Sydney Morning Herald on 28/10/2006
Maybe the secret to writing a
good autobiography is selfmockery.
Certainly, Phil Brown, a
writer and poet from Queensland
who is in search of meaning, has
a great line in self-deprecation.
He mocks his early poetry
mercilessly. His contact with
Bruce Dawe and Les Murray is
seen as suitably gauche. His
attempt to embrace Catholicism,
in part because both Dawe and
Murray were practitioners, is
delightfully naive. Then he is
cajoled into the happy-clappy
singing variety of Christianity;
meditation with Dadaji, a guru
from the Blue Mountains who
washes up in Rockhampton; some
psychoanalysis on the Gold Coast;
body purification at a health farm;
Transactional Analysis and group
therapy, colonic irrigation, Filipino
faith healing, reincarnation,
Chinese medicine and
acupuncture, and then on to
clairvoyants, naturopaths and
other miscellaneous gurus.
It's a hilarious journey through
the byways of religion and the
healing industry by a suitably wry,
neurotic and insightful traveller.
