The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 37

Page 37 1 IjSB (3Hjn) i i J- J. I A THRILLERS RADICALS The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, November 20, 1982 7 is The real TO Katharine Prichard: Like that lady from Reds STRAIGHT LEFT By Katharine Susannah Prichard Collected by Ric Throsselt Wild and Woollty. 263pp. S9.9S ISBN 090933172 3 Reviewed by MARGARET WHITLAM imitation FOR SPECIAL SERVICES By John Gardner CaptHoddttA Stoughton. 254pp.

SI4.95 ISBN 0224 02934 7 Reviewed by KINGSLEY AMIS The collection is quite a mix. There is every kind of article front an ABC Ulk on short-story writing to tales of Aborigines and lovely little giveaways or revelations on the telling. Look at her writing on the possibility of charlatanism in literary criticism: The busy editor of a magazine ptte may pass on to his wife or daughters a handful of books saying: "Have a look at these, and Id me nave a par about them." A promising, knows, young author gets smack in toe eye instead of the acoor agemcat and help be needs. I Love Australia is a statement of today. We see it on T-shirts, carrybags, ears.

KSP asserted it years ago in prose, poetry and plays. The very first article in this volume is called Australia. It was published in 1936 in The Home Annual but the sentiments expressed still apply and inspire us. So, even as I encourage the acquisition of this book I'd like to go out with an excerpt from Australia. And yet, there are things in Aastral-ia I hate Why should there be in Australia, people who have sot sufficient food or clothing, who are unable to enjoy the beauty and natural wealth about us: who are forced to live in filthy slums and houses, not fit to house cattle: who in the bitter struggle for existence cannot afford to buy books, to know anything of the art and poetry of their naiise land or to provide cultural background for national If we love Australia and the Australian people, we must realise, surely, that Australia will only have a culture with any roots in reality, and worthy of the infinite beauty and wealth of ber natural resources, when the foundations of our national life are bawd on the right of her people to satisfaction of the everyday needs of existence.

KATHARINE Susannah Prichard in this collection of writings and speeches gives the impression of being a finer version of that lady we learned to like in the recent film Reds. Not inappropriately so, since for a good many of her 85 years she embraced the philosophy of the Communist Party, being a foundation member of its Australian branch. Ric Throsselt, the renowned writer's only child, has put together the pieces which reached my desk just as I was wondering what I should read next As a solution to that question the book served well, for my curiosity was roused and often satisfied about many people and places. I think she dealt with people best, and obviously managed as well in her personal life. There's a fascinating story about Henry Handel Richardson, human revelations of O.

H. Lawrence and a searching cover of the Egon Kisch affair. Very topical that, as we've recently bad a play reading in Canberra and a sort of musical staged in Sydney on the same subject Katharine Susannah Prichard reveals all. KSP, as I shall have to call her from now on, was born in Fiji in either 1883 or 1884 according to which journal one reads (children are notorious for not knowing the birthplace of their parents) and she died in l9. She was a true daughter of the press, her father being editor of several respected newspapers here and in Fiji.

Her own career began in a most lady-like manner while she worked as governess to the children of our landed gentry, all the time writing stories and articles for the daily press. When she was 25, KSP went to London, a daring place to work in poor IAN Fleming's last novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, appeared in 1965, the year after its author's death. I published Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure under the pseudonym of Robert Markham in )9V8- The next Bond novel, Licence Renewed, by John Gardner, did not come along tiH 1981. Here now is For Special Services, by the same author. Quite likely it ill becomes a man placed as I am to say that, whereas its predecessor was bad enough by any reasonable standard, (he present offering is an unrelieved disaster all the way from its aptly forgettable title to the photograph of the author surely an unflattering likeness on the back or the jacket.

If so that is just my bad luck. On the other hand, perhaps I can claim the privilege of at least a momentary venting of indignation at the disrepute into which this publication brings the name and works of Ian Fleming. Over the past doen years the Bond of the books must have been largely overlaid in the popular mind by the Bond of the films, a comic character with a lot of gadgets and witty remarks at his disposal. The temptation to let this "Bond go the same way must have 3n considerable, but it has been Jeeisted. Only once is he called upon to round off an action Sequence with a yobbo-tickling of the sort that Sean Connery used to be so good at dropping out of the side of his itpouth.

No ridiculous feats are jrjpuired of him. His personal armament seems plausible, his car Stems capable of neither flight nor Srflderwater locomotion, his cigar-moMcs in the gunmetal case have the three gold rings as always and calls him 007. Nobody else does, though. The designation is a pure honorific like Warden of the Cinque Ports; some ruling from Brussels or The Hague has put paid to the pristine Double-i Section and its licence to kill long ago. Even the cigarettes are low-tar.

But these and similar changes would hardly show if he had been ullowed to keep some other inter-' ests and bits of himself, or find new i ones. Does he still drink cham-', pagne with scrambled eggs and sausages? Wear a lightweight Kingsley Amis's last novel was Russian HUt-and-Setk (Penguin), This review is from the Times Literary Supplement. black-and-white dog-tooth check suit in the country? Do 20 slow press-ups each morning? Read Country Life? Ski, play baccarat and golf for high stakes, dive in scuba gear? What happened to that elegant international scene with its grand hotels and yachts? No information. One thing Bond still does is have girls. There are three in this book, not counting the glimpse of Miss Moneypenny outside M's door.

The first is there just for local colour, around the start, to be dropped as soon as the wheels start turning. She is called Q'ute because she comes from Branch. (Q himself is never mentioned, lives only in the films, belongs body and soul to Cubby Broccoli, the producer.) Q'ute is liberated and a champion of feminism. Luckily she only has two lines, but one of these contains a jovial mild obscenity, and a moment later there comes a terrifically subtle reference to the famous moment in the film of Dr No when Bond said, "Something big's come up" in ambiguous circumstances and got the hoped-for laugh from the first audiences, thus, legend says, turning the tub-sequent films on to their giggly course. When you consider how much the original Bond would have haled these small manifestations of what the world has become since I960 or so, you might be led to suspect a furtive taking of the piss, but nothing like it occurs again, as if Gardner, not the most self-assured of writers, had repented of his daring.

Bond's second girl has the cacophonous and uncertainly suggestive name of Cedar Lei-ter yes, kin to that Felix Leiter of the CIA whom sharks deprived of an arm and half a leg in Live and Let Die (1954). Cedar is his daughter, a superfluous and unprofitable device that raises that thorniest of all questions, Bond's age in 1982. Bond keeps his hands off her throughout, perhaps out of scruple but more likely because only' a satyromaniac would find her appealing. She is described as short a deadly word. An attractive girl may be small, tiny, petite, pocket-sized and such, but never short.

Poor Cedar has no style or The celluloid feminists ness, its lack of the slightest human interest or warmth. Ian Fleming himself would have conceded that he was not the greatest delineator of character: even so his people have genuine life and substance and many of them both experience and inspire feeling. So far from being "the man who is only a silhouette," Bond is shown to be fully capable of indignation, compunction, remorse, tenderness and a protective instinct towards defenceless creatures. His girls have a liveliness, a tenacity and sometimes a claim on affection beyond the requirements of formula. Most of the Fleming books also have a more or less flamboyant figure assisting Bond and acting as a foil to him, such as Darko Kerim, the Turkish agent in From Russia, With Love, and Enrico Colombo, the virtuous black-marketeer and smuggler in By a kind of tradition, however, perhaps started by Buchan with Dominick Medina in The Three Hostages, the main character-interest in this type of novel attaches to the villain.

Mr Big, Hugo Drax, Dr No and their like are persons of some size and power. They are made to seem to exist in their own right, to have been operating since long before Bond crossed their paths, rather than to have been run up on the spot for him to practise on. But then to do anything like that the writer must be genuinely interested in his material. tapes governing America's military space-satellites, having fed drugged ice-cream to the personnel in charge of them. Bond, brainwashed by other drugs into believing himself to be a US general, is at the head of the party of infiltrators, but a third set of drugs, administered by a suddenly renegade Bismaquer, brings him to himself just in time.

This sounds, 1 know, like a renewed and more radical bid to take the piss, but seen in the context of the whole book and its genesis the absurdity, however gross, is contingent, mere blundering. I have suggested that For Special Services has little to do with the Bond films. In one sense this is its misfortune. Those films cover up any old implausibility or inconsistency by piling one outrage on another. You start to My to yourself "But he wouldn't "But they couldn't and before you can finish Bond is crossing the sunward side of the planet Mercury in a tropical suit or sinking a Soviet aircraft-carrier with his teeth.

Hardly a page in the book would not have gone the smoother for a diversion of this sort Why, for instance, does the New York gang boss set his hoods on Bond when alt he has to do is ask him nicely? Echo answers why. The reader is offered no relief from his bafflement. What makes Mr Gardner's book so hard to read is not so much its endlessly silly story as its desolate- presence, no skills or accessories, no colour, no shape. And it is this wan creature whom Bond instantly accepts as his partner for the whole enterprise. In a Fleming novel I nearly wrote "in real life" Bond would have outrun sound getting away from her.

To be accurate, of course, he would have done that even if she had been Pussy Galore or Domino Vitali all over again. He knew all about the way women "hang on your gun-arm" and "fog things up with sex and hurt But then that was 1 953. Bond scores all right with the third of the present trio. Nona Bismaquer, nee Blofcld and the revengeful daughter of his old enemy, a detail meant to be a stunning revelation near the end but you guess it instantly. Nena let me find the place Nena looks fantastic and has incredible black eyes.

Her voice is low and clear, with a tantalising trace of accent. She wears exceptionally well-cut jeans and has that special poise which combines all the attributes Bond most admires in a woman. When she sees him first she gives him a smile calculated to make even the most misogynistic male buckle at the knees. As she comes closer, he feels a charge, an unmistakable chemistry passing between them. From expressions like these you can estimate the amount of trouble Gardner has taken with the figure of Nena and indeed the general level of his performance.

It remains to be said about her that she has a long, slender nose and by nature, not surgery only one breast, an arresting combination of defects. Nobody really cares when she gets thrown among the pythons on the bayou. Well, there are pythons on this bayou. There are two other villains round the place about whose villainy no bones are made from the beginning, Nena's husband Mark-us and his boyfriend Walter Luxor. One is fat and cherubic, the other of corpse-like appearance, but neither exudes a particle of menace or looks for a moment as if he would be any trouble to kill, and Nena casually knocks them off one after the other on a late page.

The three had schemed to steal the computer EVERY MONDAY THE HERALD GIVES YOU TUBE GUIDE those days for a colonial girl. Always, however, she came back to Australia to live with and write of her own people. Nine novels later she was in her sixties and pretty well a household name. I find it interesting that in 1945, when she was about the age I am now, she wrote a fervent piece for International Women's Day and delivered it in Newcastle. The war was coming to an end and there was hope of both victory and peace.

Women were to be encouraged to continue their active lives and investigation of' and participation in political matters at every level. Alas, 30 years later we were still try ing and enjoyed an International Women's Year to prove it. The year turned into a decade, and the fight goes on. KSP shows herself to be a romantic revolutionary in the words she uses. She writes, for instance, of Or Evatt as a titan who had bestowed the largcue of his mind and spirit on the Australian people.

He has enhanced (heir prestige and authority in national and international affairs. It is seldom that a statesman of Evan's stature has been accorded such scant honour in his own country. He was imbued with the same practical idealism as Deakin, and defeated by the failure of his generation to realise it. She died only a few years after making this tribute but we're still knocking in the land of Oz. WOMEN'S PICTURES Feminism and Cinema By Annette Kuhn RoutledgeA Kegan Paul.

226pp. SI 1. 93 ISBN 0 7100 9044 7 Reviewed by MEG STEWART The cover design of Women's Pictures includes a still of Martha Ansara shooting My Survival as an Aboriginal, directed by Essie Coffey. The women's movement has changed a lot of things in the film scene here. Kuhn acknowledges the inaccessibility of feminist cinema studies' but says in the preface she has tried to put her arguments as clearly as possible while still doing justice to the real complexity of some of the issues involved.

She certainly does justice to the complexity. "Aren't all women feminist now?" a male friend said to me recently. Not acording to Kuhn: merely moving into an area where women were not generally working before is not enough. She quickly distinguishes between feminist cultural intervention and cultural intervention by women. Women's Picture should be called Feminist Pictures.

That's Passionate Detachment, ptv ltd, Books ACT 2609 S3 Macabbean Darlinghurat SATURDAY SUNDAY Complete sellout stock of our Melbourne. WE ARE All stock must welcome. This Is Includes finest sizes to 13 Margate' Whitlam Is a tegular reader and an occasional writer. part one of Women's Pictures. Parts two and three are Dominant Cinema and Rereading Dominant Cinema.

Dominant Cinema is an analysis of the motives underlying tha Hollywood studio system that relentlessly produced stalwart male heroes for the audience to identify with; women were victims in this cinema, constantly put down at best, second best. By now it had a familiar feminist perspective, but was struggling with the unfamiliar terminology (unfamiliar for a film-maker, that is). By the time I had worked out what a sentence meant, I had forgotten the context The book becomes easier to understand when Kuhn refers more to actual films. The theory gets closer to real film making. She describes the emergence of the LWFG which puts real women on the screen, creating feminist coua-tercinema with positive central women characters.

Writing about the cinema is always a doubtful exercise. Women's Pictures confirms it. Women's pictures are best seen. Meg Stewart wrote and directed Last Breakfast in Paradise, the winner of the fiction section in this year's Greater Union Awards at the Sydney Film Festival. THE DELIGHT of early feminist films was that they were so accessible: it is ironic, therefore, that Women's Pictures by Annette Kuhn is so distinctly inaccessible.

Battling through Women's Pictures left me with a headache two days running. It also had me reaching for the dictionary, even after I had found the glossary at the back. The book is for film theorists and critics. It would bemuse an ordinary reader, daunt the staun-chest feminist Kuhn describes in the preface how feminism began to inform the way she looked at films after a screening at the London Women's Film Croup in 1974. I too, in 1973-74, saw films made by the LWFG and by the women's unit at the National Film Board in Canada.

Then it was a revelation to see films made entirely or almost entirely, by women simple films about ordinary women, films you could imagine making yourself with other women. As a novice PAteamaker in 1968 at the Commonwealth Film Unit, not Film Australia, I had it impressed on me by male veterans that film making was, indeed, a man's world a woman was only fit to trail along behind with clipboard and bandaids. BOOKS Old Fine and Rare Best Read: If you enjoy the sight of a rich man Dstvs .1. i A happy recessional Christmas: 1982 and his camel passing through the eye of a needle, you'll enjoy Edward James's memoirs. Swans Reflecting Elephants (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, It's a touching story of how an heir to $20 million tries to write poetry and mix with literary people, but instead marries an actress and learns the rites of social humiliation.

Best excuses for anthologists: These rock 'n rain songs The Poetry of Geology (Allen and Unwin, edited by Robert Hzen, and Out of the Blue: an Anthology of Weather Poems (Fontana, $2.95) chosen by Fiona Waters are ecological hymns to seasons and substances. Best way to feel humble: The largest American bookstore chain B. Dalton stocks 9,964 reference book titles nationwide; the newly published Best Reference Books 197040 (Libraries UnlimitedJames Bennett, indent) describes the cream 920 of these. A read of this is a perfect scanning device for your own black holes of ignorance. MARY MARTIN AUSTRALIANA CATALOGUE NO.

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This means you are buying on average at 62 per cent off the original prices. Exclusions: Some current titles will not be subject to the 25 per cent cash desk reduction. These exclusions will be clearly stickered and colour coded. LIMY MARTIN THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY M.A. (Pass) in History Course Work COME TO THE WEA RESIDENTIAL SUMMER SCHOOL For Adults of all ages January 15-22 at Bathurst Acting Drawing Painting Genealogy Heraldry Greek Guitar Local History Research Ornithology Oil Painting (Beginners' Intermediate) International Politics Portraiture Tal Chi Telescope Making Watercolours Creative Writing.

FULL RESIDENTIAL FEE: $237 No previous knowledge needed. Details: RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS, WEA, 72 Bathurst Street, Sydney. 2000. (02) 267 7449. GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN ADULT BASIC EDUCATION This Is a two-year part-time course for educators specialising in.the field of teaching literacy and numeracy skills to adults.

Emphasis Is on the achievement of professional skills through experienced-based learning in lectures, seminars, workshops and field experiences. Applicants should have completed an approved 3 or 4 year course at a recognised tertiary institution and at least two years of vocational experience relevant to adult basic education. They must also be able to obtain work experience concurrently with formal studies. Other experience and qualifications may be considered by the Institute Board. I' Course subject to approval bf Higher education Board i Applications close January 10th 1983 Course commences February 1983.

For further information and application forms, contact the Admissions Office, ITATE, Box K1 2, Haymarket, NSW, 2000, or telephone (02) 211 6786 ext. 40. The Department of History offers a two year, part-time program for pais or honours graduates who have majored in History. Upon successful completion of a half-year course in Historical Method, candidates specialise over the next eighteen months in one of the following six fields: Asian, Australian, Early and late Modern European, Local History. Urban History.

Evening seminars meet weekly during first year, fortnightly in second year. A essay is submitted at the end of the course. Inquiries are welcome and should be directed to: Associate Professor B. H. Fletcher (692 3790, 6922962,6923094) THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Offers a wide variety of courses including Computing, Counselling, Business Management, Electronics and many mora.

Fees from $40 (fees may ba tax deductible). Write to Tape Correspondence Service, Division of Postgraduate Extension Studies, University of New South Wales, P.O. Box 1, Kensington 2033, phone 662 33S6. 47 YORK STREET, SYDNEY. Phone 29 1891 OPEN ALL DAY SUNDAY: 10am to 5pm-8ATUBDAV: Sam 10 5pm Normal trading hourt Monday to Friday.