Volume 70 Number 2, 2011

Editorial

Soon after I was appointed editor of Meanjin, an old colleague called, keen to pass on ‘a gift’. During an unlikely tidying of his study he had unearthed an unassuming slim volume, Critical Approaches to Literature, a book he had bought for $2 (a price scratched inside the cover in pencil). A bargain, clearly, but the true cause of his excitement was an ink stamp on the endpapers: ‘This book is from the Library of Clem & Nina Christesen’.

When I called to collect it, he delightedly showed me two sun-damaged slips of paper that had been caught in the pages. They were sheets of old Meanjin letterhead, ‘From the Office of the Editor’. A week later, writer James Bradley dropped off another book: Just City and the Mirrors: Meanjin Quarterly and the Intellectual Front 1940–1965 by Lynne Strahan. A stapled notepad lost or left inside had a page of spidery notes including: ‘relentless enthusiasm has been a major strength of Meanjin’.

But perhaps the most thought provoking of these new-editor gifts was a cautionary emailed shopping list that set out for me what Meanjin ‘was’. The coded message was, I think, ‘no more change’. Meanjin must change, but only for the better. My ‘Office of the Editor’ is now a computer-topped desk in an open-plan, vibrant publishing house. Meanjin continues to provoke and promote talent, stir ideas and air debate. Its central role is unchanged by the decades: curating and commissioning the insights of individuals and offering them to the collective. That is surely a transaction at the heart of writing, reading and thinking. But how Meanjin performs that role in the present is not constrained by either the history of the journal or its historic form. In these times of great publishing change and opportunity, there is no one way to present a journal like Meanjin. It can, and should, communicate with as wide an interested public as it can, by as many means as possible, be they print, text on the internet, video or live events. Public monies from the University of Melbourne, the Australia Council and the Victorian Government (as well as a private donation) allow Meanjin to exist. That is a great privilege, but one that comes with equal responsibility: Meanjin cannot be a publicly funded exercise aimed at bringing private pleasure to a fortunate few. Those institutions fund Meanjin as a way of encouraging and expanding the cultural and intellectual life of the country. Meanjin must reach as far into that country of space, people and ideas as it can.

The great gift of modern publishing is to enable underexposed gems such as Meanjin to reach out to new audiences with their literary and cultural credentials intact. It is a new world of opportunity.

In this issue of Meanjin Maria Tumarkin says moral imagination is needed to move beyond the slogans that are used to quarantine understanding of immigration. And the extraordinary natural disasters that marked the start of the year summon a call for new relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians by Alexis Wright.

Peter Timms delights in the unrestrained experienced of Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art. Ben Pobjie asks whether there is anything too offensive for a comedian’s repertoire. And in the Meanland essay, Christina Thompson argues literary magazines ignore electronic publishing at their peril.

In anticipation of regular examples of biography and travel writing that I intend to publish, Damon Young and Jacqueline Dutton examine the strengths of these literary forms. Gareth Evans casts his mind over a variety of approaches to foreign policy; Marion Halligan remembers a lone trip to Sydney; Sonya Voumard salutes an inspiring woman; Elmo Keep reassesses American Psycho; and Colleen Brabender keeps tabs at Coles.

There is a delightful conversation with Annie Proulx and Tim Flannery on the importance of books, birds and place. This issue includes evocative fiction by Peggy Frew, Trevor Shearston, David Mence, Miriam Sved and John Kinsella. It closes with poetry by Craig Billingham, Kim Cheng Boey, Eileen Chong, Susan Fealy, Luke Fischer, Lorne Johnson, Elizabeth Lawson, Mal McKimmie, Andrew Slattery, Mark Tredinnick, Todd Turner, Rod Usher and Meredith Wattison.

Until the next issue in spring, stay in touch via the Meanjin website: meanjin.com.au.