Dustjacket synopsis:
"What was the worst people could discover about you? Did some peoe have noting to hide?...Sometimes friends were there not to share the secrets but to keep them in.

"The new cinema owner dreams of a decadent future from his darkened castle....

"Private tragedies are unearthed from their hiding place in a locked drawer....

"Cindy is raped creating devasting personal and political dilemmas....

"An erotic memoir in six parts reveals an explosive political scandal....

"This is Frank Moorhouse at his most controversial and subversie, as he explores the secret and contradictory truths below the surface of the Australian psyche."

Quotes:
"passionate, sceptical, intelligent, funny, giving, frighteningly open" - Rolling Stone
"Moorhouse epitomises that observer culture from Australia which, surreptitiously, is in the process of charting all the propensities of our period" - Liberation

Contents:

Pacific City
The Proprietor of Darkness
The Etiquette of Deception
The Crying Organ
The Town Philosophers' Banquet
The Illegality of the Imagination
The Science Club Meets

The Dutch Letters
The Hidden-Away Letters (1)
The Hidden-Away Letters (2)
Some Background to Dirk's Letters

Why the Dutch Airforce was in Australia
The Mitchell Bomber
The Broome Incident
C.E.M. Joad
Toc H
Man the Unknown
An American Tea
Romano's

Fourth World
"Thank God, White Man"
Syphilis and the New World
Dreams of Idyllic, Exotic Cultures
Okot p'Bitek
Aversive Racism
The Stockhom Syndrome
Cindy's Age
Legendary Lovers
Only the Interaction of Complex Things
Old Vadim's
John Henry Challis (1806-1880)
Horne's Rule on Doing Conferences
Eric Bottral at the Conference
Hard Cases
The Match Game
Across the Plains, Over the Mountains, Down to the Sea

From the Picador paperback edition, 1996.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2001 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: September 7, 2001.