The first major newspaper review of the book, by Shelley McInnis, was published in the Age and WA Today on Saturday. Positive overall, which was great, albeit a touch condescending (hey, those reviewers gotta think themselves important somehow) and, well, downright odd in its internal contradictions and strange air of not really having understood the book so struggling to find other things to say. The first third was a review of Gangland, my previous book, and there seemed to be an expectation that Land of Plenty should be more of the same. Disappointingly, at no stage did McInnis engage seriously with any of the main arguments or sub-arguments of the book. I was pleased, though, that the book was deemed important, and that the section on feminism won plaudits. My sentences, however, should apparently be shorter, a comment that struck me as a typical case of a reviewer thinking their peccadillos are of universal import.
But the thing that did make me wonder was the idea that the book somehow ‘lacked hope’ and the implication that it should offer pat solutions, like little parcels all wrapped up in a bow. Now, McInnis is a parliamentary secretary, so is perhaps used to seeing the minute and action sheet all in one. But her comment got me thinking. I self-consciously steered away from such prescriptions as I was writing. It would have seemed glib and trite; self-important. And I believe that ideas and facts and narratives of the sort that the book offers, are power in themselves. It’s then up to people to use them.
Or am I wrong, and we live in an age that is indeed therapeutic, where people want pat solutions?
My reluctance to present such solutions goes back to my conception of what books and media are now: interactive, not top-down or prescriptive. For mine, society is a joint project: I bring to the table some stuff people can use (a whole bunch of research and musings on conservatism and its effects), as one tool in the toolbox, which is what we all do. The book is intended, therefore, as a starter and resource for informed debate to follow.
Frustratingly, while there are no prescriptions, the ideas McInnis is looking for are indeed there (as several interviewers have noted). Even as she criticises the way that several chapters end with a call for a new social contract, she seems not to have noticed that in fact each one offers a new set of ideas to do with how to build on that general project.
Or are openly prescriptive ‘solutions’ what we want now (as if it were all so simple)? Happy little prescriptions for society, that we can take to the chemist, so to speak, and get filled? Is this really such a therapuetised world? It seems to me that the alternative; that we live in a complex social organism and that all of us need to do our bit, is indeed the more hopeful ideal.
