According to William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

However, E.J. Banfield in his 1908 book Confessions of a Beachcomber claims that:

"The past is not worth thinking about, if not entirely forgotten; the future unembarrassed by problems."

"Why invoke those long silent spectres, white as well as black, when all active boorishness is of the past?"

It is fascinating that Banfield's book itself lived up to the author's advice in that the abridged version, which left out most of the parts relating to Aboriginal people, was the only readily available version from 1933 to 1994. From a novel that includes vital Aboriginal cultural information and the graphic monologues of ex-Native Police troopers, we were left with the conceited musings of a failed English journalist. I prefer the unabridged version.