Included in the superb two volume cased set of books on Australian Book Collectors , edited by Charles Stitz, recently found in Townsville , was reference to historian and writer Isadore Brodsky , one of his many books about Sydney covered its early bookshops .
By Peter Simon
When I was a copyboy and cadet reporter on The Sun, Sydney, in the l950s , I often saw Brodsky in the newspaper building with journalist, poet and official war correspondent , Kenneth Slessor ( 1901-1971).
Slessor, who handled the literary pages and wrote leaders, always neatly dressed , sported a bowtie, and appeared to be an albino to me because of his pallor.
Brodsky always seemed to be laughing and both men may have been going to or coming back from the nearby Journalists' Club of which Slessor was vice- president, later president .
Slessor was fond of roasted peanuts and I found him face down , asleep in a parcel of shelled peanuts , while dropping off various documents, magazines and photos in the building on the copyboy delivery run.
Born at Orange , NSW , he was named Kenneth Adolphe Schloesser, his father a Jewish mining engineer , whose father and grandfather had been distinguished musicians in Germany . As a young boy, Kenneth spent time in England with his parents. The family name was changed to Slessor in 1914, the start of WW1.
Brodsky was also seen conversing - and laughing - with sartorially dressed man about town journalist Jim Macdougall who wrote the highly popular daily Contact column in The Sun, based on one in America.
Macdougall's start in journalism was due to the fact that a poem he wrote while he was droving sheep was shown to Keith Murdoch, who liked it , and called him in to work on the Melbourn Herald . He even sent him to the London Bureau to get further experience.
From memory, Brodsky also spent time in The Sun Feature Bureau, probably discussing syndication of his numerous articles about Sydney, which became books dealing with the Sydney Press Gang, bookshops The Rocks area, the streets of Sydney, the Aborigine Bennelong , crusading nurses , Woolloomooloo , early theatrical productions .
The Australian Dictionary of Biography states that in the early l920s Slessor helped edit the short lived Vision : a Literary Quarterly, which "tried to jolt Australian writing out of the bush and into the city ". Slessor dismissed the poetry of Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and all the bush balladists.
His poetic output included Five Bells —relating to Sydney Harbour, an elegy in memory of artist and friend Joe Lynch , who fell overboard from a ferry while drunk and drowned, dragged to the bottom by bottles of beer in his overcoat pocket. Another highly regarded poem , Beach Burial, was a tribute to Australian troops who fought in World War II.
In l970 Slessor published Bread and Wine, a selection of his articles, literary essays , comments on his own poetry and his war dispatches.
