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The 'great Australian emptiness', which refers not merely to the land, is echoed in this collection of essays. The subjects discussed include the social fabric, literature, language, philosophy, science, historiography, law, education, theater, art, music, recreation, and the culture of the aborigines. Each of the contributors is an Australian, by birth or adoption.
Unfortunately, even the two best essays (Baker's, on language, which flirts coyly with obscenity and humor; and Waters', on recreation, with its hesitant recognition of heterosexuality and homosexuality) are marked by an excess of good manners. The interwoven themes of self-abasement and arrogance will not escape the psychoanalytic reader if, in fact, they do not make this book more important than its inadequate survey of Australian culture.
Foreign residents and visitors are impressed by the sincere warmth and friendliness of the average Australian. But they soon note the dulness of social and intellectual life, the heavy-handed censorship of books and films, the passion for gambling (primarily horse races), and the strenuous indulgence in leisure. The national 'inferiority complex' is nurtured by the compulsion to measure Australia against England and the United States (parental nations which are regarded with marked ambivalence); and it finds tedious compensation in the tendency to tout every natural phenomenon and human achievement with the prefatory, if not proprietary, 'Our': 'Our desert', 'Our mountain', 'Our river', 'Our bridge', 'Our harbour', 'Our women', 'Our masculinity' … ad infinitum.
Even more striking to the foreigner are the art museums, public libraries, universities, and scientific laboratories which, for budgetary and psychological reasons, exhaust their funds on architectural expenses and become cenotaphs—empty monuments dedicated to pride. Equally striking are the religious schisms which have splintered the majority Labour Party; the deep-seated anti-Catholicism and the morbid a