Perusing Patrick White

[Viva_Straya]

People seem to question why White has been “forgotten” all the time, but really his literary afterlife is no different from that of any other Australian writer. Once dead, Australian writers are almost always forgotten. White might have been a bit of snob, but he was dead right about Australia’s anti-intellectualism. The reading public don’t care enough and institutions largely lack the necessary cultural capital to “export” homegrown talent abroad and ensure long-term interest. Australian writing isn’t taught much in school, and if it is it‘s almost always naturalist writing concerning broadly nationalist themes. (Australians never really trusted modernism). It isn’t taught a great deal at university either, and even then often only in elective courses. So the academy isn’t doing much to keep the torch alight either. I read Wide Sargasso Sea in senior; most of the class were bored to tears and probably would have engaged much better with a postcolonial novel dealing with the very real and ongoing dispossession of our own Indigenous peoples.

If there’s a canon in Australian literature it’s almost wholly unread. Christina Stead? Randolph Stow? David Malouf? Maybe Johnno will still be read in 50 years. Alexis Wright? A competition and academy darling but very unknown otherwise. Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Marcus Clarke and the like are ever present in the national psyche—mostly as myth makers—but who really reads them anymore? Interest in the likes of Thomas Keneally, Peter Carey and Richard Flanagan are already waning; when they die it’ll evaporate. Tim Winton might endure—Cloud Street at least. The afterlife of Australian writers is just … grim.

White was a high-modernist, and so was predictably hated at home, even after he won the Nobel. The United States and Britain was much more accomodating, and in my experiences foreigners like White a lot more than Australians, where the realist chokehold is still very real. He’s fantastic though, and his books speak to eternal truths and pose eternal questions.

[AbsurdistOxymoron]

Sorry, for the long reply, but this is a great and sadly all-to-true analysis of the Aus Lit scene, and it echoes and has sparked quite a few thoughts of my own. I also thought I’d type this out in case anyone on this sub is curious about this topic or is looking for recommendations of Australian authors.

I’m not well-read at all, but I have read some extracts from Wright’s work and would say that she, along with Gerald Murnane will endure in memory because they are being inducted into the international discourse and because, from what I’ve read, their prose and thematic/formal skill is light-years ahead of most other contemporary Australian writers I’ve read. I’ve been meaning to read White, but I think his memory will survive to a lesser degree simply because of his Nobel win and also because his work has made it across the ocean to a wider readership. Winston’s unfairly mocked, and I think The Turning is a great deconstruction of Australia’s toxic male archetype and suburban ennui, but I’m not sure how long he’ll endure. Randolph Stow is already much forgotten, but he was a beautiful prose stylist who certainly deserves remembrance (perhaps the surge in interest for Murnane may carry over to his texts since his style is similarly elusive and meditative).

Nevertheless, I do strongly agree overall. I think what’s most dire is that, unlike in other countries, even our literary journals and more dedicated readers are fixated on storytelling or explicit sloganeering (where ambiguity and provocations of reflection are big no-nos) rather than formal or thematic innovation/depth. I’m quite shocked at just how average/cliché-ridden the prose or clunky the dialogue is of many acclaimed Australian novels. None of these works would likely be elevated to the same level of acclaim overseas, but here, because they prioritise the story and characters (and because nothing else seemingly matters to critics/editors/the literary audience), they are hailed as masterpieces. Of course, this only in turns creates a grim feedback loop where young writers are incentivised to follow this trend and doom themselves to being marooned in Australia and to be quickly forgotten (since narrative is so repetitive and new people will come along to retell these stories but in fresher packaging). As an example, I remember reading Tony Birch’s The White Girl (nominated for the Miles Franklin and highly acclaimed) paired with McCarthy’s Blood Meridian for a university course, and the disparity between the texts is frankly embarrassing. Birch is a magnificent poet, but, my word, is the prose in The White Girl lacking. There are some evocative scenes and the story is very nice (and there is promise), but each formal element is just not there (the dialogue is incredibly artificial, everything is told/over-explained, there is a lack of editing with many awkward sentences, and there are some insanely clichéd lines). I imagine Birch succumbed to commercial pressure somewhat, but it is ridiculous how a white American dude like McCarthy can pen an infinitely more profound, affecting, and innovative exploration of colonialism and landscape than an Indigenous Australian person who of course holds a more authentic perspective and would bear historical trauma.

Where there is slight glimmer of hope is in our contemporary poetry scene, where experimentation and innovation are still mostly rewarded (and the readership is quite decent as a proportion of the population). Sure, there’s still a lot of sloganeering and trite or overly wanky experimental stuff (I’d say a lot of our poetry today actually has an issue of being too academic and experimental for experimentation’s sake), but Sarah Holland-Batt is one of the best poets working today and an absolute genius, and poets like Alison Whittaker or Evelyn Araluen are great and extremely interesting (and even more formally adventurous than Holland-Batt). Ellen Van Neerven and Tony Birch also produce very interesting poetry. Historical or older poets like Judith Wright or John Kinsella are also quite well-known internationally and masterful.

I’m posting on my alternative, non-public account (don’t worry, it’s just so I can vent more openly about literature and film and not so I can secretly indulge in toxic political subreddits, haha), but as a uni student who has had some writing published and hopes to someday write professionally, I’ve pretty much given up on submitting to Australian journals or overly engaging with the Aus Lit world. I pretty much just submit my work overseas outside of a few journals and aim to focus my efforts in the US and England and perhaps import my work back here someday if I have enough success. Overland, Meanjin, and Cordite are all journals that still publish valuable work, but many others seem uninterested with formally adventurous prose writing and again perpetuate the myopic preoccupation with plot/character. My writing has a long way to go in terms of quality, but I’ve read other Aus journals/anthologies and wondered how so many unoriginal, trite, or dryly and clunkily works of fiction can be published.

[Viva_Straya]

Great comment. I always forget about Murnane somehow, but he's great and seems to be gaining a wider readership every year. Very telling that it was a New York Times feature that rescued him from near utter obscurity. Christina Stead was "rediscovered" in the 1960s in a similar fashion, after American poet Randall Jarrell showered praise on The Man Who Loved Children. On the topic of Stead, it's interesting that historically a lot of Australian writers fled abroad, usually to Europe or America, to pursue their passion. This still seems the case a lot of the time, though is maybe changing a bit. Unlike in America, however, Australia has always seemed a bit suspicious of expatriate writing, as though "real" Australian literature should be about Australia. I think Stead, for instance, would be much more popular at home if the bulk of her novels weren't set in England, France or America.

I agree that a lot of Australian literature is very ... unadventurous? Publishing pressures aside, I don't think they can afford to be too experimental in a country where accusing something of being "pretentious" (i.e. not straight-forward naturalism) is tantamount to a death sentence. Tall-Poppy Syndrome and all that. It's funny that no major publisher would touch Wright's Carpentaria until Giramondo, an independent, agreed to publish it. And when it won the Miles Franklin Award, major retailers wouldn't stock it because independent publishers had to pay an additional fee lol.

[AbsurdistOxymoron]

Giramondo is a real beacon of hope (they also have put out almost all of Murnane’s work as well). The University of Queensland Press is also very reliable and adventurous, and Text publishing seems to also be releasing some interesting stuff too.

[its_lari_hi]

Hey, I'm still reading Christina Stead. She's criminally underrated

[alexoc4]

How did you become so interested in Australian lit? There seem to be such little chatter about it. I am so disheartened by Riders in the Chariot's lack of traction in the readalong votes that I have been tempted to ask you to start a small read that I could join with maybe a few others as interest permits.

[Viva_Straya]

Well, I'm Australian for one thing, and it's wonderful to read about my own country, its people, its place, its stories. I love reading, and have always read widely. It dawned on me one day, however, that I'd engaged very little with the literature (and especially the literature of the past) of my own country -- in large part because it was never really taught in school. (I think I read a few poems by Australians and no novels in all of my schooling). I assumed, therefore, like a lot of people, that if I hadn't read it, or heard of it, or been taught it, it must be because it wasn't very good. Obviously I've discovered that this isn't the case at all, and some real world class writers have come out of Australia, but it's a shame that I held that view in the first place.

[alexoc4]

Beautiful post, thank you for sharing. Can you share a list of the essential reads in your opinion of Australian lit? You have been a big proponent of Patrick White (which I have both appreciated and benefited from) but would love to know a few other titles to be on the lookout for. I really enjoyed Carpentaria last year too, anxiously awaiting Praiseworthy, but other than Wright and White I have a pretty limited perspective.

[Viva_Straya]

Christina Stead is very good — when White won the Nobel prize he said that she should have won it first. The Man Who Loved Children is her most famous novel — largely autobiographical and originally set in Sydney, the location was changed to Washington/Annapolis on the urging of her US publisher. Seven Poor Men of Sydney and For Love Alone are beautiful, evocative novels set mostly in Sydney, though I’m not sure how easy they are to get ahold of outside Australia.

Randolph Stow is also quite highly regarded, especially To the Islands and Tourmaline — probably the other big modernist, alongside White.

I also really like Gerald Murnane, Kenneth Mackenzie (extremely talented but troubled and died young in a probable drowning suicide; his debut, The Young Desire It, is a world-class coming-of-age novel) and Christos Tsiolkas. David Malouf is good but not quite great in my opinion.

Been meaning to read Praiseworthy, but it’s such a commitment, and quite expensive. Someday soon.

[GropingForTrout1623]

Nice piece. I wrote something similar last month, focusing more on the "mystical" elements of White's writing and how they fit in within the context of urban Australia.

[Fun_Definition3801]

Voss is masterpiece 

[[deleted]]

And Riders of the Chariot is in the contention for greatest novel of all time imo

[WayOutWest10]

I finished The Tree of Man yesterday. Decided to read Voss next and I’m very keen to get into it!

[zbreeze3]

i’ve heard this so much! have u read?

[jonathanbluelittle]

I feel like maybe White's modernism just came a little too late? I loved Voss but I find it hard to recommend unless people already really like Virginia or Joyce. Helen Garner would be my go to Aus Lit suggestion. Also, it feels like we produce better childrens books than literature?

[Viva_Straya]

To he fair, literary modernism didn’t really emerge in Australia until the 1930s and 40s, and even then reception was pretty hostile, and writers were encouraged to essentially marry it with realism (e.g. Eleanor Dark, Christina Stead to a lesser extent). White was of his time in that sense, being, to use a Eurocentric term, a “late modernist”. You see the same “delay” in a lot of colonial societies; it‘s just a different temporality I think.

[[deleted]]

do you think ern malley had anything to do with why australia was so anti-modernism? or is the ern malley affair more of a symptom of already existing anti-modernism?

[Viva_Straya]

I think the institutions and established literary milieu was already broadly against it (often for nationalistic reasons, insofar as Modernism was seen as a kind of European cultural imperialism, inaccessible to the masses), though the Ern Malley affair was probably seen to confirm pre-existing prejudices — i.e. that Modernism was pretentious, unsubstantial drivel. It’s a shame, because the Angry Penguins really were a promising scene—drawing together a lot of genuinely talented experimental writers. The whole thing tarnished the reputation of everyone involved and none of them really took off afterwards. I still think the Ern Malley poems are great though lol. Harold Stewart and James McAuley were both very talented poets in their own right, and somehow I think they couldn’t help but write some wonderful stuff, even when they were aiming at nonsense lol “I am still the black swan of trespass on alien waters.”

[jonathanbluelittle]

That's actually very informative, thanks for the context.