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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 06:12 am
Gregory Day reviews Andrew McGahan’s Underground, a “protest novel written out of a sense of disgust with the political and moral direction of the Australian Government” featuring the characters Leo James (twin brother of the evil Prime Minister, Bernard James) and Aisha, a “fierce blonde strangeling” with terrorist organisation Great Southern Jihad:
They trigger a mass execution of Muslim refugees in the NSW outback, they are selflessly ferried across the Murray River at night by a female Aboriginal elder, they wind up in a walled compound for Muslims on Sydney Road called the Brunswick Ghetto – which is bombed by government aircraft – necessitating their flight through an underground tunnel. And from there they head to Canberra for what can only be described as the book’s mega-denouement.
It is a sickening indictment of the “coalition of the willing” era that that this fluorescently far-fetched plot is almost plausible.
(Via Tony Thomas)
UPDATE. Hanyu: “And why did I know Gregory Day would be a first-class compassionate head tilter?”
- Maybe Messieurs Day and McGahan should run the ALP’s election campaign next year.Posted by entropy on 2006 10 27 at 10:50 PM • permalink
- “Through it all Leo James reflects on a different Australia of years gone by, when politicians had spines, when the population was expert at bullshit-detection, when we could fight wars without losing all sense of who we were. “
FMD, if you don’t know who you are see a therapist rather than write some deranged pap in an attempt to find your place in the world.
Posted by Harry Buttle on 2006 10 27 at 10:54 PM • permalink
- yeah, I’ll run right out and get this one.
On the other hand, I got an email saying this had been sent to me. At least it’s an author we can trust.
[Long url to Arthur Chrenkoff’s book on Amazon removed because it was breaking the page. Go to Amazon.com and use the “search” function if you want to find it. The Management.]
- I reckon I’ll wait for the movie version.Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2006 10 27 at 11:10 PM • permalink
- And why did I know Gregory Day would be a first-class compassionate head tilter.
- Exactly how much LSD is Gregory Day consuming daily?Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 10 27 at 11:16 PM • permalink
- Hanyu’s head-tilter is an eyebrow furrower, to boot. And there’s more:
“He is also a poet and, with his partner Sian Marlow, publishes limited edition books….
He’s….recorded a solo album, Black Tower, which set several of William Yeats’ poems to music. The songs attracted the attention of the Yeats Society…”Yikes, there’s a fellow to reckon with !
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2006 10 27 at 11:22 PM • permalink
And from there they head to Canberra for what can only be described as the book’s mega-denouement.
Where Leo launches his army of pacifist gay whales, and giant papier-mâché heads at the facsists’ tanks, while Aisha applies for a grant to conduct goddess poetry courses. The battle drags on, fortunately Leo & Aisha don’t have to go back to their Marxist Finger-Painting degree until semester starts – and even then there’s only three contact hours.
However, activists, whales and damp newspaper are no match for an enemy that isn’t surgically attached to a bong and the fascists prevail. They immediately hold an election and are returned with an increased majority.
Aisha dumps Leo – a woman can’t be expected to work with something that tiny – and marries his brother. He has a job after all. Aisha & Bernard now have three sons: Bernard Jr., Ronald, and Dubya.
FMD, if you don’t know who you are see a therapist rather than write some deranged pap in an attempt to find your place in the world.
I don’t know who he is either, but whoever he is, he sounds like a dickhead to me.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 10 27 at 11:34 PM • permalink
- OT as well, but saw this at Jihad Watch (Vote Early and often!) just now. Our Prime Minister John Howard has been nominated by the Islamic Human Rights Commission as Islamophobe of the Year……..okay Bush and Blair got a mention tooooooo.
If you want to vote, and I think you should, the only thing to decide is vote ‘no one’ or go for it and see who we can get to win!
- Predictable ain’t it? If its a conservative, or christian, or if it doesn’t have the usual head tilting slant towards the left’s ratbag of policies- anti-American, anti-Jew, anti- capitalistic, anarchy, “refugees”, the Age will usually lambast it or praise it to high heaven. Anyhow else remember the bloody awful reviews that the Age gave to HBO’s Rome, and Narnia?Posted by Wylie Wilde on 2006 10 27 at 11:40 PM • permalink
- …publishes limited edition books….
Code for vanity publishing. In other words, his work is such crap that he has to pay to get it printed.
Might get the book, though, when it is remaindered tomorrow. The outdoor dunny needs paper after vast sales only exceeded by Lowenstein’s. Are the pages as absorbent as a koran’s?
MarkL
canberra
- Maybe it’s just me, but after following Hanyu’s link and reading the story about the eels, my first reaction was to think “Gosh, I hope they didn’t go to waste.”
I’m off to find a snack…
Posted by Not My Problem on 2006 10 28 at 12:10 AM • permalink
- #9 Crispytoast.Surely it wouldn’t be acid! Totally inorganic don’t y’know.The politically correct and truly delightful psilocybian fungi will however provide a similar level of detachment from reality.A particular favorite,well regarded for its alkaloid content,is the dung inhabiting species,panaeolus cyanescens.It is recommended that one does not ingest the host just stick to the mushroom otherwise one could finish up full of shit.
- I went and voted for hoWARd as the “Islamophobe of the Year”. (several dozen times)
While buggering up their nasty little poll, I was sniggering at the ratbag’s title ” Islamic Human Rights Commission”
Islam? Human Rights? In the same breath? Hohohohohohoho.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 10 28 at 12:31 AM • permalink
- Protest novel, huh? Well, he’s going to regret this speaking truth to power when the thugs bust down his door and he’s pinned to the floor with jackboots on his neck.
I mean that IS going to happen, right?
Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 10 28 at 12:35 AM • permalink
- I have never heard of Andrew McGahan, but I do wonder if he has a brother called David.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 10 28 at 12:42 AM • permalink
- i’m surprise charles johnson of littlegreenfootballs fame wasn’t nominated as Islamophobe of the Year.Posted by drscroogemcduck on 2006 10 28 at 12:55 AM • permalink
- I’m sorry, call me an economically minded, cold hearted son of a bitch if you wish, but why would we drop bombs on them? If they’re trapped in this ‘ghetto’, why not just turn off the water and lob in a few white phosphorus grenades? London 1666 anyone?
We’d save SHITLOADS on the weapons alone, forget jet fuel, flight pay and aircraft maintenance.
Also could the great and powerful Andrea please fix that page format thingy? Cheers.
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 10 28 at 02:17 AM • permalink
It is a sickening indictment of the “coalition of the willing” era that that this fluorescently far-fetched plot is almost plausible.
The unintentionally hilarious plot line of A Handmaid’s Tale is more “plausible” than this nonsense. Good grief.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 10 28 at 03:22 AM • permalink
The text is full of bald sermonising and broad-brush stereotypes that are found in most airport thrillers. It is also dotted with adjectival blandness, unauthentic language (no “born and bred” Hawthorn supporter would call a guernsey a “jersey”) and curiously touristic depictions of a landscape that McGahan has described far better in the past.
But wait!
McGahan has chosen a style that facetiously mirrors his content.
The cunning bastard!
And there was me thinking that the book was just plain shithouse. All praise to The Age for explaining such brilliance to the unsophisticated masses!
- In related news, David Marr is honest enough to rubbish another left-wing GWOT thriller by a more literary kind of writer.
- #37 That’s one of the best reviews of a novel I have ever read! People must hav been knocking the doors down at Collins this morning to make sure they get a copy. The review is almost as long as most of the novels I have ever read too (like one of Nick Earls’ characters in Bachelor Kisses, I am an affectionado of thin novels).
I particularly liked the flourish Marr uses to finish off the review:Who could do anything but wish it well and hope that what’s not achieved on the page can be realised on the screen: a fine, imaginative grappling with the manipulation of fear in the late Howard era.
Who could argue with that?
What a tosser.
- off topic,. but could Antony Lowenstein and the Wendy Lowenstein obituarised below by Andrew Bolt be related? Just wonderin’.
The Age compass goes haywire over schoolgirl sex
By Andrew Bolt
Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 10:40amThe Age obituary page gives teacher, historian, author and former communist Wendy Lowenstein a tender farewell:
Teaching at a high school in the 70s, Wendy caught a group of schoolgirls selling their favours to passing businessmen. Instead of admonishing them, she lectured them on the values of unionism, agreeing on a base rate and never undercutting their fellow worker because that was tantamount to ‘scabbing’. (One of the girls was charging 50c to do what the others were getting $2 for).
Meanwhile The Age editorial gives us a stern sermon on the evils of a video shot by Werribee schoolboys having sex with a possibly willing, although vulnerable, school girl and then monstering her despicably:
But the wiser and more effective course is to fine-tune our ethical compass for the promising, sometimes frightening, journey ahead.
Tune away, Mr Jaspan.
- Percypup, if I recall from reading that post and comments on bolta’s blog, Wendy is richard Lowenstein’s mother or sister. No relation to Antony at all.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 10 28 at 11:51 AM • permalink
- It is a sickening indictment of the “coalition of the willing” era that that this fluorescently far-fetched plot is almost plausible.
It is a sickening indictment of the condition of today’s left that this fluorescently far-fetched (great description there) kind of “literature” is just so much wishful thinking.
- “head-tilt”
I can’t figure out how leftys manage the HEAD-TILT OF CONCERN thing. They have no backbones…so, how come their heads don’t flop onto their shoulders when they tilt?
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 28 at 05:07 PM • permalink
- How in the world did we allow such faggoty wankers to thrive? I wish I could put Day, McGahan and Marr in a wooden tub and send them on a fact finding tour of gay whales in the South Pole.Posted by Wylie Wilde on 2006 10 28 at 06:37 PM • permalink
- #15 Our Prime Minister John Howard has been nominated by the Islamic Human Rights Commission as Islamophobe of the Year……..okay Bush and Blair got a mention toooo.
Funny, isn’t it, that three countries that put their non-Moslem soldiers in harms way daily to stop vicious Islamic tribes tearing each other apart, are against their Islamic Human Rights
- Compared with the new Bush Snuff Movie – out just in time for the elections! – this is pretty mild.
The American Left have excelled themselves, but they had to get a Pom director to do it.His pathetic defence: Gratuitous gross violence in a film about a major current leader is merely cinematic entertainment, and no-one would dream of relating it to real life … besides, it DOESN’T CONDONE THE ASSASSINATION in any way!
I call this the “Reverse Spielberg Defence”
- (When the eels came out) it was like, OK, the locals can only know so much; they’ve only been here so long. What if someone came along that really knew?”
Well, sport, you should have gone to the library and done some research. Could’ve saved yourself years of wondering about if and when the sky was going to fall.
The eels weren’t committing suicide as lemmings are thought to do, but don’t. Nothing ailed them. They were exhibiting normal eel migration behaviour.
Dill!
I had no idea some lout in a tin can who robbed people of their money also wrote high-toned lefty-style craparama. That Ned Kelly, he was multi-talented.
Actually, he did!
Posted by Mr Hackenbacker on 2006 10 29 at 08:32 PM • permalink
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