Australia and the World Past and Present

As yourself the following questions:

Has an Australian ever won the Nobel Prize for literature? If you have answered yes, you are doing well. There has only been one. Second question – what is his name? Full marks if you answered Patrick White.

It is a name I never heard when I was a child. It was name I never encountered while I was at high school, nor while I was at university.

I consider myself quite well-read, but I had gone through the first four decades of my life and had not read one Patrick White novel. Not one chapter. Not one sentence. Not one word.

Granted, he was a bit before my time.

Born in 1912 and and lost to this world in 1990.

Perhaps those Aussies a generation older than me might know his name. Still, It is doubtful that many of them have read one of his works.

I conducted my own little experiment the other day. I went to my local library to see whether they stocked some of White’s novels. I couldn’t immediately spy them on the shelves. So I inquired with one of the library staff and I am happy to report that not only had she heard of White, she was able to locate three of his works where my own eyes had skimmed past them.

Inquiring further, I asked her if she had ever read him? She responded in the affirmative, but added that it was ‘a very long time ago’.

White was born in London to Australian parents. His dad had been a sheep grazier. Some believe that this kind of environment bred individuals who were absolutely self-assured and Malcolm Fraser is often cited as a case in point.

White grew up in Sydney in rural or at least semi-rural locations.

He was sent off to boarding school, first in New South Wales before going to Britain to continue his studies.

He went on to study modern languages at Cambridge.

He served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force. He was stationed in Egypt in 1941 and it was there that he met the man who would be his companion for the rest of his life, Manoly Lascaris.

White returned back to the country of his childhood in 1948 where he would go on to write a slew of novels drenched in Australianness.

He produced The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957) and Riders in the Chariot (1961).

There was The Solid Mandala (1966), The Eye of Storm (1973) and the Twyborn Affair (1979).

The late 1960s brought out another side to White. He became a political activist of sorts weighing in on everything from the Vietnam War and Aboriginal issues to nuclear disarmament and the environment.

In 1973 he won the Nobel Prize for literature with his citation reading ‘for an epic and psychological narrative art, which has introduced a new continent to literature.”

He was also made Australian of the Year.

So with my three library copies of White’s works I decided to read the opening chapters of each, just to get a taste of his writing.

Voss

The Australia in White’s Voss is a world of classes and of servants. It is a place in which women do embroidery and a young girl, Laura Trevelyan, struggles with her belief in God and tends towards ‘rationalism’. This Australia is ‘that remote colony’ and Laura thinks rather highly of herself, “she might have elected to share her experience with a similar mind, if such a mind had offered. But there was no evidence of intellectual kinship in any of her circle of acquaintance”.

One wonders if this is White referring to himself.

The property on which Laura lives is only 4 kilometers from Sydney, but the surrounding environment is decidedly rural or semi-rural.

In conversing with Laura, the German Voss, remarks “A pity that you huddle…Your country is of great subtlety.”

Voss is en explorer with visions of an epic crossing of the continent.

He is ‘ragged’ and ‘course’. He is looking outwards towards the ranges and deserts. He is an adventurer, a mover and a shaker.

Laura is more inactive amongst her decanters but this may have as much to with her lot in life as a woman in this time and place as much as her own predilections.

We can find White’s description of the landscape – the “deformed trees” and “wind-combed trees”.

It is an Australia that was before my time. But it was also before White’s time. Perhaps is was a nostalgic Australia for White in the way that ‘the time before’ tends to appear to modern eyes. A simpler time perhaps.

The nature of Australia emerges early on the work, “everyone is still afraid, or most of us, of this country, and we will not say it. We are not yet possessed of understanding …it is not my country although I have lived in it.”

The Twyborn Affair

The Twyborn is a different kettle of fish.

It begins with Australians Joanie and Curly Golson holidaying in France before World War I.

There are a slew of other characters.

To be honest, it all seemed a tangle of spaghetti to me. I had trouble making out who was who and how they connected to each other.

It would seem that sensuality infused this book.

It is a world of parasols and copper bed warmers.

The period of history in which the book was set was not immediately clear to me.

White has a reputation of sometimes being a hard read. I would benefit from a reread, but probably can’t muster the required interest.

The Tree of Man

There are horse-drawn carts and stringybarks.

At times White seems to be channeling some kind of Australian Haiku “A dog lifting his leg on an anthill. The lip drooping on a sweaty horse.”

The novel revolves around a young man who inherits a block of land, clears it, takes a wife and encounters the trials and tribulations of life.

Out of the three novels, this is the one that I enjoyed the most. I read a bit more of it than I planned.

White’s description of Stan Parker’s Australia will be recognisable to many Australians.

This was the time of early development, of land clearing, the felling of giant eucalyptus trees. Attempting to tame nature – to bring order to a wild landscape.

Stan’s dad was a blacksmith – a profession long lost to the world.

We find verandahs and dirt floors, iron beds and pickled meat.

It is still a world of kerosene and seed potatoes. Flour tea and sugar round out the diet.

Madeline Watts has said of the Tree of Man that “the novel felt to me as though it contained the entire breadth and depth of life. It was also absolutely Australian”.

White’s writing certainly oozes Australianness.

But White remains largely unread.

In 2006 the Weekend Australian sent one of his book chapters to an array of Australian publishers, albeit without White’s name attached. None wanted to publish it.

It is difficult to talk about White without talking about the concept of cultural cringe. The term is attributed to A.A. Phillips in the 1940s and is the idea that Australians view their own cultural creations as somehow inferior to those produced in places like Britain of the US.

White was never universally acclaimed. At times his work was well received in the US or Britain. At other times it wasn’t. White’s popular and critical success in his home country was also hit and miss. Acclaim was not universal. Today we might say that there is a general disinterest or aloofness to his work, except among certain individuals.

For the most part I found White’s work accessible. I would recommend giving him ago, especially with Voss or The Tree of Man.