‘Greetings to the Angry Penguins’: Ern Malley, Harry Roskolenko and USA Connections

Abstract

As Australia was turning, politically, away from England and towards America in the 1940s, a similar, though less discussed cultural shift was also taking place. Clem Christesen of Meanjin, and Angry Penguins' Max Harris were eager to reach American contributors and readers, and to extend their international contacts. The arrival of American forces provided an opportunity to reach the writers among them, an opportunity that neither editor missed. One American who published in Mean}in and Angry Penguins was New Yorker Harry Roskolenko. Max Harris, in the introduction to Roskolenko's American Civilization (1970), recalled the 1940s as 'seminal years [which] provided the one precise and exact moment of time when American and Australian experimental values carne into contact'. Roskolenko's papers at Boston University and at Syracuse University are a rich source of correspondence and manuscripts directly related to this connection with Angry Penguins and Reed & Harris, and they add an interesting postscript to his role in the Ern Malley affair, both in Australia and America. The importance of this connection to Roskolenko is clear; the Syracuse University papers are extensively annotated lest their significance in an Australian context should be overlooked.