The emperor’s new book

Saturday, 29th January 2011

The major problem here is reasonably straightforward — apparently George Negus cannot write.

The World from Down Under: a Chat with Recent History
By George Negus
HarperCollins, $35, pp 320
ISBN 9780732276249

The major problem here is reasonably straightforward — apparently George Negus cannot write. He also discloses an intense bias, which colours his reporting. Finally, on the available evidence, Negus just isn’t that learned in ‘current affairs/politics/travel’. If he is, he does himself a great disservice by publishing this tremendously foolish book.

It is only worth pointing this out, and so baldly, because the new Channel Ten current affairs host obviously thinks he is smarter than most of the ‘movers and shakers’ he interviews. That is clear. He certainly thinks he is morally superior, a bit better than the rest of us: definitely not like other ‘Australians’. His subjects simply cannot touch him, in his reckoning, and maybe no one has ever disabused him of this opinion. Someone should.

Each time the reader confronts another nonsensical phrase — ‘historically considerable’ or ‘double-jointed journalistic entendre’ — this withering assessment of Negus is reinforced. This is a book full of such nonsense.

He certainly sets a relentlessly pedestrian tone, paraphrasing a déclassé autobiographer, A. B. Facey, without introduction, as though ‘Bert[’s]’ 1980s fame (and nickname) live on in Australian households, unsullied by three decades of popular and critical neglect. He also quotes Abraham Lazlo who, according to an ABC website, was ‘a Human Potential psychologist back in the 1970s’. Upon finding this out, I started telling family and friends that I wanted to stab myself in the eyes.

Of course, readers could Google these references, but any eventual enlightenment must be worth the keystrokes. Most times here, it is not. The arcana are just arcane.

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Dani

February 4th, 2011 3:30am Report this comment

Ah, the first sentence of this review exactly summed up my feelings. I was given this book for Christmas and never got more than a few pages in because it was just so poorly written with sub-clauses inside sub-clauses. It sounded like a confused grandma recounting a tangled recollection from her youth, rather than any kind of prose I'm familiar with. Very poor editing, if indeed there was any at all.

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