Cirrus@Austlit

'This piece of writing might well be called 'Return of Meanjin'' or Meanjin strikes back'. Exactly fifty years have passed since I first struggled to compose something fit for Meanjin, and here 1 am. going at the task again and finding it hardly less trouble. Moreover. nearly twenty years have passed since I decided not to renew my subscription to Meanjin. I had taken early retirement from my position as a teacher of fiction writing in a university. During my sixteen years as a teacher, I had subscribed to Meanjin and every other Australian magazine publishing fiction. I needed to advise the best of my students where they might send the best of their writing. Sometimes my advice proved sound—not a few of my students achieved what I had never achieved and had an unsolicited contribution published in Meanjin. In the early 1990s, however, I not only gave up teaching fiction—I gave up writing and reading the stuff for the time being and followed other interests. Three years ago, I even left Melbourne. where I had lived continuously for sixty years. Of course, I had not forgotten Meanjin but here, in a stone cottage near Little Desert, and with no computer or mobile phone, I would have supposed that Meanjin had forgotten me. Not at all. Near me on the floor is a pile of back copies sent to me yesterday by the editor after I had been persuaded to do this piece of writing. I spent most of today looking  through them, surprised at how interested I was after all these years and pondering the question, why has Meanjin flourished for so long? (Introduction)
 

'The Australian Broadcasting Commission has a Sunday programme, designed to cajole a mild Sabbatarian bestirment of the wits, called `Incognito'. Paired musical performances are broadcast, one by an Australian, one by an overseas executant, but with the names and nationalities withheld until the end of the programme. The listener is supposed to guess which is the Australian and which the alien performer. The idea is that quite often he guesses wrong or gives it up because, strange to say, the local lad proves to be no worse than the foreigner. This unexpected discovery is intended to inspire a nice glow of patriotic satisfaction. ' (Introduction)
 

'The criticism of Australian universities for their neglect of Australian literature is discussed. Canberra University College is unique because it is the first university in Australia to conduct a full course in Australian literature.' (Publication abstract)

'It was that very astute and remarkable journalist, C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian, who said 'a newspaper has a moral as well as a material existence, and its character and influence are in the main determinated by the balance of these two forces'. This could be said of all individuals, all institutions, all businesses, all industries, all professions in a free society, but it applies with particular emphasis to some individuals (journalists are an example) and to some institutions (the press, radio, and television). Scott found the balance struck between the moral and the material existence of newspapers particularly significant because the newspaper 'plays on the minds and consciences of men'. So, too, do the other mass media of communication.' (Introduction)

'So that the next morning  Maitland was firmly persona grata again. He was glad. To live in that grey elephant of a house on any other terms would have been a test of sanity he did not wish to undergo. Yet his success had its blemishes, as when Costello bombarded him with applause. Nolan, having carried so funereal a face on the question, kept clear. It was not until two mornings later, himself and Maitland passing in the corridor behind the high altar, both vested for Mass and bearing chalices, that Nolan smiled with an aged wistfulness and whispered, 'So you talked His Grace round to your view of things.''  (Introduction)

'The third part of this eleven-part series of articles. The change in the calibre of Australian students as compared to earlier times is discussed. Among successive generations of students, temperament is variable, whereas their average intellectual calibre is almost the same.'  (Publication abstract)

'The continuing series of articles on the 'Temperament of Generations'. The paternalistic view of society as people being passive recipients of goods and government is discussed. Modern radicals feel transformation of society in a socialist and democratic direction to be essential.'  (Publication abstract)