PUT OUR NEIGHBOURS ON YOUR CHRISTMAS LIST rs Kia won't get any vegetables M from her garden to feed her family this Christmas. 500,000 people are similarly affected by the severe drought in Papua New Guinea. Food aid is needed immediately. And even if the drought breaks, food will still be needed until Easter. Drought and famine don't stop for Christmas. We cannot let our closest neighbours starve while we get on with our Christmas shopping. I---------------------------------~ would like to help Caritas Australia's Papua New Guinea Drought Appeal. Here's my donati o n of 0 $100 0 $200 0 $50 0 $20 0 $__ ___ 0 I enclose my cheque/ money o rder, OR 0 Please debit my 0 Bankcard 0 Visa 0 Mastercard 0 Amex 0 Diner's Clu b Card umber Signature Expity elate I I I I II I I I II I I I II I I I I _ I _ Name (Mr/ Mrs/ Ms/ Mi ss) - ------....,......,:-:------:----------------­ capital letters please Address ---------------------- Postcocle _______ 0 I would li ke to donate regularl y from my bank account or credit card. Pl ease send me details. 0 Please send me info rmati on about remembering Caritas Australia in my Wil l. MAIL COUPON TO: CARITAS AUSTRALIA GPO BOX 9830 IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY. Donations over $2 m·e tax deductible. Caritas Australia THE CATHOLICAGENCY FOR OVERSEASAIDAND DEVELOPMENT 1297ES Volume 7 Number 10 December 1997 A m agazine of public affairs, the arts and theology CoNTENTS 4 26 COMMENT THE WAY FORWARD Patrick Dodson and Frank Brennan Eureka StTeet 7 speak on the future of reconciliation . CAPITAL LETTER wishes 33 8 THAT HOLY NIGHT all our readers LETTERS Robert Crotty on the history of the Christmas Story. the peace 14 THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC 38 and blessings BOOKS 16 Peter Craven looks at Don DeLillo's Under­ of the POETRY world and Ian McEwan's Enduring Love. The Right Stuff, by Aileen Kelly Peter Steele savours Eric Rolls' A Celebra ­ Christlnas Season and Early On, With Sm og, tion of Food an d Wine (p40h Max T eich­ by Chris Wallace-Crabbe. m ann examines Political Lives, Judith Brett, Ed. (p41); Jim Davidson reads From Tories at 17 Prayer to So cialists at Ma ss by Colin Holden SUMMA THEOLOGIAE (p42); and Michael McGirr reviews Peter and Richard Wherrett's Desirelines (p42). 18 DIANNE'S STORY 44 Cover: Frank Brennan SJ Life in the far north of Western Australia THEATRE and Patrick Dodson, Chair of the Council as Dianne Samba, a Walmajarri woman, Peter Craven and Geoffrey Milne do a double for Aboriginal Reconciliation, has known it. take on current Irish theatre in Australia. at St Ignatius Church, Richmond Victoria, 21 for the Eureka Street Talk 48 at Richmond on the Hill DOWNSIZING AND THE FLASH IN THE PAN in late October. CONTENTED SOCIETY Reviews of the films Thank God He Met Photograph by Bill Thomas. Economist Frank Stilwell on the Lizzie; Love Etc; Road To Nhill; Kull The Photographs pp26-27, 29, 3 1, 32 shrinking of everything. by Bill T homas. Conqueror; Hurricane Streets; A Life Less Ordinary. Graphics pp5, 10, 2 1, 22, 23, 33, 34, 24 40 by Siobhan Tackson. WATCHDOG ON A LEASH 50 Cartoons pp9, 14 by Dea n Moore. Moira Rayner looks at the curious WATCHING BRIEF Eureka Street magazine case of the Victorian Auditor General. Tes uit Publications 51 PO Box 553 25 SPECIFIC LEVITY Richmond VIC 3 12 1 T el (03)9427 73 11 ARCHIMEDES Fax (03) 9428 4450 V o LuME 7 N uMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 3 EURI:-KA SfRI:-ET COMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts PETER STEELE and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Scenting Editor Morag Fraser Consulting editor Michael McGirr SJ Summer Production editor Lynda McCaffery F esT RCMCM"'"" S<CHT' my new bom tluee-yea"-younget brother, blond and dormant in the hospital. First remembered Production Manager sound: crows whingeing above the road from Perth to York, as Sylvana Scannapiego an old car negotiated January's hea t. First remembered smell: the magical effusion of a gum-tree sapling, propped in a bucket Graphic designer: Siobhan Jackson Sub editor: Juliette Hughes to be a Chri tmas tree-' and the whole house was filled with Production ass is tan ts: its odour.' Paul Fyfe SJ, Chris Jenkins SJ, Scott Howard Some of it is gone, som e not. My brother went, forty­ five years later, from another hospital. As I write, another Contributing editors crow makes its protest, though this is thousands of miles Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ from York. But as m any have fo und and find, the scent is Perth: Dean Moore virtually immortal. California, Israel, Victoria- foreign Sydney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor terrains all-it does not matter; crumple the right leaf at the nostrils, and that Christmas perpetuates itself. Where a South East Asian correspondent bowed scyther might have been, a child is born once more. Jon Greenaway 'Comparisons are odorous,' the Shakespearean booby says, and of course he is right. Some things are on the nose, Jesuit Editorial Board and warrant m ore than sniffs of disapproval- the sneezes, in Peter L'Estrange SJ Andrew Bullen SJ, fac t, of allergy at the disgusting; others sponsor zest. What a Andrew Hamilton SJ curious lot we are, as it turns out, jutting our ways nasally Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ into the air's immeasurable tides and currents, and able at Business manager: Sylvana Scannapiego least sometimes to read out of this subdued storm not only Marketing manager: Rosanne Turner our bodily courses but paths for the spirit. Advertising representative: Ken Head None of the arts could operate if we were not wedded, outright, to the senses, and through them to the worlds we Patrons know. Shakespeare, again, has a character wonder at the fact Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the that 'sheep's guts should hale oul out of men's bodies,' such support of Colin and Angela Carter; the being music's way: but his thousand-fold metaphors are trustees of the es tate of Miss M. Condon; always fleshed in som e degree, and he does not shy at W.P. & M.W. Gurry; sm elling. A m ettlesom e soldier, despising a jack-in-office, says, 'He made m e mad I To see him shine so brisk and smell Eureka Street magazine, ISSN 1036- 1758, so sweet;' Mark Antony, keening over Cresar's body, predicts Australia Pos t Print Post approved that ' this foul deed shall sm ell above the earth;' Lady pp349181/00314 Macbeth, the deed done but not forgotten, senses that 'Here's is published ten times a year the smell of the blood still;' and Lear, asked to offer his hand by Eureka Street Magazi ne Pty Ltd, for kissing, says 'Let m e wipe it first; it smells of mortality.' 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 121 Bad news, this, for each of them; but Juliet's savoured T el: 03 942 7 73 11 Fa x: 03 9428 4450 rose is better remembered than any of those distresses, and e-mail: eureka@we rpl e. net.au can stand for all the world's good tangs. These, sometimes, Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by come our way for no apparent reason: George Herbert, in Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. 'The Flower, ' says 'And now in age I bud again, I After so Printed by Doran Printing, many deaths I live and write;/ I once m ore sm ell the dew 46 lndustrial Drive, Bra eside VIC 3 195. and rain,' and is twice blessed for the surprise of it all. Whether © Jesuit Publications 1997. Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry and or not the day's experience, or the year's, is mainly benign, it is fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by open to us to go on testing it, sometimes in very subtle ways, at a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests for others in immediate and outright fashion. If lilies do fester, all permission to reprint material from the magazine the show in the world will not disguise the fact. should b addressed in writing to: Politicians, ancient and modern, competing for our T he editor, Eureka Street magazine, allegiance, attempt to flatter u with the assurance that we PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3121. are discerning, able to sniff out the signs of decay or the odour 4 EUREKA STREET • DEC EMBER 1997 of representative sanctity. Freshness, authenticity, dewy being­ considerable, harangued, cajoled and harried as we frequ ently these we are promised, though admittedly it can be hard work are: there are billions of dollars to be made from psychic anosmia, in Australia, where political discourse often reminds me of a and nobody need cut a nose off to induce it. line from Raymond Chandler-'We looked at each other with But in spite of all the oafishness, cold-eyed manipulation, the clear, innocent eyes of a couple of used-car and incense to the great god Sloth, remarkable things salesmen.' And sometimes what we are offered has do happen-random association turned to reverie, a couple of mingled airs, the one frank, the other and that to artistic formulation, and that to shared brutal. Mentioning death to a civic official who, illumination, for instance. One of the reasons the briefly, stood in his way, Julius Cresar said, 'Surely arts matter is on account of their ability to distil, at you know, young man, that it is more unpleasant for least for a while, some of the testing of life's air me to say this than to do it.' At least the reek of which, as long as we are not quite brutalised, is part brimstone is clear there-and no stranger to various of our moral pleasure.