Ken Goodwin

The fact that this has not been reviewed by anyone is exactly the problem, and I'm a part of that problem. Australians have long been held in thrall by the so-called "Cultural Cringe", wherein we know more about British (and, increasingly, American) art and culture than we do our own. Run down a list of winners and nominees for the Miles Franklin Award over the last few decades and ask how many of them are known compared to winners of major Anglo/American awards.

This vital anthology collects short stories, novel excerpts, poems, letters, journal entries, newspaper articles, essays, traditional Indigenous stories, and various errata from the last 250 years of occupied Australian history, and it's an enthralling read. With no particular argument about "canonicity" to be made by the compilers, the anthology becomes simply about collecting examples of Australian literature, and it's all the better for it.

Goodwin pays close attention to migrant experiences, to the agonies of the colonised Indigenous peoples, and to the role of women, but this doesn't veer into the murky realm of "Cultural Studies" that Harold Bloom teaches us to be wary of. Where items are selected more for historical than literary merit, this seems justified by the anthology's aim of representing history. As some of the essays included, by A.D. Hope and others, state, this actually runs deep in the veins of Australians, who to this day consider their art, films and literature to often be second-rate compared to those from overseas. Some of the more interesting pieces aren't even literary at all; an article from "The Age" in the 1860s looks at both sides of the issue of allowing Chinese citizens to settle in Australia, using language that wouldn't feel out of place in the 2016 debates about Middle Eastern Muslims.

As with any anthology, inclusions and exclusions can be quibbled. But the purpose of this anthology, beyond providing insights into the historical and access to works not republished in modern times, is to allow us to "dip in". Like the better known Norton editions from overseas, there's a pleasure in just selecting a random page, finding out about the author, and engaging with the text. Who knows? Perhaps you'll find someone who strikes your fancy.

If there is one niggling query about this edition, 25 years after its publication, it's how to approach texts from the colonial era. Several poems, in particular, written in the early 1800s discuss Australia in that abhorrent "terra nullius" approach, i.e. that the land was unoccupied before whites moved in. There are a couple of poems which are truly beautiful, and yet immensely problematic in the mindset of the authors writing them. Goodwin's text doesn't provide anything editorial on these poems, not out of malice but simply because it isn't within this editor's purview. Nonetheless, it's worth noting that these poems contain omitted stanzas which are particularly aggressive in their white supremacist outlook. Whether teaching or simply reading from this edition, caveat lector.… (mais)