Emperors in Lilliput: Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland by Jim Davidson
This gorgeously titled book delivers the Heroic Age epic of little magazine publishing inAustralia, ‘little magazines’ being a way to describe literary/cultural periodicalsinspired by the avant-garde Chicago journal, The Little Review. Jim Davidson tracks the decades-spanning careers of the two editors who established two crucial Australian little magazines, Meanjin and Overland. Along the way, Davidson’s eyewitness account (literally: he took over the reins of Meanjin himself in 1975) rewards the fascinated reader with a detailed picture of Australian literary culture through the lenses of two crusading, larger-than-life founding editors: Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith.
Both these Melbourne-based magazines were born elsewhere: Clem begins Meanjin in Brisbane in 1940, Stephen’s Overland grows out of The Realist Writer in 1954. Davidson spends his time tacking between these two men and marking the times that their paths cross, which is often, and the occasions on which they are cross, which is also often, particularly Clem. Davidson excels at giving us an up-close, no-holds-barred account of the encouragement, generosity, literary spats, visionary pig-headedness and white- knuckle doggedness that was involved in getting these magazines up and running(no small task in itself) as well as keeping them going through their early decades (a more Sisyphean effort). Desperate financial insecurity, constant cap-in-handing, dealing with the egotism of writers and politicians and academics … gad. It’s a heartbreaker.
Although Clem and Stephen are absolutely the central figures in this cultural history, they are generously contextualised by tales of the family members, friends and enemies who enabled their monumental contributions to the conversation that is Australian cultural life. Davidson has given us a spectacular warts-and-all twin portrait of these two shepherds (perhaps sheep dogs) of Australian literature from the 1940s up to the 1980s. Given the continuing existence today of the little magazines that they created, their legacy continues into the 21st century. Huzzah!
