Dear Doug,

You <[log in to unmask]> wrote:-

"On the other hand, I definitely would agree that those letters are supposed
to be, and for many of the writers involved should be, private."

And I'd just like to clarify that this is the point
I'm concerned about, and which I've raised with
my local Poets' Union (to whom I'm reading at
Trades Hall, this Friday) and which I suggest other
Australian poets could similarly raise. I think it would
be good if each state's Poets' Union wrote to Professor
Peter Alexander and the ASA expressing their concern.

Media coverage would suggest the major legal action by
Tom Thompson relates more to the possibly defamatory
picture of his publishing role, which the chapter as a whole gives.
However, I believe some writers who've recognised themselves
in the harsh quotes from reader's reports by Les Murray are
also concerned, and some at least have sought legal advice.

Something that concerns me is that, if it is seen as acceptable
to publish reader's reports at all: poets early in their career could
suffer untold harm. The principal is important. In (to use a
personal example) my early 20s, I sent a manuscript or two
to A & R, and Les Murray presumably (and quite rightly)
would have written negative reader's reports as I was still
a fair way off being ready for publication in book form. Had
thees (presumably) negative reports been made public - well,
untold harm to a young poet could be done by being trashed
publically by Australia's most famous poet without my even
having published a book. The unfairness of this would perhaps
be even more obvious given that (as my work improved through
my 20s) I was later to be recommended for publication by A & R
in a very positive reader's report by one of Les's successors in
the position, the late John Forbes.

Indeed, some of those very negative reports quoted by Professor
Alexander, might have contrasting later reports written on the same
works by Robert Adamson or John Forbes. Reader's reports are
internal publishing house documents, if any Reader's Reports that
I've written for Black Pepper were to be published
through the agency of anyone other than the author
whose work they discuss, I'd be very displeased. Les Murray is
perfectly within his rights to express strong views on unpublished
manuscripts in internal A & R documents: he and his biographer
are doing all authors a grave disservice by publishing these comments
without the express permission of the authors concerned.

yours faithfully

Hugh Tolhurst



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%