No comments about Neither-Nor: A Young Australian's Experience with Deafness (Deaf Lives Series, Vol. 5).

5 comments about A Portrait of the Artist As Australian: L'Oeuvre Bizarre De Barry Humphries.

1. The inside back dustjacket flap of this book notes that Paul Matthew St. Pierre is a Dada artist. I suspect (duh!) that he has written his Barry Humphries study precisely in his capacity as a Dadaist, as a tribute to Humphries (himself a Dada artist) but also as, what he calls in the book, a "dadact", an act of subversion in the spirit of Dada. What is he subverting? Well, I think he's deconstructing the whole idea of academic criticism, the very thing that Humphries himself deplores, being taken seriously. If you accept this premise, A Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L'Oeuvre bizarre de Barry Humphries becomes a very complicated book, at once subverting the whole idea of the academic study and undertaking a daunting research project into just about everything Humphries has ever done as a writer and a performer. Did I like the book? Yes, I think it's amazing. It's certainly unlike any other book I have read about Humphries, by John Lahr, Peter Coleman, Ian Britain, and Stephen Alomes. A singular performer, Humphries certainly deserved this kind of singular treatment. Kudos to St. Pierre for having the pluck (Humphries would say the spunk) to write it!



2. In his well researched and provocatively written book, Paul Matthew St. Pierre has made a sound case for Barry Humphries as a writer of literature. Certainly, I had not known that Humphries has been writing books throughout his career on the stage. St. Pierre addresses all of Humphries' writing and much of his stage and television work, and comes up with some original interpretations. As an academic, St. Pierre draws on some pretty infamous critics like Derrida and Barthes, but he also mentions some really interesting writers such as Es'kia Mphahlele and my late countrywoman Janet Frame, and somehow makes the mix work. In addition, he seems to be trying something nonacademic by writing a new kind of criticism. I am not sure what kind it is, but Dada criticism comes to mind, the subversion of conventional criticism. This aspect of the book offered a real challenge to me as a reader, because I realized the author was trying to change the rules of the critical game precisely as I was reading his book, which put some of the responsibility on me to play along. I see this as St. Pierre's intellectual challenge to the most avid readers.



3. I have just finished reading A Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L'Oeuvre bizarre de Barry Humphries, which I found an engaging and informative book. Having been familiar with Barry Humphries mainly as Dame Edna Everage, from television and The Royal Tour, I evidently had a lot to learn about him. I hadn't known he was a writer, for example, the author of 29 books. Nor had I known that he draws on music hall and dada in his stage performances as Edna and Sir Les Patterson. One of the most fascinating parts of the book is a chart in which St. Pierre compares some of Dame Edna's and Les Patterson's lines with the conventional spiel of the music hall chairman, who presided over stage shows a century ago: that Humphries might be invigorating some of these old formulas I found quite fascinating. St. Pierre claims that "Sandy Agonistes", which is a Sandy Stone monoloque, is the greatest Australian poem of the 20th-century. I wouldn't know. I haven't had a chance to find a copy of the poem yet, and, I must confess, I am not always sure whether I can take all of St. Pierre's claims seriously, but he has made me very very curious. I know I have to read this poem. So now I have started looking to purchase Humphries' books, records, and CDs (St. Pierre lists hundreds of them in his bibliography), because St. Pierre has intrigued me about the man beneath the make-up, who, I am convinced, must be a great artist. I realize that I knew NOTHING about Barry Humphries before reading this book. Now I think I know quite a bit. But, more important, St. Pierre has made me want to learn EVERYTHING about Humphries. He has created an interest in me.



4. I think the joke is on the reader only if one doesn't recognize this satire of a satirist. And Les Patterson, well, I think with his rave review he hopes we won't be aware of his close relationship to Barry Humphries. We all know that rave reviews are often the product of a reciprocal arrangement where you rave about my book and I rave about yours. Come to think of it, though, Mr. Patterson HAS written a book. But I doubt that Mr. Humphries had anything nice to say about it.
   
   Every page satirizes what the author must feel is Mr. Humphries' pompous writing style (or should I say sesquipedalian?) A writing style like this is so distinctive, so exaggerated and bizarre, how can anyone doubt the real author? Barry's memoirs and other books are wonderfully written and hard to put down, whereas I can't imagine anyone plowing through this balderdash. Excuse I for asking, but how did the author ever have the time or inclination to write book like this? More Sir Les and Dame Edna, please!
   
   Reading Barry Humphries' books requires a dictionary close at hand. But here the author has helped us out. All the big stumblers are footnoted, and we are spared having to haul a big heavy dictionary into our beds, or onto the train. But do we really care?
   
   Barry Humphries is a genius. I'm positively in love with Dame Edna and have a real soft spot for the Australian Attaché to the Court of St. James, but--and I mean this with respect--I learned a lot more about Barry Humphries from Women in the Background (not autobiographical!!) This book is Barry on speed or something, and I'd rather have another volume of his autobiography, something that will keep me up until 2 a.m. All I can say in favor of this book is the cover is great.



5. Paul St. Pierre's A Portrait of the Artist as Australian (2004)
   
   Paul St. Pierre's thoroughly researched text is a scholarly portrait of Barry Humphries' (the flamboyant character of Dame Edna Everage) entire career as a comic artiste extraordinaire. Humphries is a master of "grotesqueries and bizarreries," whose reputation as an actor, performer, writer, music hall artiste and Dada prankster situate him as the darling of Australian, British, and international artistic communities. The reader is invited to travel through satirical, comedic, entertaining and witty literary work with St. Pierre leading the way as a true pathfinder. Humphries' oeuvre includes dramatic monologues, comic books, (auto)biographies, film scripts, poetry, novels, and sketches. St. Pierre acknowledges Humphries' unique talents:
   
   By playing up and sending up cultural stereotypes, Humphries has encouraged Australians, and others, to laugh not only at him and his characters but also at themselves, at the negation of themselves on stage, and to come up on stage and join in the subversion of their images in the mirror. ... Thus, Humphries
   invites audiences to find pleasure in subversive things such as Dada, music hall, parody, theatre, kitsch, class, race, gender, and Australiana, as they play in the one-man show, and also to find the act of subverting pleasurable, even laughable. (133)
   
   We owe our gratitude to St. Pierre for introducing to us the world of Humphries' laughter and for his delight in researching and writing this text "not out of opportunism but out of community service, as a note of thanks to Barry Humphries and as an offering to his squillions of fans" (224). If you wish to partake in lively amusement and introspection, then sample Humphries' genius for "putting out bush fires of ignorance, pomposity, seriousness, complacency, provincialism, and political correctness around the world" and pick up a copy of St. Pierre's A Portrait of the Artist as Australian (251). In these troubled times we all need to feel the miraculous properties of laughter to heal our spirits.

4 comments about The Diggers of Colditz: The Classic Australian Pow Escape Story Now Completely Revised and Expanded.

1. This is a great story of what determined men can achieve with severely limited resources. Much has been written on Colditz Castle, the men who were imprisoned there and the few who escaped. I visited the castle in 1999, and what I saw confirms the stories in the book. This book is great reading for those who prefer real adventures and exploits to fiction.



2. On June 23 1943 the author, Jack Champ, was marched into the German prisoner-of-war camp designated Oflag IVC, these days better known as Colditz Castle. Colditz was Germany's seemingly escape-proof castle prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful prisoners of World War II tirelessly carried out an unending campaign to achieve the seemingly impossible - freedom. By the end of the war, twenty Australians had spent time in Colditz, and this book looks at life in the ancient castle specifically from their point of view. Colditz was a very special camp - the guards outnumbered the prisoners, and the castle was floodlit at night. Initially the Germans boasted that Colditz Castle was escape-proof, but they were wrong. By the end of the war, there had been more escapes from Colditz than any prison of comparable size during both world wars. Jack Champ was a reluctant prisoner who took part in two of the most spectacular mass escapes of the war. This book describes in vivid detail how these indomitable and resourceful Australian servicemen tried, and at times succeeded, in turning dreams of escape into reality. Colin Burgess has interviewed many of the survivors and carried out extensive research to create this gripping account of the full story - from tense days in the care of the French Underground through to the only recently resolved fight for proper compensation.



3. On June 23 1943 the author, Jack Champ, was marched into the German prisoner-of-war camp designated Oflag IVC, these days better known as Colditz Castle. Colditz was Germany's seemingly escape-proof castle prison where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful prisoners of World War II tirelessly carried out an unending campaign to achieve the seemingly impossible - freedom. By the end of the war twenty Australians had spent time in Colditz, and this book looks at life in the ancient castle specifically from their point of view. Colditz was a very special camp - the guards outnumbered the prisoners, and the castle was floodlit at night. Initially the Germans boasted that Colditz Castle was escape-proof, but they were wrong. By the end of the war there had been more escapes from Colditz than any prison of comparable size during both world wars. Jack Champ was a reluctant prisoner who took part in two of the most spectacular mass escapes of the war. This book describes in vivid detail how these indomitable and resourceful Australian servicemen tried, and at times succeeded, in turning dreams of escape into reality. Colin Burgess has interviewed many of the survivors and carried out extensive research to create this gripping account of the full story - from tense days in the care of the French Underground through to the only recently resolved fight for proper compensation.



4. Great story of what determined men can achieve with severely limited resources. Lots has been written on Colditz Castle and the men who were imprisoned there and the few who escaped.

   I visited the castle in 1999, and what I saw confirms the stories in the book.

   Great reading for those who prefer real adventures and exploints to fiction.

2 comments about Les Murray: A Life in Progress.

1. Peter Alexander has written a biography that does come close to doing justice to perhaps the greatest living poet in English. It is not only a well crafted account of the details of Murray's hard early life; it is, more tellingly, a compelling yarn about the pain, struggle and triumph of a troubled, stubborn and divine genius.
   
   It can also serve as a useful primer. And not just to some of Murray's more diffcult poems, but to poetry itself. You are put closer to the poet's seemingly impossible aspirations for his words, and thereby participate more keenly in the truth of his poetic gifts in revealing the spirituality of the ordinary.
   
   It is hoped too that this biography is as premature as its title suggests, as I, for one, want to hear a lot more of Murray's poetry in years to come.



2. Les Murray is the leading poet in the English-speaking world today. This account of his often strange life and work is scholarly, well researched and lifts the lid on some of the dirty tricks of Murray's rivals and enemies in the Australian literary scene (there were unsuccessful attempts to ban it). Sheds light on many aspects of poetry, culture in general, and the human condition.

No comments about Bluff Rock: Autobiography of a Massacre.

1 comments about OLD MAN FOG (Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry).

1. Haviland's book is an interesting if not entirely successful experiment in ethnographic literature. Or perhaps we should say, Haviland's and Roger Hart's, since he goes further than most anthropologists in crediting the person who provided him with the information. It is well to remember that we anthropologists do not so much write books as craft accounts of the experiences that people allow us to have into books.
   Haviland weaves together three strands in his work: Hart's life story as an elder from the Barrow Point region, the myths of the Barrow Point people (as reconstructed by Hart), and documentary data from the modern history of northern Queensland. He finally accompanies Hart on a journey back to his homeland. Haviland is more aware and more clear than most that an ethnography of a contemporary Aboriginal or any other native group cannot be straightforward reportage but must always been pieced back together from the fractured memories of the survivors of the modernization process. The resultant book, he warns, will always seem more integrated and unified than the experiences that went into it. His book cannot help but suffer from the same defect. He presents a refraction of his disjointed experience of Hart's disjointed memories, but a book that really presented the experience as it felt in the first place would be impossible to read. The whole project is worthwhile not only for what we learn about Aboriginal culture but about anthropological knowledge and the construction of one kind of account and literature out of another.

1 comments about Skidboot: The Amazing Dog.

1. Skidboot started out like a little rascal, but ended up a diamond in the rough. It is a sweet story. I enjoyed reading it.

No comments about While in Darkness There is Light: Idealism and Tragedy on an Australian Commune.

No comments about Geoffrey Parsons: Among Friends.

No comments about Daphne Street: The Biography of an Australian Community.