Days of Wine and Rage

by Frank Moorhouse

This was social history - entertaining, fascinating and informing - in the making.Days of Wine and Rage explores the tempo and shifts in mores and style of a dynamic decade - the 70s - in Australia's cultural development. Deftly interweaving literature and documentary history, Frank Moorhouse traces, from their avant-garde origins, significant threads in Australia's social fabric - the sub-cultural movements towards sexual liberation, cultural identity and a new creative and intellectual confidence.The multi-faceted examination evokes a lively impression of the ambience in which these social changes were generated and of the characters who got them going. Frank Moorhouse was hailed as 'the widest-read chronicler of the new intelligentsia and their uncertainties'. Nowhere are his skills in literary and editorial craftsmanship and his acuity as observer of social nuance more evident than in this book.

Genres: Australia

446 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Frank Thomas Moorhouse AM (21 December 1938 – 26 June 2022) was an Australian writer. He won major Australian national prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing. His work has been published in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States and also translated into German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Serbian, and Swedish.

Moorhouse was perhaps best known for winning the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel, Dark Palace; which together with Grand Days and Cold Light, the "Edith Trilogy" is a fictional account of the League of Nations, which trace the strange, convoluted life of a young woman who enters the world of diplomacy in the 1920s through to her involvement in the newly formed International Atomic Energy Agency after World War II.

The author of 18 books, Moorhouse became a full-time fiction writer during the 1970s, also writing essays, short stories, journalism and film, radio and TV scripts.

In his early career he developed a narrative structure which he has described as the 'discontinuous narrative'. He lived for many years in Balmain, where together with Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes, he became part of the "Sydney Push" - an anti-censorship movement that protested against rightwing politics and championed freedom of speech and sexual liberation. In 1975 he played a fundamental role in the evolution of copyright law in Australia in the case University of New South Wales v Moorhouse. - Wikipedia

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays & reports from Sydney's 70s bohemian (read: libertarian) arts & culture scene (The Sydney Push). Reading this felt like honouring my elders who paved the way towards being annoying & self-righteous at the pub. Critical drinkers endure <3
6/10

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only relevant if you're interested in 1970s Australian counter-culture, arts and media. Interesting, fun at times, and wide ranging but maybe short of comprehensive.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an anthology of writings about the politics, social changes and shifting sensibilities of Australian society in the 1970s, this is certainly comprehensive. But as a social history or a book to give one a feel of the time, it can get bogged down in esoteric articles and poetry. I found the beginning of the book really interesting, but it did drag towards the end. I think this book is definitely one of those to be dipped into and out of as one's interest is raised, but to read it straight through is certainly tough.