High praise for ‘On Luck’

A review in the Sun-Herald today describes my essay ‘On Luck’ as “brilliant”.  The essay is now included in an ‘On-nibus’ collection of eight of the “little books on big themes” essays published by Melbourne University Press in 2008.

Another standout is Anne Summers’s excellent essay on the notion of the “lucky country” – a phrase that was intended as an insult but which we have somehow transformed into a national epithet.

From the high-minded to the masses

The ON-nibus
(Melbourne University Press, $29.99)
Reviewed by Johanna Leggatt

Few book editors would be game enough to pitch a collection of intellectual essays at the mass market, well aware that most readers prefer to sit down with that year’s Booker Prize winner rather than wade through an earnest assortment of ideas. Like the short story and poetry, dense erudition has struggled to find shelf space in an industry reliant on the airport bestseller to stay afloat.

MUO’s Little Books on Big Themes series is the stark exception; largely because publishing chief Louise Adler knew that in order to sell the books their intellectual rigour would have to be couched in attractive display cases and slick sleeve designs. She kept the word count down – 10,000 for each book – and relied on a host of celebrity writers to bring in the readers: Germaine Greer, Don Watson, David Malouf and Barrie Kosky, among others.

Thankfully, MUP’s tricks of design and display have not altered the quality of the content and the books are, for the most part, an outstanding collection of ideas.

The ON-nibus reproduces the first eight essays of the successful 2008 series – from Greer’s seething treatise on the state of Aboriginal affairs (On Rage) to Blanche d’Alpuget’s riposte to years of gossip about her affair with a former prime minister, whom, curiously, she refers to only as “M” (On Longing).

The authors were given free rein to write about subjects close to their hearts and the essays are as impassioned as they are informed. Most favour the personal approach over the didactic.

Greer’s essay is the more scholarly of the collection, tracing the dysfunction in many Aboriginal communities to the rage felt by Aboriginal men, whom, she argues, have been systematically emasculated and degraded since white settlement.

Aboriginal rage, Greer argues, has been denied its proper hearing and it has turned on itself with shattering consequences: “Often homeless, jobless, illiterate, with neither driver’s licence, birth certificate, nor Medicare card, the young Aboriginal male has virtually no chance of staying on the right side of the law. Lawless behaviour is the nearest he can come to resistance.”

Another standout is Anne Summers’s excellent essay on the notion of the “lucky country” – a phrase that was intended as an insult but which we have somehow transformed into a national epithet.

Australians, Summers argues, are easily seduced by the idea of luck and the notion making a quick buck – either from the land or poker machines. She points to our obsession with gambling as evidence of this flaw in the national psyche and astutely notes that governments are equally at the mercy of Lady Luck, with their coffers full of poker machine taxes and their love of a natural resource.

The problem with latter, Summers says, is that there is no skill or planning involved and lapping up the benefits of bountiful resources without proper economic management is a flawed approach.

It’s one of the many brilliant essays that deserve to be widely read in the collection and if there is one book that can persuade us to become a nation of essay readers, this is it.