A brief selective review of some significant and often neglected works from the culture of dissent.
Point of Departure (1986)
When Jean Devanny (1894-1962) wrote this memoir, she was no longer a member of the Communist Party of Australia. As a feminist, novelist, agitator and organiser, Devanny was renowned in the socialist movement for the intensity of her activism and the boldness of her views. The reasons for her expulsion from the CPA remain a matter of great controversy, and this work was written with some bitterness (although she refused to publish it during her lifetime).Devanny's extraordinary life makes startling reading as she recalls her oppressive early life in rural New Zealand and her involvement in the party's popular front campaigns. Now the subject of a soon to be published biography by Carole Ferrier, the life and work of Jean Devanny is a window into the passions and prospects of a radical generation drawn to revolutionary politics in the '20s and '30s.
Wild Card (1990)
Recognised today as the great matriarch of Australian literature, Dorothy Hewitt (born 1923) was also once a cadre in the Communist Party of Australia, which she joined at the age of 19. While her poetic skills make this first volume of autobiography riveting reading, Hewitt's life here so bluntly described was one intensely and boldly lived as a lover, mother, writer and communist.Any reader of Wild Card is soon immersed in the Hewitt way of forever renewing herself and is sure to put down the book thirsty for more. With the publication of her first novel, Bobbin Up, in 1958, Hewitt breaks off her story as her promise as a writer is beginning to be realised.
Despite her withdrawal from the party in 1968, her tempestuous party membership is represented as an inseparable and essential component of her personal narrative.
The Serpent's Tooth (1984)
Published to critical acclaim, Roger Milliss' (born 1934) memoir of his relationship with his father, Bruce, was greeted as the greatest work of Australian autobiography. Originally a Katoomba businessman and ALP member (he was Ben Chifley's campaign director), Bruce Milliss left the Catholic Church for the Communist Party in the 1940s.The later Sino-Soviet split in the Communist movement bitterly divided father from son. While Roger Milliss was working in Moscow as a journalist on the Moscow News, his father became a dedicated Maoist and adherent of the Pekingªaligned CP(M-L) in Australia.
But The Serpent's Tooth is more than a story of a family feud. In exploring his relationship with his father and their shared commitment to communism, Milliss captures some of the inspiring dedication and optimism that only the socialist movement in this country has been able to harness.
[This first edition of "Worth a second look" is written by Dave Riley. Other readers are encouraged to submit similar short reviews of books, films and so on that deserve a continuing audience.]