18. A desert song, or is it? Voss by Patrick White
18. A desert song, or is it? Voss by Patrick White
The interior as a state of mind: something of a shame, really.
A desert song, or is it? Voss by Patrick White:
Early in my re-reading of Voss I found myself wondering if it was an historical novel, and found that I couldn’t deal with the question because I wasn’t sure what the term meant, or if it meant anything definite at all. The question arose from two sources: a statement on the back of my copy that ‘the true record of Ludwig Leichhardt, who died in the Australian desert in 1848, suggested Voss to the author’, and a feeling I gained from the early pages that White was recreating early Sydney with considerable skill. He seemed well-informed as to what the place had been like.
I read on, wondering whether the question mattered; White had such a powerful imagination that I felt sure – indeed, I remembered from earlier readings, years before – that, insofar as White would draw upon matters previously described by historians, he would transmute them into something personal. It was, as far as I knew, the way his mind worked. My latest reading, however, has left me somewhat puzzled; Voss is strong in ways I’d forgotten and, for this reader, problematic in other ways, mostly internal to the mind of the explorer and his colleague, Frank Le Mesurier, who dies in the desert before Voss meets his end. (The dying Voss is beheaded by one of his aboriginal guides, Jackie by name, who cuts the throat of the explorer, hacks his head off, and throws it at the feet of the tribesmen who prompted Jackie to do this un-aboriginal deed. More of this anon.)
Is Voss an historical novel? Yes, it can be seen that way, if we focus on the opening third of the book and the last fifty or so pages. [read more]
Introduction:
In 1981 Patrick White published an autobiographical book called Flaws in the Glass; the Melbourne Age commissioned two reviews, one of them from Hal Porter, who said, among many things unflattering to ‘Mr White’:
Writers of my sort can be said not so much to read as to examine another writer’s work rather as one car freak examines the vehicle and driving of another car freak. One says, “Splendid vehicle! Superb driving!” Or, “Nice vehicle! Ghastly driving!” Or, “Can’t stand that kind of cumbersomely pretentious vehicle! And what bewildering and erratic driving!”
Hal confesses that the third attitude is his to the novels and plays of ‘Mr White’. I will say no more at this point about Mr White or Mr Porter, but I quote this comparison of writer and car freak because in the essays that follow I am the freak who comments on others of his kind. I know I can’t see my essays as others will see them but I imagine some readers accusing me of many things, and others, well trained, perhaps, in one or another school of literary or social criticism, who will think my observations no more than shallow or ignorant. To such people I can only say that these essays offer whatever it is that a fellow-writer can offer, and don’t pretend to offer anything else.
