Staying Alive goes to the heart of the human condition and the challenges of life and death. Epidemics and war make it a geopolitical issue as well as a personal one.
Twenty million people have died from AIDS globally. Many died because its management was hijacked by those who believed it was caused by a sin, not a virus. Bill Bowtell, one of the architects of Australia's successful HIV/AIDS policy, passionately and persuasively argues that HIV can be eradicated within three generations. With political will, the lessons of successful HIV prevention can - and must - be applied globally. As the second phase of the pandemic looms in this region, this is an urgent plea.
Wars are also urgent. Donna Mulhearn kept a diary during her time doing humanitarian work in Iraq, and describes four terrifying days caught in the crossfire in Fallujah. Nor is heroism confined to the battlefield or the global stage: writers in this edition reflect on personal battles to stay alive, and explore the implications of death. But when it is time to die, Dr Frank Brennan describes how this can be done with dignity and grace.
Staying Alive puts personal dilemmas of survival in the context of the big picture, and maps out new and thought-provoking ways of thinking about the human condition.
Other contributors include Pater Browne, Ian Townsend, Andrew Belk, Meera Atkinson, Bille Brown, Sarah Kanowski, John Docker, Michael Andrews, Simi Linton, Joanne Caroll, Helena Pastor, Virginia Lloyd, Joanna Mendelssohn, Jane Nicholls, Diego De Leo, Susan Varga and Michael Wilding. Photo esay by David Nielsen.
The immediacy of the memoirs in
Staying Alive - Virginia Lloyd's Sex and the Single Bed', which charts the work of caring at home for a husband in his illness; Frank Brennan's doctor's notebook, recalling the dying moments of patients - is often startling. The essays address important issues: Bill Bowtell on the eradication of HIV; Susan Varga and Diego De Leo on suicide; as do what is called 'reportage', pieces dealing reflectively with health and survival in Botswana, indigenous western Sydney and Fallujah. Peter Browne's The Best of Times, the Worst of Times is a factual and shocking account of the conditions amongst HIV patients and their carers in Botswana.There is a range of informative and reflective writing here. This volume of Griffith REVIEW positions its readers in the ring with life and death questions. ----Australian Book Review
Griffith REVIEW, arguably the best of all the Australian literary magazines, tackles illness and death. The opening essay Applying the paradox of prevention: eradicate HIV by Bill Bowtell is a fine and passionate overview of the history of HIV/AIDS that tries to grapple with the stupidity that has allowed a virus which was nearly beaten to turn into a pandemic affecting tens of millions in the third world.
Equally impressive is Donna Mulhearn's grim account of trying to be an aid worker in Fallujah in Iraq during the US attack on the city. Bille Brown's delightful rite-of-passage reminiscence, Playing with fire, is an evocative piece about a sleepy country town in the 1950s and the antics that went on in and around the cinema.
This Griffith REVIEW has enough tasty morsels to ensure that the most discriminating reader will be more than satisfied. ----Sydney Morning Herald
With the grand, twinned theme of survival and death, this issue of the admirable Griffith REVIEW sweeps from the broad to the narrow, from the public to the personal, from the abstract to the concrete.
The broad view is taken by Bill Bowtell in his long, opening essay on the prevention of HIV, something he believes is ultimately achievable if lessons from Australia's comparatively successful prevention policy can be learnt. His polemic also stands as a lament for so many preventable deaths.
Susan Varga's essay on suicide is the most radical piece in that it asks us to contemplate suicide as a valid choice and not just for the terminally ill. It is immediately followed by a piece by Diego De Leo who argues that 'suicide is the very worst of all human tragedies' as he explains how his personal experience led him to try to prevent it.
The stand-out article comes almost at the very end - palliative care physician Frank Brennan draws starkly beautiful sketches of his encounters with dying patients. It is an apt conclusion to what has gone before, a reminder that death is common to us all but that our experience of it is unique.
If Griffith REVIEW isn't Australia's best literary magazine, it's only because the lit-mag tag doesn't quite fit this more political beast. Whatever it is, it's a fine publication. --The Age
