War through Aussie’s eyes
Literary and public affairs quarterly Griffith Review drew criticism last year for its Anglocentric Pacific Highways, billed as showcasing some of New Zealand’s best writers.
Now editor Julianne Schultz, who co-edited that issue with New Zealand’s Lloyd Jones, is joined by New South Wales historian Peter Cochrane on Enduring Legacies, released for Anzac Day.
Promoted as eminent Australian and New Zealand historians challenging the myths of the 20th-century’s wars and revealing forgotten truths about them, it includes four Kiwi representatives among the 32 contributors. To be fair, Schultz’s introduction is clear this is about Australia’s wars, from the Second Boer War through to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Enduring Legacies coincided with the Gallipoli centenary, although Schultz notes 2015 is also the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific and the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam War’s end. Interrogating the aftermath ‘‘to explain how we got to where we are’’ is, she says, the sort of intellectual activity most Australians shy away from.
Given the fervent centenary celebrations on both sides of the Tasman, Cochrane’s essay, The Past Is Not Sacred, is an excellent opener. Subtitled A dangerous obsession with Anzac, it interweaves his views with such literature survey as is possible in 12 pages.
He contends ‘‘the centenary is committed to locking in a glorious military past’’, with Anzac ‘‘legend’’ critics vilified, its commemoration made more inclusive to better promote political agendas.
In a nation where a TV sports reporter was sacked for tweeting unpalatable Anzac truths on Anzac Day – his employers alerted by ‘‘freedom of speech’’ proponent Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull – this essay illuminates what Cochrane calls ‘‘the great divide between politics and history’’.
Timely too is New Zealand historian and former army officer Christopher Pugsley’s Breaking Ranks. This fascinating account of the breakdown in official reporting of Gallipoli losses and of the four controversial NZ memorials erected on the peninsula – 93 per cent of all who served killed or wounded, compared with British casualties of 22 per cent – considers its impact on the Massey Government.
New Zealand-based poet Rosetta Allen writes of Japan’s kamikaze pilots while long-time Australian resident John Clarke (the one-time Fred Dagg) writes simply but beautifully of his neighbour Ray Parkin in A Remarkable Man.
One of nine memoirs, his tribute to this naval man, artist and writer taken prisoner during World War II, is accompanied by a gallery of Parkin’s pictures.
Wellington author Craig Cliff’s short story Recessional is the sole fiction inclusion: Amelia is a lone Kiwi at an Anzac Day barbecue for which dawn service attendance is a prerequisite. Cliff tells his story well but fails to probe this new generation’s Anzac fervour.
This collection reflects Griffith Review’s reputation for an informed embrace of the most challenging debates.