The blog is taking a break but in the meantime a few odds and sods which might be of interest to readers.

The Hazzard- Harrower- letters

In recent years the work of the Australian expatriate, Shirley Hazzard, has enjoyed renewed interest. Her novel, People in Glass Houses, about the United Nations and a lightly fictionalised report on her time there, and other books have been republished and found new readers.

Her close friend, Elizabeth Harrower, published a series of novels in the 1950s, but fell out of fashion before Text Publishing re-published the work and her significance for Australian literature was rediscovered.

Now there has been an important publication of the letters the pair exchanged over the years – Harrower in Sydney and Hazzard in New York and Capri. The Hazzard-Harrower Letters, edited by Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham, details how the pair exchanged ideas and news over the years. Before email, telex and other communication technology emerged they communicated by air mail and kept copies for posterity.

Hazzard was often travelling and spent much time assisting the work of her husband, Francis Steegmuller, in his monumental work on Flaubert’s letters and other works so there were often long breaks between letters.

But while the current election campaign continues with the distinct possibility that Trump might just win, thanks to the Electoral College, one letter to Harrower from Hazzard seems particularly pertinent to today.

It was commenting on the Nixon 1972 landslide and the Whitlam 1975 loss. The letter said: “we were immeasurably shocked by the landslide, which was a deliberate self-destructive selection by a population of the group that will bring out the worst in them. A conscious rejection of civilising influence and humane considerations. Something that has been v hard for me to realise, brought home to me by Vietnam, its colossal indifference of people generally to evil. I do not want to suggest that other eras were better in this way, but I do think there is something in the mass society, over-population aggressive materials, masturbatory advertising, saturation of people’s responses with irrelevant urgings and information, that has used up the general capacity for ordinary human instincts and good intuitions. I used to think, if you could bring the truth to people, they would mostly care. I’m afraid I don’t think that anymore.”

Apposite almost 50 years after it was written.

Some glimpses of hope on US attitudes to the climate

The Spring 2024 Climate Change on the American Mind: Politics & Policy by The George Mason University and Yale Centers for Climate Change Communication found that: “62% of registered voters would prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming. This includes 97% of liberal Democrats, 81% of moderate/conservative Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 47% of liberal/moderate Republicans, but only 17% of conservative Republicans.

“About four in ten registered voters (39%) say a candidate’s position on global warming will be “very important” when they decide who they will vote for in the 2024 presidential election.  Of 28 issues asked about, global warming is the 19th most highly ranked voting issue among registered voters (based on the percentage saying it is “very important”).

“When then asked to choose their most important voting issue, three percent of registered voters chose global warming, making it the 12th highest-ranked most important issue. 52% of registered voters think global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress and 63% of registered voters think developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress.”

So far it has not been seen as a high profile US election issue but the results suggest that things aren’t totally dire – at least unless Trump prevails.