ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Office wishes to thank the following Special Inspectors attached to the Office of the Inspector-General of Misconception on this investigation: barrister and woman-about-town, Angela Bowne; author-chef Tony Bilson; man-of-letters, Dr Donald Anderson; architect Peter Bridges; and Andrew and Laurie Derwent of the NSW Department of Fisheries.
We wish to thank Counsel Assisting the Cheese Inquiry, namely, Owen and Arthur Moorhouse.
Special thanks to Christopher Koch, McKenzie Wark and Dr Anderson for personally assisting the Inquiry into Deconstruction.
On net-sex the Inquiry wishes to thank Johan Wehtje, special consultant to the Inquiry; Sherry Turkle and her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, distributed in Australia by Allen and Unwin; and Sandy Stone’s interview in Wired magazine, May 1996; and other sources who wish to remain anonymous.
For those who would like to read an academic study into the future of the Australian party system, we recommend Professor Ian Marsh’s book Beyond the Two Party System, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995.
The Inspector-General wishes to thank Martin Groen of the Flying Squid Brothers for his invaluable assistance. Earlier versions of most of these pieces appeared in the Adelaide Review under the editorship of Christopher Pearson; ‘In Defence of the Committee’, ‘National Festivals’, ‘The Art of Fun’ and ‘The Lost Art of Speech-making Rediscovered’ first appeared in other versions in the Age; ‘A Musing: The Music of Ice’ first appeared in the Mentalle Notes; ‘The Connoisseur of Dust’ in the Financial Review; ‘The Art of Fun’ first appeared in the Bulletin; ‘Prime Ministership’ first appeared in the Age Centenary of Federation supplement; ‘The Grave Case of Australian Oyster Abuse’ and ‘Dining Alone at Christmas’ appeared in Best Australian Essays 1999 and HQ magazine; ‘Ballad of the Sade Café’ appeared in the Bulletin.
Notes
1 A pun. Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) published erotic writings that gave rise to the term sadism – enjoyment of cruelty.
Not to be confused with Helen Folesade Adu, the Nigerian-born torch singer who sings under the name Sade (pronounced by her as ‘Sharday’) and known among her Australian fans as ‘Sadie’.
2 With acknowledgment to the Carson McCullers’ novella of the title Ballad of the Sad Cafe.
Frank Moorhouse was born in the coastal town of Nowra, NSW. He worked as an editor of small-town newspapers and as an administrator, and became a full-time writer in the 1970s. He has written fiction, non-fiction, screenplays and essays, and edited many collections of writing.
Forty-Seventeen was given a laudatory full-page review by Angela Carter in The New York Times and was named Book of the Year by The Age and ‘moral winner’ of the Booker Prize by the London magazine Blitz. Grand Days, the first novel in The Edith Trilogy, won the SA Premier’s Award for Fiction. Dark Palace won the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Age Book of the Year Award.
Moorhouse has undertaken numerous fellowships and his work has been translated into several languages. He was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to literature in 1985 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Griffith University in 1997.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FICTION
Futility and Other Animals
The Americans, Baby
The Electrical Experience
Tales of Mystery and Romance
Conference-ville
The Everlasting Secret Family and Other Secrets
Forty-Seventeen
Grand Days
Dark Palace
Cold Light
OTHER BOOKS
Room Service
Lateshows
Loose Living
The Inspector-General of Misconception
NON-FICTION
Days of Wine and Rage
Martini: A Memoir
COLLECTED WORKS
Selected Stories (also published as The Coca-Cola Kid)
FILM AND TELEVISION SCRIPTS
Between Wars (feature film)
Coca-Cola Kid (feature film)
Everlasting Secret Family (feature film)
Conference-ville (telemovie)
Time’s Raging (with Sophia Turkiewicz, telemovie)
The Disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain (docudrama)
BOOKS EDITED BY THE AUTHOR
Coast to Coast 1973
State of the Art
Fictions 88
A Steele Rudd Selection
Prime Ministers of Australia
The Best Australian Stories 2004
The Best Australian Stories 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
The Inspector-General of Misconception
9781742746654
Copyright © Frank Moorhouse, 2002
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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First published in Australia 2002
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Moorhouse, Frank 1938-.
The Inspector-General of Misconception.
ISBN 0 09184162 3
1. Governmental investigations-Australia-Fiction.
I. Title.
A823.3
‘I Still Call Australia Home’ (words and music by Peter Allen) © Rondor Music Australia Pty Ltd. Reproduced by kind permission of Rondor Music Australia Pty Ltd.
Cover and internal design by Greendot Design
The Inspector-General of Misconception Page 21