In Australia as elsewhere within the belligerent nations of the Great War, dissenting thinkers were marginalised with the mobilisation of militarism. Vance and Nettie Palmer, Australia's most important literary partnership in the interwar period, were initially critical of the war, their response typical of the English radical intelligentsia among whom they were living at the time of its outbreak. Forced back to Australia in 1915, the Palmers had to re‐establish themselves in its increasingly turbulent intellectual battlefields. Nettie's earlier anti‐war beliefs and cosmopolitanism were undermined while Vance became ever more deeply enmeshed in a discourse concerning the virtues of the “ordinary people”, which encompassed the men of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Nevertheless, in their extensive writings about Australia, neither Palmer ever endorsed the legend of the heroic Anzacs. The Great War, however, profoundly shaped their political consciousness and their choice of genre and writing strategies, as it did others of their literary generation. This article will show that the war was a far more important influence on their work than usually acknowledged in Australian literary scholarship, and thereby reveal some of the cultural patterns that shaped their generation of Australian radical writers and intellectuals — particularly in Melbourne, arguably the heartland for the tradition of democratic literary nationalism which the Palmers have been seen to epitomise.
Climate change literary criticism calls for fundamental re-evalutions of our critical tools. In representations of extreme weather events, Vance Palmer’s Cyclone set in North Queensland meets many of the new criterion with its story about the impact of the cyclone on individuals, community and plot. The genesis and inspiration of the novel, its writing, its publication, review and reception can be addressed. The cyclone is seen through the perceptions of different characters. Vance and Nettie Palmer knew many of the people drowned in the 1934 cyclone. Palmer drew on the historical record in his novel, which was published over a decade later. The reception of Cyclone was very limited given it was published locally by Angus & Robertson and had no serious critical response. The environmental imagination has been a powerful force in Australia creative writing and is undervalued in contemporary debates.
The Office of Personnel Management is responsible for overseeing the government's personnel management operations. Over the years it has searched for a workable balance between centralization and decentralization, oversight and encouragement, and subjective and objective approaches to management.
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