1977 and All That

The year begins with Tiny Tim and I wasn’t expecting that. It’s no longer 2023, I’ve fallen into 1977 and I hadn’t meant to. I was finally reading The Saviours by Patrick O’Brien and wondered what Quadrant made of this “intellectual history of the left in Australia” when it was published. The magazine’s huge archives, freely accessible to all subscribers, holds PDF copies of the journal from 1956 to the present. The issues aren’t searchable online.

I start with January 1977 and come face to screen with Tiny Tim, a startling pop art portrait for “The Real Tiny Tim: Fake or Genius?” Huge portrait of a white face, golden flowing hair, Luna Park lips with billboard teeth—pop art by Martin Sharp, so the word Eternity in cursive script flows across the bottom of the image. The article, naturally by Sharp, is encyclopaedic, enthusiastic: “I see Tiny Tim as a human lyrebird.” The editor, Peter Coleman, may have been going through a Martin Sharp phase because…