The Red-Nosed Man Discourseth!

Why Write A Book About Angus & Robertson? When I began my...

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 12:51:00 +0800

Why Write A Book About Angus & Robertson?

When I began my research in 2006, the Angus & Robertson (A&R) bookstore chain was in every Australian city and eBooks were a failed experiment by the makers of Palm Pilots. By the time I finished in 2010, this situation had reversed: the famous book chain had collapsed and publishers were mired in a terminal struggle to survive against rapidly expanding international digital media platforms. In an industry that was traditionally long-term, the relentless budget pressure produced by the availability of cheap overseas eBooks through Amazon and Apple shifted priorities towards “big books”; that is, short-term publishing with a focus on immediate sales. Generating a sense of crisis, the book trade was perceived to be dealing with rapid innovation followed by rapid closure and restructure.

As an historian and cultural studies researcher, this was also a key moment for a subject I had lived with for nearly four years. With the Australian book trade in a constant state of adaption and A&R fading from the public consciousness, I found myself anticipating challenging questions like why should A&R deserve any examination at all? It’s just a failing bookseller, right? And yet the business name still resonates with us, making headlines with every change in ownership, even if we are nowadays a little unsure of its significance.

One possible answer is that landmark publications like The Man from Snowy River, The Magic Pudding and The Australian Encyclopaedia helped consolidate A&R’s reputation as one of Australia’s most culturally significant publishers of Australian writing. During the 20th century, A&R also became one of the largest copyright holders in Australian literature. In previous unpublished research, Caroline Vera Jones has unpacked the substantial “influence which early A&R books have had on an Australian history of ideas and even on the writing of Australian history itself”. Jennifer Alison has also examined the company’s first 12 years (late 19th century) as “A&R holds a premier position in the history of the Australian book trade” and “the story of Australian publishing cannot be told without the story of A&R”. Neil James has also studied the firm’s early domestic business and concluded that A&R’s publications helped Australian “culture to shape a sense of self. It cemented the national-historical archetypes of the bush and the Australian landscape, of social democracy and the fair-go, of the grand narratives of Australian history, of distinctive Australian values and identity”. And in Richard Nile’s account, an analysis of A&R’s business is an analysis of the production and distribution of a certain view of Australian culture.

It is not unreasonable to argue, therefore, that much of what is conventionally imagined to be the character of Australian identity is linked to the many texts that A&R once elected to publish in book form. Granted, the modern field of publishing is now enormously crowded but the Australian publishing industry today is rooted in a long historical process, stretching back to the 19th century, of which A&R was a key player. A&R may have lost its national influence after 1970 when it was taken over by an insurance and securities company and its position has since been supplanted by several independent and trade presses. But the importance of examining A&R in historical detail remains connected with the need to understand ourselves and why we might think of certain ideas or ideals as being uniquely Australian.

Another answer is that the focus of my research is on trade publishing; that is, both fiction and non-fiction intended for general readers and for sale through bookstores and retail outlets. It’s thus not just about Australian literature but, importantly, it’s also about Australian non-fiction and the deals that were made to give both genres a reasonable chance in international markets. The reason for this is that these two genres are interrelated and the factors that shape and organize the publishing of fiction are intimately connected with those affecting non-fiction. As George Ferguson (veteran publisher of A&R) once commented, the publication of Australian poetry was often paid for by trade books like Commonsense Cookery.

It is hoped therefore, through investigating the cultural and commercial links between books produced at home in Australia and books produced overseas –- as evidenced by the experiences of A&R –- that Angus & Robertson and the British Trade in Australian Books, 1930–1970: The Getting of Bookselling Wisdom offers an historical primer to the contemporary transformations underway within the Australian book trade. More significantly, I hope this book contributes to a recuperation of A&R’s place in Australian cultural history as one of the nation’s earliest publishers to promote the work of Australian authors in an international context.

Angus & Robertson and the British Trade in Australian Books, 1930–1970: The Getting of Bookselling Wisdom is available from Anthem Press.

Kinky Edits It wasn’t that long ago that publishing a book...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:40:21 +0800

Kinky Edits

It wasn’t that long ago that publishing a book like Fifty Shades of Grey would have landed an Australian publisher in jail due to prevailing obscenity laws and moral panics regarding the content of what people privately read in their own homes. A few years ago, while digitising publisher’s letters in the State Library of New South Wales, I came across this note (the above image) which remains to date one of my favourite finds from the archives. Typed by Denis Cohen in 1950, the letter was a set of suggested amendments for Australian publisher Angus & Robertson to follow if they were to purchase the rights to the rather bawdy novel A Rage to Live by American author John O’Hara and if they were to publish O’Hara’s novel in Australia.

A colleague in the international book trade, along with this note Cohen also sent a copy of the American edition of A Rage to Live to Hector MacQuarrie who at that time was managing director of Angus & Robertson’s London office in the United Kingdom. Sufficiently distant from Australia’s obscenity laws, MacQuarrie could read the book on behalf of Angus & Robertson without threat of prosecution and he eventually advised the home office back in Sydney that: “Without going the slightest bit Presbyterian, my impression, after reading the book, is that it is so utterly bawdy that to amend it suitably, or safely, for your market would be utterly to destroy it. It is, of course, well written; but its whole essence is what might be called bedroom life lived, largely, outside bedrooms. It is quite foul”. Deciding that Cohen’s edits would not be enough, the directors of Angus & Robertson were certain they would go to gaol for six months if the company published A Rage to Live in Australia and so they politely declined the rights.

Such comments and concerns seem quaint by today’s standards but they are indicative of a period in Australian publishing during which the book trade had to navigate values and laws quite at odds with what we think is possible and permissible today. Fifty Shades of Grey, as a book that would have been impossible for Angus & Robertson to publish in Australia during the time of Cohen’s note, has refuelled a long-standing debate pre-dating this era over the question of whether some literature is art or porn. After all, a review of history reminds us that what is considered porn in the previous age can often later be considered culturally valuable in the next age. Any stroll through an art gallery or a look at the list of books once banned in Australia but now freely available will lend evidence to this argument. So, while I’m not in any way suggesting (nor would I) that Fifty Shades of Grey is remotely literary or artistic, the debate it has re-ignited is one worth revisiting since struggles over what messages are free to circulate in society, and challenges over what is literary and what is profane, touch upon issues sensitive to the kind of culture we want to have and encourage in the here and now.

That said, with respect to Fifty Shades of Grey and the desperate stacks of multiple copies that I see fronting most bookstores in Perth, I think there is another important point to be made and it is one best emphasised by acclaimed Australian author Stella Miles Franklin, who in 1946 petitioned on a radio talk that we should all try at least a dozen Australian novels: “You’ll find them better than dozens of others from overseas — piffling stuff by piffling writers whose names I’ve never heard, and which I forget as soon as I’ve glanced through their efforts”. To repurpose the words of Franklin, forget Fifty Shades of Grey: if we want to “take our minds off the washing-up and potato peeling” then “keep on asking for Australian books”!

Sources: Hector MacQuarrie to George Ferguson, Angus & Robertson, 10 January 1950, ML MSS 3269/440; Miles Franklin, 25 January 1946, ML MSS 3269/76.

Why the Red-Nosed Man? For many years I’ve tried to hide...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:32:00 +0800

Why the Red-Nosed Man?

For many years I’ve tried to hide the fact that I have a very red nose. It wasn’t always like this but in March 2006 I was diagnosed with Rosacea, a somewhat harmless cosmetic condition which, among other things, gradually results in a red lobulated nose. Mistakenly attributed to alcoholism by mainstream society (I think Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers popularised this view along with the help of famous actor-drunks like W.C. Fields), it can have a strong psychological impact on one’s appearance because the nose is, well, such an obvious thing. What’s more, people notice and often feel the need to make it known: from concerned inquiries like “What’s wrong with your face?” to (ahem) compliments at book launches like “Wow, your nose is not so red today”. (When you read in a novel that a character’s smile didn’t reach their eyes, you have an idea of my usual response in those situations: a polite WTF.)

So, naturally, I have tried various treatments which have ranged from antibiotics to scrubs, and from dermatological creams to green paint-like ointments. The latter kind do a good job colour-matching (and therefore toning down) the redness which is usually very effective in normalising my face — but, if you have any dry skin, then it looks like you’ve sneezed on yourself or didn’t clean up an especially extravagant nose pick. Thus, sometimes these treatments work, other times they don’t — often because I might be having a extra-special peak period of redness. It can be a shot in the dark as to when you might have a clear face. Indeed, the experience of rosacea can often be cyclical due to the many triggers that set off what I call a “rosacea blowout” (or an attack of lumpy redness). These triggers include: sex, coffee, alcohol, heated food, heated drinks, spicy food, hot water, sun exposure, summer, stress, exercise, humidity, sickness, wind (as in weather), citrus fruits, and bread. So if I eat like a rabbit, live in a cave and abstain from sex then I should be fine. Yay me.

Hence, it’s time to own the redness. And so what was once called my “Digital Culture” blog has now become the blog of the “Red-Nosed Man Discourseth”. Admittedly, judging by Charles Dickens’ derisive reference in Pickwick Papers to a pastor with a red nose as an outward sign of hypocrisy, I’m certainly not the first to be ruddy during a rhetorical flight nor will I be the first to have their views dismissed, whether by reasons of appearance, ignorant notions of what causes a red-nose or (more likely) because my views are just plain rubbish. Whatever the case, I plan to be a bit more nuanced and self-reflective than Dickens’ fictional character Stiggens!

Image Credit: Hablot Knight Browne, ‘The red-nosed man discourseth’, Illustration (lithograph) from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, 1837.

Jason Ensor, “Angus & Robertson and the Case of the...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:19:18 +0800

Jason Ensor, “Angus & Robertson and the Case of the ‘Bombshell Salesman’”, Script & Print 35.2, Burwood, Victoria: Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (2011): 69-79.

Will Smithwick, Kevin Reid and Rana Ensor, Black Water Prawning:...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:05:00 +0800

Will Smithwick, Kevin Reid and Rana Ensor, Black Water Prawning: Drag Netting in the Swan River, Volume 1, Writing Life Australia, general ed. Jason Ensor, Perth: Arts Naked Publications (2011). To order, please visit the website.

"In a technocracy, tools play a central role in the thought-world of the culture. Everything must..."

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:57:00 +0800

“In a technocracy, tools play a central role in the thought-world of the culture. Everything must give way, in some degree, to their development. The social and symbolic worlds become increasingly subject to the requirements of that development. Tools are not integrated into the culture; they attack the culture. They bid to become the culture.”

- Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Vintage (2011): kindle loc 433.

"The decisions we make, the directions we choose, the futures we extinguish and those we enable, all..."

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:15:00 +0800

“The decisions we make, the directions we choose, the futures we extinguish and those we enable, all frame and condition the lives of our descendants.”

- Richard Slaughter, Futures for the Third Millennium: Enabling the Forward View, St Leonards, New South Wales: Prospect (1999): 5.

Climate Change in Everyday Language Launched in August last...

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:44:00 +0800

Climate Change in Everyday Language

Launched in August last year, The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers is a collaborative report authored by seventeen Australian scientists with internationally recognised expertise and genuine credentials in the field of climate science. Just twenty-four pages long, the report provides perhaps the clearest explanation presently available of the current global warming situation even as it takes into account the complexities and uncertainties of the science plus the lack of consensus within scientific communities.

Yet, in approaching their subject matter by using plain everyday language familiar to non-specialist readers, the authors of The Science of Climate Change clarify current understandings of the research into climate and weather systems and in so doing address the confusion created by contradictory information circulating in the public domain. The result is a concise (if rather terrifying) document which examines the fate of the world in simple, unsentimental, even devastating, terms. Should global warming continue on its current trajectory, the report’s findings are unambiguous and consequently a powerful call for immediate action. As an example, to quote a key statement:

Although climate varies from year to year and decade to decade, the overall upward trend of average global temperature over the last century is clear. Climate models, together with physical principles and knowledge of past variations, tell us that, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are stabilised, global warming will continue.

Climate models estimate that, by 2100, the average global temperature will be between 2°C and 7°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions and on the ways that models represent the sensitivity of climate to small disturbances. Models also estimate that this climate change will continue well after 2100.

A 2°C global warming would lead to a significantly different world from the one we now inhabit. Likely consequences would include more heat waves, fewer cold spells, changes to rainfall patterns and a higher global average rainfall, higher plant productivity in some places but decreases in others, disturbances to marine and terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity, disruption to food production in some regions, rising sea levels, and decreases in Arctic ice cover. While aspects of these changes may be beneficial in some regions, the overall impacts are likely to be negative under the present structure of global society.

A warming of 7°C would greatly transform the world from the one we now inhabit, with all of the above impacts being very much larger. Such a large and rapid change in climate would likely be beyond the adaptive capacity of many societies and species.

Bereft of the hyperbole, sensationalism, position taking and political colouring that is common to contemporary discussions of the subject, The Science of Climate Change is a critically important evidence-based report and essential reading. It can be freely downloaded from the Australian Academy of Science website as a PDF or read online through any flash-enabled browser.

Australian Literature Jason Ensor, “Reprints,...

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:36:00 +0800

Australian Literature

Jason Ensor, “Reprints, International Markets and Local Literary Taste: New Empiricism and Australian Literature” in Gillian Whitlock and Victoria Kuttainen (eds), JASAL Special Issue: The Colonial Present, Canberra: Association for the Study of Australian Literature (2008): 198-218. Available for free as a downloadable PDF.

New Empiricism Jason Ensor, “Still Waters Run Deep:...

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:07:00 +0800

New Empiricism

Jason Ensor, “Still Waters Run Deep: Empirical Methods and the Migration Patterns of Regional Publishers’ Authors and Titles within Australian Literature”, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature, Brooklyn, New York: American Association of Australian Literary Studies (2010): 197-208.

Angus & Robertson Jason Ensor, “‘A Policy of...

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:55:00 +0800

Angus & Robertson

Jason Ensor, “‘A Policy of Splendid Isolation’: Angus and Robertson, George G. Harrap and the Politics of Co-operation in the Australian Book Trade During the Late 1930s”, Script & Print 34.1, Burwood, Victoria: Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (2010): 34-42.

"We are social beings who seek communication with others. We are lonely beings as well. Despite our..."

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:05:06 +0800

“We are social beings who seek communication with others. We are lonely beings as well. Despite our fear of having our essential humanity reduced through comparison with a machine, we begin to relate to the computer whenever it appears to offer some company. When this happens, philosophical concerns are often swept aside.”

- Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen, Great Britain: Orion House (1996): 102.

Editorial The year 2006, which marked the tenth anniversary of...

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:50:39 +0800

Editorial

The year 2006, which marked the tenth anniversary of John Howard’s Coalition Government, was peculiarly bracketed by two interrelated sets of events (and corresponding media flurries) both problematising the symbolism of the national flag: the Cronulla riots of December 2005, and the nation-wide debate in the media over the ‘banning’ of the Australian flag at the hugely popular travelling music festival Big Day Out … Read more [PDF].

Other Contact Zones In the construction and acknowledgment of...

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:08:00 +0800

Other Contact Zones

In the construction and acknowledgment of responsibility towards the Other, this edition of New Talents challenges the contradiction of a lucky country sustained by processes of forgetting and, more critically, the processes of silencing. Beginning with Levinasian ethics applied to a scenario where the immediate physical presence of another human asks us to account for our enjoyment of life, Other Contact Zones explores mechanisms of responsibility and avoidance, including: the politics of gender representation, signs of sexual deviance written on the convict body, the invention of the white woman as an object of fantasy in captivity narratives of early colonial Australia, the creation of multicultural senses of belonging, and the complexities of identity construction in the face of mechanisms of silence and misrecognition. If you would like a free copy of this scholarly work, please contact me using one of the links to the left under “Find Me On”. Jason Ensor, Iva Polak and Peter Van Der Merwe (eds), Other Contact Zones, Perth: Network Books (Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology), 2007, 269pp.

Australian Sport and Diet Crikey has posted an article on the...

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:09:00 +0800

Australian Sport and Diet

Crikey has posted an article on the current round of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) commercials which promote a relationship between its processed food products and Australian cricket. I agree with most of Paul Barry’s essay although I suspect it assumes that people are little inclined to distinguish between nutritional and unhealthy eating practices; that is, the essay accords perhaps too much power to the multi-million dollar advertising campaign being conducted by KFC and Cricket Australia, a campaign that is targeted at changing people’s inclination to choose other options.

That aside, the linking of fast-food with sport is a cause for concern in that it naturalises an association of eating unhealthy processed foods with something that is ironically representative of the best in human physical achievement. That Cricket Australia has selected KFC as a suitable major sponsor suggests something of what Cricket Australia currently thinks is a close fit with its own core values and competencies (or at least those it expects of its audience!). I would argue however that this link between food and sport has a deeper cultural history in Australian society given we also conventionally (and more easily) link alcohol with sport. If you can answer how a specific class of beverage (which adversely affects motor skills, physical performance and mental acuity) has become idealised as the drink of choice for consumption during sporting events (which as a rule celebrate the athleticism of superior motor skills, physical training and mental focus — that is, the opposite of the effects of alcohol), then we might be closer to understanding the broader contradictory relationship between sport and diet in Australia.

As an argument of social responsibility, it is perhaps then less a question of replacing one brand with another more appropriate brand (since such a question locates the problem in terms of a contest between different tastes only) than asking, in light of obesity concerns, why unhealthy dietary practices have been historically linked with sport in Australia. After all, during the next sporting event of interest in Australia, you might not reach for a KFC drumstick but it’s highly probable you will reach for a beer or three.

Digital Humanities Jason Ensor, “Is a Picture Worth 10,175...

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:26:00 +0800

Digital Humanities

Jason Ensor, “Is a Picture Worth 10,175 Australian Novels?”, in Katherine Bode and Robert Dixon (eds), Resourceful Reading: The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary Culture, Sydney: Sydney University Press (2010), pp 240-273.

No Ticket, Stratco Outback! Anyone who, like myself, has been a...

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:30:07 +0800

No Ticket, Stratco Outback!

Anyone who, like myself, has been a fan of John Williams’ movie soundtracks ever since Star Wars was first released on LP in 1979/1980 will probably raise their eyebrows at the bold plagiarism which is to be found in the latest TV advertisement from the Australian firm Stratco Outback. Touted on YouTube as featuring “the famous sulpher crested cockatoo and a brand new Stratco Outback Gable”, the makers of this commercial forgot to mention its liberal copying of the cue “No Ticket” from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Judge for yourself: the advertisement is embedded above and a sample of the original cue composed by John Williams in 1989 can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZTTlqdTAc0.

On my book shelf … Although nicely presented as a grid of...

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:44:00 +0800

On my book shelf …

Although nicely presented as a grid of covers, the Kindle layout of eBooks doesn’t quite have the same appeal as a messy, overflowing bookcase. This might be because there is some status attached to bookcases and, more generally, to the display of books. So-called “coffee-table books” are perhaps the most obvious major printed product whose primary purpose is to signify status; that is, books whose selection from commercial offerings and prominent display in our lounge rooms supposedly manifests our wisdom and good taste for others to see and guage. I wonder then how the current turn to eBooks and eReaders will change this. How long before eBook platforms open up your digital library for public viewing, within which you can order, re-order, hide and display those books you want the world to know you own, read or admire?

Print Culture Studies Richard Nile and Jason Ensor, “The...

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:09:00 +0800

Print Culture Studies

Richard Nile and Jason Ensor, “The novel, the implicated reader and Australian literary cultures, 1950-2008” in Peter Pierce (ed.), The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press (2009), pp 517-548.

"The production and consumption of culture has become imbued with commercial values and marketing..."

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:00:00 +0800

“The production and consumption of culture has become imbued with commercial values and marketing messages. Brands have become the most powerful means of forming and spreading culture.”

- Clive Hamilton