Bohemia : the all-Australian literary magazine

Call Number
Nf 059.45 BOH
Created/Published
Melbourne : Bohemia, 1939-1967
Issue
Seventh Issue (October 1939)
Images
16
Notes
Pages 9, 10, 11, 12, missing from hard copy
View Catalogue

Text

Bohemia  

Remarkable Privilege Book Offer to Every Reader  

— (SEE PAGE 9)  

Registered at the G.P.0., Melbourne, ft*  

transmission through the Post as PeriodiaaL  

 

Mateship  

Art  

Letters  

THE ALL-AUSTRALIAN LITERARY MAGAZINE  

SEVENTH ISSUE.  

MELBOURNE.  

OCTOBER, 1939.  

Bohemia  

IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY.  

Subscription 3/- per annum,  

plus 1/- postage.  

NEWSAGENTS and CLUBS please note:  

DISTRIBUTING AGENTS: Messrs. George  

Batchelor Pty. Ltd., McKillop St., Mel-  

bourne, to whom all applications for par-  

cels must be addressed.  

LITERARY CONTRIBUTORS: Please ad-  

dress your contributions to The Editor,  

“Bohemia,” Bernard T. Jones Co. Pty.,  

Ltd., 1-7 Knox Place, Melbourne. Liter-  

ary and Art Fellowships’ reports must be  

in at least days before date of publica-  

tion, which will be on the first of each  

month. Other communications should be  

addressed to—  

THE MANAGER, Osborne House, 399  

Little Collins Street, Melbourne.  

The Bread and Cheese Club does not  

identify itself with the views of any writer  

expressed in these pages. As Literary Club,  

it has no political opinions nor ecclesiastical  

leanings.  

IN THIS ISSUE  

POETS’ pie  

MR. GROUCH AGAIN  

POETRY PRIZES PRESENTED ....  

FURNLEY MAURICE—Verse  

JEAN CAMPBELL on Author Baiting  

NORMA L. DAVlS—Verse  

EDITORIAL; Harry Hooton—Verse ..  

ALAN MOYLE—on Bernard Shaw ..  

Z. V. WEBB—Verse  

VICTOR COBB on an Artist’s  

Troubles  

BERNARD SHAW—Special Book Offer  

(See Coloured Inset).  

LETTERS FROM OUR BETTERS .... 13  

A. W. DAWES—Book Review 14  

PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS 15  

MAX HARRIS—RepIy to Critics .. .. 16  

Book Reviews 17  

WHAT SOCIETIES ARE DOING .... 19  

DIRECTORY 20  

“Mountain Flat” Far From Flat  

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH  

Reviewed  

by VANCE PALMER  

Mountain flat’ is, think,  

the best novel Leonard Mann  

has written. There is an unhurried  

swiftness in the telling of the story,  

sense of certainty and assurance on  

every page, that gives you complete  

confidence in the writer. He knows,  

you feel, what he is doing. He has  

thought about his story long enough,  

deeply enough, to give it shape, with  

one incident following inevitably out  

of another.  

This is not life, as the casual on-  

looker sees it; it is something tidier  

and more comprehensible, in which  

everything has significance. micro-  

cosm of the real world, prepared for  

our understanding. In fact, what we  

call art.  

There is heavy prejudice, nowa-  

days, against giving things shape.  

Writers are encouraged to slosh things  

down, to pour out their casual ideas  

and impresions as they come, the no-  

tion being that this gives feeling of  

spontaneity to their work. So it does,  

sometimes. It arrests the attention of  

the man who reads as he runs. But,  

after while, work written under  

such impulses looks about as fresh  

as yesterday’s newspapers.  

Its ebullient opinions rouse no more  

interest than the headlines that once  

looked so clamorous in their black type.  

It has come from the top of the mind,  

the exposed part, not from the crea-  

tive lower part that remains submerged  

like floating iceberg.  

Yet there is danger about pre-  

occupation with form. It may come to  

be an end in itself, as it did with  

George Moore, whose later books seem  

like beautiful carvings in butter. Leon-  

ard Mann escapes this, and think will  

always escape it, because oi his deep  

interest in men and women how  

they live, what is in their minds.  

You feel he knows this ‘Mountain  

Flat’ down to the last patch of brack-  

en on one of the outlying farms, so  

that before the book is finished you  

come to know it, too; know the teacher  

and the township lawyer, know the  

Sieglers, the Ainsleys and the Coburns;  

all the scattered families that are faint-  

ly connected with one another to  

some extent through the old Garibald-  

ian, Negrelli, who had come to the  

Flat in the very early days.  

In its way, the book is study in  

intermarriage, in racial admixture,  

in the making of the Australian type.  

Vanni Coburn, perhaps the most in-  

teresting figure in it, is grandson  

of the old Garibaldian; so is Bob Gal-  

ton, with whom he comes into tragic  

conflict over the girl, Laura.  

But it is more study of the peas-  

ant instinct, how it persists even in  

new country, making older people,  

like George Coburn, cling to the soil,  

making them try to add other men’s  

acres to their own, through craft or  

marriage. Coburn’s land-hunger is  

dominating passion, leading him to sac-  

rifice the deeper interests of his fam-  

ily and himself, till his primitive greed  

is burnt out of him by disaster, and  

the warm-blooded human being re-  

stored. But how to preserve that neces-  

sary love of the soil without the grasp-  

ing narrowness that goes with it!  

In “Mountain Flat” Leonard Mann  

has shown that, at last, he has forged  

style for himself. It is simple, rhyth-  

mic, straightforward as that of the  

new American writers, yet not merely  

capable of expressing physical reac-  

tions of toughs.  

(Continued on Page 17).  

MAGNIFICENT OFFER TO BOHEMIANS. SEE PAGE 9.  

Cite

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http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3084633414

APA citation

Bread and Cheese Club (Melbourne, Vic.). (1939). Bohemia : the all-Australian literary magazine Retrieved May 19, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3084633414

MLA citation

Bread and Cheese Club (Melbourne, Vic.). Bohemia : the all-Australian literary magazine Melbourne: Bohemia, 1939. Web. 19 May 2025 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3084633414>

Harvard/Australian citation

Bread and Cheese Club (Melbourne, Vic.). 1939, Bohemia : the all-Australian literary magazine Bohemia, Melbourne viewed 19 May 2025 http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3084633414

Wikipedia citation

{{Citation
  | author1=Bread and Cheese Club (Melbourne, Vic.).
  | title=Bohemia : the all-Australian literary magazine.
  | year=1939
  | section=v. ; 28-36 cm.
  | issue=Seventh Issue (October 1939)
  | location=Melbourne
  | publisher=Bohemia
  | url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3084633414
  | id=nla.obj-3084633414
  | access-date=19 May 2025
  | via=Trove
}}

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