WLF Prize 2022 - Gerald Murnane

[Bartleby]

This is a space for sharing thoughts on Gerald Murnane's works read for our WLF Prize in Literature project.

Dalkey Archive Press

Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works.

www.dalkeyarchive.com

A Strange Australian Masterpiece

In “The Plains,” Gerald Murnane captures the paradoxical mix of uniformity and mystery: small differences have an outsized power amid so much sameness.

www.newyorker.com

 

[Leemo]

I own Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane; would those of you familiar with Murnane's work say that's a fine place to begin, or is he more known for his novels?

 

[redhead]

I see Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs is now available as an e-book. Does Stream System have those pieces? Or is it just made up of Landscape with Landscape, Velvet Waters and miscellaneous pieces?

 

[alik-vit]

I see Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs is now available as an e-book. Does Stream System have those pieces? Or is it just made up of Landscape with Landscape, Velvet Waters and miscellaneous pieces?

There are only two pieces from Invisible Yet Enduring Liliac in Stream System. And it's (of course) Invisible Yet Enduring Liliac and ...., right, Stream System. Basically, former is collection of essays and latter is collection of short stories.

 

[Johnny]

I see Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs is now available as an e-book. Does Stream System have those pieces? Or is it just made up of Landscape with Landscape, Velvet Waters and miscellaneous pieces?

No, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs is separate. It’s non fiction, quite biographical and absolutely brilliant. It’s a good intro but not a novel as such. The Plains is his most famous book but may not be the best intro either. Barley Patch or Border Districts would be good places to start IMO.

 

[Bartleby]

I see Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs is now available as an e-book. Does Stream System have those pieces? Or is it just made up of Landscape with Landscape, Velvet Waters and miscellaneous pieces?

It's also interesting to note that for an edition that's intended to comprise his "collected short fiction", Stream System doesn't include the stories from Landscape with Landscape.

from the acknowledgements section of Stream:

"The first eleven fictions in this volume were published together as Velvet Waters (McPhee Gribble, 1990). The five fictions from ‘In Far Fields’ to ‘The Interior of Gaaldine’ were published as Emerald Blue (McPhee Gribble, 1995). ‘As It Were a Letter’, ‘The Boy’s Name was David’ and ‘Last Letter to a Niece’ appeared in A History of Books (Giramondo, 2012)."

Also, for those interested in reading his earlier work, A Lifetime on Clouds is a second novel heavily edited (half of it was cut) by the publishers; Murnane got to return it to its original form in 2019 with A Season on Earth. So I think it's safe to say one can skip the former and go with the latter instead.

 

[redhead]

Thanks for the info! I’ve liked the novels (novellas?) I’ve read by him, and I’m curious to see how he is in different formats. Maybe I’ll also check out that book of poems.

Also, for those interested in reading his earlier work, A Lifetime on Clouds is a second novel heavily edited (half of it was cut) by the publishers; Murnane got to return it to its original form in 2019 with A Season on Earth. So I think it's safe to say one can skip the former and go with the latter instead.

Ugh don’t remind me. I ordered a few of his works, including A Lifetime on Clouds, a month or so before A Season on Earth was announced… so I guess I’ll be reading that version.

 

[TheFriendCatcher]

It's also interesting to note that for an edition that's intended to comprise his "collected short fiction", Stream System doesn't include the stories from Landscape with Landscape.

Landscape with Landscape's stories are interlinked, which is – I assume – why this is the case. The impact of the whole is what makes it my personal favorite in fact.

 

[namelesshere]

My starting point with Murnane was Border Districts, his last, and then Tamarisk Row, his first. So I perhaps approached him in an odd order. Border Districts was a fine starting point for me but I think Tamarisk Row might have been better.

I've also read Lilacs. I own but haven't read the Collected Short Fiction, but I suspect he's the sort of writer where that's also a very good start.

 

[namelesshere]

I own Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane; would those of you familiar with Murnane's work say that's a fine place to begin, or is he more known for his novels?

While I think his short fiction is highly praised and probably a nice entree, I think he is more known for his novels yes.

 

[Leseratte]

I started reading The Plains. If I rightly remember, it was not intended as novel but as a project for a movie. The force is in the details, in the building up of an atmosphere, where one can almost grasp the plains.

 

[Liam]

Murnane's supposedly last book, Last Letter to a Reader, is set to come out in May 2022. Although it appears that it will be published in Australia (by Giramondo) a lot earlier.

 

[Ludus]

Just ordered Stream System and it should arrive in less than a week!

 

[Cleanthess]

My two favorite Murnane's books are, first, in easy mode, his collected short stories; and then, in hard mode, A Million Windows.

Stream System gives you the sensawonda with little of the headache (still, lots of both the head-scratching and mind-fuscking are included).

A Million Windows, his tribute to Henry James, gives you the full headache and mind-blowing in such a way that you don't even notice.

Like James' Turn of the Screw, A Million Windows is "a piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught (the ‘fun’ of the capture of the merely witless being ever but small): the jaded, the disillusioned, the fastidious. Otherwise expressed, the study is of a conceived 'tone,' the tone of suspected and felt trouble, of an inordinate and incalculable sort the tone of tragic, yet of exquisite, mystification" (invisible yet enduring lilacs, c.f. invisible world vs visible world).

Even more impressive, instead of setting up his trap in the guise of a ghost story, Murnane, sets his as an inquiry on the different kinds of fiction. And, like the Turn of the Screw, no matter what understanding your sleuthing procures you, it's wrong and contradicted by other details in the narrative. One Goodreads reviewer who noticed that things are not so simple as other readers claim regarding AMW, was Jim Elkins. We disagree on our conclusions though; Mr. Elkins thinks that Murnane's texts are failures that produce interesting results: another successfully caught fish at the Goroke's Golf and Fishing Club to be seen mounted at that club's bar's walls.

 

[redhead]

Murnane's supposedly last book, Last Letter to a Reader, is set to come out in May 2022. Although it appears that it will be published in Australia (by Giramondo) a lot earlier.

I hope they can stick to that schedule. I’ve noticed lots of new novels and new editions are getting delayed due to supply chain issues.

 

[tiganeasca]

So...Leseratte mentioned Plains. That happens to be where I was considering starting too. Good idea/bad idea?

 

[Leseratte]

I never read anything by him before, in fact I first read his name on this forum. If one isn´t over focused on plot it might be a good beginning. In his capacity to create a dense atmosphere he reminds Henry James, but, if The Plains are characteristic for him, James has more plots.

 

[Cleanthess]

Inland, Barley Patch and A Million Windows are better introductions to Murnane than The Plains, if you like complex novels (and don't mind doing a bit or research in the web to help you figure out what is happening in the world of those books beyond what is reflected in their surface, a very Murnanian topic).

If you like simpler narrations with more transparent plots, then Tamarisk Row, his first novel, is a good starting point: it includes much of Murnane's future books' themes, and Murnane, like the fox, was already then then hunter, to quote Hertha Müller.

Tamarisk Row, for the most part, is similar to, for example, Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar in consisting of short, clearly labeled, sections, but with a lot more complexity and sexuality mixed in. Similar, that is, until its last section where Murnane's goes Joycean on us.

 

[Dante]

So...Leseratte mentioned Plains. That happens to be where I was considering starting too. Good idea/bad idea?

Plains has been my first Murnane's novel too. I appreciated its evocative and inclassifiable writing style, but I didn't fall in love with it.

 

[nagisa]

I liked The Plains, but wasn't taken in by Inland... I liked the take posted by Cleanthess, which develops Murnane's "complex failures of authorial intention and control", producing "genuinely interesting writing that appears to be literature"; I need to read him more extensively. I'll be going for Stream System, his collected short fiction which has been sitting on my shelf, and will certainly go for a few others: Landscape with Landscape, A Million Windows probably. But I suspect I don't have affinity with this author (happy to be disproved).