NOVEMBER
2008, No. 306
'A change
election'
Don DeBats on the US presidential
campaign
Don DeBats - Professor of American Studies
at Flinders
University and prominent commentator - reviews the
remarkable US election of 2008: a contest between the
politics
of honour and of empathy.
'A
furious moralist'
James Ley on Christos Tsiolkas's
The Slap
A new novel by Christos Tsiolkas is never a tame affair.
Melbourne critic James Ley reviews his lastest novel,
that
'acknowledges [hatred's] primal allure, its negative validation;
his characters often experience a surge of excitement
when
they allow themselves to think a vicious or bigoted thought'.
'Crucible
for happenings'
Geordie Williamson on Richard Flanagan's
Wanting
A new novel by Richard Flanagan usually
proves to be
controversial. Sydney critic Geordie Williamson finds
that
'while the superstructure of this superbly sleek, confident
and
persuasive novel may be based on a questionable blurring
of
fact and fiction, this wicked and exhilarating dance [...]
is a
local tragedy that only a novelist could raise to the
level of
universal fable'.
'Behind the mask'
Stuart Macintyre on Manning Clark
One of Australia's premier historians reviews
Brian Matthews's
long-awaited biography of Manning Clark, one of the most
contested figures in Australian historiography.
'Panic merchants'
Peter Rose on The Henson Case
'In
this enthralling little book, David Marr is less spiky
than
usual. He is too worried to be mordant. He has reason
to be.
More was endangered after May 22 than a few contentious
photographs. Wowserism, philistinism, censoriousness -
never far below the surface in Australia - were given
new life.'
'Biography: The past has a great future'
The great Romantic biographer Richard
Holmes
delivers the 2008 HRC Seymour Lecture
Richard
Holmes offers a lively, generous, discursive account
of world biography, with specific referenc to the Australian
school, predicting 'a golden age of Australian biography'.
Click
here to view the complete contents
of our October issue.
Click
here and
purchase a copy of the October 2008 issue.
Click
here to subscribe to ABR.
