Recognising, however, that a feature of literary discourse is related to or dependent on or an instance of a proto-feature of langugage itself, and then proceeding to draw from this recognition an inference that any performative speech-act can count as “literature”, is clearly unwarranted. For one thing, it summons up the spectre of an indiscriminate, perhaps infinite, variety and scope of examples which can be adduced as instances of “literature”: bus tickets, utility bills, recepits, Janet Albrechtsen’s diatribes in The Australian; anything reduced to written form, really. And, even if we were to embrace this playful and unruly new world of infinite literary variety, we would still be needing to address such questions as: “What is the relative value of the ‘Bacchae’ when compared to a bus ticket?”; or, “Can the performativity instantiated by my Telstra bill illuminate for me the meaning of ‘A Tale of a Tub’?””

I agree. Think harder about the hint.

In any case, performativity is, though obviously more highly developed and refined in literary discourse, not only central to it. Indeed, ever since Austin’s illuminating examination of the variety of acts which can be performed by the use of language, literature may be seen as a higher-order instance of a performative function which is basic to language itself.

Recognising, however, that a feature of literary discourse is related to or dependent on or an instance of a proto-feature of langugage itself, and then proceeding to draw from this recognition an inference that any performative speech-act can count as “literature”, is clearly unwarranted. For one thing, it summons up the spectre of an indiscriminate, perhaps infinite, variety and scope of examples which can be adduced as instances of “literature”: bus tickets, utility bills, recepits, Janet Albrechtsen’s diatribes in The Australian; anything reduced to written form, really. And, even if we were to embrace this playful and unruly new world of infinite literary variety, we would still be needing to address such questions as: “What is the relative value of the ‘Bacchae’ when compared to a bus ticket?”; or, “Can the performativity instantiated by my Telstra bill illuminate for me the meaning of ‘A Tale of a Tub’?”

May I offer a hint, easily missed to be sure, in our Introduction: “These works reveal modes of performativity that are central to literary writing.”

Peter Minter

T’other is valid. It’s people like me who’ll either buy or reject this Anthology, not those wandering around Olympia.

As for ‘poor me’ - never, ever. I’m much more comfortable and confident for that.

If you are a pleb Aphra in this case it’s probably not because youre excluded, but because you’re not very bright.

If you find the debate boring, then piss off, and stop playing the ‘poor me’ card. Pathetic.

The editors were the editors, the final arbitrators, and that’s that. I’ve never, once in my life, read an anthology or a review of an anthology, which didn’t evoke passions, intellectual posterings and egotistical rebuttals and denunciations. Yawn.

Australia’s cultural life will neither rise nor fall because of this Anthology. In the meantime, hopefully, the travelling will be enhanced and the arrival enlightened by Macquarie’s admirable efforts to make more Australian writing easily accessible to those of us who don’t ponce around the elevated heights of cultural/literary critic or university academic.

My copy hasn’t yet arrived so it’s hard to comment further except to say that I generally (but not always) enjoy Craven’s reviews, but I think the same of Kerryn Goldworthy’s. In my personal library I have a copy of Goldworthy’s selection of Australian Short Stories, a wonderful book, which proves to me that she knows her Australian ‘stuff’, not to mention her clever and beautifully written collection of shorts, ‘North of the Moonlight Sonata’.

Perhaps this is a failing of my own judgment and intelligence but I’m prepared to back a writer/critic, sight unseen, as it were, because she already has discernible runs on the board.

But then, I’m an ordinary plebeian, who’s simply interested to read in and about her own country and it’s literary present and past and who couldn’t give a fig about pretension.

And dare I add that it’s the ordinary plebs amongst us who will contribute to this book’s sale or fail.

Actually, it was a joke. Peter gives the impression that anyone disagreeing with him must by definition be confused, and I was attempting (unsuccessfully, apparently) to make the point as briefly as possible, as per the previous comment, that there are in fact a number of legitimate positions to be taken on these matters, all of them complex and none of them reducible to a simple syllogism or a string of magisterial pronouncements.

‘But the PEN anthology is not operating at this level; it does not purport to be a contribution to philosophical anthropology but to literary culture.’

Is that right. I think everyone who has anything to say about the anthology should actually have a bit of a look at it first, starting not with a quick glance at the second half of the Table of Contents but with the introductory essay by the General Editor, Nicholas Jose, in which many of these questions are addressed.

In any case, how can there be a real disagreement when one interlocutor is labouring under a fundamental confusion? Or - if you reject that charge - when one interlocutor, rather than responding to a properly articulated objection, prefers to evade it by redescribing the terms of the debate or disclaiming the existence of any such terms? Either the PEN Anthology is of literature, in the first of Peter’s appropriately flexible senses of the concept, or it is not; if it is, then it is incumbent on the editor to justify the inclusion of material which is prima facie documentary rather than literary; if it is not, then the editor must, in the interests of candour (and self-respect), avoid creating in her putativive readership an expectation that it will find, in that part of the anthology devoted to Aboriginal subject-matter, the kind of imaginative richness which it is the distinct ontological function of literature to provide.

The confusion which Peter identifies is perpetuated, I think, by the tenacious attraction of an unexamined premise: that if a work (“text”) cannot be described as “literature” it is of no value at all. But this premise is patently false; the priority of literature over other domains of human culture cannot be demononstrated by strictly literary argument; it requires a higher, or more abstract and capacious, order of reasoning. And - whatever be the results of such reasoning - it is at this higher level that the mutliplicity of values is most perspicuously revealed. At this level, both a bus ticket and the Bacchae can be seen, in their own ways, as inherently valuable.

But the PEN anthology is not operating at this level; it does not purport to be a contribution to philosophical anthropology but to literary culture. And, in light of this, it is entirely legitimate, and laudable, for Peter to have questioned whether the anthology’s contents, and the principles on which they were selected, are fully reflective of and consistent with its self-avowed purpose.

Still if anyone should write a letter to Sophie just like the example from Maggie Morbourne, then it will have to go into the next edition of PEN, ensuring some literary fame for someone. Otherwise, Maggie would be receiving special treatment because of her background, which would not do…

Thanks,

Peter Minter

Thanks,

Pete

Therefore Craven is right, though as waffly as ever.

Still, Mr Craven I think you may have fallen victim to your own circumlocutory style such that your original message was a bit hard to process clearly. I haven’t purchased a copy of your review, but the piece above needs some editing and could almost have been reduced to the first and last paragraph without much loss of meaning. And “devoid even of literary ambition” might be taken to mean either that some of the “literature” was just post-it note stuff, or that the writer or the writer’s people lack any sense of poetry.

The lesson is: clarification and elaboration are not synonyms. Simplicity is golden.

Tick-tock, dead tree dudes. Another gate-keeping gig bites the dust.