AustLit

'The cover photograph on A Fuhrer for a Father shows Jim Davidson with his then wife Olga. They are the parents of the author, Melbourne writer and historian Jim Davidson. The acknowledgment reads: “Olga and her keeper, Melbourne Zoo, c 1942, courtesy of the author.” The designation of Davidson the father as his wife’s “keeper” in a photo taken in a zoo is no accident. It reflects precisely how Davidson the son viewed his father in life. This memoir is “an account of my father and his consequences”. He elaborates in his preface:

'Authoritarianism was the basic assumption on which my father ran his family and faced the world … Everything was firm, definite, unequivocal and hierarchical — in the household, as beyond it … This [story] … reveals a particularly aberrant instance of patriarchy, expressed in domestic violence towards wives and a persistent antagonism towards a gay son.' (Introduction)

'Meet Ruth Apps, born 1926 and gleefully proud of her Irish convict ancestry. Her father lost the use of an arm in Gallipoli and was also mentally affected. During World War II he slept in the yard to avoid bombs. Ruth won a scholarship to a selective girls’ high school in Sydney when few girls were educated beyond primary school. She did well and gained work as a stenographer. She loved going to the ‘Saturday arvo flicks’ and family camping beach holidays. She met a railway guard on a train, but was lectured by her mother because ‘Nice girls don’t go out with boys who are not introduced.’ Despite the lack of an introduction, Ruth married Bill and they lived happily. She left work when she fell pregnant. Their first child died shortly after being born with ‘multiple deformities’. There were no scans available in those days. Subsequently, Ruth and Bill had three healthy and successful daughters. Ruth returned to work when her youngest started school and was called a ‘fallen woman’ by some for this. She loved working, was promoted and respected, and managed to win a battle for equal pay. She felt guilty and wondered if she should have had children, despite loving and caring well for her girls. She was an early adopter of the contraceptive pill. In her youth, there were only two ‘foreigners’ living in their street; now there are only two Anglo families on her block in Westmead, Sydney. One of her daughters ‘married a Pole and a granddaughter married a Lebanese man’.' (Introduction)

'In the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s there was a flurry of what were called ‘single issue’ or ‘problem’ novels for teenagers. The books focused on problems or issues that frequently confronted teenagers, such as bullying, anorexia, child abuse, depression, suicide, unplanned pregnancies, struggles over friendships, puberty, divorce, and more. These were indeed matters faced by young people, and the rationale was that by reading about others in similar situations, teenagers would feel less alone and might also find ways of coping. ‘Reading novels dealing with social and personal problems is a safe way to bring these issues into focus and give adolescents a chance to talk about their own experiences or relate their own lives to what others have gone through’ (Diana Hodge, The Conversation, 13 June 2014). There is a whiff of bibliotherapy (books and reading as therapy) in this view which seems to undermine the notion of reading and evaluating books for their literary merit.' (Introduction)