Power without Glory

By Frank J. Hardy

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0586043144
• ISBN13: 9780586043141
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Panther
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Great Australian Novel

This is a book that was loosely based on the life of John Wren. In the book Wren is known as West and other names and locations are rather superficially disguised. For instance most of the action takes place in a suburb of Melbourne called Collingwood, which is rendered as Carrinbush in the novel. Wren had a colourful life becoming wealthy by running an illegal gaming operation around the turn of the century. He gained immense wealth and later moved into more legitimate business. He became close to senior church figures in the Catholic Church and the Australian Labour Party. Hardy the author of this book was a long term member of the Australian Communist Party. His book is a strange mixture of story telling plus an attempt to paint the political affairs of Australia as corrupted by influence and money. Despite his somewhat doctrinal and schematic approach the richness of the material on which the novel is based makes it a fascinating read. It is strongest when Wren was a younger man portraying his rise to power and the sort of society that Australia was around the turn of the century. One senses a strong sympathy for the younger Wren as a working class boy who defied his background and society to claim his place in the sun.The book is not only interesting as a novel but was part of Australia's history. After it was published Wren's wife took a famous libel action against Hardy which failed. As a result the book achieved folk law status and was made into a mini series.

Searching deeply into the Australian soul

This is one of the most powerful novels to have come out of Australia. With very little attempt at disguise, it tells the story of an Australian mobster who ruled a network of criminal activity for several decades before the Second World War. It is a brutal story and one that somehow touches on an aspect of Australian history which is hardly ever expressed in print. European Australia has always been a hard land. With communities originally based on convict labour, it seems as though a certain amount of violence came to be taken almost for granted. In a country that long had an oversupply of men, it is perhaps not so surprising that they spent much of their time trying to dominate both the land, its original inhabitants and each other. A sometimes brutal Army Corps looked after convicts for the first fifty years or so. Later, law enforcement was taken over by a police force which has often had to face charges of similar brutality and deep-rooted corruption, up to the present day. Aussie politics has always had a particularly nasty underbelly, and it seems as though social conditions were ripe in the 1920s for the rise of just such a personage as is depicted here.Frank Hardy had to fight (the mob) hard to get this novel published and once he had succeeded, he had to go to court to defend it against a defamation order. The book's main character, even though he tried hard in later life to attain a position of legitimacy, always found himself caught up in the web of underworld intrigue that he had created. Even so, it is probably true to say that most ordinary people didn't want to know about the activities imputed to a man who was, superficially, a pillar of the community. So Hardy was right to expose the ruthless nature of the beast underlying the ostensibly honest sports promoter and family man. And perhaps all Australia, or those who remember this particular episode (and its ongoing media life through film and television) did well to note what sort of man lay behind the mask. Australia has taken a long time to come out of this period of its history, when personal might could be displayed almost with impunity, even in public affairs. This book, perhaps neglected today, serves to remind us of the imposing structure of organised crime that Australia has had to grow up with. In addition, it is a fine literary achievement and worthy of being read on that basis alone.