Martin Boyd: the aesthetic temperament : a critical study

The claim of this thesis is that Martin Boyd is a writer of aesthetic inclination whose fundamental concerns and values, while they emerge in a highly individual manner and with the complicating orientation of a religious view of the world, have clear affinities with the fin de siecle celebration of beauty and pleasure as the goal of life. Section I concentrates on the milieu into which the novelist was born, its aim being to investigate the presence of late Victorian ideas in this environment. Attention is given to the role of the a Beckett- Boyd family as a shaping force in the novelist's formative background, with particular emphasis on the cultural interests of Boyd's own parents, painters associated with the flowering in Australia of an art that has been labelled 'Impressionist.' Both the European and Australian nineties are considered for their alternative and, at times, complementary contributions to the general cultural atmosphere affecting the novelist's upbringing. The part played by Boyd's schooling is also considered. Section II examines Boyd's theoretical notions as these are developed in a discursive work of the writer's mature years, Much Else in Italy, A Subjective Travel Book. The idea of the primacy of beauty, a central concept in nineteenth-century aestheticism, is revealed as vital to Boyd's exploration of the marriage of Classicism and Christianity in Western civilization. In this way his vision is linked with the Hellenizing impulse of the late Victorian imagination. Section III, comprising chapters three to seven, sets out to show that the aesthetic view of life, expressing itself as a vision of pleasure, dominated the novelist's imagination from the outset and continued as a major preoccupation of his fiction. Chapter three discusses the lesser fiction, where a theme of pleasure is often mechanically presented. Chapters four, five and six analyse its more sophisticated treatment in the better fiction: The Montforts, Lucinda Brayford and the Langton novels. In the case of the Langton books, my concern is with The Cardboard Crown and Outbreak of Love as the two novels in the series most preoccupied with evoking those aspects of life which reveal themselves as 'the face of pleasure.' In these novels Boyd concentrates on what he terms 'the Greek story' in his portrayal of a number of searching individuals who are afforded at least a partial experience of a life of beauty and enjoyment. Chapter seven is a transitional chapter discussing the system of values underlying Boyd's division of his characters into the categories of aesthetes and puritans. The idea of a spiritual contest focuses Boyd's need to reconcile his vision of a life of pleasure with his awareness of moral evil and initiates a discussion of his approach to the graver issues of life. Section IV, comprising chapters eight to ten, discusses the treatment of the suffering hero in four novels, Lucinda Brayford, Such Pleasure, A Difficult Young Man and When Blackbirds Sing, in which Boyd seeks to portray a transcending of the aesthetic vision and to offer a view of life able to give a positive interpretation to the fact of pain and sorrow. A variety of approaches is revealed: the rather abstract provision of the framework of Christian myth in the story of Stephen Brayford, the discursive argument of Such Pleasure, the entirely aesthetic evocation of 'the face of sorrow' in A Difficult Young Man, and, finally, the presentation in When Blackbirds Sing of a double world, the symbol of a personality divided against itself. In each case, we witness the novelist's search for a resolution to the apparent conflict between the pleasure-loving personality's desire for fulfilment and his knowledge of evil. Significantly, the values important to Boyd's aesthete characters are not rejected but are gathered up in the appreciation of a higher kind of moral beauty, that of sacrificial love. Section V discusses Boyd's aesthetic impulse from the point of view of a technique of Impressionism he shares with a number of other writers and which, in his case, owes something to his background of a family of painters. The early novels are examined for elements which anticipate major developments in the mature fiction. The implications of an Impressionist approach for the form of the novel - its handling of narrative, plot and character - are considered in detail. An Appendix is included with the aim of highlighting both fin de siecle and Impressionist developments in Australian art at the turn of the century

Antidepressent Treatment for Depression: Total Charges and Therapy Duration

Background: The economic costs of depression are significant, both the direct medical costs of care and the indirect costs of lost productivity. Empirical studies of antidepressant costeffectiveness suggest that the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) may be no more costly than tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), will improve tolerability, and is associated with longer therapy duration. However the success of depression care usually involves multiple factors, including source of care, type of care, and patient characteristics, in addition to drug choice. The cost-effective mix of antidepressant therapy components is unclear. Aims of the Study: Our study evaluates cost and antidepressant-continuity outcomes for depressed patients receiving antidepressant therapy. Specifically, we determined the impact of provider choice for initial care, concurrent psychotherapy, and choice of SSRI versus TCA-based pharmacotherapies on the joint outcome of low treatment cost and continuous antidepressant therapy. Methods: A database of private health insurance claims identifies 2,678 patients who received both a diagnosis of depression and a prescription for an antidepressant during 1990–1994. Patients each fall into one of four groups according to whether their health care charges are high versus low (using the median value as the break point) and by whether their antidepressant usage pattern is continuous versus they discontinued pharmacotherapy early (filling fewer than six prescriptions). A bivariate probit model controlling for patient characteristics, co-morbidities, type of depression and concurrent treatment is the primary multivariate statistical vehicle for cost-effective treatment situation. Results: SSRIs substantially reduce the incidence of patients discontinuing pharmacotherapy while leaving charges largely unchanged. The relative effectiveness of SSRIs in depression treatment is independent of the patient’s personal characteristics and dominates the consequences of other treatment dimensions such as seeing a mental health specialist and receiving concurrent psychotherapy. Initial provider specialty is irrelevant to the continuity of pharmacotherapy, and concurrent psychotherapy creates a tradeoff through reduced pharmacotherapy interruption with higher costs. Discussion: Longer therapy duration is associated with SSRI-based pharmacotherapy (relative to TCA-based pharmacotherapy) and with concurrent psychotherapy. High cost is associated with concurrent psychotherapy and choice of a specialty provider for initial care. In our study cost-effective care includes SSRI-based pharmacotherapy initiated with a non-specialty provider. Previous treatment history and other unobserved factors that might affect antidepressant choice are not included in our model. Implications for Health Care Provision: The decision to use an SSRI-based pharmacotherapy need not consider carefully the patient’s personal characteristics. Shifting depressed patients’ pharmacotherapy away from TCAs to SSRIs has the effect of improving outcomes by lowering the incidence of discontinuation of pharmacotherapy while leaving largely unchanged the likelihood of having high overall health care charges. Targeted use of concurrent psychotherapy may be additionally cost-effective. Implications for Health Policies: The interaction of various components of depression care can alter the cost-effectiveness of antidepressant therapy. Our results demonstrate a role for the non-specialty provider in initiating care and support increased use of SSRIs as first-line therapy for depression as a way of providing cost-effective care that is consistent with APA guidelines for continuous antidepressant treatment. Implications for Further Research: Further research that improves our understanding of how decisions regarding provider choice, concurrent psychotherapy, and drug choice are made will improve our understanding of the effects treatment choices on the cost-effectiveness of depression care. We have suggested that targeted concurrent psychotherapy may prove to be cost-effective; research to determine groups most likely to benefit from the additional treatment would further enable clinicians and healthcare policy makers to form a consensus regarding a model for treating depression

Developmental monitoring using caregiver reports in a resource-limited setting: the case of Kilifi, Kenya

AIM: The main aim of the current study was to evaluate the reliability, validity and acceptability of developmental monitoring using caregiver reports among mothers in a rural African setting. METHODS: A structured interview for parents of children aged 24 months and less was developed through both participant consultation and a review of literature. The reliability and validity of the schedule was evaluated through a 10-month monitoring programme of 95 children, aged 2-10 months. The acceptability of the process was evaluated by studying retention rates and by organizing focus group discussions with participating mothers. RESULTS: The structured interview 'Developmental Milestones Checklist' consisted of 66 items covering three broad domains of child functioning: motor, language and personal-social development. The interview yielded scores of developmental achievements that showed high internal consistency and excellent test-retest reliability. The results were sensitive to maturational changes and nutritional deficiencies. In addition, acceptable retention rates of approximately 80% were found. Participating mothers reported that they found the procedures both acceptable and beneficial. CONCLUSION: Developmental monitoring using caregiver report is a viable method to identify and monitor at-risk children in Sub-Saharan Africa

Old Myths and New Delusions: Peter Weir\u27s Australia

To the layman\u27s eye Gallipoli is technically flawless: superb shots of outback country, a convincing evocation of the period, thoroughly believable Gallipoli cliffs, fine acting (even in the minor roles), and something which is to say the least rare in the Australian film industry, a good script - thanks to David Williamson. Moreover the picture, unlike Picnic at Hanging Rock (an otherwise impressive film which was fumbled towards the end), is dramatically tight, completely under control from first to last. It is full of splendid touches, like the appearance of the wooden horse early in the piece, to which the audience immediately responds, recognizing the allusion to Troy. Then there is the perfect miniature, the scene with the camel driver in the desert. There is the parallelism of two wildernesses, the deserts of the new world and the old, and, even more striking, the link drawn between the lights and gaiety of the departure from Perth (and of the nurses\u27 ball in Egypt) and the Luna Park effects of the arrival at Gallipoli

Mario Dobrez: Displaced Sportsman

This account of Mario Dobrez’s European career in the late 1920s and early 1930s and its traumatic Australian aftermath is necessarily personal, since he is my father. While he was alive and I was young I had no interest in the factual details of his boxing life, except for the stories of travel and occasional drama, and he had even less. I gather from him and from Italians who knew him at the time that he won most of his 100-odd bouts and was comfortably in the running for the European middleweight title, by which time, however, he was losing interest, having fought two matches with opponents of major reputation, one with Bosisio (which he lost), another with Jacovacci (which he drew or, if one is to believe a partisan report, effectively won).1 But within a decade of professionalism he was bored with the business and gave it up for better things, training other fighters, finally a job as accountant in a government enterprise. Vanity played its part in the switch: he wanted his Roman nose intact. In any case, though press cuttings refer to him as ‘the challenger’, he was totally indifferent to the idea of a challenge. The ‘climbing everest because it is there’ argument would have struck him as vacuous. He had no ‘will to win’, no ‘killer instinct’, no ‘urge to achievement’. The competitive ideal puzzled him

Interview with Heather McKay (AM, MBE) April 2001

‘An all-time great’: in June 1978 Yvonne Crittenden, writing for the Bulletin, suggested that Heather McKay’s sports record might be ‘the most extraordinary the world has ever known’. Outclassing records compiled for any sport, Australian squash-player Heather McKay won sixteen consecutive British Opens, fourteen consecutive Australian amateur titles and two World Open championships

When Blackbirds Sing: Martin Boyd and the Reality Of Good Friday

Should he like St Francis have bent and kissed that hideous cheek? Then he thought what a beastly thing that would have been when the boy offered his whole face, to kiss only the side that was distorted and horrible, ignoring what he still had of life and health. When Blackbirds Sing