Testament of a social rebel

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 38183, 24 March 1973, Page 10

Testament of a social rebel

The Earth Drum. By Peter Loftus. Angus and Robertson. 162 pp.

This account of a journey through Singapore and Malaya would have made more impact upon the reader had it been written in the form of articles for a periodical. The author has the keen perception of a good reporter, but is so carried away by his own eloquence that he floods his impressions in a sea of elaborate and lengthy metaphors. The result is a book of 162 pages with no chapters and infrequent paragraphs, which leaves the reader somewhat bemused.

Mr Loftus is an Australian, with an impassioned dislike for Western civilisation as a whole, and his own country in particular. During his joumeyings he came to include Indians and Chinese in his general condemnation of our modern world because of their slavish pursuit of material wealth, and heedlessness of the poverty resulting from their exploitation of the indigenous population. Who is to say Mr Loftus is wrong, but his thundering invective against those of whom he disapproves tends to obscure its own object.

After a series of adventures, some of them amusing, in Singapore and later Kuala Lumpur, the author determined to explore new territory away from the tourist route, and was landed on a small island off Penang called Pulau Gendung (“the island of the drum”). This was to prove his ShangriLa. for the inhabitants lived a communal life in which mutual affection and helpfulness were the distinguishing features. After a period of slight suspicion they took this non-tourist-type visitor to their large hearts, and he became gradually assimilated in their community. The islanders were Mohammedans and the Drum, after which their island was named, was beaten at certain times every day to summon the faithful to prayer. In this island the author found the spirit of peace for which he had been searching all his life and his efforts to please his hosts evidently paid off. for they rewarded him with their confidence and affection.

As the testament of a social rebel the book has merit, especially in the less frenetic tone of its final portion. The dust-cover tells us that "Peter Loftus is a third-generation neurotic who has been described as a mystical megalomaniac.” a passage which one suspects he wrote himself. The blurb concludes in same semantic vein: "The raw urban camps of Australia and America, and the seedy sexual stadiums of Europe deserve to be swept away in a flood of soot and violence leaving

room for the superior cultures of Asia to save the world.” That shows us where we got off—or perhaps where we came in.