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The first twenty of these essays about Australian writers and their books have been available on this site for many months, and in September 2009 I posted an additional eight essays of a second collection. There are two developments to report:

1 Publication of the first twenty Ozlit essays under the title The Well in the Shadow will go ahead, courtesy of transitlounge publishing, in mid 2010. My thanks to Barry Scott who runs that firm for his interest, and to the Australia Council for their support for the venture. Availability of the essays from this site will remain unchanged but interested readers will find it easier to get the essays in book form, obviously.

2 A second Ozlit collection has been completed with the addition of four final essays, and they are posted here under the title Truthful Fictions, a name borrowed from Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River. The new essays are as follows:

15. Style: often mentioned, less commonly analysed
16. A place too big: Australia as a collection of regions
17. Tirra Lirra by the River
18. The goddess allows herself to be seen
But not forever; Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus (1980)
An afterword

It is not my intention at the moment to take this series any further.

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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