THE MONTHLY ESSAYS

"In my many comings and goings from my compound to the visitor's area at the front of the prison I had encountered Victor Bout, according to the CIA - though vigorously disputed by Victor - the world's leading arms dealer. He often passed on books he had finished with, including Henri Charriere's Papillon. He also counselled me when he saw I was in despair. Victor would observe wryly that in Russia he would be given more space in which to die than Thailand gave him to live."

In "The King & I", Harry Nicolaides writes exclusively for The Monthly about his time in a Thai prison. Charged with offending the monarchy, Nicolaides spent almost six months in Bangkok Remand Prison, where he endured illness and deprivation, witnessed corruption and abuse, and made the acquaintance of some of the world's most notorious criminals. In this concise and fast-paced memoir, complemented by stunning illustrations of prison life drawn by a fellow inmate, Nicolaides reveals not only the day-to-day conditions of his incarceration but the strange circumstances surrounding his sudden, early release. 

"I stepped on a rickety manhole cover and plunged into a massive underground sewage tank, landing waist-deep in excrement. It was an inauspicious start to the day. I cleaned up as best I could and, a short time later, was summoned to the building chief's office. There I had my palm read and was told I would soon receive good news. At four o'clock we were marched to the cells, counted as usual and locked up. Soon after, a group of officers returned with the building chief, who asked me to show my palm again. He nodded with some satisfaction and ordered that the door be opened ..."

"When there is nothing at stake, no parent lost to dementia, no brother writhing in pain, talk of helping someone to die is safely hypothetical, and quite possibly more common than I know. Certainly, among my own generation, there is less of the hypothetical and more of the getting-down-to-business. Baby boomers who have been able to control large stretches of their lives and are used to choice are repositioning themselves for the next big thing ... They put out feeler questions, venture small taps on the membrane separating us from the great unknown of not-being."

In "Endnotes", Gail Bell investigates matters of life and death. Drawing on her work as a pharmacist and her personal experiences, she offers an affecting and beautifully crafted meditation on the choices we make, and those we avoid, about ending our lives.

"Lena showed me her workshop notes. One sheet, ‘Preparations for Life's Final Journey', asked for ten or so lines on the theme If I had six months to live, I would ... Followed by: If I had my life over, I would ... To me, these are unbearably sad subjects. I couldn't write a word if the exercises were given to me. I am not ready. For Lena, they are projects, goals, steps on the path ... She knows that she is not tired of life. Nor is she depressed. If anything, she's a pragmatist who has lived long enough to know that all good things must come to an end."

"Damien Wright is fond of saying that he ‘lets the wood do the talking' - this wood had a lot to say. The simple designation ‘gum' harks back to Cook's naming of Botany Bay in recognition of ‘the great quantity of plants' visible from the Endeavour, including trees exuding a ‘reddish gum'. ‘Most of the trees were gum trees,' noted Joseph Banks soon after, fusing the words forever .... The particular red gum exercising Wright had a tale both more ancient and more recent ..."  

And in "The Pursuit of Usable Beauty", Gideon Haigh tells the story of a table made from 10,000-year-old river red gum for Morwell's Koori County Court: a table that, in its origins, design and fabrication, speaks of the relationship between art and craft, Indigenous and non-Indigenous culture; between traditional and Western law, people and land.

THE NATION REVIEWED

"The major driver of global growth was consumption financed by borrowing, particularly in the developed world. Many workers' earnings actually fell in inflation-adjusted terms, because of global competition; but they could borrow against the appreciation in the price of owner-occupied houses and other financial assets. In the new economy, there were three kinds of people: the haves, the have-nots and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-haves."

In the Monthly Comment, Satyajit Das questions the "hair-of-the-dog treatment" being applied by governments to the economic crisis. Attempting to spend our way out of trouble is, Das argues, not only ill-advised but illogical; instead, what is needed is a response addressing the underlying cause of the crisis, over-consumption. "Demagogic debates about the ideological differences between neo-liberalism and social democracy are unhelpful," he reminds us, for "all competing economic philosophies are underpinned by the same reliance on growth - by economic models that were built to fail."

"Debt-fuelled American consumption drove global growth. Home to 5% of the world's population, the US accounts for 25% of global GDP, 20% of global consumption and 50% of the global current-account deficit. It needs to decrease consumption, increase savings and reduce debt, export more and import less. The countries with large savings and trade surpluses need to do exactly the opposite: they must encourage domestic consumption. Presently, both surplus and deficit countries are doing exactly what they should not."

"It's more than 50 years since an Australian mammal became extinct, so my generation has been spared the shame of the loss of the thylacine and any of the other 20 unique creatures to have vanished from Australia since European settlement. Many of us believed we'd won the war to preserve Australia's biodiversity ... But now we know better, for the extinctions are about to resume, and there is no doubt that without urgent action they will build into the biggest extinction wave of all."

In "The Third Wave", Tim Flannery exposes the bleak future of many of our rarest animals. Scientific modelling and on-the-ground research indicate that climate change is endangering Australia's unique creatures - and at ever increasing rates. With the central rock-rat, white lemuroid possum and mountain pygmy-possum "just the photogenic tip of a huge extinction iceberg", Flannery calls on the Labor government to end "mouthed concern" and take action.

"Researchers have now shown that short-lived heatwaves are killing Australia's animals. After each heatwave fewer possums were spotted, until an exceptionally hot day in 2005 brought the creature to the brink of extinction. With more heatwaves inevitable, the white lemuroid possum will almost certainly become extinct in the wild in the next few years. And this is a tragedy, for the lemuroid ringtail is a truly ancient Australian, with a fossil record going back more than 5 million years."

Plus, in "Time Loop", Mungo MacCallum returns from a vibrant pre-election India to the Groundhog Day of Australian politics, where Peter Costello is "still ensconced in a fantasy world" in which he emerges as prime minister "without having to go through the inconvenience of leading the Opposition or even contesting an election"; and in "Born Again", Leigh Sales meets Dave Bloustien, a Sydney stand-up comedian struggling to overcome self-doubt about his new material after finding himself in court and accused of being unfunny - "so unfunny that he didn't deserve payment" for a catastrophic corporate gig.

ARTS & LETTERS

In "The Good Soldier", Inga Clendinnen reflects on the pioneering work and elusive character - the many characters - of the renowned Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner. A brilliant essayist and impressive public speaker, Stanner was also an outspoken and hardworking policy advisor whose commitment to improving black-white relations left an invaluable legacy but little time during his life for writing the "big book" he had always planned.

"Stanner had been persuaded by his experience on those first field trips both of the pure difference in world view between Aboriginal and European Australians, and of the shameful consequences of white refusal to respect that difference, or even to see it. Throughout his vigorous public life Stanner insisted that the difference must be acknowledged and respected: that people of Aboriginal descent must be free to choose to live their lives as Aboriginal Australians, not as lowest-rung whitefellas. As ‘Nugget' Coombs put it, Stanner was out to change ‘not merely the policies of Governments in relation to Aborigines, but the very conception of Aboriginal Australians held by the great majority of their countrymen'."

In "Thoughts in the Middle of a Career", Robert Forster immerses himself in the music of Paul Kelly through a substantial  review of the best-of collection Songs from the South. In the most important appraisal of Kelly's career to date, Forster traces the singer-songwriter's musical development from his early years with The Dots and then The Coloured Girls and The Messengers, through to his recent collaborative projects, Stardust Five and Professor Ratbaggy, and delightful diversions into comedy writing.

"None of these songs would be as good or as pleasurable if Paul Kelly wasn't the singer he is. It is his most overlooked talent ... there are no growls or yelps, or strange ticks, or Americanisms, or faux-Pommy bits; he hasn't fallen into the horrible trap of so many old and new folk singers who sound like they've just stepped off the boat at Botany Bay, circa 1800. In fact, Kelly doesn't seem to be interested in authenticity at all - it just comes naturally to him, and it reaches further because of that, to the campfires and the bush, the suburbs and suburban pub, and the inner-city sophisticates. His voice - sly and warm, laconic and sometimes frail - may be the closest thing we have to a national one."

And in "Seers", Bill Bowtell discusses three recent books about the future: The Next 100 Years, by the American intelligence expert George Friedman; A Brief History of the Future, by the French intellectual Jacques Attali; and What Next?, by the doyen of intelligent English conservatism, Chris Patten. He finds that each offers a distinct, and distinctly eccentric, vision of what the next century holds in store.

"Friedman's world that emerges at the dawn of the twenty-second century looks a lot like Texas, while Attali's looks more like Paris. In both cases, the end of our hundred-year journey is Utopia Achieved: enemies and threats vanquished, and liberty and freedom for all who survive the trip. But getting there is going to be hard ... Chris Patten's book is an altogether calmer, London clubman's view of our future ..."

Plus, in "Snow Falling on Vampires", Luke Davies appreciates the dark depths and ambiguities of Let the Right One In, a gothic tale of lost innocence, sexual awakening and vampiric bloodlust in suburban Stockholm.

"The film's surprises are many and constant; it is melancholy and yet wryly funny, exploring the frailties and yearnings of youth at the same time as it packs in a good old-fashioned narrative of revenge and loyalty. It's an extravagant hallucination, yet - because director Tomas Alfredson trips through the genre so lightly and irreverently, while loving his characters so much - we buy what is patently melodramatic in the film."

There's also Clive James's elegant new poem "Beachmaster"; Emmett Stinson on Steven Amsterdam's justly hyped long-form debut, Things We Didn't See Coming; Alexandra Coghlan on The Striped World, the acclaimed first collection from Australian-born poet Emma Jones; and Shane Maloney on the time a young Paul Keating met his elderly political hero, Jack Lang.