Picture of author.

Don Watson (1) (1949–)

Autor(a) de Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language

Para outros autores com o nome Don Watson, veja a página de desambiguação.

18+ Works 1,557 Membros 30 Reviews 2 Favorited

About the Author

Don Watson was born in 1949 in Australia. He is an author and public speaker. He took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a PhD at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. mostrar mais For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the Premier of Victoria, John Cain. In 1992 he became Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, won both The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year. His 2001 Quarterly Essay, Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence was a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. In 2015 his title, The Bush, won the Indie Book of the Year, the Book of the Year at the 2015 New South Wales Premier Literary Awards, and The Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction. His 2016 Quarterly Essay, Enemy Within: American Politics in the Time of Trump is on the bestsellers list. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: Photographer unknown

Obras de Don Watson

Associated Works

The Best Australian Essays 2008 (2008) — Contribuinte — 28 cópias
The Best Australian Essays 2002 (2002) — Contribuinte — 22 cópias
The Best Australian Essays 2014 (2014) — Contribuinte — 9 cópias

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Resenhas

This is an important Australian book. It will find companions on the shelf with: [b:A Million Wild Acres: 200 Years of Man and an Australian Forest|281037|A Million Wild Acres 200 Years of Man and an Australian Forest|Eric Rolls|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1607425350l/281037._SY75_.jpg|1964254] by Eric Rolls, [b:Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture – A New Earth|34951739|Call of the Reed Warbler A New Agriculture – A New Earth|Charles Massy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1494503291l/34951739._SX50_.jpg|56224975] by Charles Massy, [b:Back From the Brink : How Australia's Landscape Can Be Saved|3747340|Back From the Brink How Australia's Landscape Can Be Saved|Peter Andrews|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335571856l/3747340._SY75_.jpg|3791186] by Peter Andrews, and [b:Collected Poems|1341646|Collected poems|Les Murray|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1182869189l/1341646._SY75_.jpg|1331230] by Les Murray.

Don Watson eloquently surveys the extent to which Australia has been, and continues to be, laid waste by the people who struggle against it; people who want the bush to be something it isn't. Even today, the destruction is due to ignorance and the afflicted application of unsuitable practices and aesthetics. Across regional Australia the arrogance of broadacre terra-farming finds its corollary in the domestic garden where ugly bush is pushed back in favour of exotic fancies. Urban Australians have also lost contact with natural systems. The consequent public blindness through loss of knowledge, memory, and continuity, now tolerates an almost wilful disregard for Australian natural values.

For all its historical anchoring, The Bush is really only half-a-book because it fails to lift its gaze from historical descriptions of mainly nineteenth century utilitarian imperatives -interesting as they are. Don Watson's reluctance to look further, even into the present, like the man who sees grasses only as potential stock feed, seems remiss. This is despite a brief encounter with bush artist, John Wolseley and a passing reference to Peter Andrews.

Sensitivities towards the bush have changed dramatically over the last hundred years particularly through bush walking, bush regeneration, and bush living. As I closed the book, I was left with the sense that he has yet to surrender to the enchantment that can come with not turning bush land to use.

This is a pity because someone as widely respected as Don Watson could have moved beyond agriculture and mining and not only acknowledged such new sensitivities but investigated how a deeper understanding of the bush might be worming its way into our national psyche or even creating a new frontier - or not.

Over the years I've encountered many people in Australia who are as enchanted as I am with the perfection and resilience of the bush in whatever form and shape they feel affinity with - even severely damaged or degraded bush; people who know how to nurture it, restore it, and know when to leave it alone; people who are enthralled by what they see and hear; people who find themselves in the bush, are open to what it can show them, and are plunged into a state of wonder and veneration; people who commune with it - even worship it, as if in a kind of secular church.

Don Watson is interested in language, yet he doesn't question why the Australian language doesn't have words or phrases for (increasingly uninhabited) areas of the bush, bush where people live benignly, feel they belong, or are finely attuned to the complexity of cycles and moods, other than the dismissive, even derogatory terms he briefly mentions: hobby farm or lifestyle block.

In Don Watson's sweep of bush architecture, it's as though people who know, nurture, exult in the bush, and who find in such terms the continuation of a destructive force, don't really exist, or are not worth mentioning. The almost invisible uninhabited wilds that are finding custodians or sometimes incorporated into National Parks are not known to many but are held in almost religious awe by those that know them well. If, as Watson asserts, our relationship with the bush defines who we as Australians are, then why is this non-utilitarian dimension missing? Is it that the absence of language has denied bush lovers the opportunity to describe what they have discovered?
...and yet, there have always been some, in each generation,
there have always been some who could live in the presence of silence.
And some, I have known them, men with gentle broad hands,
who would die if removed from these unpeopled places, (Les Murray Noonday Axeman)
I write this, not as an armchair urban theorist, but as someone who has lived in, and loved, remote bush land for more than 50 years. I've had the childhood privilege of experiencing what I call the pastoral life on a large property with more than 30 station hands (including a full-time rabbiter), where women wore jodhpurs and the homestead had a groom. I've wasted time as a grazier paring thousands of maggoty feet. I've known the satisfaction of building a well-strained fence. I've had a romance with Australian hardwoods and still run a sawmill. I've been flooded-in, burnt-out by bushfire, and have closely observed the ecologies of wild and feral animals - and humans, over a lifetime of restoring and nurturing degraded bush land and watercourses. I've been the President of a Landcare Network, where what has natural provenance is not just venerated but turned to non-use. I like to think that after nine generations, my family have learnt what it means to be living on the land.

What's missing from this book are the bush's non-utilitarian, spiritual dimensions or as Les Murray once said, something along the lines of, 'the Australian landscape is made for poetry'.

Most of what I'd like to say about a lifetime of bush enchantment, and perhaps its consequences, can be found in a written piece about where I live in the bush that I've called In Place. I suspect, if he read this piece, Don Watson would become Tom Donovan and mutter, "bullshit".
… (mais)
 
Marcado
simonpockley | outras 6 resenhas | Feb 25, 2024 |
Love the way Watson writes and the depth of knowledge he brings to topics to help contextualise.
 
Marcado
brakketh | outras 6 resenhas | Jan 29, 2024 |
I loved reading this very interesting coverage of Australia’s bush with history, personal observations and literary anecdotes. Extremely good index of a books like this.
 
Marcado
GeoffSC | outras 6 resenhas | Aug 20, 2023 |
Beautifully written and provides a glimpse of how the Paul Keating office functioned. A wonderful read for anyone interested in Australian politics.
 
Marcado
brakketh | outras 7 resenhas | Nov 30, 2021 |

Listas

Prêmios

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Estatísticas

Obras
18
Also by
4
Membros
1,557
Popularidade
#16,554
Avaliação
3.8
Resenhas
30
ISBNs
98
Idiomas
1
Favorito
2

Tabelas & Gráficos