AUSTRALIAN LITERARY REPORT

...first time, the sources of ths now world-rcnowed Australian tone, and word telegraphy of their slang...

...Spoiled Darlings...

...Johnson insisted the drama's law*, ths drama's patrons give...

...Baker defines, If for the...

...Unfortunately, the best known radio-play, Douglas Stewart'a Ned Kelly (the Jesse James of Australia) is not in the book...

...There is great interest now that Norman Corwin has made his visit and given some very fine talks...

...The fact that Osmar White recently published Green Armour, the most important book on the New Guinea campaigns, seemed unimportant to PEN...

...Noel...

...White...

...He is in the interim issuing Modern Australian Poetry through the Melbourne University Press...

...HaRRY M. GREEN, who pioneered Australian criticism (he is the author of a book on Christopher Brennan, Australia's renowned poet, the friend of MatJarme) has, at the age of aixty-Ave, resigned his post of librarian of Sydney University's Fisher Memorial Library in order to devote his time to a definitive study of Australian literature...

...prograins...

...It is even more" depressing to realize that they are invited to preside in a courtroom where both artists and art are on trial for their lives...

...Mencken's classical work on the American language...

...The weakest section of the book deals with neglected Australian poets...

...To complete the censorship picture, Edmund Wilson's "Memoirs of Hecsts County" has just been banned, sight unseen, in New Zealand and Australia...

...Vance Palmer, the critic and novelist, Is staying it the fishing villsge of Caloandra, Queensland, the scene of his earlier novel, The Passage...

...Incidentally, Burton Graham, publicity director of the raaf which has just sponsored my trip to New Guinea (for a series of articles, photos and films of the raaf Aftermath), is in the process of doing a definitive work on Damien Parer'a life...

...UNO got a break in the press...

...Yet one would have welcomed White's address on snother subject, particularly clnce he was a cobber of the photographer, Damien Parer, on the Kokoda Trail...

...Even a Saturday Evening Poet, called Australian Post, a composite of Time, SEP and the New Yorker, has tried to make the grade, aiming for a mass circulation...

...Dal Stivens, the Australian John O'Hara, has published his sharp, stinging book of short stories, The Courtship of Uncle Henry...

...Often there Is such anticlimax between the pungency ot/ Mr...

...times, with recognisable eha...

...Recently, the law regarding censorship in the state of New South Wales waa altered...

...writing profession, but It did waste the time of Mr...

...Another, the Twentieth Century, a 'Catholic quarterly of art and theology, Is fairly Catholic in its tastes and concerns Itself academically with Australia's future...

...Of the poets publishing and writing today, the moat significant item is that the author and chief hoaxer of the Ern Malley poems, James MacAuley, is finally publishing hia first book, and under the imprimatur of Melbourne University Presa...

...FoR the first time an anthology of Radio Plays had been published, edited by Leslie Reed, head of the A.B.C...

...is not a piece on Christmas, but a scorching though polite attack upon the Coward wbo from 'hid unscathed war adventures could write sueh words as: "One of the more tiresome aspects of .the burned eases Is the smell, and a plunge In the eea got it out of my nostrils...

...Brown's enthusiasm la a virtue, but it bears Its complementary-fault...

...But the latest bit Of wowserism was ths story in yesterday's Melbourne Herald that Lautremont's surrealist novel, Maldoror, wag seized from the Victorian 'Library under the section of the Customs Act prohibiting the importation of "blasphemous, indecent or obscene works or articles...

...Isa, in Northern Queensland...

...But it has only reached 30,000 despite the fact that it is published by the Argus, a leading Melbourne morning paper...

...But what the pen Club lacks as a literary center, the Fellowship of Australian Writera makes up...

...Brown is currently president, of the New York Drama Critics' Circle—are not on the theatre...

...The next hardest thing Is to get Jt out...

...Nevertheless, Vanguard Press will publish his new book, The Dupe...

...They range from an account of his escorting seven small boys to the Rodeo to a salute to Colonel Blimp that begins by quoting: "The hardest thing on earth to do is to get an idea into a soldier's head...

...By John Mason Brown...

...He tees most situations In high light*, but either black or white...

...Kenneth Slessor has done a much better job on a smaller scale, with his Australian Poetry—1945...

...First nights tre always showy— and always open to the stir and rout* of a vslid play...

...The patient turns yellow from too much love of his art and not enough discrimination...

...Who knows...

...Then all of us might go to openings with the ssnM feeling* we once brought to them, snd which they deserve...

...The Herald critic, Clivs Turnbull, immediately assailed the Customs Department and suggested they stick to tariff appraisals of sausage casings...

...Frank dalby Davidson, author of Man Shy, has come out with a novel about a sheep dog, The Stranger, which won the £600 Argus Novel Competition...

...When i reached the Tasman Sea i went down with malaria, was hospitalized in Melbourne for three weeks and surrendered, when i could escape the high-fever, to the total immersion of Tolstoy's War and Peace...

...The State of the Nathan" is an appreciation of tht most lofty-browed of our pity reviewers: "Too many plsygocrs have a way, of following the Array's practice and lowering their standards at tunstt...

...Miles Franklin, one of the leading women novelists, has just published My Career Goes Bung, Betty Hamill, who gives Extension lectures at the University of Melbourne, has written a sharp analysis of modern writing—From Lawrence to Joyce — and will likely emerge as one of the important Australian critics...

...Moat of the pieces here gathered—though Mr...

...racters Imparting grand gestures, and much-ado to the social asides of Governor Darling's rule in early New South Wales...

...The latest arrival has been the hardier, monthly six-penny magazine, Tomorrow, more or less leftliberal, but facing all issues in a thoroughly competent and witty fashion...

...341 pages...

...It is seldom that art, or literature, can successfully compete with athletic carnivals...

...Completely crippled, he managed to go through Arnhem and on the backs of abos, He owns a significant collection of native writing on bark, as well at bark paintings...

...It It extremely well written, clever, but fascist to the skin...

...But the anthologists are the moat active...

...If I were a manager, I would change my first-night listt at once...

...Other magazines to appear in the last six months, are Focus, patterned in some minor ways alter the New Yorker, but still a foundling as to pertinent satire and the short-story...

...The Fellowship gives lectures on novels and novelists, on poets and poetry, on plays and playwrights, etc...

...Beoause of his excellent characterisation, of certain Sydney types, it should ,be a companion volume to Sidney Baker's The Australian Language— the antipodian counterpart of...

...In America the patient receives a massproduction tonic, with suspended lyrical flavors: in Australia it is still horses, cricket and football...

...But despite some of the simple catch-alls,' it it fascistlc and nationalistic to the core and asks that Australians "think Australianly...

...the subtler shadings of character seldom glimmer in these pages...

...Reed succinctly gums up the difficulties facing radio drama-artists — saying that Australia has a voice of its own, not nationalistic to be sure, and needs a technique which must find its own levels and heights without being artificially influenced by either American or English/ sources...

...An individual can no longer bring legal action...

...3.00...

...However,' Percival Serle's anthology has a modern section throughly up to date and shows keener editing as well as selectivity...

...The enthusiasm and the fluent, colorful language that make John Mason Brown an excellent lecturer and afterdinner (or tea-time) speaker give verve to these culling* from his section, 'Seeing Things," in the Saturday Review of Literature...

...This is either the "cultural lag" in full bloom, advancing and overtaking the Victorian Age in the states of Victoria and New York, or the heat-wave of minisculsr fire-works in a somewhat un-socialist psychology...

...The pen Club at its recent'quarterly dinner was addressed by Osmar White on the subject,"Markets for Writers in America...

...Yet the literary scene here is very much like politics and the new victory of the Labor Party—the fever and the aftermath...

...New York: Whittlesey House...

...Not that one should ignore the economics of the...

...Nathan...

...It now stems from the stats government, and in this instance it is a liberal departure and for the good...

...Nevertheless, the book has a fine flavor of modern themes and past Australian pageantry within its eight plays...

...When Bernborough, the outstanding horse, ran, nothing else, including the...

...While in Apia, as a challenge to'otherwise, total surrender to native culture, i climbed"rugged Mt...

...The country can stand more than a few, and in all the arts...

...Other poets now active and doing from fair to good work, ar* Paul Grano, the Catholic poet, and about the best of them: Judith Wright, who writes sensitively of the Australian pastoral, and Rex Ingamells, the founder of the Jindyworobak Movement (a literary adhesion to aborigine culture) who has published his Selected Poems, very much In keeping with his philosophy...

...There Is an attack on tho adhesions of the put to "The Empire," asserting tht need for • kind or relationship with America which would Incorporate "defense" at a Pacific measure...

...Various states, have their ~owa attitudes regarding books of a censorable nature...

...It lacks appeal, is uncertain on what angle to approach the Australian public and has little literary or significant taste in its stories or journalistic features...

...tralia but sold everywhere else...

...The best in the anthology are George Farweil'a (he is the editor of Book News) "Portrait of a Gentleman," a period piece...

...It had disappointing critical notices and showed how difficult it is for a writer of short stories to enlarge his subject and scope and extend a medium obviously best for the short story...

...i have quoted the whole of this ending, to bring the stab of its first lint into contrast with the ooze of its close...

...I.N i the magazine .field, Australia it coming of' age, though some of the activities in this vein might welt be left undone...

...As the author of the'Bismsrck Sea Battle book, None Shall Survive, and ' author of numerous works on the raaf, a radio-playwright as well as a novelist, Graham should do Parer justice...

...It has a large following in the literary and journalistic fraternity and is the open house for men who write as they please...

...Not so Mr...

...Brown's expression and the Inertness of his Idea.—If the "first-night lists" were changed, who are the "all of us" still goldg to openings...

...The last two books to meet the blue-pencil were Love Me Sailor by Robert S. Close, banned in South Am...

...1 Mr...

...Their tires make us tremble to remember that Dr...

...He is at his best la the rapier thrust that flashes before his opponent falls, as*in the attack on post-war first night audiences, "As It Once Was": "It is depressing to look st them and realize that each of them once represented an act of ecstasy...

...His new work is based on the silver and lead mining field of Mr...

...What eventually emerged from the dinner was that some technique should be created whereby relstions with other countries as well as markets should be effected through some uno literary center...

...Brown's titles are, however, themselves a reminder of his major field...

...It should be a bank-holiday for poetry when it finally comes out...

...Mr...

...George Mackanass, working on his Poets of Australia for many years, has finally seen hia book emerge, but almost all the poets in it have sharp things to say about the work...

...Some of them doubtless will and should remain neglected...

...a gatlre^esi Tewor Dtrlfng'e...

...Vae to see the huge tombstone over the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson, who is still enshrined in our boyish hearts...

...Behind Its demand for high birth rates and great populations Is a diminishing stress on the old reason* for the "white Australia" policy—using a quote from Nietzsche, eld, "a trans valuation of values" for lit philosophical base...

...V i There it stir and rouse in "Seeing Things" through tht color-quick eyss of ¦ John Mason Brown, tvsn though he sots more' cletrlj» along the sides of llf«'» roadways than toward the Journey's tnt...

...Australia haa.its own censorship din...

...Mr, Close stated to me, "It was also considered too tough for American stomachs...

...culties...

...and Edmund Barclay...

...A few weeks ago, a Custom's official seized my correspondence from the office of Reed A Han-is and stated that* the Customs had ferreted out the book from the mailbags and thus seized my letters...

...Gavin Casey, a shortstory writer, currently director of the Australian Government Information Bureau In New York, haa published, after several- delays, his much looked-forwardto first novel, Downhill le Easier...

...Postxcript: I mailed Wilson's book to the publishing firm of Reed & Harris from New York, last April...

...What goes In New South ¦Wales does not go in South Australia or Victoria...

...Nod...

...i apent •ome time in' Samoa, formerly a tropical regency for authors fed up with the white pale of the heart, and busily establishing minute kingdoms at so much per year...

...making Its initial appearance a week ago, edited by D. G. M. lackson, Is laying the basis for a fascist movement...

...Walter Murdoch has re-issued the definitive Australasian Anthology but has not added much In the way of good new work by contemporaries...

...Nation (the irony...

...Carrot-Nourished Eyes Reviewed by JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY SEEING THINGS...

...Eric Glaasup'a We Are the Rats, a tale of the siege of Tobruk, published by ths conservative firm of Angus A Robertson, was banned in New South Wales—which means cosmopolitan Sydney...

...Alsn Marshall, who wrote These, Are My People, a study of the Northern Territory, Is at work on another, book about the aborigines...

...And the whole tone of the closing passages of this essay is a sentimental nostalgia for "the good old days" that were no better than those here, and t» come...