|
|
|
BOOK NOTE
| Bernadette Brennan (ed.), Just Words? Australian Authors Writing for Justice, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland, 2008. pp. 216. $32.95 paper.
|
| This book is symptomatic of the times. A book about the politics of letters that fails to look at political economy of publishing or the literature of labour could only be conceived, compiled and published in an era such as ours. Bernadette Brennan has put together a significant collection of essays that investigates the issue of justice as it applies to Australian writing but it is one that leaves this reader wanting a lot more. |
1
|
|
Individually, the essays are mostly challenging and engaging (though I will go to my grave wondering why Adrian Martin was asked to write and why he agreed to contribute) but are too often captive to the spirit of aesthetic quietism. In the lead essay, 'Art in a time of crisis', Eve Sallis suggests that 'Art is powerless to stop us going to war. But it can bear witness. It is the job of art to bear witness'. Well that is one opinion. The problem is that the collection does not canvass others that diverge too far from this claim. Even Katharine Thomson's otherwise feisty piece on performance writing capitulates at the altar of art's relative ineffectuality. |
2
|
|
Thomson's piece is an exception to the collection's overall focus on justice as an abstract, legal-aesthetic quality as opposed to her more concrete idea of social justice. Perhaps there's also a deeply felt religious conception of justice underpinning the collection that alienates this reader in particular. In the end I wanted more focus on the fictional works of contemporary seekers of justice, Tsiolkas, Lucashenko, Fogarty, even Andrew McGahan and Richard Flanagan. I wanted more focus on class and the literature of labour. |
3
|
|
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|