One of the first essays in the collection, 'On Literature and Martial Art', demonstrates Foster's magnificent command of rhetorical structure. It's a rhythmically balanced, learned exposition of an interesting subject. But he can't resist the indulgence of the aside that undermines his argument and alienates his audience. When he delivered this paper at the Australian Defence Force Academy, it was clear that he thought his views on women in the bushfire brigade offered a defiance of current feminism. Foster projects whatever troubles he has with his wife and the women in the local fire brigade onto the universal relationships between men and women.
Comic material intrudes into a fascinating discourse on martial codes.
His recounting of the argument between Leavis and Snow on the relationship between literature and science provides the kind of wide-ranging intellectual speculation that demonstrates in its very style a freedom from the barriers of 'discipline'. Foster acknowledges his own curious persona in an essay on satire where he describes a satirist as 'an angry response looking for something to respond to', and one who 'observes and laments his own destructive impulses'. Foster can't keep this persona out of his writing, even at the expense of his own interests. The intrusion of the satirist gives these essays something of the status of fiction. The voice here does not claim to be objective, and may throw away its authority at any minute.