Vol. 2 No. 9 October 1992 $4.00 and where he did Volume 2 Number 9 I:URI:-KA STRI:-eT October 1992 A m agazine of public affairs, the arts and theology 21 CoNTENTS TOPGUN Michael McGirr reports on gun laws and the calls for capital punishment in the 4 Philippines. COMMENT In this year of elections we are only as good 22 as our choices, says Peter Steele. Andrew DON'T KISS ME, HARDY Hamilton looks at the Columbus quin­ James Griffin concludes his series on the centary, and decides that the past must be Wren-Evatt letters. owned as well as owned up to (pS). 6 25 ORIENTATIONS LETTERS Peter Pierce and Robin Gerster take their pens to Shanghai and Saigon; Emmanuel 7 Santos and Hwa Goh take their cameras to COMMISSIONS AND OMISSIONS Tianjin. ICAC chief Ian Temby Margaret Simons talks to Australia's top speaks for himself: p 7 crime-busters. 34 11 BOOKS AND ARTS Cover photo: A member of Was the oldest part of the Pentateuch CAPITAL LETTER the Tianjing city planning office written by a woman? Kevin Hart reviews in Jei Fang Bei Road, three books by Harold Bloom, who thinks the 'Wall Street' of Tianjin. 12 it was; Robert Murray sizes up Columbus BLINDED BY THE LIGHT and colonialism (p38 ). Cover photo and photos pp25, 29 and 30 Bruce Williams visits the Columbus light­ by Emmanuel Santos; house in Santo Domingo, and wonders who Photo p27 by Hwa Goh; will be enlightened. 40 Photos p12 by Belinda Bain; FLASH IN THE PAN Photo p41 by Bill Thomas; 15 Reviews of the films Patriot Games Cartoons pp6, 36 and 3 7 by Dean Moore; Zentropa, Edward II, and Deadly. ' Graphic p7 by Waldemar Buczynski. ARCHIMEDES Photos pp8 and 9 16 41 courtesy of Th e Age. ULTERIOR MOTIFS TRANSPLANTS AND REJECTIONS Rowan Ireland queries the image, and the 42 Eureka Street magazine self-image, of missionaries in Latin Amer­ THE LAST WORD Jesuit Publications, ica. PO Box 553, Ruth Pendavingh makes a ritual decision. Richmond, VIC 3121. Tel (03 )427 7311 20 43 Fax (03)428 4450 QUIXOTE SPECIFIC LEVITY EURI:-KA srm:-er COMMENT agazine of public affairs, the arts and theolo~y PETER STEELE Publisher Michael Kelly SJ f Editor Choices, choices Morag Fraser Production editor 'EEE TO CHoosE' said the spine of the book. I opened it and Ray Cassin Design consultant flipped through. It was by Milton Friedman, and it helped to John van Loon give a bad name to liberalism. Not today, thanks, Milton; I'm Production assistants choosing elsewhere. I Choose Freedom said another book, read Paul Fyfe SJ, Chris Jenkins SJ when I was a schoolboy. It was about making an exit from Soviet constraints. Apart from that, I remember nothing of it: Contributing editors but its title can still issue a summons. Adelaide: Frances Browne IBVM We are only as good as our choices. Unable to construct Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ ourselves radically, we still go on construing ourselves tell­ Darwin: Margaret Palmer ingly-going for this story rather than that, this policy, these Perth: Dean Moore yearnings, these cessations. We do this in the midst of fear, Sydney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor, bafflement, sloth, and often labyrinthine opportunities. We do Andrew Riemer it because, in the end, 'choice' is not only a noun, but an European correspondent: Damien Simonis adjective. The choosing itself is part of our prize. US correspondent: Michael Harter SJ 'Choose, challenge, jump, poise, nm ... ' wrote Richard Editorial board Wilbur, in a poem about 'Grace'. It sounds boyish, which can Peter L'Estrange SJ [chair), creep back towards being infantile. But Wilbur's poem, cele­ Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, brating finesse in its many forms, is really against going off Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, half-cocked: for him, expert choice presupposes tensional pre­ Trevor Hales, Christine Martin, dicaments. Choice magazine could hardly have a readership if Kevin McDonald, Joan Nowotny IBVM, we did not find ourselves tugged this way and that amid sup­ Lyn Nossal, Ruth Pendavingh, posed excellences. Peter Steele SJ, Cletus Storey FSC, 'Elegance' can sound like a luxury, but no mathematician Bill Uren SJ will think it merely that; the elegant solution to the problem Business manager: Louise Metres is the one with the fewest loose ends-which is, as etymology Advertising representative: Tim Stoney suggests, the best-chosen one. To live life thoughtfully, not Accounts manager: Bernadette Bacash under beleagurement or automatically, is to develop a certain precision in stepping: not necessarily the delicacy of the high­ Patrons wire walker, but certainly that of the creek-crosser on the Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the slippery stones. A lot of adults, at least in the 'western' world, support of C.L. Adami; the trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; D.M. Cullity; find much of that in life. F.G. Gargan; R.J. and H.M. Gehrig; An adult inevitably, and a Jesuit by choice, I think of these W.P. Gurry; J.F. O'Brien; things often. Ignatius of Loyola prefaces his cardinal visionary A.F. Molyneux; V.J. Peters; document, the Spiritual Exercises, by saying that it is a hand­ Anon.; the Roche family; Anon.; book for the liberation of the heart, so that its readers and Sir Donald and Lady Trescowthick; practisers may choose well. My own view is that if the Jesuits Mr and Mrs Lloyd Williams. have one thing more than another to offer the world, in all circumstances, it is a certain judiciousness, a certain stylish­ Eureka Street magazine, lSSN 1036- 1758, ness, in making free choices. The readiness to go that route is, Australia Post registered publication VAR 91 - 0756, of course, not at any Jesuit-or any other institutional-dicta­ is published eleven times a year tion. Liberty of spirit is divinely offered and humanly chosen, by Eureka Street Magazine Pry Ltd, or it is not there at all. 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121. 'Existentialism', someone said ironically, 'means that Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. nobody can take a bath for you.' Whatever its extravagances, it Printed by Doran Printing, means more than that. It presses the view that our lives need 4 Commercial Road, Highett VIC 3190. not be governed by track-habits and prejudice, by soliciting © jesuit Publications I992 fears and engulfing greeds. It supposes that we are more than The editor welcomes letters and unsolicited manu­ the re idue of the past, more than the condition of the future. scripts, including poetry and fiction. Manuscripts will I am not much of a one for 'isms', but that much I can take. be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self­ Bonne chance at the next election: whether or not the candi­ addressed envelope. Requests for permission to reprint dates need it, you do . • material from the magazine should be addressed in I writing to: The editor, Eureka Street magazine, Peter Steele SJ is reader in English at the University of Mel­ L PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3121. bourne. 4 EUREKA STREET • O c TOBER 1992 CoMMENT ANDREW HAMILTON C ENTENA" C:E=~~ND cheers for s ~n~ul~~nd not me.ely cele to be edgy affairs nowadays. This Centenaries invite us to brate the wealth and status of the emerges clearly if we compare con- winners. It is right also to insist that temporary celebrations with previous look realistically at people when cultures meet, many values can ones. At the 400th anniversary of of mixed virtue and be lost, and that what emerges is not Columbus' arrival in the Americas, always admirable. for example, red wine and purple wisdom. Even when we In the face of such strong reser- prose flowed unstinted. The grounds vations, it may seem odd that any- for celebration then seemed self- have taken his limitations one would want to celebrate the evident: the discovery of the A.meri- into account, Columbus Columbus quincentenary, let alone cas, the bringing of civilisation and defend its celebration as energetical- Christian faith, the triumph of the was an interesting human ly as many, including Pope John Paul exploratory human spirit. Many Latin and various Roman congregations, American cardinals and bishops even being of considerable have done. Yet their attitude deserves demanded that Columbus be canon- a hearing, if only because at several ised a saint. courage and spirit. It is a points it challenges our contemporary At anniversaries we do not sim- pretty miserable society conventional wisdom. According to ply celebrate the past, however, but this account, centenaries are not only appraise our own society and culture. that can celebrate only celebrations of our own culture and So the celebrations of 1992 differ from times, but times to examine the past those of 100 years ago. Both the prose what is perfect. and to try to enter it on its own terms. and the festivities reflect our more This implies a rare degree of humility recessionary times and our greater parsimony with about the partial character of our own conventional praise. In particular, they mark our more hesitant affir- wisdom. Centenaries also invite us to look realistically mation of our own culture. Whereas 100 years ago at people of mixed virtue and wisdom. Even when we Western culture was seen as a single whole that brought have taken his limitations into account, Columbus was blessing to whatever it touched, now all culture is gen- an interesting human being of considerable courage and erally seen as fragmentary. We are uneasy with large spirit.