Review of Capricornia and South of Capricornia: short stories (1925-34) by Xavier Herbert, and Xavier Herbert: episodes from Capricornia, Poor Fellow My Country and other fiction, nonfiction and letters, edited by Frances de Groen and Peter Pierce.

Abstract

Just as we might have thought there was nothing new to be said about Xavier Herbert's flawed achievement, these three books challenge us to rethink its nature. Mudrooroo Nyoongah's introduction to the new printing of Capricornia argues that the novel fails to present an alternative to the society it depicts. Russell McDougall's collection of Herbert's magazine romances shows both the effort Herbert put into perfecting his craft as a writer and his early interest in the connections between land, race and masculinity. The selection by Frances de Groen and Peter Pierce amply demonstrates both the variety of his work and his obsessiveness, energy and sheer crankiness. Taken together, the three books reveal again his politics of passionately committed nationalism, but they go further to suggest that the source of this politics, in both its positive and negative aspects, is his need to assert his own virility.