am
I managed to get kicked out of Catallaxy. Something about my “vile views damaging Catallaxy’s brand”. Once got kicked out of the Metro for getting making a sarcastic remark to the door bitch. And so looking forward to seeing the Cruel Sea.
I must learn to watch my toungue.
What do I think about Clendinnen and Grenville? I don’t think she wanted to replace the historian, or make claims for the superiority of the fictive over the historical. Whether she consciously knew it or not, what she wanted was a bit more radical than that. She wanted, IMO, to rescue the past from the historians, both Reynolds and Windschuttle – and make it palatable again, somehow. To find a reconciliation and closure that was not in sight during the history wars. I think it works to alleviate white anxieties about the past raised by the history wars. Hence her constant question: what would you have done?
So, if the Secret River functions on behalf of whiteness to recuperate its past from the history wars and to set it on a manageable terrain for the her predominantly white readership then the empathy she employs is extended to the white ancestors to humanise them and works with a peculiarly modern mindset to absolve them from their own excesses. This empathy (which Clendinnen rightly hammered) is not extended to Aboriginal characters, as she says, she cannot get into the mindset of an Aboriginal 200 years ago (Koval). But as Clendinnan rightly points out, she seems to think she can do this for her white characters (QE). Why can she only imagine whiteness 200 years ago? This is the function of the Secret River. It rescues its white ancestors from the tarnish accumulated during the history wars. While Clendinnen is disturbed by Grenville’s comments on the nature of history, she may have missed Grenville’s missionary impulse in rescuing the white past from the horrors of its own violence. Grenville is not so much interested in usurping the historian, as she is interested in ameliorating white shame which has resulted since the history wars.
This is a deeply political book which performs on behalf of white concerns. The “what would you have done” question she continually has posed in interviews and in the text works to render the central character Thornhill as an essentially likeable guy caught up in a tragic set of circumstances.
She says in her interview with Koval that the violence on the frontier was a “tragic, tragic inability to communicate across a gulf of culture”. What? What about the material aims of empire? She says that white violence was limited to a few bad blokes. She manages the untenable past by splitting white violence, othering the intolerable cruelty towards indigenous peoples and relocating its excesses onto a small minority of white stereotypes who remain uninterrogated in the text. In this way the incomprehensibility of the past is rendered manageable and can be resolved.
It is a work which longs to sew up what the history wars rent open and I believe that she thinks that where the historian has failed to arrive at this closing of the wound, the novelist can achieve it through empathy and the imagination (but only for white people).
Grenville from Koval again: “There is no winner. What there can be though, is understanding, actually experiencing what it was like , the choices those people had. And once you can actually get inside the experience, its no long a matter of who is going to win (referring to Windschuttle and Reynolds here), it’s simply a matter of yes, now I understand both sides and, having understood the notion of one side being right and the other side being wrong becomes kind of irrelevant. So thats where I hope this book will be, it stands outside the polarised conflict and says, look, this is a problem we really need, as a nation, to come to grips with. The historians are doing their thing, but let me as a novelist come to it in a different way, which is the way of empathising and imaginative understanding of those difficult events. Basically to think, well what would I have done in that situation…”
So, you know, I think she had good intentions, but it’s about mollifying white concerns. I think she thought the novelist could cure the ills the historian could not. That is what the ladder metaphor was about. Curing with understanding.And imagination. And empathy.
Which Clendinnen hated. Absolutely hated. Oh Liam I thought that it was Kate’s simple idea to imagine her way into the past by reliving boat trips and using wick candles that got Ingas goat too.
*Sorry for use of the word “closure”.
Um, a couple of points.
In terms of history, where then does the process of historical imagination (which I qualify by pointing out that an historian’s imagining has to be based on the sources).
Secondly, in some sub-disciplines eg ancient and medieaval, works of fiction are in fact historical sources, eg, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Apulieus’s The Golden Ass, The Satyricon.
In medieval history, the whole Arthurian legend, the Song of Roland, etc, etc.
There is a connection between history and fiction. Anybody writing a history of the Great Depression in America would surely have to treat Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath as a valuable source.
And one would be a bit silly studying convict Australia if one didn’t read the works of Henry Savery or Ralph Tucker for indications of how convicts themselves felt.
Just sayin’.
Thanks Casey, that’s very convincing.
Laura at #238, fair enough.
Paul at #251, I don’t buy it, though it might just be residual anti-Medievalist bigotry. The Song of Roland is a great source about the mentality of medieval audiences. It’s a terrible source for Basque warfare, just as the Grapes of Wrath is a great—unrivalled—source for post-Depression memory but a terrible source for the Depression itself. Steinbeck uses Tom Joad mercilessly. Unlike the men he’s based on, he’s never unemployed in the narrative.
Don’t you think that “historical” imagination raises many greater risks than any other kind of imagination?
Casey, cracking as always. Me, I’m prepared to take Grenville at face value regarding ferry rides. Greg Dening on beaches and liminality convinced me of the coast’s—for lack of a better word—uniqueness.
Oh fuck I’m pleased. I was quoting my thesis.
Casey, whatever they’re paying you, it’s not enough. Apropos these matters, have you read Thea Astley’s novel A Kindness Cup and R.D. Fitzgerald’s poem ‘The Wind at Your Door’? If not, you really must.
You’ll like this story: my dad, who is 82, has a wide, deep scar on his arm from a sheepdog pack attack on the farm in 1929 when he was a toddler. The man who rescued him from the dogs, thereby almost certainly saving his life, was an old Narungga man called George Button who lived and worked with the family all his life and who my dad now thinks was almost certainly his grandfather’s half-brother, that is, his own half-great-uncle. My dad would like to confirm and acknowledge that, but knows he can’t, since it is beyond written record. He has no ambitions of the closure kind, neither to resolve nor to fix it; he knows that it is beyond fixing. No sewing-up is possible. But the scar reminds him every day.
Pav. Do want to mark my thesis?
They pay me nothing. But I will pay you good money if you do it.
Oh that’s a beautiful beautiful story. Yes, that’s what I think we need to understand. The scar is something we will always live with. I think that is something Gail Jones gestures to in her novel as well.
I must say, living in Melbourne and catching a (sometimes literally) shitty train and bus to and from work every day, I never know whether Sydney people talking about their ferry commutings are deliberately playing up the sea-spray romance of it, or whether they actually have no idea that it sounds so glamorous.
Laura, nah, the ferry across the harbour really is glorious. Although I can’t cross the harbour on one without thinking of ‘Five Bells’. Literature is a terrible thing, even more terrible than history.
Casey, thanks again for your comment. I’ve been thinking about this bit: “It is a work which longs to sew up what the history wars rent open and I believe that she thinks that where the historian has failed to arrive at this closing of the wound, the novelist can achieve it through empathy and the imagination (but only for white people).”
That rings true, the more so because it strikes a chord with strategies / decisions I’ve made, without thinking it through very well probably, about how to read certain texts – specifically ‘Plains of Promise’ and a couple of other books, where I’ve sort of hung back from readerly probing at matters I know I don’t get and can’t get and am not supposed to get, not wanting to barge in and make myself at home in psychological spaces where I’m not invited. But these scruples don’t seem to bother me much when white modernist texts block me in similar ways. There I seem to see it as a challenge. So now I’m wondering why that is and what it means and whether that sort of tact or whatever is well meant but actually unhelpful.
Oh no. Thank you all very much for your comments and for really fascinating discussions on everything here over the past 2 days. It’s been very challenging and quite riveting for me.
You’re too nice, Efdeebee, as I clearly don’t understand what a [sic] “hypothetical” is. What’s even clearer is that I need someone with your evidently superior grasp of language to educate me on the subject. After you’re done with that you can explain to me – in small words, natch – how your hypothetical rape fiction is relevant to this discussion. That’s after you’re done teaching the lit academics how to suck eggs, o’course. When you’re ready.
Holy fucking batshit! Good sir, that is quite a derailment.
My apologies, I will go through the comments in more detail. Some interesting reading so far. I do want to add that I met Helen once briefly too, at a time when I was doing an assignment on literary hoaxes.
I do think that the surrounding brouhaha and opprobrium illustrated more about the tensions and constructions of gender and ethnicity in our society than it could ever about a single author.
I decided to write about Gwen Harwood’s aka ‘lady poet’ Fuck All Editors hoax instead. Less written about it, so it was easier to write. And I didn’t have to research a person who I had met.
But re-reading all this in 2009, for some reason just makes me think of Corey Worthington.
IMHO I find it strange that Helen D is the crux on which these issues still turn for discussion. Has the Leon Carmen hoax been mentioned? And Norma Khouri’s was simply sinister. I still can’t tell if she is/was real.
I do not thank you for that British Sex Ed escapade Fyodor.
But now we’ve looked at both sides, history, fiction, FDB, to name a few you should add this one to your endless list
I suspect she may be lip snigering though. But I suspect that will not bother you in the scheme of things.
Nah, I ain’t bovvered.
And now that I am all alone by myself, let me utilise my witchly powers of persuasion for something of deep importance to us all. I really really want to recommend harem pants for the summer season. I think everyone should wear them this summer. They are roomy. Dr’s would recommend them and they hide a multitude of sins. You can do the MC Hammer dance in them which is of utmost importance. You can get them in a variety of colours and the drop in the pant is variable according to your taste and needs. Please do not call them poo catchers. That pisses me off. Both men and women are wearing them in Europe. Please do not raise charges of orientalism. First wave feminists wore them. Certain people of prominence on this blog refuse to consider them. Please ignore them. What is there not to love about harem pants this summer?
The Harem Pant. Can’t touch this.
Ach ja, just the thing for kicking back in your RV.
What are you still doing here? Anyway, always with the French, try some other lingos for a change.
I could ask you the same question…but I won’t.
Meantimes, I like a challenge
Well pardon for asking. Never meant to cause you any sorrow dude.
Heh. The only thing I ever got from you was sorrow.
Dude you only put that up cause his hair is the same colour as yours. But sorrow is it? Well if you don’t know me by now Leonid…
Ceded Sideshow? Well live and learn. This proves that I can stay up way way later than you any time. I got the power. And let this be a lesson to those that drink 3 Red Bulls in a row, to see if it’s true, what they say about it.
It’s true.
Aren’t there rules about that sort of thing Casey and PC? Not that I want to oppose a free transaction between market participants responding to a price signal.
Never. Baggy-at-the-top skinny-at-the-bottom pants are a global thing.
*punches in, looks for Nabs*
Certo.
Totally. There’s no way I could falsify that claim.
But, c’mon, Hucknall? Yeah, OK, sure, he was in Star Wars, but FFS he’s a clown.
@64
Well I suppose you’re thinking along the George Eliot line? HD has been dining out on this for years. Why didn’t she just start out be declaring that she was decended from west Yorkshire miners or whatever it was?
She even tried to sell her Miles Franklin so she could finance a law degree at Oxford. Actually fairly typical RW path to glory, she’ll be a fellow at the IPA or CIS next. Jackpot! BTW where are the follow up literary masterpieces? I wonder if my re-write of Atlas Shrugged by Yan Darn will get me a seat of the Quadrant editorial board?
“Aren’t there rules about that sort of thing Casey and PC? ”
Rules? Of course there are rules. First, don’t get 3.5 hours sleep when you have to go work the next day, or if you do, make sure there is an extra Red Bull to get you there, dagnabbit. Second, the Universities, but not the students who have no money and are talking out of their proverbials, pay the academics inordinate and obscene amounts of money to mark theses. Just quietly, I have heard it said one can become a multi multi trillionaire through thesis marking. Right Pav?
Oh I do hope to sight you in harem pants this summer Liam.
@80,
You are being deliberate thick. QT was all over the place taking the praise for the film as QT. In fact he is the film in many respects. I doubt he is even interested in claims of authenticity. Get a decent analogy we dontcha.
Apologies to anyone whose professional or personal integrity I may have called into question yesterday.
And Casey – top work up there a way.
Oh well, back to it I guess.
Oh, wait: forgot the harem pants. More of this sort of thing, please.
Patrickg when I a m being thick it’s never deliberate.
Will you please cease? You want destroy my infernal intention to infect all LP readers and commenters with the desire to wear Harem Pants by making a <em?parody of them just cause I threw Mick Hucknall at you. Just how many rangas do you think one can find on Youtube at 1 am? There will be consequences. I will raise up the Roo. That will fix your little red wagon.
Okay I really must really continue perpetrating my own hoax of work pretence today. Toodles.
I went off-line just 25 minutes before FDB’s hypothetical #208. Thanks to Liam and Fyodor for saying what needed to be said.
Harem pants? Well, seeing as how I’m no longer slim enough to be flattered by lycra bike shorts…
Case, I’m telling you this for your own good: unless you’re gonna bust a move, you ain’t got no bidness wearing scarem pants.
Liam @ 254,
Before I decided to specialise in Oz history (mainly because apart from some schoolboy French, Latin and German I’m monolingual though I did do one semester of first year Latin at uni)my major was medieval studies and I made a very half-hearted attempt once some years ago to teach myself classical Arabic. (Probably not the thread to go into how medieval studies affected my ideas on religion and spirituality).
Undoubtedly it is the medievalist in me.
I’m not suggesting fictional sources should be read uncritically, but they can be useful.
Thanks also to Laura for not taking as badly as she could have my woefully ill-advised choice of hypothetical.
You are far from the only woman I know who has been raped, thus I should know all too well it’s a minefield.
Prancing around in it for rhetorical purposes was dumb for me and probably hurtful for others, and I apologise unreservedly.
/seriousness
Casey, as pants go, I’m more daddy mack than harum scarum. That’s when I’m wearing ‘em at all.
…
There’s too many patricks here. Would you please sort out your lowercases as it’s confusing . KTHX.
Ok, now we’ve got that out of the way, anyone see Christopher Hitchens on Q&A last night?
He was so good I’ve almost forgiven him for supporting the Iraq war. His altercations with Mrs G Henderson (please note that this is a joke, though my wife still gets letters addressed in this manner) were particularly delightful. In the face of her constant interruptions he said at one point “I’ll finish this answer if it kills you’.
“There’s too many patricks here”
Word.
And they’re SOOO different to each other, it can be quite a jolt sometimes. I remember reading one of the first things patrickg wrote and thinking “good lord! Coherence? Logic? Has someone given patrickm a touch up with the clue stick?”
Oops yes, different Patricks. Sorry for confusing you two. I was reading on the tiny screen of an iphone at that point.
I especially liked the fact that Hitch thinks his idea of what is like to be a woman in Iran overrides the experience of actual women who have actually been in Iran. Talk about bullying…
La nuit dernière j’ai vu la lune de nouveau
Et elle m’a tourné de la forme de nouveau
“Bust a move”
Are you bullying me? But while we are here, please be so kind as to explain which definition of ‘bust a move’ you refer to? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6?. Nota Bene: You may not wish to pick no. 3 if you want to get out alive. Except for 1, “Bust a move” sounds like something blokes like to kid themselves with.
Join us Paul, join us.
Yeah that’s you Liam – a precociously ferociously genius 12 year old. It’s not fair.
While I quite enjoyed Q&A last night – they should have many more of them without politicians; they’re much better I did think Hitchins was a twee bit over the top. And the way he treated that Iranian woman at the end was appalling. Guess that’s what happens to you when you become a propagandist for RWDBs.
Or perhaps:
Hier soir j’ai vu la lune encore
Et elle m’a courbé déformé encore
Hey Casey just wanted to chime in also and say I thought your reading of Secret River et al really is top notch, trying to work out whether it’s more incisive or insightful. Either works.
Thanks very much patrickg. I appreciate that.
Smile like a weasel
As I cover you in treacle
Well he has actually been to Iran, and yeah he was rude at the end, but it was refreshing to see someone who was passionate, articulate, genuinely witty and amusing, usually all at the same time.
And he’s right about religion.
Jeez, do I have to choose? Though I do think 5 kinda precludes 2, 3 and 4.
Damn straight it’s unfair – Haiku only looks 12. Or was that Halberstram?
Paul Norton at #295 and #298, is this a werewolf poem peut-être?
Or sparkly vampires?
Every clause a grave misrepresentation. I’m far more a serious, misunderstood artist of the streets. And yes, my nose is large.
Dr Cat #304, it’s about my episode of limerence wihch began in 2005, definitely continued into 2007/2008 and seems to be still continuing.
For you Paul.
Awwwwww, FDB, you shouldn’t have…
Oh dear, Paul, I don’t like the sound of that. Because the other thing your Frenchifying made me think of was that verse of The Ballad of Sir Patrick (hah) Spens that goes ‘Last night I saw the new moon / With the old moon in her arms /And I fear, I fear, oh master dear / We shall have a deadly storm.’ In my experience of limerence this is all too accurate a description of the late stages.
For all those patrick lovers out there. Only 39 years ago but it seems like yesterday or maybe the day before.
limerence……………………….patricks
limerence………………..patricks
limerence………..patricks
limerence….patricks
limerencepatricks
limerencatricks
limerentricks
limerericks
limericks!!!
Seems your limerick-dar is on the fritz Liam.
I always assumed you had a big red telephone hooked up to the internets to trigger on all instances of “limerick”, “Missy”, “Labor right hack” or “jiggy”.
Oh well, I’ll have to kick it off then.
We are told that the love of Paul Norton
Unrequited, like Mark’s for Beth Orton
Is making him blue
Should he sing Stuck on You,
Or get down to some serious courtin’?
Everybody needs kinks for their smile-on
Done as duet, solo, or pile-on.
Now we know what’s the star of
Erotica Bazarov:
Baggy pants, made of thick yellow nylon.
It started with a quadrant pile on
Resulted in a thread a mile long
The author is dead
Just like poor Ned
So we should be able to get their souls for a song
Said Kate to Inga, “Wassa madder?
Youse historians couldn’t be sadder.
My novels are troof!
If you want proof,
Take a look from the top of my ladder!”
Back on TEH TOPIC, here is some background on TEH MATTER WHICH JASON SOON BELIEVES TO BE OF TEH GREATEST IMPORTANCE.
Back on topic indeed.
Caroline Overington, frustrated at her inability to print the names and locations of abused and neglected children in her newspaper columns, has turned to fiction.
God she’s a horror isn’t she?
“I’ve covered eight murders of young children at the hands of their mothers, or their mother’s boyfriends. Because of the difficulties you have reporting these cases, you can’t identify anyone — the laws are absurd.”
Sorry Ovie dear, your conclusion doesn’t follow from your… wait, there aren’t any premises.
Shorter Ove: What’s the point of being a journalist if you can’t whip up a lynch mob?
(And there’s the missing premise FDB.)
Irretrievably blue.
However, I must point out. Via the wonders of FB, I have now met a British sociologist who knows Beth Orton’s brother. Blogs have nothing on social networking sites.
Also, what Casey said about harem pants.
pwn whatever it means.
Thank you, adrien @ 312. I used to have a Fairport Convention record with that song on it, but it went missing in a house move nearly 40 years ago.
Seeing as this started out as a thread about Quadrant, I should pass on a comment made by a friend of mine, that he couldn’t see the point of paying money for Quadrant when you could go to a library and read back issues of Encounter.