No comments about Sir James Cockle: First Chief Justice of Queensland 1863-1879 / J.M. Bennett; Foreword, B.H. McPherson (Lives of the Australian Chief Justices).

No comments about Watcher on the Cast-Iron Blacony: An Australian Autobiography.

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.

No comments about Bluestocking in Patagonia: Mary Gilmore's Quest for Love and Utopia at the World's End.

No comments about Tales of the Austral Tropics (The Colonial Texts Series, 5).

1 comments about Wandering Girl.

1. Imagine racism separating you from everything you love. Imagine you are taken from your family and your friends to a house you've never been to, to live there and work endlessly for a stranger's happiness at the cost of your own. Glenyse Ward's book, Wandering Girl is an autobiographical account of her youth as an Aboriginal maid for a rich family in a small town in Australia. Ward grew up in a Christian Mission and was taken to tend to a large mansion with an unsocial family. Her friendliness and curiosity are hard traits that get her into a lot of trouble because she sees equality where the woman that owns the house sees superiority. Ward doesn't understand the hostility of others' beliefs and begins to doubt herself. Through making new friends and visiting old ones, she finds that friendship and home can come in any shape or form. While this book was inspirational in showing the author's developing personality, I felt it lacked detail and it was not particularly engaging to the reader.
   The start of the story shows a self-conscious young woman with an open heart who becomes more independent and strong through the hardships that she faces. In the beginning, she feels vulnerable and dependent in her surroundings: "With a haughty look about herself, she strutted out the door, leaving me with feelings of animosity and humiliation. I fumbled through my case to find my nightdress and slowly put it on, blew the flame out, and got that old familiar feeling called homesickness. I cried myself to sleep." By the end of the book, her attitude towards being self-reliant has changed completely. When she is told to come back to the mission, she decides to take her life into her own hands: "So when it was time for me to return to the mission, I never turned up. I went the other way! I was hoping Kaylene would be there at the stop in Bussleton." In the beginning, Glenyse also feels that friends and home are in one place and that being with them is the only way to be happy. Later, she finds that wherever she goes, she can always take those important things with her. This is apparent when she makes a new friend named Bill who works for the same family as she does. Being open and welcoming leads them to a strong relationship and a lasting bond.
   While the book was somewhat inspirational, I felt there was no connection between the reader and the writer because of Ward's distant and tedious writing style. Most of the book felt as though one day of her life was repeated over and over again, which after a while became monotonous. The story lacked description and captivating detail with passages such as: "I turned the oven off and made sure everything was ready. Then I heard her call out to bring the tea in and serve it up. So I laid the trolley up and went into the lounge to serve them." These types of passages were very common in the book and overly repeated.
   You may enjoy this book if you are looking for the daily account of a maid's life and a coming of age story. However, I felt as though this book was more beneficial for the author to write than for the public to read.

No comments about Judah Waten: Selected Works (UQP Australian Authors).

No comments about Portrait of a Friendship: The Letters of Judith Wright and Barbara Blackman 1950-2000.

5 comments about The Naked Island.

1. The author went through some really horrific situations but at the same time can describe the strength of the human spirit. The author also has a great sense of humor. I think books like this are rare these days in our politically correct world. Well worth the read.



2. The Naked Island

   The autobiography of a young australian soldier who spent long years in captivity as prisoner of war of the Japanese.
   The first part is the description of the military life in Malaya before the attack of the Japanese with many ironical notes on that tedious life from the point of view of a soldier.
   The second part is the description of the useless fight of the Australian and British troops against the overwhelming enemy and then the attempt to escape the capture.
   Then the third, and most interesting part, is the description of the life during three long years of captivity in the different prisons where the writer was imprisoned and in the jungle camps where all prisoners were forced to work without food, facing malaria, beri beri and death for starvation.
   A book I would really recommend.
   Are you looking for another absolutely interesting book about a similar experience?
   Read the famous "Behind bamboo" by Rohan Rivett




3. One of my first introductions to Australian and Far East reading of WW11, thoroughly enjoyable, could not put it down until it was finished. Would recommend this book to all generations. Has given me the taste to find out more about the Far East and familiarise myself with further Australian literature. Thought only John Pilger could write riveting literature, I was wrong!



4. This is an unforgettable book: informative, educational, poignant and often delightfully humorous. It is a tribute to the British and Australian Forces used as slave labour in the construction of the Burma/Siamese Railway and their ability to live with dignity, compassion and decency under the most deplorable conditions imaginable. This book leaves an indelible impression on the reader and should be required reading for each successive generation.



5. it is amazing that with all the hardship that these guys went thru, human nature can still make the best of an awful situation.

No comments about A Biographical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Economists (Elgar Original Reference).