Will I or won’t I
I am a junkie when it comes to books about Australian politics. I buy and read most books that come out. All other things being equal, The Latham Dairies would have been on my must buy list. Paradoxically yet, the extracts to date have not enticed me. My partner described them as boring. While Latham undoubtedly has a sharp pen, he lacks wit and subtlety. The book looks like a brutal sledge-fest without agility or cleverness.
For sure, I expect it to be self-serving; most auto-biographies are — Whitlam is still defending himself against the events of 1975. But I look for more in a biography. It might be insights of character and process. It could be amusing anecdotes among the daily humdrum. I enjoy well crafted prose and a clever argument. Yet, if the extracts are anything to go by, the diaries promise little beyond a raging torrent of vitriol (and some colourful nicknames).
Given my ambivalence, imagine my surprise when I read,
Booksellers are predicting The Latham Diaries, which go on sale today, could outsell Mr Clinton’s mammoth autobiography, My Life, in Australia.
The blanket coverage of revelations from Mr Latham’s diaries has led to such interest from the book-buying public that its publishers have decided to bring forward its release by two days, creating a logistical nightmare for Melbourne University Press.
I reckon it will be a dog. Most people have seen enough in the extracts and reviews over the last week to sate their appetite. (If truth be told, I think the book has been over marketed to its sales detriment). Many Labor voters are not going to buy it out of loyalty to the party. Why would they give their hard-earned to Mark? Many Coalition voters would not buy it anyway.
Okay, there is a ready market in Canberra. Coalition Senators and Members of Parliament are likely to be among the buyers as they sharpen their lines of attack on the man not even fit to clean the toilets in Parliament House. Labor parliamentarians will buy it and go straight to the index to see which of their private conversations have been made public. But this is a small market. I cannot see a huge interest in the wider public. If the punters did not vote for him why would they read his books?
The Diaries at 450 pages tops Latham’s other major tome, Civilising Global Capital. I certainly hope Latham has improved his writing style (or got himself a better editor) since 1998. Few books aimed at the popular market were more turgid. CGC was a 440 page monolith that should have been edited back to 240 pages. Crikey had this to say about it.
There are lots of long tortured sentences, piled high with jazzy sounding words. The effect is it all looks very ‘intellectual’, but when you break it down nothing much is really being said.
For example, instead of calling a country a country, he prefers ‘nation-state political jurisdiction’. The book is so overloaded with buzzwords you feel nauseous: vertical and horizontal social capital; endogenous growth; radical centre politics; zero sum choices; downwards envy; mutuality. A lot of the book cannot be fathomed without deciphering its own internal language and logic.
Here’s a sentence picked at random: ‘As noted earlier, one of the contradictions of the competitive advantage paradigm is the way in which it loads extra responsibilities onto the budgets of government while also seeking, in the accounting systems of nations, to blame public sector dissaving for the problems of a current account deficit.’ See what I mean?
I am torn. Should I wait until the Diaries sell for ten dollars a pop in the remaindered bin? When that happens, it will be in good company with Cheryl Kernot (Speaking for Myself Again) and Bob Hawke (The Hawke Memoirs). Or should I get it today? Advise me dear reader.
Update: It looks like I was wrong with my dog prediction. Today’s SMH says Rush to the bookstores shows bile is a bestseller
Update: At $24 from Big W in Woden, I succumbed.