When is it that we realise that we’ve been robbed? If the house has been kept in place, and the robbery was done swiftly, when do we realise what has been stolen? This is what I’ve been wondering since the news that Meanjin, one of Australia’s longest running literary journals at the ripe old age of 85, will publish its last at the end of this year.
Hard to fathom really, that something that has been around for most of our lives, will just disappear. Is this the result of complacency – that we haven’t been careful enough with what matters? Or is it that we’ve lost a quorum on what we once thought was a no brainer – that Australian writing matters? And instead it’s been replaced with laziness and that experimentation and risk is no longer important, that cultivating the talent in this country is no longer of concern?
But this robbery hasn’t gone unnoticed. A thousand-odd writers have signed a letter suggesting that perhaps the reported shortfall in funding which has been cited as the reason for the closure, might be remedied by a small voluntary pay cut of a senior academic of 10 per cent of the current salary would save the university $150,000. Enough, it was thought, to continue to publish this jewel of Australian literature.
I have grown up with the richness of Australian writers, crafting stories that weren’t ashamed of their origins. Monkey Grip created the version of Melbourne that I still believe in. Tirra Lirra By The River is a book I read when I was fifteen and can still recite today: ‘the step of a horse, the nod of a plume, come the plumed heads of the curbed horses at my father’s funeral.’ Garner and Anderson are just two, in an extensive list of writers who have told me the stories of myself.
Peter Carey said it well this week, ‘Remember when property developers destroyed mangroves without understanding they were a breeding ground for mud crabs, prawns, and barramundi? They … are now destroying a proven breeding ground for Australian literary culture.’ Himself being the benefactor of his work being published as a young 29-year-old. Clare G Coleman went further and described the closure as ‘cultural vandalism.’
Are we so deeply under the influence of our precious neo liberalism that arguments for culture, its function as important as breath, no longer holds weight? It used to be an argument that might be given air – that culture and art and music were valuable enough to protect. But after watching the decimation of the music industry by the big streaming companies et al, it’s clear we have become impotent to its heartless rationalisation.
This is the fallout that has been coming for some time. Every small cut to the value of culture, of the work of artists and writers and musicians eventually results in the entire house of cards falling. We know about what has been stolen, but when our kids grow up in a culture bereft of its artists presenting challenging ideas and experiments of the heart, they won’t know what was stolen from them. They will think it had always been this way. They won’t know to grieve the loss of the opportunities that the writers of their generations should have had.
If there was a time we need Meanjin, it’s this exact moment when Meanjin will no longer exist. Is it a coincidence that when we are facing a world that needs its writers now more than ever, that we see one of the important avenues for the publication of their work disappear?