Australian Literature

[Stewart]

With the Booker longlist being announced at the end of the month, there's a number of titles from Australia that are eligible and stand a chance of making the final cut. The likes of Helen Garner's The Spare Room, Peter Carey's His Illegal Self, Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog, Tim Winton's Breath, and Alexis Wright's Carpentaria are the most likely.

That, coupled with my recent discovery of Elizabeth Jolley and Helen Garner via the Australian version of Penguin Modern Classics, confirms that there's plenty out there, even in the English speaking world, that we aren't getting in other territories.

So, this thread is for Australian Literature - the classics, the cult, and the contemporary. What's outback and deserves to be infront?

[Mirabell]

One of my favorite novels ever is the Australian Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.

[Cocko]

So, this thread is for Australian Literature - the classics, the cult, and the contemporary. What's outback and deserves to be infront?

I was very impressed with both the latest offerings by Helen Garner (The Spare Room) and Tim Winton (Breath). Similar in length, they do manage to both tackled heavy themes that explore friendship and loss, each pulling it off without a word wasted. Comments on both books are on my blog.

In particular I relished Garner's return to fiction. I had read Monkey Grip in school but this is her first fiction novel in over 15 years so it was hard to know what to expect. She is probably better known these days for her investigative non-fiction, like Joe Cinque's Consolation and The First Stone.

As for other authors, Mirabell, Funhouse and I have been discussing Richard Flanagan elsewhere. He has been the real find for me this year. From our posts you will see that none of us like his 2006 thriller The Unknown Terrorist, but certainly I believe Gould's Book of Fish to be one of the best Australian novels I've ever read, a complex story within a story within a story that spans colonial history and questions the very nature of historical record and authenticity. A very clever guy. He also is a rare find, directing a film version of his novel The Sound of One Hand Clapping.

Here's some of my favourites that I read (or re-read) over the last couple of years:

Gould's Book of Fish - Richard Flanagan
The Spare Room - Helen Garner
Remembering Babylon - David Malouf
The Well - Elizabeth Jolley
Eucalyptus - Murray Bail
Voss - Patrick White
Breath - Tim Winton
Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
Theft: A Love Story - Peter Carey
30 Days in Sydney - Peter Carey

But these are some of the hard hitters of Australian literature, I'm ashamed to say that I haven't yet started to explore some of our young emerging authors.

[Stewart]

Eucalyptus - Murray Bail

I had never heard of Murray Bail until last month when I learnt he had a new book coming out. He seemed interesting enough, from the little I read about him, and so I bought Eucalyptus. I've only had a quick read of the opening pages, but it feels interesting. I look forward to it.

[Cocko]

I had never heard of Murray Bail until last month when I learnt he had a new book coming out. He seemed interesting enough, from the little I read about him, and so I bought Eucalyptus. I've only had a quick read of the opening pages, but it feels interesting. I look forward to it.

Interestingly enough, he was one of Helen Garner's husbands... but gossip aside. Eucalyptus is a strange little book, kinda fairy tale like. I know some people that really hated it, I ran with it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It won the Miles Franklin Award.

It also was the catalyst for heated discussion over here when Russell Crowe was producing and starring in a filmed version with Nicole Kidman and Geoffry Rush. Only a week before shooting began Crowe shut down production over differences in the script adaptation with the director. Put lots of filmmakers out of work after committing to the job for three months and relocating to north west NSW.

I've also read Murray Bail's Homesickness that I didn't really get into. He certainly likes to take his time between books.

[Cocko]

Interestingly, I just saw that AbeBooks have written up a list of Australia's 20 "best authors":

1. Peter Carey
2. JM Coetzee*
3. David Malouf
4. Shirley Hazzard
5. Thomas Keneally
6. Geraldine Brooks
7. Tim Winton
8. Helen Garner
9. Michelle de Kretser
10. Markus Zusak
11. Peter Temple
12. Shane Maloney
13. Kate Grenville
14. Richard Flanagan
15. Andrew McGahan
16. Alexis Wright
17. Kerry Greenwood
18. DBC Pierre
19. Frank Moorehouse
20. Gregory David Roberts

Check it out... AbeBooks

[Stewart]

DBC Pierre

I can't help but think they are taking the piss a bit with that one. While his first novel, much to everyone's chagrin, won the Booker Prize, his second, and only other work, Ludmilla's Broken English, was absolutely slated in the press. I've still to read Vernon God Little to see why so many were unhappy with the choice as Booker winner, but it's the negativity surrounding it that leaves it on my shelf.

J.M. Coetzee is a stretch. I know he became an Australian citizen recently, but his output is categorically South African. And the Shantaram guy, Roberts, only has one book to his name - admittedly, the size of five regular novels.

In fact, the only of those I've read, Coetzee aside, is Helen Garner, and that's only because I'm halfway through The Spare Room just now. I expect I may be reading Alexis Wright's Carpentaria, Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog, and Tim Winton's Breath in the near future. Oh, and Peter Carey's His Illegal Self.

I know it's a list designed to cover all the bases - Zusak being a kids' writer, Greenwood, Maloney and Temple being crime writers - but I would have thought Murray Bail was a bit more deserving than Roberts. And since the list makes no mention of having to be dead or alive, where's Patrick White? Still, if Matthew Reilly was on the list, I'd have laughed it away without a second thought.

[Mirabell]

I loved loved loved Vernon God Little. It's basically a noirish adolescence novel by a fantastically energetic writer, linguistically. haven't finished Ludmila yet, but so far, it's weirder and better.

[Funhouse]

Despite having lived here for ten years, I'm woefully under-read in Australian fiction. Apart from those already mentioned, here are a few authors and titles that I recommend, though:

Julia Leigh - The Hunter
Joan London - Gilgamesh
Kate Grenville - The Secret River
Sonya Hartnett - Thursday's Child
MJ Hyland - Carry Me Down
Kate Jennings - Moral Hazard
Elliott Perlman - Three Dollars

[leyla]

Funhouse, I love Joan London. Her The Good Parents is a book that stayed with me for ages.

My review of Gail Jones's Five Bells is in the Sunday Indie today at this link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...s-2254064.html

[Liam]

James Vance Marshall's beautiful novella Walkabout (on which Nicolas Roeg's famous film is based) is being newly released by the NYRB Classics.

[Liam]

A curious collection of short stories by the Australian writer John Kinsella is coming out in February, 2012: In the Shade of the Shady Tree: Stories of Wheatbelt Australia.

From the editorial blurb:

In the Shade of the Shady Tree is a collection of stories set in the Western Australian wheatbelt, a vast grain-growing area that ranges across the southwestern end of the immense Australian interior. The stories offer glimpses into the lives of the people who call this area home, as we journey from just north of the town of Geraldton to the far eastern and southern shires of the region.

Cast against a backdrop of indigenous dispossession, settler migration, and the destructive impact of land-clearing and monocultural farming methods, the stories offer moments of connection with the inhabitants, ranging from the matter-of-fact to the bizarre and inexplicable. Something about the nature of the place itself wrestles with all human interactions and affects their outcomes.

The land itself is a dominant character, with dust, gnarled scrubland, and the need for rain underpinning human endeavor. Inflected with both contemporary ideas of short fiction and the “everyman” tradition of Australian storytelling, this collection will introduce many readers to a new landscape and unforgettable characters.

[Lleir]

As a young Australian who up until now has had very little exposure to non-Children's Australian literature outside of the token assignment of "school of resentment" fare like Larissa Behrendt's ridiculously harping "Home" and a smattering of Henry Lawson (who I now love) and Banjo Paterson (who I tolerate). So essentially I've pretty much been playing catch-up with what can be said to be Australian canon, as part of me feels a bit sad that I had become a little too divorced from my own bloody culture, especially since I was also part of that generation basically saw the decline of Australian public television and pigeon-holing of Australian film as "pretentious arthouse" to boot. But that's what growing up in the Howard years gets you...

My last read was Henry Handel Richardson's "The Getting of Wisdom" which was rather deceptive in it's simplicity as a bildungsroman but ended up having some interesting things going on including some almost totalitarian moments, with Orwellian thought-crime cropping up decades before he'd write about it. Don't even get me started on how some of the characters reflect some of the people I was exposed to at school (private school girls haven't changed that much in a century or so). I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and plan to start her Fortunes of Richard Mahony soon, though it's quite a daunting read.

Kate Grenville's "The Secret River" really impressed me and I'm glad to find out it's becoming a popular text in secondary schools because it combines an interesting character study with an actually nuanced view of early relations with Aboriginals which as a bit of an Australian history buff, makes me quite happy. I'm looking forward to reading "The Lieutenant" soon, probably after I tackle perennial high school text "Cloudstreet" which must be on the reading list again because I haven't been able to find a cheap copy anywhere.

Xavier Herbert's Capricornia has lots of technical flaws and ham-fisted authorial mouth-pieces but all of this was completely overcome by it being a sprawling, harrowing and (at times) hilarious novel. I'll probably end up tackling the completely unedited Poor Fellow My Country (or as one smart-arse once described it "Poor Fellow My Reader") just out of sheer curiosity to see how much he can push his schtick to fit over a 1000 pages.

Patrick White I'll save for the other thread.

Peter Carey: I've read True History of the Kelly Gang which wasn't so much as profound as just being a thrilling bit of historical fiction, though the central conceit of the text does wear thin at times. I've also read his Unusual Life of Tristan Smith which as much as the setting of Efica with explanatory footnotes and whatnot interested me, I just couldn't give a flying firetruck about anything else, especially the characters.

An unusual Aussie novel I've read is Peter Minack's CWG (Campaigning with Grant) which is a cynically witty post-modern novel about the American Civil War (specifically the life of John Rawlins and his relationship with Ulysses S Grant) and the corruption of history. It's a pity it's out of print as it's really quite impressive for a first novel, even despite it's flaws (Rawlins narrative voice sounds a bit too Australian at times and it's rather off-putting). The only reason I'd heard of it though was that Minack was a member of a cult anonymous and unpretentiously post-modern alternative rock/happy hardcore/spoken word band called TISM that captured my late adolescent imagination back in the day.

Other than that I've read stuff like Nevil Shute's "On The Beach" (particular effective since he talks about suburbs I used to live right next to), Frank Hardy's "Power Without Glory" (the great Australian political novel), Thomas Keneally's "Schindlers Ark", Andrew McGahan's "The White Earth" (which is a Gothic novel about relationship with the land and got an Age Book of the Year award. I really enjoyed it) and the poetry of A.D. Hope (parts of his poem "Australia" I have memorised), Les Murray (or "That-Guy-That'll-Never-Get-a-Nobel-Because-He's-A-Conservative-Catholic-Who-Writes-For-Quadrant") and a dash of Judith Wright until my copy of her collected poems fell apart.

So yeah, I've become rather enthused about Australian literature in this period of my life.

[unicornphoenix1]

Markus Zusak is definitely a deserving author. In terms of young adult fiction, Melina Marchetta and Jaclyn Moriarty are excellent. As a younger reader I always felt Tim Winton was very inaccessible, but I think I might prefer him more if I re-read him now. Terri Janke is an excellent Indigenous fiction writer.

[Lleir]

Zusak has really become quite popular and not just amongst Australians it seems. I'll admit though, I read the first 40 or so pages of The Messenger and it just didn't really grab me at all which is a bit odd considering you have a humourous bank robbery scene, mysterious cards in the mail and whatnot in those first 40 or so pages. To top it all off his first person narration just read like he was tempering it a little too much for his "Young Adult" (a term I've always found just a little iffy) audience and just didn't feel (for want of a better word) "genuine" - which I just don't expect from an author who seems to come from the tradition of children's writing that spawned the likes of Paul Jennings, Gillian Rubenstein et. al. who didn't really talk down to their audiences. Maybe it's just me though. I have heard good things about the Book Thief and might give that a go one of these days.

On the Marchetta front: all I've encountered is the usual adolescent angst about how boring Looking for Alibrandi is. Of course I never studied it in my secondary years, as with most of the "obligatory VCE/HSC/whateveryourfreakinstatecallsit English texts" so I ought to give it a read, since I'll probably have to teach it at some stage...

I haven't touched any Winton either, which is becoming increasingly scandalous. I did pick up a battered copy of Dirt Music from the library for a $1 so I'll soon fix that.

Haven't heard of Jaclyn Moriarty or Terri Janke - though looking up the latter and discovering that she's yet another Aboriginal lawyer doesn't really fill me with hope after Larissa Behrendt's shit.

[Liam]

A private journal by an Englishman named James Bell is set to be published next year, opening a new window onto the early history of Australia:

A Voyage to Australia: Private Journal of James Bell

The journal's value to the SA Memory project as an account of one of the earliest voyages to South Australia, to which many South Australians can trace their ancestry, is obvious. It fits easily with the Library's catalogue alongside copies of the ship's manifest records and other journals of passage to Adelaide, most notably the diary kept by Mary Thomas on the Africaine in 1836.

According to Collections Specialist Tony Leschen, "A Private Journal of a Voyage to Australia 1838-39 by James Bell is highly unusual because the voyage was so eventful-including a mutiny which required a detour to Rio de Janeiro and a storm which involved the loss of spars and sails-but more because of its frankness." On the title page James Bell writes

Kept in conformity with a promise made to C. Perry, Bellisle Street, Workington [Cumberland, England] and with the intention of being sent to her, as a small token of respect for her many good qualities and the friendship with which she has honoured me--.

In the Preface he also writes "that it is to be considered wholly private" and "that it must never be read by a third party." We can only assume that these codicils are why his journal conveys a surprising amount of debauchery on board, particularly from the ship's captain, Thomas Beazley. While historians would caution against generalising the values of South Australian settlers based on this narrative, it certainly casts a new light on our conceptions of Victorian society. According to Leschen, "The will be a lot of interest in reading the journal, by historians and descendents of the passengers once it is transcribed."

Not much is known about the Planter or James Bell apart from this journal. The ship was built at Newcastle on Tyne in 1835, weighed 347 tons and carried 106 passengers to South Australia. James Bell travelled as an 'Intermediate cabin' class passenger on the Planter, though he never states his business in South Australia. He appears to have been of Scottish birth according to his journal entry on 9 December 1838, with its reference to 'the quiet scenes of Scotland on a Sabbath morning'. It is likely he was the person by that name who died on 18 December 1840 "of brain fever, after a few days' illness," as recorded on the S.A. Register, 19 December 1840. The West Terrace Cemetery burial register records he lived in Rundle Street, Adelaide and was 24 years of age.

[Liam]

An excellent recent article on the upcoming 2012 Aussie titles: from novels to memoirs, etc.

A new Carey, plus a "lost" novel from Patrick White.

New books from Thomas Keneally, Richard Flanagan, Gerald Murnane, et al.

[Liam]

An interesting-looking, if insanely priced, new book of literary/visual theory: Alison Ravenscroft's The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race.

Informed by theories of the visual, knowledge and desire, The Postcolonial Eye is about the 'eye' and the 'I' in contemporary Australian scenes of race. Specifically, it is about seeing, where vision is taken to be subjective and shaped by desire, and about knowing one another across the cultural divide between white and Indigenous Australia.

Writing against current moves to erase this divide and to obscure difference, Alison Ravenscroft stresses that modern Indigenous cultures can be profoundly, even bewilderingly, strange and at times unknowable within the terms of 'white' cultural forms. She argues for a different ethics of looking, in particular, for aesthetic practices that allow Indigenous cultural products, especially in the literary arts, to retain their strangeness in the eyes of a white subject.

The specificity of her subject matter allows Ravenscroft to deal with the broad issues of postcolonial theory and race and ethnicity without generalising. This specificity is made visible in, for example, Ravenscroft's treatment of the figuring of white desire in Aboriginal fiction, film and life-stories, and in her treatment of contemporary Indigenous cultural practices.

While it is located in Australian Studies, Ravenscroft's book, in its rigorous interrogation of the dynamics of race and whiteness and engagement with European and American literature and criticism, has far-reaching implications for understanding the important question of race and vision.

[Liam]

The longlist for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced. I don't know anybody on this list except Kate Grenville, .

[Stevie B]

I've heard good things about Alex Miller who has been published in the UK and US, and I believe Elliot Pearlman had some commercial success with his earlier novel Seven Types of Ambiguity. I didn't know he was Australian, though, until I read the longlist.