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This section of the site is now complete in that I don’t currently have any intention of going beyond the 38 essays offered below. Some readers will be aware that the first 20 essays have now appeared in book form as The Well in the Shadow: a writer’s journey through Australian literature, transitlounge, Melbourne 2010. I wish to thank Barry Scott, publisher at transitlounge for making this possible, and the Australia Council for some much appreciated financial assistance.

A second set of 18 essays, collectively entitled Truthful Fictions (a name borrowed from Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River), is offered below, and I hope that this collection will also appear in book form but must wait to see the commercial success or otherwise of The Well in the Shadow.

The essays will remain available from this website regardless of their appearance in commercial form, or otherwise.

OZLIT 1st Series (The Well in the Shadow)

Introduction

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1. Unfortunate affairs
A discussion of Maurice Guest (Henry Handel Richardson, 1908) and Monkey Grip (Helen Garner, 1977).

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2. Jack and George: who owns a life?
George Johnston’s My Brother Jack as seen by Jack himself.

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3. Habe Dank! A writer’s release
A short survey of Helen Garner’s first phase.

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4. Judith Wright; the basis of our nation?
The Generations of Men (1959) and its themes reconsidered in The Cry for the Dead (1981).

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5. Most theatrical when most personal
A consideration of Hal Porter’s three volumes of autobiography: The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony (Faber & Faber, London, 1963); The Paper Chase (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1966); and The Extra (Nelson, West Melbourne, 1975).

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6. Private Manning & Private Bourne: Her Privates We
A discussion of The Middle Parts of Fortune, also known as Her Privates We, by Frederic Manning, first published by Peter Davies, London, in 1929 (Middle Parts) and 1930 (Privates), with the author identified as ‘Private 19022’.

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Interlude 1: two family sagas

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7. The teller of tales presents The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

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8. Keeping it in the family: one way to interpret the past
A look at All That Swagger (1936) by way of seeing how Miles Franklin reconciled her need to be at one with her nation’s past, and with her family too, while expressing something of what she felt was the spirit of her time.

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Interlude 2: as far apart as ever?

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9. The un-loving of Coonardoo
A white woman’s version of a black woman’s life, first published in 1929.

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10. Sally Morgan’s My Place
An Indian discovers she’s aboriginal; the long struggle to find a way back.

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Interlude 3: Marshall and Porter, Alan and Hal

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11. Where certainty lies; his father’s world
Some thoughts about the values inherent in Alan Marshall’s writing.

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12. A broth of stars; the sky without mother
Some thoughts about the way Hal Porter makes the reader complicit in what happens inside the writer’s mind.

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13. The Eye of the Storm: but what is the storm?
A short answer and a long one to a tricky question.

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Interlude 4: something of a divide

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14. Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Sydney burns, and a future is revealed
What can we make of a long-disregarded novel?

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15. A ring that’s lost; is there something better?
Patrick White’s management of plot in A Fringe of Leaves.

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Interlude 5: some reasons for writing

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16. Story and the effacement of story: Beverley Farmer’s The Bone House

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Interlude 6: the otherness of Australia

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17. What tree is that? Eucalyptus by Murray Bail
A man with no name snatches the prize-woman from Mr Cave in a book of endless deception: is there anything we can take as certain?

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18. A desert song, or is it? Voss by Patrick White
The interior as a state of mind: something of a shame, really.

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19. Possession, dispossession, what about re-possession?
Broken Song: T.G.H.Strehlow and Aboriginal possession by Barry Hill.

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20. Singing the country: a first look at Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

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OZLIT 2nd Series (Truthful Fictions)

1. Gippsland’s first great book

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2. Strangely humble: The Tree of Man by Patrick White

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3. Capricornia

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4. Questions of scale: a term in Geneva, starting in 1926

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5. Another journey with another Frank

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6. How the world failed the League of Nations, then began again

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7. The living are few, Frank tells us, But the Dead Are Many

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8. A master of prose because he knows he shares it

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9. Twyborn? Tri-born? Or some lives as they might have happened?

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