Volume 67 Number 4, 2008

Editorial

Christmas is nigh (how did it get so nigh, so quickly?) so we have angels, thanks to Paul Kelly’s essay on the inspiration provided by Fra Angelico’s. You can also get an insight into the frenetic train of thought that characterizes David Astle, the man who constructs the cryptic crossword puzzles you may be doing over the summer break. Indeed several of our contributors look at how things are made: lyrics (Kelly), crossword puzzles (Astle), writing fiction from philosophy (Damon Young) and the construction of comics (Elizabeth Argall). As well, we’re running the first of a series of CAL/Meanjin essays on Australian cultural institutions – here journalist and former director of the Sydney Film Festival, Lynden Barber, considers whether the sheer number of film festivals now being held around the country is a threat to the form or a sign of exuberance.

There is all kinds of warfare in December’s Meanjin and while the Australian summer holidays are not a time normally associated with such serious subjects I find this is a time of year when I always remember the poignancy of the Christmas day truces on the Somme in 1914.

Jim Davidson makes the argument that sport is becoming increasingly militarized and Ciannon Cazaly considers the way the history wars are being hand-balled among journalists, historians and the AFL. Those same culture wars also seem to have exploded around our contributor, Anthony Burke, the Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations
at The Australian Defence Force Academy. In September’s Quadrant, Mervyn Bendle argued that Burke’s ‘appointment [to ADFA] certainly raises questions about what those future leaders will be taught about terrorism, especially as Burke’s far Left views are well-known.’ He goes onto describe Burke as having a ‘relentless sympathy for terrorists’. Burke cited defamation and in reply Quadrant’s characterized him as restricting academic freedom – though surely arguing that people with left wing sympathies should not work at ADFA is a call for just such restrictions. To the essay at hand: in ‘Life, in the Hall of Smashed Mirrors’ Burke considers the relative weights of a child’s life, as does Morris Gleitzman in his discussion of his books written for children, Once and Then, two novels set in Poland during the holocaust which follow the devoted friendship between Felix and his best friend, Zelda. Jane Gleeson-White’s touches on similar themes in her exploration of Barbara Campbell’s most remarkable work: 1001 nights cast, an online performance inspired by the Arabian classic One Thousand and One Nights . You don’t need to be a fans of the television series Battlestar Galactica (though I am) to enjoy James Bradley analysis of the way in which the war that rages between the cylon’s and humans offers a commentary on the way in which the war against terror is being fought closer to home.

There is a great variety of fiction, both historical and contempory. In Stephen Orr’s, ‘The Shot-put’ two parents wait on a farm for the return of their son from WW1, Andrew Humphreys’, ‘It’s Colditz Outside’ evokes memories of WW2 and Eleanor Whitworth brings to life Australia’s first recorded bushranger, Black Caesar. Jessica Au, Sunil Badami Richard Lawson, Gina Flaxman and Caroline Lee move over more intimate, contemporary ground.

A final note: the redesigned Meanjin has some detractors and many fans. One enthusiastic review – which can be found online at threethousand: ‘Sometimes Melbourne wants to be New York so badly it’s embarrassing.’ The review’s premise being that if you get Meanjin it means you ‘use your brain, impress your friends, admit you live in Melbourne.’ It is in that spirit – as well as the Christmas one – I offer you Oslo Davis’s Melbhattan.

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Contents

Editorial by Sophie Cunningham

Newsreel

• With Jim Davidson, Joshua Henkin, John Warner, Eleanor Hogan and Beth Driscoll

Meanjin in Colour

• Faber Finds and Generative Design by Jessica Au

• Forty-Eight Angels by Paul Kelly

• To Prevent Contact & Story # 725 by Jane Gleeson-White

Essays

• CAL Essay: Ballerina Ballrooms, Rattled Peas and Other Strange Tales of Film Fest Mania by Lynden Barber

• One Man, One Box and 26 Letters by David Astle

• All of this has happened before, and will happen again: Battlestar Galactica by James Bradley

• Off the Ball: Football’s History Wars by Ciannon Cazaly

• Life in the Raw with the Personal Muse by Robyn Rowland

• Life in the Hall of Smashed Mirrors by Anthony Burke

• Making The Scientist by Elizabeth Argall

• Their hooks find hold deep in our flesh: Part Three by Kate Fielding and Mandy Ord

• On Fiction and Philosophy by Damon Young

Fiction

• The Lesson by Damon Young

• Bargains by Jessica Au

• The Shot-put by Stephen Orr

• A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words by Gina Flaxman

• It’s Colditz Outside by Andrew Humphreys

• Porridge Days by Richard Lawson

• Black Caesar, the Irrepressible by Eleanor Whitworth

• Stripped: Part Three by Caroline Lee

Interview

• The Darker Facts of Life: Sophie Cunningham interviews Morris Gleitzman

Poetry

• The Garden of Toys by Iain Britton

• Pearls Before Nothing? by Danny Gentile

• A Place on Earth; Tinnitus by David Brooks

• a finite catalogue of self by Anne Elvey

• Dog Carts by Philip Hammial

• The Mercenaries by Evan Jones

• Upul by Ron Pretty

• Lost among the Lizards by Peter Porter

• ‘Mo’ McCackie 1892–1953 by PiO

• Roaring Forties by Pauline Reeve

• Serenade by Alex Skovron

• Improvisations on a daylight moon; or, eight ways of seeing the moon by day Mark Tredinnick

• Holbein Through Silk by Meredith Wattison