Tokyo

Brief flit back to the cosy old Imperial Hotel for some meetings and to give a talk at a DIA meeting - and of course to drop in on a couple of sacred sites in the Ginza. But why on earth did they pull down Frank Lloyd Wright's lovely old concrete pile?

Monroe Doctrine Non Che?

Just a test post really, I wanted to put up a piccy of Marilyn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes which we revisited last night with great affection, but for some reason the image won't upload. Will this be the end of Quo Vadis as we know and love it? Or is it just time to restrict it to the pleasure of the text?

Hong Kong

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Patten Recognition

This week's brief visit to Hong Kong included a climb to the Peak for dinner. In addition to the usual four stories of tourist outlets a Dymocks has just opened. Arriving early and browsing, what caught my attention in this 1998 memoir by Hong Kong's last British governor was the prose style: elegant, erudite and witty. And of course his story has the immediacy of history told by a player rather than a spectator.

Reading on through, one discovers that it is not so much a memoir as a defence of the traditional liberal values: market forces, the rule of law and basic freedoms of expression and movement, using Hong Kong vs Beijing as a case study. Patten perhaps understandably has a forthright view on Asian politics, and it is not necessary to agree with everything he says in order to admire and enjoy the exemplary way in which he says it.

Handy Job

The USA has spawned a legion of management gurus, the UK only one: Charles Handy. Catching up today with this semiautobiographical 2001 offering was an opportunity to reflect...

One of Handy's previous books The Empty Raincoat (1994) was provided in its year of publication to all executive MBA students at AGSM

It led to some extensive changes in my life. For better or for worse?

Only The Shadow knows.

Der Tod in Venerdig

'There is indeed in every artist's nature a wanton and treacherous proneness to side with beauty'

Opera Australia's current revival of Jim Sharman's 1989 production of Benjamin Britten's final opera Death in Venice (1973) is transcendent. The new OA music director Richard Hickox is a Britten devotee, and as Gustav von Aschenbach Philip Langridge achieves an utter mastery of text, music and character which I cannot remember seeing in the theatre before. Why does this sad tale of the mortal need for beauty require so much retelling?

Death Allstars
Gustav Mahler
Thomas Mann
Luchino Visconti
Benjamin Britten
Richard Hickox
Philip Langridge
Graeme Pushee
Peter Coleman-Wright
Jim Sharman
Brian Thompson
Luciana Arrighi
Meryl Tankard

Oldies

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In Canberra Tonight

Old Parliament House was rather the surprise find of this short trip to our beloved national capital. The building crackles with the electricity of political power. You can wander round Gough Whitlam's old office, loll on the red leather front bench, contemplate Bill Henson's heart-rending tryptych of Simone Young in the National Portrait gallery and, when you're done roaming, have a bite in an above average caff out the back, full of Canberrans who clearly recognise a good thing. Soft shelled crab tempura, sixteen dollars, more please.

Rather a contrast to the National Gallery which these days resembles nothing so much as a national monument to the cult of the stud wall, as the austere off-form concrete interior surfaces of Madigan's magisterial design have beeen encrusted with with a tempura of plasterboard, and the grand cathedral spaces broken up into faux suburban living rooms in tasteful decorater shades. The whole institution, like the cafeteria lasagna, seems tired and stale and tasteless. But at least they have now dispensed with the sad Irish turkey who numbed the great Sensation for fear of giving his minister heartburn. Let's hope Radford gets the place back on track.

He went of his own accord

In Jakarta for a day or two lecturing. Just a year since the Oz embassy was bombed, two years since the Jakarta Marriott (where I was staying) and three years since Bali. Spring is peak season for bombs, as the Jakarta Post kindly pointed out. Must be something about a young man's (apocalyptic) fancy. Couple of new cases of bird flu, then there's the dengue epidemic. Actually none of those little risks troubled me as much as the grinding traffic and the air pollution, sufficiently savage to reduce the voice to a rasp within 15 minutes of stepping outside

But there are always good things, of course, and I particularly liked this handcarved phone booth - right next to the departure lounge...

Legless in Adelaide

Just as Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) is about making movies, this delectable, recursive newie from the author of Elizabeth Costello (2003) and Disgrace (1999) is all about writing fiction.

Reviewers seem to rather dislike the arrival, half way through the story, of the frail but incisive Elizabeth C, eponymous author-heroine and Coetzee surrogate of his previous meandering, thought-provoking tale. But on the face of it, she seems to have just as much of a right to be pottering around the back streets of North Adelaide contemplating aspects of the novel as anyone else.

Buy this book now. Buy all his books. We paid a paltry forty five Australian dollars for the Adelaide-printed Knopf edition at the new Dymocks in World Square, and worth every penny. Or you could pay $39.95 at Gleebooks or $34.95 at Borders in Pitt St. Wandering away from native soil, you could pay A$29.53 for an identical version published by Secker & Warburg at Amazon UK or A$21.96 at Amazon US in a much handsomer rejacketed version from Viking due out on Sep 22.

Asia Fan Fantasia

Like other pundits in a crowded field, Backman reads obsessively and travels constantly. Mainly brainy reading - The Economist, New York Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune plus scholarly articles and monographs. Unusually, he keeps bowerbird notes, looks for patterns, and buttresses his analysis with recent, relevant facts and stories.

The result is a cut or two above the usual avalanche of personal travelogue and cultural stereotyping. In his new book, published September 2005, Backman is good on the 'stans - the five central Asian republics sitting on a vast ocean of largely untapped oil and gas. He has fun with President Nyazov of Turkmenistan, but his more serious thesis concerns the 'stans dominant position at the top of Transparency International's hit parade of corruption, which discourages Western democracies from investing - but not China.

Also on offer are thoughtful perspectives on Aussies abroad, the Asian art market, Nepal, how rich Saudis trash their hotel rooms, and the Anwar Ibrahim saga in Malaysia.

In a remote village in Nepal, Backman is accosted by a band of Maoist insurgents with automatic weapons, demanding money. He hands over 1000 rupees (about US$13) and is astonished to receive a neatly printed receipt, which the bandits sign and date and carefully stamp with a hammer and sickle insignia. He is advised to produce the receipt to avoid paying again - he does, and it works! His conclusion: surely it should be possible to negotiate with these guys.

The best compliment for an author: his first three are now on order from Amazon

Backman Backlist
Asian Insider 2004
Big in Asia 2003
Asian Eclipse 2001

Doherty Mind

To the Sydney Institute yesterday evening to hear Peter Doherty again. Despite a lifetime devoted to cellular immunology he was as usual witty, urbane and self-deprecating. The occasion was the publication of his book A Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize - equally enjoyable, even for us non-beginners.

Biography
Interview
Portrait