The Ballad of Desmond Kale and so on…

I mentioned a while ago that I bought a remaindered copy just before Roger McDonald’s novel won the Miles Franklin Prize. Now I am reading it, and I have to say I really don’t like it all that much. I think it magic realisms itself to death, though there are many clever moments and some sharp characterisation, but being so clever for so long makes me feel just a bit too sated in the end. I much preferred Carrie Tiffany’s Everyday Rules for Scientific Living which was shortlisted for the same prize. They say The Ballad of Desmond Kale is sprawling; well it is that. Too clever for its own good, in my opinion, with more about sheep than I will ever want to know, or ever did. However, it does give a good whiff of colonial life, but too often I found myself forcing myself to read.

However, see Peter Peirce in The Age. One reason for reading the novel is that it will be discussed tomorrow night in the new First Tuesday Book Club on ABC-TV, which I am looking forward to. I also found an excellent literary/political/pop culture blog just now, while checking out Desmond Kale: Friday Six PM by Beth Driscoll.

Mel, Mel, Mel! And Pell too, while we are at it…

Right wing religion and politics often lead to very unpleasant places. There were many with strong reservations about The Passion of the Christ, and now it appears that its creator’s true colors are on public display. His father, Hutton Gibson, a one-time quiz show champion and notorious right-wing nutter (”the Second Vatican Council was illegitimate due to the heresies it produced, and … was the result of a secret anti-Catholic plot orchestrated by both Masons and Jews”) seems to have poisoned the son. A sad story of religion gone wrong. And of alcoholism too, it appears, though that I can regard with compassion.

From Mel to Pell, pell-mell one might say… Pell is possibly to the left of Mel, just, but nonetheless his anally retentive oversight of the Redfern branch of his Sydney archdiocese has not been without consequences. Those of us who live in the area have been well aware of the depth of sadness this has created in the parish of St Vincents. Of course it is always hard to follow someone like Ted Kennedy, whom many regard as a candidate for sainthood but whom Pell regarded as having been a meddlesome, perhaps even heretical, priest.

From The Poet: How We Miss Yitzhak Rabin

The Poet has drawn my attention to this editorial on BuzzFlash.

When Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, we felt a profound loss and a sense of horrible foreboding.

He was killed by a right wing Israeli — not an Arab, not a Palestinian, not an Iranian, not a Syrian. He was killed by a fanatical, radical Israeli who saw the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel as a proponent of the Oslo accords and as an enemy of the settler movement.

We support Israel’s full right to be a nation-state and live without suicide attacks and rockets launched by Hezbollah. The editor of BuzzFlash, who is Jewish, has relatives and friends in Israel. We wish them, as would anyone, long and safe lives for them and their children. Many of them are quite dear to us.

But we cannot support, condone, or do anything but fully condemn the loss of life in Qana, Lebanon, where the majority of more than 50 people killed by Israeli air strikes were children.

Rabin was shot and killed by a right wing Israeli after he sang a song of peace in a packed rally in front of the Tel Aviv government center.

That was a long time and so many hopes of peace dashed ago.

Israel has real security problems; that has always been clear.

But, like Bush in Iraq, you can become the terror you behold if you lose your sense of decency, humanity, and compassion…

Heart-felt and I would say profoundly true.

Lunch at Johnnie’s Fish Cafe

Not with Lord Malcolm and Sirdan today, but with Delenio, who told me about a recent typo I am about to correct… Very pleasant day. Talked of many things, including Master Fu, and wondered about The Rabbit. After that I caught up with The Empress and a few others. Next week is Sirdan’s birthday, and something may be happening then.

At last: a sane voice on Palestine!

I am sure there are many. It’s just that with the Fool in Washington, the Broken Man in London, the Toadie in Canberra, the Rampant Bigot in Teheran, the murderous elements in Hezbollah, the Butcher in the Knesset, and the whole pack of really bad uninspired leaders across the board, enemies of humanity all of them I sometimes think, it is little wonder that we despair at times.

So where did I find this sane voice? Sorry, atheists, but it was on the ABC religious program Encounter this morning, and they have very wisely raced ahead and put up a transcript within minutes of going to air. They usually wait up to a week. “Sociologist, politician and Christian Palestinian, Dr Bernard Sabella, is a passionate advocate of peace between Israelis and Palestinians and argues that finding ‘a joint vision of the future’ is an urgent priority for Palestinians and Israelis. This program presents Dr Sabella’s address to a Canberra audience during his Australian visit this month.”

On double standards

P. Akerman, whose effusions I don’t even bother to read any more, and T. Blair are both strong on the evils of “dual nationality” when the two “loyalties” are Lebanese and Australian, but precisely the same phenomenon is not just OK but positively noble when the two “loyalties” are Israeli and Australian. Could a clearer case of hypocrisy ever be made? Either dual nationality is a bad thing across the board, or it is acceptable across the board. Benjamin Solah noted this in a comment here yesterday, and he has a point.

Where Benjamin and I would disagree (probably) is that I do not so easily equate the State of Israel with that abstraction “imperialism” and I do not see armed Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel as heroes either. Go down that track and you are ineluctably drawn into the madness that says one side’s bombs are good and the other side’s bombs are evil. The doctrine of “armed struggle” also means the deaths of innocent civilians. Those killed in the Twin Towers for example are just as dead and just as innocent as the poor sods under the bombs in Lebanon. Those responsible are the maddies of whatever political or religious persuasion who accept that this is somehow a reasonable thing to do. It isn’t.

The Fury of Aerial Bombardment

Richard Eberhart (1904–2005)

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?

Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.

Please explain. I am just a Martian trying to fathom the folkways of Earthlings. Here is my life-time in pictures:

Last time I mentioned Tim Blair…

…my traffic went through the roof! He is, despite appearances, a sensitive soul who seems to read avidly what people say about him, and where he reads his fans follow. Or so I found back in March.

Let me therefore commend this week’s column to you: New word order. It is a very useful guide to Tim’s perennnial Aunt Sallies and hobbyhorses, with an irony that is delightfully two-edged. For example:

Intellectual, n. Someone who knows less than you, but knows bigger words than you…

Stupid, adj. Intelligent, i.e. “George W. Bush is so stupid he won consecutive terms as the governor of Texas followed by two terms as president of the United States. What an idiot!”…

Lebanese Australian, n. Person of Lebanese background who lives in Lebanon and works in Lebanon but whose Australian citizenship requires that they be evacuated at Australian expense during times of trouble. In Lebanon…

Global warming, n. Scientifically observed phenomenon whereby scientists the world over receive warm, toasty funding to talk about the weather.

No problem seeing where Tim stands, eh! On the last point it must be said Tim’s views on global warming are neither better nor worse than mine, as neither of us has any qualification that I am aware of to pontificate on the subject. I do however take Lord May of Oxford, former president of the UK’s academy of science, rather more seriously than I do Tim or PR merchants for oil and fossil fuel interests. Tim’s other witticisms speak loud and clear really: the message you get will depend on where you stand.

Believe it or not…

…but not all people of faith, even in the USA, are card-carrying right-wing Republicans. It is good to see this acknowledged this morning on Truthout: Religious Left Gears Up to Face Right Counterpart. However, I do tend to sympathise with Jim Wallis of Sojourners, an organisation I greatly respect:

Those on the right say they are not worried by the left’s activism. Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in Nashville, said, “The religious left is a shadow of what it was in the ’60s.”

“I’m quite confident that in the struggle for hearts and minds, we’ve got a lot more boots on the ground than they do.”

Amid the war of words, some clergy are making a point to steer clear of labels. Rev. Jim Wallis, who heads a faith-based group in Washington called Sojourners, has been widely viewed as part of the religious left. Yet he rejects the name and preaches the need to bring the nation to “a moral center.”

“I’m an evangelical Christian who thinks that justice is a biblical imperative,” said Wallis.” The monologue of the religious right is finally over and a new dialogue has just begun.”

For God and Country — a good read

Elizabeth Rich writes in Killing the Buddha as a Jew visiting Jesusland on the Fourth of July, and wondering where she belongs.

Live music fills the chapel. The Praise Band leads the call to worship and the Praise Team leads the worship in song. Above the organist, a large white-rimmed screen slides down to project hymn lyrics. The congregation is on their feet, swaying to the music and singing with the choir. When the hymns are over, the music minister motions for everyone to be seated. He then steps up to the wooden lectern, taking a moment to look out and smile.

“Freedom,” he says, “is at a price, and our men and women are fighting the terrorists so that we can be here today.” The woman with the gold bracelet pulls a Kleenex from her purse and dabs the corners of her eyes. The organ, the piano, the Praise Band and the Praise Team are silent.

Quality writing.

I’m sure I saw Philip Ruddock in Bleak House…

The Cadaver, though I didn’t know him until the following year when we were in the same English History class, as a teenager at Sydney University would have read in English I, as I did, Dickens’s great novel, but he has subsequently morphed into a better Mr Tulkinghorn than Charles Dance in the splendid BBC production now being shown on ABC on Sunday nights. I mean, look at his performance as Attorney-General, and prior to that as Minister for Compassion Fatigue and Immigration. Just look at his latest priorities. And that voice! Perfect for the part of Tulkinghorn, I would have thought.

In fact, the current Australian government really are quite Dickensian, when you think about it, though it is the more grotesque mean-spirited characters in Dickens who come to mind most readily.

Unretiring?

Lately I have been getting mobile phone calls from The Mine, desperate to have me back in one of the welfare roles I used to inhabit. So today I am off to The Mine with a republished CV and a form of application to become what used to known impolitely as a “retread” — a retired teacher returning to service. I have no intention to do anything major though. Forty years (not just at The Mine) really is enough.

Julian Barnes, Arthur & George (2005)

This is a brilliant novel. If one is to judge it by any criteria — language, quality of research, depth of characterisation, insight into the human condition, and even sheer entertainment value — it must rank as better than most of the alleged classics written by many a long-dead author. It is a damned sight better than most of Sir Walter Scott, for example, and than a pretty fair proportion of Dickens, or Silas Marner, or even than Shakespeare’s King John. It is also better than its inspiration, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I don’t think his Holmes tales (which I love) ever had too many pretensions. It serves too as a parable for our time: the injustices meted out to George Edelji, and the habit of viewing “The Other” we really haven’t consistently outgrown, parallel uncomfortably our own responses in the War on Terror.

Outrageous praise? I don’t think so.

Visit Arthur & George, but better yet, read the book.

Reflections on the Middle East

This catastrophe, about that at least Tony Blair is right, continues to exercise all our minds. I heard an Israeli peace activist on Radio National this morning point out that there are around 3,000 Hezbollah in Lebanon. (You can listen too on that link.) I couldn’t help wondering how we would have felt if Britain a few years back — after the assassination of Lord Mountbatten of Burma, say — had decided to bomb Dublin because of IRA terrorism, and also demonise Boston and New York for their financing of such terror. But then maybe that’s a bad analogy: or is it?

1. The Pin in the Grenade. William Rivers Pitt pretty much got Iraq right in War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know back in 2002; is he right now?

2. War and Peace in the Mideast, essays from Tikkun, a Jewish site seeking “to influence public discourse in order to inspire compassion, generosity, non-violence and recognition of the spiritual dimensions of life.”

History as fun: David Morgan’s The Australian Miscellany

The Australian Miscellany (2005) has hit the remainder shops. Get one; it’s fun, as this review makes clear:

When visitors to Burrumbuttock stop giggling and ask at the general store how the tiny Riverina town got its name, they are usually told it means “the place of many bums”. The more prosaic explanation is that it has something to do with a bullock’s backbone.

Either way, it’s the sort of obscure Australiana that fascinates local historian David Morgan, who has been an inveterate collector of trivia, compiler of lists and orchestrator of improbable connections since he began thumbing through encyclopedias as a child.

“I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a magpie, picking up stuff, storing it away,” he says, recalling how he developed an unhealthy interest in suggestive placenames after finding a 1960s photograph of his mother posing by a sign for the NSW town of Numbugga.

Only belatedly, after working as an IT consultant, a cab driver and a bank clerk, did 44-year-old Morgan discover that there are big bucks to be made out of what he calls his “accumulated brain lit”.

He has become a feared competitor at Sydney pub trivia nights, playing for everything from jugs of beer to $500 cash prizes.

Given the current habit of our government to volunteer troops hither and yon according mainly to the whims of George Bush, it is interesting to turn to “Strength of Australian Armed Forces 1901-2004″ on p. 46. In 1980 the figures were: RAN 16,961; ARMY 32,321; RAAF 22,249. In 1990: RAN 13,404; ARMY 27,298 RAAF 19,770. In 2004: RAN 13,133; ARMY 25,446; RAAF 13,455. Back in 1935, when we were notoriously underprepared for the outbreak of World War II four years later, the figures were: RAN 4,177 (but we still relied on the British Navy); ARMY 29, 262; RAAF 1,450. The population of Australia in 1935 was, however, 6.75 million, compared with 20,090,437 today.

It’s more a stampede than a pendulum swing…

The mad embrace of right-wing politics and attitudes continues, driven no doubt by fear and lack of knowledge of twentieth century history. I documented one aspect of it last week in How far right can you go…. Here, in rank order of seriousness, are three further examples.

1. The Authoritarian Streak in the Conservative Movement by John Dean.

2. Civil Rights Hiring Shifted in Bush Era from The Boston Globe.

3. Beyond the history wars by Michelle Grattan. The Howard government is mounting a major offensive to capture the teaching of history so that it reflects their vision of our past, rather than any disinterested enquiry.