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Hollow man of yesterday.

Article Excerpt
MOST SERIOUS READERS of Australian history have long since laid Manning Clark aside. His six-volume History of Australia became the famous busted flush of a certain slightly gauche period of our intellectual development, and today the mention of his name can be an embarrassment many of us would rather be spared.

The heat has gone out of the great blast of angry vehemence which met all criticisms of Clark in the early 1990s. Many of his hottest champions of those days now acknowledge (some of them still rather shyly) how unworthy of their adulation his work really was.

The house of Clark's history was never designed to withstand the heavy weather of time and criticism. Built by the well-known firm of Jerry, bits fell off it every time a fresh volume was issued: in volume 1, Portsmouth Harbour (which never saw the keel of a single First Fleet ship) is given as the departure point for New South Wales. So it went on: in volume 6, the one-time-only winning horse Phar Lap is made to win the Melbourne Cup twice. The overall paint job, done over once lightly with dodgy synthetic prose, was certainly not able to glue the rickety dwelling together. Now, even Don Watson prefers to defend his hero from the foxhole of Clark's two books of documents (1950 and 1955) rather than from the ramparts of the six-volume History. Every one of the clear and specific criticisms made of Clark in Quadrant back in 1993 remains fudged but never refuted by his supporters.

Clark's work and reputation having slipped below the sunset, why now should we be offered a massively detailed new Life by Brian Matthews? The author clutches the six-volume History as his sea-anchor. Clark's lesser works--Meeting Soviet Man, The Quest for Grace, the awful short stories and so on--are wisely cut adrift to sink. But Clark's "primal fault" taints the History, just as it does the minor writings. The shallowness of it all lies in the narrowness of Clark's experience.

He never left the soft cocoon of perfect bourgeoisdora. Just as one example, he did not enlist in the services during the Second World War. True, mild epilepsy forbade the rigours of front-line action, but he did not offer himself for other duties--a sacrifice conscientiously...