An uneven collection by a colossally unfashionable writer. Foster is alive, I believe, and is quite willing to say things that are not but will appear to be racist. He believes in natural differences between men and women, though he's quite willing to say that women should not be stopped from doing anything they might want to. He refers to gay men as inverts. You get the picture.

He also has interesting things to say about literature, particularly literature in an age of tolerant conformism. Foster sets himself up, as few now do, as a satirist, and embraces what that means. No surprise, it is at least in part saying things other people won't. The best essays here restrict themselves to literature, where his larrikin persona does the most good (he calls Rushdie, for instance, a coward, because he intentionally offended the Islamic world but refused to fight--literally, like with fists--the people he insulted), and the least harm. The travel writing and the quasi-political interventions in the terribly complicated question of how/if to help indigenous Australians, on the other hand, aren't very interesting, and could do harm. ( )