Biography

John Strehlow’s 'The Tale of Frieda Keysser'

On a Mission

By Peter Sutton

Among a right-thinking crowd you can still get a laugh with a missionary joke. At the 2008 conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth in Keele, the doyenne of British anthropology, Professor Marilyn Strathern, brought the house down with one such joke during her keynote address. In the coffee queue afterwards I asked her how many people’s lives she th

The Story of Billy Blue

A Ferry into the Past

By Cassandra Pybus

When I was 17 my friend Chloe lived in Lavender Bay, just down the road from the Old Commodore Hotel. I lived nearby in Kirribilli, immediately across the water from the soaring sails of the Opera House that shimmered in my bedroom window at night. Chloe and I had been expelled from high school for chronic truancy and we were meant to be studying at home for the matriculation exams. Instead w

Brian Kellow’s 'Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark'

Citizen Kael

By Christos Tsiolkas

The day after I finished reading Brian Kellow’s Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (Viking, 432pp; $39.00), I watched John Cassavetes’ Faces. It had been nearly 20 years since I had last seen it and on re-visiting the film I had Kael’s voice in my head, so powerful is my memory of her distinct, visceral style; it took me a few minutes before I could give myself over to it. Kael was derisive about Faces and wrote scathingly about bot

Frank Moorhouse’s 'Cold Light'

Age of Innocence

By David Marr

Edith Campbell Berry has crashed to earth in Canberra circa 1950. She is no longer wanted abroad. All her years at the League of Nations and her efforts rescuing refugees from the rubble of Europe (“my best work”) have failed to win her a place with the United Nations. So this plucky woman comes home at about the age of 40 hoping for the best. Her plan w

Meeting Mary Finsterer

What Happens Next

By Andrew Ford

Mary Finsterer says she wants to write a Mass. As one of Australia’s finest composers, she’s entitled; composers have been making new musical settings of the Mass for the best part of 2000 years. But it is not such a common occurrence in the twenty-first c

Wim Wenders’ 'Pina' and Alain Corneau’s 'Love Crime'

After Life

By Louis Nowra

It was a hot night in Adelaide in 1982 and I was sitting in a ramshackle town hall about to watch a dance piece, Kontakthof, created by a German choreographer I had barely heard of, Pina Bausch. The hall was so stifling that people were fanning themselves with

John Hirst on Mark McKenna’s 'An Eye for Eternity'

A Grand History

By John Hirst

Mark McKenna’s An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Miegunyah Press, 816pp; $54.99) is a challenging biography because it will not allow us to think that there is an easy way into the life of another person. In the second chapter, which by normal standards

'Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory' By Patrick Wilcken

By Michelle de Kretser

In 1938 an obscure French anthropologist, sporting a topee and with a monkey clinging to his boot, led an expedition into deepest Brazil. Part scientific enterprise, part youthful lighting out for the territory, its fieldwork was patchy, impressionistic and la

Hans Keilson’s 'The Death of the Adversary' and 'Comedy in a Minor Key'

Case Histories

By Inga Clendinnen

Hans Keilson, a retired psychiatrist of German birth who lives in Amsterdam, was four months away from his one-hundred-and-first birthday when, in August 2010, the New York Times critic Francine Prose pointed her magic pen and declared his two long-ago novels, Comedy in

Knox Grammar’s Adrian Nisbett

The Old Boy

By Malcolm Knox

Knox Grammar, on Sydney’s upper North Shore, was and is a beautiful school. Established in 1924, it feels as if it has been around forever. It has expanded from its original ivy-covered brick buildings set around a grass quadrangle into a large modern campus

David Lee’s 'Stanley Melbourne Bruce' and David Bird’s 'JA Lyons'

Balancing Acts

By Hugh White

Most of us think that for much of Australia’s history we have not really had a foreign policy. We assume our approach to the world has always been determined for us by our great and powerful friends – that Australia’s leaders have passively accepted poli

'Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage' By Hazel Rowley

By Carmen Callil

It is always a pleasure to read a biography by Hazel Rowley. She is an enthusiastic chronicler of the lives she chooses to present to us, and has considerable narrative and research talents. Her biography of Christina Stead remains her best. Always she chooses subjects

Hugh Lunn’s 'Words Fail Me: A Journey through Australia’s Lost Language'

Lest We Forget

By Peter Conrad

Hugh Lunn, vegging out as he sunbakes in his popularity, has come up with an unstrenuous new method for manufacturing a book: why not anthologise your fan mail? In Lost for Words (2006), Lunn assembled a chatty glossary of Australian lingo or ‘slangwidge’ that has died out, only to be replaced by a world where everyone speaks a glib, streamlined American

'Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Fueds' by Lyndall Gordon

By Michelle de Kretser

Central to Lyndall Gordon’s biography of Henry James is an extraordinary scene. As daylight fades over Venice, James drops a dead woman’s dresses into the lagoon. But the garments fill with air and won’t drown, pressing up against the novelist’s gondola. The scene is riveting for what it tells us about James, but also, more subtly, because it serves as a metaphor for secrecy and revelation

Australian Style

Blankett Slate

By Clare Press

“Are not the colours exquisite? And see how intricate the patterns.” So said the two swindlers intent on convincing Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor that his new clothes were indeed the proverbial bee’s knees. Alas, the Emperor’s subjects could see

Germaine Greer and 'The Female Eunuch'

The Better Self?

By Louis Nowra

It’s 40 years since Greer published her first book, The Female Eunuch, and became famous. I first read the book when it came out in paperback. By that stage, I had already read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. I was brought up in a world of women and

The Beatles Remastered

From Mop Tops To Moustaches

By Robert Forster

The Beatles were formed in 1957 when John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join The Quarrymen. Soon after, McCartney got his mate George Harrison into the band too. It’s important to remember, and Lennon never let the others forget, that he asked Paul and the others t

A Wild Colonial Boy

By John van Tiggelen

Ben Laycock buried his father on Melbourne Cup Day. The 300-odd mourners, a rather arty lot, were assured Peter Laycock wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. He had lived not by the Roman calendar but by the Melbourne Cup calendar. The affliction may well have been congenital; Peter was born in November in Adelaide’s Glenelg Private Hospital, in the very same bed as Bart Cummings. In fact, th