October 2023 Volume LXVII Number 10, No. 600
Jean-Paul Sartre and the Meaning of Life
Drops of God: Sommeliers Supreme
Jane Austen: Modernist
The Necessity of a New Economic Unorthodoxy
What is Literature? Can it be Recovered?
The Heroic Masculine and the Devouring Stepmother
Contents
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Was there truly 'no exit' from humanity’s existential predicament, as Sartre posits in Huis-Close? Was the meaning of life a hellish nihilism? Such questions confronted intellectuals amidst the crisis of the Cold War that defined both the era of Existentialism. the decline of a front-rank philosopher to the status of a hired-gun propagandist for the communist blocNovember 5, 2023
27 mins
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In the world of competitive chess, the rising strength of computerised programs with almost infinite memory capacity is changing the perception of the game. As detailed in a number of fine and fascinating films, documentaries and series, the hard-won title of Sommelier isn't likely to be snatched away, not now or ever, by some silicon-crusted cyber tasting tongueNovember 4, 2023
22 mins
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Austen’s view of herself as a writer -- the miniaturist with 'the little bit ... of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush” -- should not be mistaken for the self-deprecation of a shrinking violet. On the contrary, it was a confident and honest self-appraisal by a mature novelist who had committed herself determinedly to write only about what she had personally observed or heardNovember 4, 2023
13 mins
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The 'adults in the room', as former Greek finance minister Yannis Varoufakis christened the likes of Jerome Powell, Andrew Bailey and Christine Lagarde, never have to account for policy errors or the manner in which their attempts to correct them compound fiscal uncertainty at the expense of the anxious and indebted middle classes. The developed world is in a post-lockdown debt trapNovember 3, 2023
24 mins
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What should alarm anybody retaining a grain of respect for the life of the mind is what little remains of genuine education in our schools and universities. This particularly applies in the teaching and nurturing of an appreciation for literature's benefit to civilisation at large. If 'the common pursuit of true judgement', as T.S. Eliot put it, is to survive, where and how?November 1, 2023
12 mins
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The heroic masculine, once the dominant ethos in Western civilisation, is now on life support. Yet, if you were to take one look at ABC News, you would assume we were living in a patriarchal tyranny that would make Sauron blush. Within every man is a rapist trying to get out; toxic masculinity, we are endlessly reminded, lurks everywhereOctober 31, 2023
18 mins
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If Australian opera is to have a worthwhile future, craft, style and quality are essential. That artistic merit should be trumped by quotas and chromosomes is laid out in a recent paper, Risky Business: Policy Legacy and Gender Inequality in Australian Opera Production. Have the authors never heard of Simone Young, our greatest living conductor?October 29, 2023
12 mins
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Anne Henderson's lively new book on the rivalry of two bright boys, each from relatively humble backgrounds, cannot have been easy to write, with relevant episodes compressed or deleted in order to keep the story within bounds. The vigour of the writing, however, and emphasis on events which today still have significance more than compensateOctober 27, 2023
12 mins
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Once children has been persuaded by teachers and syllabus to 'comes out' as 'non-binary' or 'trans', the religious rites begin: social transition, then puberty blockers to destroy the endocrine system, followed by cross-sex hormones, then irreversible surgery to shape a grotesque facsimile of what the opposite sex is said to look likeOctober 26, 2023
19 mins
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There is a war against statues; there is fearmongering against words. This is not the way to enter the past, with loaded words to impose superiority and self-censorship. The young should not be made afraid, bored or censorious by our past—which is what it was and not what we would want it to have beenOctober 25, 2023
16 mins
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Australians have up to now gained only a limited understanding of inflation. The exceptions are those of an older generation who went bankrupt or lost their jobs in the wake of the 'Whitlam party', when a Commonwealth spendathon coincided with a wave of global oil-price increases. What is it they say about history repeating?October 24, 2023
16 mins
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Before dismissing those who dispute the Swan of Avon's authorship, consider why their arguments are so widely believed. The purported Bard had no education beyond the basic, yet his plays reference around 500 works, some in foreign languages, and eyewitness descriptions of Italian towns. Simply put, the known facts don't mesh with the evolution of his supposed worksOctober 22, 2023
5 mins
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As Roger Scruton observed in half a dozen books and many essays, the fight to preserve classic music has not gone particularly well over the past century. Truth, beauty and a sense of the divine have been all but erased from our shared musical palette -- victims of modernity’s anti-aesthetic march and the ever-present neo-Marxist will to destroyOctober 22, 2023
15 mins
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Propositions that once seemed so outré no one would have thought them worth refuting become almost unchallengeable orthodoxies in a matter of a few years, if not of months. It requires courage to dispute them, certainly if one has a job and income to protect, and thus do we genuflect ever deeper before the altar of enforced absurditiesOctober 20, 2023
8 mins
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The various legal assaults on Donald Trump, now the target of a gag order prohibiting almost any comment about the Georgia 'vote-fraud' prosecution, get the headlines. Less noticed but no less insidious is Democrat prosecutors' brazen misuse of the legal system to silence the speech of those whose opinions they disapproveOctober 18, 2023
9 mins
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"What was once Gadigal country is now the great city of Sydney, a place with an Aboriginal heritage, a British foundation, and an immigrant character, and now the leading city of the least racist and most colourblind country on earth -- a fragrant fact of which every Australian, regardless of race, or creed or gender, should be overwhelmingly proud"October 13, 2023
9 mins
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Let us imagine that it is 2080 and all is bliss in Aboriginal communities. No more unemployment, domestic violence, truancy, abused children, alcoholism or poor housing. What chance of another referendum to repeal a now superfluous Voice? And how likely to be found is the political will to dismantle the separatist infrastructure and divisions it will have fostered?October 12, 2023
31 mins
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Ex-BBC correspondent Nick Bryant, writing for the SMH, raves about the Yes TV ad's multi-generational leftoid clan and Farnham’s 'You're the Voice' soundtrack. You couldn't make this up: a British fellow’s gushing approval of a song written by four fellow Brits and performed by a bloke who grew up in Britain -- all this in the name of Australian AboriginesOctober 11, 2023
8 mins
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"Their chief prosecutor was some wise guy named Shokin, and Dad said he was one bad dude -- just like Corn Pop -- and he had to go. So I went to Kiev, put on the speakerphone, and got the Big Guy on the line. Six hours later, Shokin was gone"October 5, 2023
8 mins
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Cultural safety doesn’t just mean removing the Australian flag lest it give indigenous people anxiety attacks. Apparently the mere presence of a non-indigenous person is a threat to safety. Consequently, according to Queensland state minister Leanne Enoch, it’s tickety-boo to exclude non-indigenous people from workplaces to ensure 'cultural safety'October 2, 2023
11 mins
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No Books for You They told me I could […]September 29, 2023
1 mins
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The Thankless Task of Saving the World I am […]
September 29, 2023
2 mins
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Dead Stingray Prone on the sod, like a wax […]
September 29, 2023
2 mins
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When Mum Died When Mum died, I didn’t cry. […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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From Ronsard (Quand vous serez bien vieille) When in […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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Microchimerism I feel them, the way I feel the […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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Leaf Litter My leaves are falling off too. I’m […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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Of all the things, Clive James (a love song) Of […]
September 29, 2023
2 mins
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Flat White, One Sugar Up above is special to the […]
September 29, 2023
2 mins
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Compulsion A bird is trapped in a cage. It sings […]
September 29, 2023
2 mins
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Change here The platform announcement said The service would terminate […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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Ode to a worker bee Who hasn’t been where you […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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The Invasion of Iceland Volcanic rock, pitted by wind and […]
September 29, 2023
2 mins
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The Squawking Bird I heard tonight a squawking bird, who […]
September 29, 2023
1 mins
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When the magpies warbled Finn knew it was spring. The […]
September 29, 2023
9 mins
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Marcia Langton is talking about angry youths taking to the streets while Henry Reynolds looks further afield to the UN, where he promises Australia will have 'few friends in the erstwhile colonial world'. Given neither academic commands a phalanx of angry teenage youths, what they are expressing is what they wish would happen. What they actually reveal is their hatred for the country that has given them all they haveSeptember 29, 2023
9 mins
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For readers and poets who question the extent to which […]
September 28, 2023
10 mins
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Of course, as the pandemic showed, however far you may roam, you still sometimes do really want to “call Australia home”. But here’s the rub: if you really are so good, why are you coming home? The question lingers. The suspicion is that you might be running out of bookings, or perhaps you really can’t hack it in that supposed real world any more?September 28, 2023
13 mins
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Without question, David Scrimgeour was the right person, in the […]
September 28, 2023
30 mins
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This is the foreword to the new book Placed in […]
September 27, 2023
15 mins
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In the spirit of reconciliation, I would like to offer […]
September 27, 2023
11 mins
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Lest Albanese Forget Sir: In his piece on Anthony Albanese […]
September 27, 2023
7 mins
