The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 32

fege 32 The Sydney Morning HeraU Siitardny, December 19, 1981 i USB (ffiljjj) u'im mho-mi -r i POETRY Hue MeMmgale Pink pigs and pandoras battle sexism in the publishing industry iowmi warn wmnis THE PENGUIN BOOK OF BIRD POETRY Edited by Peggy Munsterberg Allen Lane, 361 pp. $24.95 Reviewed by DENSEY CLYNE and school supplies; To rein in the cost of pilfering, the stationers W. C. Penfold are marketing a new American computer system which patrols any variations in office-workers' demands for paperclips and white-out It's not back to the bad old days when: a clerk had to turn in the stub of a pencil in order to get a new one, but it does set up a surveillance system that by its very existence inhibits poachers. The owner of the New Edition Bookshop in Oxford Street, Pad-dington, had similar experiences with booknappers and decided to install a detection device.

As William de Winton says in the article below, realising how much ripping-off goes on may change your view of the human race. Michele Field not include publication after all, she wisely the person written about may not want it published. HOTEL New Hampshire, reviewed here this week, caused some debate when the second American edition was reprinted on paper much thinner than the original edition. The price was the same, so everyone assumed that the thinner paper was a way for the publisher to increase bis profit. Not said the publisher.

It's just not always possible to get the paper one wants. The incident raised questions again about the right ratio of cost-of-paper to value-of-book. IT HAS been estimated that 20 to 30 per cent of the pens, staplers, paper and tape that is used in Australian offices ends up at home as shopping lists, thank-you notes Right: A cut-away section showing the subterranean nest of the spotted pardalote, from Foliage Birds (Reed, $35), a beautiful survey! of 50 common Australian birds by the Sydney architect George Martin Adams. in another direction and call this one that I'm supposed to be telling you about a bouquet of birds. Right Let's get on with it The poems span 10 centuries if you count the first few anonymous ones, and six if you don't The onymous poets range from William Langland, who wrote Piers Ploughman, to J.

C. Squire, who wrote The Birds. In between there are 83 others, and only one of them is a woman. Shame! And the birds? Well, they're all there, the old friends. Shakespeare's cuckoo mocks married men, perhaps pointlessly now.

Shelley's skylark ascends and sings, closely followed by Meredith's. Keats's nightingale still soothes the poet's fretful soul, and Tennyson's eagle I must quote that lovely Fragment because it's a favourite and Tennyson was a first friend of-my childhood: THIS is an English anthology of poems about birds, from Anglo-Saxon to Victorian times. When I wrote that sentence I stumbled over the word "anthology," seeing it in a way I hadn't seen it before. Suddenly it seemed to have more to do with nature than with art Wasn't anthos the Creek word for flower? So what have flowers to do with poetry? Generally speaking ing, except in a flowery, bowery, Victorian sort of way, as in A Garland of Verse, A Posy of Poems, and so on. Surprisingly enough, it was exactly this sort of thing the Greeks had in mind when they used the word anthology for a collection of short poems.

Literally it meant just that a bouquet of flowers. Perhaps we might stretch a point PINK PIGS are prizes awarded by women who work in British publishing to recognise the contributions of sexists to the industry. A reference book that omits women achievers is as likely to win as a strictly titillating title; this year even Norman Mailer's "autobiography" of Marilyn Monroe, Of Women and Their Elegance (Hod-der and Stoughton) was on the short list Sexist reviewers and sexist book-jacket designers get prizes in categories of their own. The jury also awards a positive prize, the Pandora awards, and here two Australians figured: Stephanie Dowrick, a Sydney woman who set up the successful Women's Press in England, won the main award, and Sue Donovan, managing director of Lloyd O'Neil, and the first woman to be elected to the Australian Book Publishers Association executive, won congratulations. THE CONTEMPORARY Australian short story is the excuse for a special issue of Australian Literary Studies (vol 10, no 2, from University of Queensland, Box 88, St Lucia 4067).

It was given a grant from the Literature Board to carry out a survey of 40 story writers, and here turns out 27 "statements', though some are statements declining to answer the questions and some are excerpts' from other sources. An interesting conclusion might be. drawn from the fourth question where the writers, asked if they consider that economic con- DARWIN THE ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. 'BEAGLE The first ever full-colour facsimile in a limited world edition of 750 copies includes 50 bird plates by the renowned John Gould. A deluxe 3 volume presentation of unique factual, artistic and collectable value.

SHRINK AUST LIT 39 For this and other fine and Edwardian ink-wells? All three, I think. And to students of social change the book may have value as a history of attitudes towards nature. Peggy Munsterberg, editor of the anthology, ends a fascinating introductory essay with the words: All these nets cut all these webs of shining words, all these insights, these visions, these fantasies, these truths! Yet the real bird, the bird in its totality, escapes every net What these poems, really record is man's changing view of his world, and in this sense the subject is man himself. Yes. And when ail's said and done the only true bird poetry is made by birds.

Which doesn't alter the fact that this is a book of delights and discoveries. For Peggy introduction, no less than for the- poems themselves, I recommend it to bird-lovers, word-lovers and plovers. rare works visic- BOOKS He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands. Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled- sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Familiar poems, all of those. Evocative not only of the writer's vision but also of their first discovery! and exploration by the reader. A pattern of love is laid on them then that becomes a major part of their delight Other poems in this book are less familiar. As a change from the serious stuff I like this snippet trust Anon to come up with a bit of light relief: Little Robin Redbreast Sitting on a pole, Niddle noddle went his head. And poop went his hole.

It's rather close to home, that one I've been rearing a baby bird in my house for several weeks, and have the same problem. Even after 200 years I think the European birds in this book still live for us, through traditional ties. But it's time our own birds got some attention. What about cuckoos? Up there, they've only got one and it sounds pretty monotonous. We've a half dozen or so in Australia, all different, all worthy of celebration.

And oh! for a poem to do justice to that peer among singers, the pied or black-throated butcherbird. Preferably without mentioning its name. But to get back to the book. I went through it and made a bird count The nightingale wins of course, wings down, with 23 major and 22 minor references. Cuckoos come second with 23 references, mostly unflattering.

Skylark and dove run next, about equal. Wren, sparrow, owl and eagle trail the field. Robins are well covered but mostly in short folk rhymes, and various other species get a mention or two only. I can't make up my mind who this bouquet was gathered for. Bird-watchers? Poetry lovers? People who collect classes of things like thematic postage-stamps or 66 Walker St, Nth.

Sydney. 929 5497 Good books for everyone on your list, from children to grandfather. abbea PENGUIN BOOKSHOP King Street, Sydney. 2000 (Between George and York Streets) Phone 290 322S H0WELU IN VOGUE Six Deuset of Fuhion S36.00 PELICAN COMPLETE SHAKESPEARE SJ6JS Densey Clyne is a naturalist, author and film-maker. She Witts Wildlife in the Suburbs each week in The Good Weekend.

(very title available from O.U.P. and CU P. Oxford Cambridge Bookshop SS King StrMt, Sydney, 1000 (Inside building next to Penguin Bookshop) 'OMMO! siderations have had any influence on their work, almost unanimously said (Morris Lurie gave a qualified If that's so, maybe all the money that flows from the Literature Board should be distributed solely to ensure that enough good literature is available to readers, not to try to change the CAOOGAN: -THE MOON OUR SISTER PLANET SaJtl SCHORSKE: FIN OE-SIECU SIMS; FOROI: "VICTORIAM SPUNOOUR tJUS: SUTHERLAND: -VENOMOUS CREATURE OF AUST. SS (FaM Cud with mue on fin A) This book inside my trousers? Just browsing publishing industry for the miters' benefit THREE Australian authors have received unusually wide coverage in British and American newspapers in the past few months. Reviewers of Patrick White's Flaws FOR QUICK SALE Small and growing New and Second Hand Bookselling Business.

Inner-west. lease of residence included. Tel. 8183065. TIRRA LIRRA BY THE RIVER By Jessica Anderson Nora dreamed down by the river knights in armour life would give her.

Instead she got a husband brutish (her friends were arty andor fruitish). Her spouse, not recognising beauty, swapped her for a common cutie. She set her sights on London town but on the way she was let down. Her life was full although austere (her friends were thin and bright and queer). Getting old and past the tango her thoughts turned to the scone and mango.

She came back to the Sunshine State (her friends were tanned and out-of-date). There she waits without a shiver for Tirra Lirra by the River. AUDREY LONGBOTTOM in the Glass were inclined to see White's problems "he is uneasy in his. own country" as endemic in Australia. The London Times thought some of White's uneasiness comes from the fact that he is "an aristocrat in Australia." Colleen McCullough's name is I ALWAYS knew that shoplifters took particular delight in the secluded nooks and crannies of my shop.

It was the price that I had to pay for, having a place where people could browse in comfort: I often had to tell myself and my staff to ignore it, or we'd all soon become paranoid wrecks. We knew enough booksellers to realise the truth of that Even if I were to rebuild the place like the brightly lit city-centre supermarket bookstores, and to install television cameras to monitor every corner, shoplifters would still know how to get away with any titleaf their choice. Year after year, my accountant tried to tell me that I was losing consistently misspelled as McCul- LOOKING FOR AH UNUSUAL XMAS SIFT? Books To Suit All Tastes And Pockets From Sydney Heralds, 1871. $8, to Governor Phillip's Journal! THE ANTIQUE BOOKSHOP 38b MlUtary Rd. Cramome.

SOSJ47S-J Days loch in the London Times. "Author interviews" with McCullough gen erally stress her resourcefulness and Australian loyalties how the first $50,000 she earned from writing went to pay off her father's debts here after he died. Moving as fast as she did in her promotional tour for An Indecent Obsession, she seemed tireless no jetlag, she said, "because I'm' an Australian" and the stamina comes with learn ing to cope with great distances. Peter Carey's Bliss, however, is the book getting the most remark SAILS JAPANESE BOOK SHOP ARTS ft CBAFTS CENTRK "MUSASHF by EijiYoshikawa Best seller in America this year Also: "A BOOK OP FIVE RINGS" by Musashi A guide to Strategy Both copies available from our Shop Open 6 days 141 George St, Sydney. 2000, Tel.

27 ml able reviews. Frank Kermode in the London Review of Books worries whether Carey's talent can survive the experience of fame. He says Carey's world is one of "frangi-panics, blue bushes, casuarinas and honey-eaters, drinking veuve Cli- should not, one surmised, have been making a profit anyway). One young lady, a regular customer whom I had always suspected of removing books from the shop, asked nervously what the machine was. "Radar? That gives me bad vibes, man." We have not seen her since.

And finally the Tattle Tape was switched on. A mere hour later the alarm sounded for the first time. It was a customer who came in often after work to browse. Horrified, he dropped his briefcase and ran. We retrieved' $155 worth of our books, and gained a briefcase.

From then on, we regularly met the people who had been robbing us for years. 'A "friend who had come in each week to discuss poetry, or books in general, or the problems of the world and bought a small paperback had a $60 book tucked away in his bag. And we met the professionals. When we stopped them inside the shop, they would say by rote: "You can't sue me I'm still on the premises." If stopped outside in the street, they would immediately hand over the exact money, ready counted "Two copies of A Timeless Grandeur, $35 each: $70" and walk on. We met the burly jogger in his track suit we never found out which book he'd taken.

When challenged, he replied: "I don't think I've got anything on me." To attempt a body-search might not, we thought, have been totally safe, so we invited him to return into the shop to think about it He accepted, and minute later, as be left, he smiled and said: "I think you'll find this is better." The alarm remained silent Occasionally someone in ignorance still tries to walk out with a book for which they have not paid like the young lady who took a $5 book of poetry. Didn't she have anything else on her? Visibly mortified, as tears filled her eyes, she replied "No only my dole book." It's good, loyal piece of machinery, the Tattle Tip. Rut 'perhaps they should have pro. 'gummed ll to turn blind eye -juM now end then ind keep )uil. The Kii li diatribuiiil lit Auatrslis by Rank Murium 'I till ftp aliHfibwUej sis' M.

quot and Mouton Rothschild." The about 8 per cent of my sales in shoplifting but that was a truly inconceivable figure. It was clear to me that he'd got his additions wrong. Eight per cent! That would have meant people walking out with suitcases packed with books almost every day. Shoplifters, yes; but not a procession of invisible re-movalists. Then Christmas would arrive yet another record year for sales, and still somehow the creditors queued at my door demanding settlement of overdue' accounts; again, all that hard work had yielded virtually no profit At last, at the American Booksellers Association Fair in Atlanta this year among an unusually dull collection of stalls I found two exhibitors selling anti-shoplifting devices: machines that would bleep whenever someone walked out of the door with a book they hadn't bought The small brochures about Knogo (with a silent K), and Tattle Tape had more to offer me than the tens of of books display ed on other stands.

And the Knogo book presented figures. They had researched several bookstores before and after the installation of their machines, and. there it was: in every case, shoplifters had been removing between 4.9 per cent of their stock. It was clear that my 8 per cent was a true figure my accountant had got it right Back in Australia while I contemplated whether to buy this vastly expensive piece of modern technology, I watched the stream of people walking out of my shop and tried to guess which ones were taking with them the day's profit. One morning, three books priced at more than $100 "went missing." I phoned Tattle Tape at once and placed the order.

It is interesting to talk to people the average man in the bookshop about shoplifting. Most are surprised that we were losing so much, yet Ihs extent of their honesty bat surprisingly varied limit. One wtll-drMd builnetsmsn Mil ui "I'd nevir sul book n'l undsrtUnd ppa doing It, Of touoe, I inks fruit Imm the viiMt ihun, hul Hul ilillimil, li iiiinit maul IW'I)II Ialsi4 I lH JuaUlUe IM Usl'it; limit "NiH imm kwr i(i, i iMt' ftliuii liny HM mmU I'lHid tt4 M'iiM lM4tlltr Times says be is "another impor tant novelist from Australia," and the reviewer in the Literary Review admits BOOK STOCK LIQUIDATION A huge Christmas sale of Publishers liquidated stock and smoke damaged stock from our recent fire, will be on offer from prices as low as 20c from the basement of VIKING BOOKS WAREHOUSE at 2933 PtTTWATER ROAD, MANLY and our new Bargain Bookshops 862A PITTWATER ROAD, DEE WHY (Old Bookstream Shop) AND 495A VICTORIA AVENUE, CHATSW00D (Old Booktraders Shop). Enormous range of children's and adult books, fiction and non fiction, picture books and reference. INCLUDES: ART BOOKS COOK BOOKS NOVELS ECOLOGY AIRCRAFT WAR.

GUNS CARS AUSTRALIAN A GARDENING and heaps more. Hours at all sites are 9.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. 7 days and Tuesday and Wednesday nights till 9.00 p.m. SALE ON NO TILL STOCKS SOLD! Carey can write.

He is funny, humane, and at times profound. He makes you believe that eating tinned beans makes you blind, but then some grown-up people believe that controlling the money supply cures inflation. It taxes all sorts. GREAT CHRISTMAS SPECIALS Abbess Bookshop USTINOV: "DEAR ME KORDA: 'CHARMED LIVES S17.96atS4.SS PRICE: HOYALTOUR OF 1901 S3S.00atSS.SS HALUDAV: -STAINED GLASS SM 00 at SlS.tt HEMINGWAY: "MEN AT WAR S2S.00 at St.SS McCALLUM: -LIFE WITH GOOGIE SI7.MatSSJS NEWHALL 'MASTERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY' SJOOOetSU.SS S2tJSatSe.eS SEVERIN: "THE SRENDAN VOYAGE" S21 .96 at SS.SS Ope every aleMtll WIS p.m. WI0NII0AV and Ml I am SATURDAY ed SUNDAY The other piece of best-selling Australian fiction overseas is Nevil Shute's A Town like Alice.

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