The pond woke to news of the latest hearing into the mango Mussolini, and the mob chanting for Mike Pence's hanging, with a bonus serve of supine lapdog Serge Lavrov spinning the usual bullshit lies to the BBC - why they gave him the airtime and the space must remain a two siderist mystery - but when the pond checked out the lizard Oz, it might just as well have been a fever dream, because the reptiles were back on the climate wars ... and nary a hint of the mango Mussolini or his tribulations and trials disturbed the tree killer edition ...
It was the same in the digital edition, with the climate wars top of the page ma ...
The pond was shattered not to be on that list. After all, in her day, Dorothy Parker took a view on matters Russian: “Sometimes I think I'll give up trying, and just go completely Russian and sit on a stove and moan all day.”
At least it wasn't a vodka joke, but it does introduce a literary theme this day, because reality was too grim for our Henry, so he wandered off down literature lane ...
Strange that the obvious point about Ulysses is ignored by the hole in the bucket man ...though it's old news, what with this turning up in the then Fairfax rags in 2012:
So secretive was Australian literary surveillance that a list of banned books was not made public until 1958. Some novels, such as Lady Chatterley's Lover, were banned for decades while others, including Brave New World, by Lawrence's friend Aldous Huxley, were restricted for just a few years. James Joyce's sexually explicit Ulysses (1922) was not formally banned in Australia until 1929, then released in 1937, only to be restricted again in 1941 after pressure from church groups. Defending this about-turn, the Minister for Customs declared the novel ''holds up to ridicule the Creator and the Church'' and ''cannot be tolerated any longer''.
As for Lawrence, he was shocked to discover a deeply fascist mentality down under, and he would have been appalled had he lasted long enough to see the mango Mussolini and News Corp in lock step ...
Talk about a fascist sex symbol ...
Our Henry might have included some relevant contemporary reference to the brazen coup plotters and their dark overlord, and his quisling, lickspittle fellow travelling Americcan Murdochian kissing cousins, but sadly no ...
If the pond might be so bold, it was actually the rampant fascism on view that caused Lawrence some searing discontent ...
Make of this paper what you will, with its discussion of the American Protective League, unnervingly like the mango Mussolini and the culture wars, as practised down under by the lizard Oz ...
...This is not the place to describe the APL's activities in detail, except to say that it bears a very much closer similarity to Kangaroo's Australian secret army of Diggers and Maggies than does Steele and Ellis's league of comrades, which, when you examine it (especially the part that Steele omitted in his CUP Kangaroo) looks more like a boy scouts troop than a secret army.
The APL, for example, had an elaborate hierarchy of chiefs, captains, lieutenants and "operatives'', similar to that described in Kangaroo. It had levels or cells of secrecy, and a recruiting regime very like that outlined in Kangaroo. It co-operated with local police (bashing unionists, Wobblies, etc), very much like Lawrence describes in the "Row in Town" chapter.
By November 1918 the Web (for that is what the APL came to be called) had spread into every State, city and town in America. It had been responsible for tracking down hundreds of thousands of "slackers'', Wobblies and other supposed dissidents. In Chicago alone it boasted 16,000 members - a veritable private army. Nationwide, its numbers ran to more than 100,000. Its Hollywood branch was ran by Cecil B. DeMille. When the war was over, it remained active, mainly in the cause of fighting Bolshevism. J. Edgar Hoover (the Bureau of Investigation soon became the FBl) employed large numbers of ex-APL men to fight the communist threat in the early 1920s.
The index to Jensen's history of the American Protective League contains one reference to Australia, on p. 234, where she says: "Word of this volunteer army spread beyond the shores of the United States, and at least two other countries, Canada and Australia, sent government representatives to study APL methods, with a view to their possible adoption.''
We know who from Australia went to the APL's headquarters to find out about "the Web''. It was a Melbourne businessman, R.C.D. Elliott, who had been dispatched by Australian Prime Minister Hughes to Chicago to see if the APL might have an answer to a problem that had arisen in wartime Australia.
Like America, the Federal Government in Australia lacked any infrastructure to enforce wartime emergency measures, such as combating disloyalty, sabotage, civil unrest, etc. Constitutionally, such enforcement was in the (inept) hands of the State Governments.
Here the difficulty was that at least one State Government was in socialist hands, and was obdurately refusing to arrest trouble-makers, dissidents, IWW members, and so on. In any case, the Federal authorities felt they could not rely on normal, orthodox measures to prosecute their exigent wartime needs. Something more forceful and dependable seemed called for.
Elliott met the APL leaders in Chicago in November 1917 and brought back to Melbourne a report on their organisation, including details of its scope and effectiveness. His report was sent on to Australia's military and security authorities for their comments, and they apparently added their support to the idea that something similar might be tried in Australia.
Consequently, on May 29, 1918, a meeting was convened in the Melbourne office of the acting Prime Minister to "consider a proposal to form an 'Australian Protective League' on the lines of a war body operating in the United States of America''. (I show a copy of a letter convening this crucial meeting. It happens to be one of the few documentary items we have that shows that the APL model was reproduced in Australia - a rare fragment of light in a story otherwise shrouded in almost Stygian darkness.)
The precise steps that followed in setting up a simulactrum of the APL in Australia are not fully known. The next item - the next point of light - is a note in the archival file of a Melbourne businessman, Herbert Brookes, who seems to have been given, or taken on, the job of organising what indeed came to be called the Australian Protective League (henceforth the APL, Australian version).
In October 1918 Brookes again met with the acting Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence in Melbourne. Apparently at this meeting Brookes put forward a detailed plan for setting up a modified version of the American Protective League across Australia . Brookes's record of the meeting is marked with the crucial words "when this suggested scheme was adopted''.
Brookes's modified APL had certain unusual features, designed to better fit the American model into the Australian political scene. lts most distinctive change was that it was to be divided into two: an "official'' side (linked to the security services), and a connected but separate "voluntary arm''. The objective of the latter, according to the Brookes notes, was "to stimulate a public or semi-public organisation to do some work which might be necessary (my emphasis).''
Further, the voluntary arm was to be organised in a particular way. The overall "organiser'' (Brookes) would "set up the voluntary organisation throughout Australia'' by approaching "the executive heads of the known loyal societies and associations'' and, after swearing them to secrecy, "invite them to form their own State organisation.'' Behind this screen of loyalist bodies a volunteer army of "vigilantes'' - Brookes specifically uses the term - would be assembled.
The end of the war in November 1918, however, led to further refinements in Brookes's APL proposal. In particular, it led to an alteration in focus - away from anti-war dissidence towards post-war civil unrest, particularly the threat of radical socialism and Bolshevism, of strikes and possible revolution. The government's apparent involvement retreated into the background, and the APL took on a more civilian - and even more secretive - nature.
The APL, for example, had an elaborate hierarchy of chiefs, captains, lieutenants and "operatives'', similar to that described in Kangaroo. It had levels or cells of secrecy, and a recruiting regime very like that outlined in Kangaroo. It co-operated with local police (bashing unionists, Wobblies, etc), very much like Lawrence describes in the "Row in Town" chapter.
By November 1918 the Web (for that is what the APL came to be called) had spread into every State, city and town in America. It had been responsible for tracking down hundreds of thousands of "slackers'', Wobblies and other supposed dissidents. In Chicago alone it boasted 16,000 members - a veritable private army. Nationwide, its numbers ran to more than 100,000. Its Hollywood branch was ran by Cecil B. DeMille. When the war was over, it remained active, mainly in the cause of fighting Bolshevism. J. Edgar Hoover (the Bureau of Investigation soon became the FBl) employed large numbers of ex-APL men to fight the communist threat in the early 1920s.
The index to Jensen's history of the American Protective League contains one reference to Australia, on p. 234, where she says: "Word of this volunteer army spread beyond the shores of the United States, and at least two other countries, Canada and Australia, sent government representatives to study APL methods, with a view to their possible adoption.''
We know who from Australia went to the APL's headquarters to find out about "the Web''. It was a Melbourne businessman, R.C.D. Elliott, who had been dispatched by Australian Prime Minister Hughes to Chicago to see if the APL might have an answer to a problem that had arisen in wartime Australia.
Like America, the Federal Government in Australia lacked any infrastructure to enforce wartime emergency measures, such as combating disloyalty, sabotage, civil unrest, etc. Constitutionally, such enforcement was in the (inept) hands of the State Governments.
Here the difficulty was that at least one State Government was in socialist hands, and was obdurately refusing to arrest trouble-makers, dissidents, IWW members, and so on. In any case, the Federal authorities felt they could not rely on normal, orthodox measures to prosecute their exigent wartime needs. Something more forceful and dependable seemed called for.
Elliott met the APL leaders in Chicago in November 1917 and brought back to Melbourne a report on their organisation, including details of its scope and effectiveness. His report was sent on to Australia's military and security authorities for their comments, and they apparently added their support to the idea that something similar might be tried in Australia.
Consequently, on May 29, 1918, a meeting was convened in the Melbourne office of the acting Prime Minister to "consider a proposal to form an 'Australian Protective League' on the lines of a war body operating in the United States of America''. (I show a copy of a letter convening this crucial meeting. It happens to be one of the few documentary items we have that shows that the APL model was reproduced in Australia - a rare fragment of light in a story otherwise shrouded in almost Stygian darkness.)
The precise steps that followed in setting up a simulactrum of the APL in Australia are not fully known. The next item - the next point of light - is a note in the archival file of a Melbourne businessman, Herbert Brookes, who seems to have been given, or taken on, the job of organising what indeed came to be called the Australian Protective League (henceforth the APL, Australian version).
In October 1918 Brookes again met with the acting Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence in Melbourne. Apparently at this meeting Brookes put forward a detailed plan for setting up a modified version of the American Protective League across Australia . Brookes's record of the meeting is marked with the crucial words "when this suggested scheme was adopted''.
Brookes's modified APL had certain unusual features, designed to better fit the American model into the Australian political scene. lts most distinctive change was that it was to be divided into two: an "official'' side (linked to the security services), and a connected but separate "voluntary arm''. The objective of the latter, according to the Brookes notes, was "to stimulate a public or semi-public organisation to do some work which might be necessary (my emphasis).''
Further, the voluntary arm was to be organised in a particular way. The overall "organiser'' (Brookes) would "set up the voluntary organisation throughout Australia'' by approaching "the executive heads of the known loyal societies and associations'' and, after swearing them to secrecy, "invite them to form their own State organisation.'' Behind this screen of loyalist bodies a volunteer army of "vigilantes'' - Brookes specifically uses the term - would be assembled.
The end of the war in November 1918, however, led to further refinements in Brookes's APL proposal. In particular, it led to an alteration in focus - away from anti-war dissidence towards post-war civil unrest, particularly the threat of radical socialism and Bolshevism, of strikes and possible revolution. The government's apparent involvement retreated into the background, and the APL took on a more civilian - and even more secretive - nature.
And so on and on, but the pond must return to our Henry for his final gobbet ...
And there you have it: "Still now, ubiquitous voices echo Lawrence's blend of apocalyptic prophecy and utopian fantasy, tinged with the viciousness and virulence of deeply authoritarian aspirations", and up against it an alleged "cautious reformism"?
Shane Leslie called Ulysses "literary Bolshevism ... experimental, anti-conventional, anti-Christian, chaotic, totally unmoral". Karl Radek called it "a heap of dung, crawling with worms, photographed by a cinema camera through a microscope". Sisley Huddleston, writing for the Observer, wrote: "I confess that I cannot see how the work upon which Mr Joyce spent seven strenuous years, years of wrestling and of agony, can ever be given to the public." Virginia Woolf wrote, "Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster." One newspaper pundit said it contained "secret sewers of vice ... canalized in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images, and pornographic words" and "revolting blasphemies" that "debases and perverts and degrades the noble gift of imagination and wit and lordship of language".
Meaenwhile, our Henry simply doesn't have the courage to mention by name the mango Mussolini and his lickspittle Murdochian fellow travellers, and their vicious and virulent, deeply authoritarian aspirations, leaving it up to a few cartoonists ...
Continuing the culture wars, the reptiles were cock-a-hoop at this news ...
The pond has no dog in this fight - at least it had read Lawrence and Joyce - but the pond did think that academic disputation was supposed to be a sign of health.
As usual, the reptiles would have none of that notion of healthy debate, and instead the lizard Oz editorialist went full denialist ...
Yes, the usual bullshit about identity politics ... the reptiles can't help themselves, it's part of their identity ... and Blainey trotted out yet again ...
And so to a bonus, and here the pond just had to draw the line ...
The meretricious Merritt arguing that the pervasive challenge confronting this generation is government overreach?
Sorry, the pervasive challenge is the pervasive attempt of the Murdochians to fuck the country and the planet, and so the pond reluctantly turned to Ticky for a ticking-off, though really this is Lloydie of the Amazon's turf, and the pond resents Ticky intruding on his caper ...
How about a mood-setting cartoon?
Good, and there'll be a few more cartoons along the way....
Indeed, indeed, better to fuck the planet than just do an idle domestic fucking... but now to pause for an infallible Pope, celebrating the beefy boofhead Angus's many and varied skills ...
What else needs to be said, but the ticked-off Ticky will say it anyway ...
Yes, gas is the new coal, and Wilcox for one sees unlimited opportunities ...
Talk about being dazzled by hope, and the pond must now get through another celebration of gas before getting to the Rowe of the day ...
Yes, there it is, the usual malicious reptile spite, the denialism, and yet the ticked-off Ticky must be judged a fail, for not mentioning nuking the county and nuking the planet.
Still the reptiles are fired up, the climate wars are not dead, and so they can lie in wait down the laneway of denial and delay, celebrated by Rowe here ...
What a gallery of rogues, spivs and deadbeats lurk in that dark corner ...
'began writing his finest and most stylistically innovative novel, Kangaroo.' ROFL!
ReplyDeleteAnd we know that sub-editing is a thing of the past. So I am delighted to see that you, Dorothy, still believe that title should be typographically distinguished.
*titles
ReplyDeleteThe reptiles are never going to let it go about Pascoe, are they - it's a true Mr Ed campaign about how them abos only ever made it as hunter-gatherers. For a slightly different perspective:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/world-heritage-recommendation-for-ancient-aboriginal-eel-farming-site-at-budj-bim-20190522-p51q43.html
Budj Bim Cultural Landscape
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1577/
And here it is:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/0vXtywOlayc
Oh all right, this one too:
Deletehttps://youtu.be/x9GlG6ET2uk
Further observation of the decreasing relevance of the Limited News/Sky/Spectator 'axis' - the newsagent in our nearest town puts the Oz adaptation of 'The Spectator' in a carton with other magazines catering to obscure handicrafts, or pets, at a price of $1 per. Yep, in a reactionary cell within the most LNP electorate in the country, Maranoa, Rowan Dean has real difficulty selling his magazine, laced with such luminaries as the Garrick Professor, Dame Groan, Bettina Arndt and Rebecca Weisser (who, we believe, still cohabits with the Cater, but presumably is less likely to involve Dean and his backers in expensive damages cases).
ReplyDeletePresumably the newsagent receives them on an arrangement similar to consignment, with no credits for unsold (one of the truly tedious tasks of being a newsagent was cutting out the issue number and date from the front page of unsold copies, to receive credit from the distributors)
Just like a very small cottage industry isn't it. I wonder who pays the bills.
DeleteDorothy - a couple of times I started a comment on our Henry and 'Kangaroo'. My copy of the book has several newspaper clippings between its covers, of articles attempting to answer the question of just what did Lawrence stumble across in his brief time in Australia. Thank you for the Darroch paper. That, and the other sources I have kept, and material now available even on the 'Wiki', tell me that if, as a serious writer (which the Henry would claim to be) you want to impart some of Lawrence's direct impressions of Australia, but do not refer in any way to Charles Rosenthal, and those around him - then don't bother.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, it is not my business to take issue with what the Henry has written, and attempt to enlarge on it. He, presumably, is paid to inform, or to promote discussion. He has failed.
I cannot imagine what point he felt he was making here about Lawrence, or how it might have served the court of Rupertmandias.
He has missed the reality of Lawrence's experience, and Lawrence's interpretation of it - entirely.
It's a bit late in the day to be picking up on 'Desert-Head' Lawrence and Kangaroo, isn't it ? Lawrence was a little popular back in my schooldays, but of course that was mainly due to Lady Chatterley, not Kangaroo. I wonder what reception you'd get, if any, from secondary schoolkids today about Lawrence.
DeleteBut I rather suspect that Henry wasn't actually trying to serve the court of Rupertmandias at all, just the ego of the Holely one himself. And how better to do that than extolling the virtues of a writer that nobody reads today.
Anyway: "There is no need, as Robert Darroch has done, to invent supposed meetings between Lawrence and the president of the King and Empire Alliance, Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal, meetings which Lawrence is then said to have immediately written up for the novel."
Precis of a paper delivered to the first Australian D.H. Lawrence Conference by Paul Eggert
https://www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au/j7a1.htm
GB - I agree that it would be unlikely that DHL actually met Rosenthal, but I think there is always a good case that, if you are a writer as adventurous as Lawrence was at that time, spending a few months in Australia to try to get the feel of the place, and start from Thirroul, it is quite likely that you heard, and read, a lot about the politics of the day. And it was a very 'political' time. Jack Lang was saying things that, at the time, were seen as tantamount to socialism, or worse - and doing it from the perspective of someone who had built a successful business.
Delete