|
|
Patrick White (1912 - 1990)
|
|
|
|
Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
|
 Patrick
White : Letters by David Marr (Editor), Patrick White
Australian
novelist Patrick White, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1973, was a compulsive letter-writer throughout his
life, and he generally asked that people destroy his letters. They
didn't. Only portions of White's voluminous correspondence have
been previously published, but this books fills the gap. Included
are hundreds of letters in which White gossips about other
writers, discusses serious literary matters and holds forth in his
witty manner about all sorts of subjects. When
Patrick White won the Nobel Price for Literature in 1973, he was
known only to readers of serious fiction. Since that time he has
become world-famous. By the time he died in 1990, White had
attempted to destroy -- or have destroyed -- most of the letters
he had written to friends, fans and acquaintances. This makes
David Marr's collections of White's letters almost a miracle. Marr
has collected over 600 pages of witty, insightful and revealing
correspondence from the gay novelist which give us an
unforgettable, intimate portrait of White and his world. Read in
conjunction with Marr's 1992 biography of the author, Patrick
White Letters is an unparalleled look into the life of a
literary genius. Patrick White
(1912-1990), author of The
Living and the Dead, 1973 Nobel Laureate in Literature,
officially Australian but also partly upper-crust Englishman by
education, rejected alike English stuffiness and Australian
philistinism. These letters, edited by his biographer David Marr,
chronicle White's gradual reluctant engagement with the world: his
interest in Jewish culture after an early ignorant anti-Semitism;
his idyllic wartime period in West Africa; his passionate and
rancorous anti-royalism, sparked by the 1975 Australian
constitutional crisis when the British Queen's representative
sacked the Prime Minister; his deep held belief in the validity of
homosexual unions, based on his own life-long relationship. These
letters give an inner glimpse of a mostly private life.
|
|
By Petri Liukkonen
Excerpt:
Australian novelist, short story writer and
playwright who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973.
White combines in his works myth, symbols and allegory. His
characters are of ten separated from the society by age,
sexuality, race or geography. White's international breakthrough
novel was VOSS, which was published in 1957. RIDERS IN THE
CHARIOT, which contains a powerful indictment of Australian
suburban life, established him as one of the most important modern
writers. In his own country White had to wait a long time before
his depiction of the Australian middle class was accepted.
"I would like to believe in the myth that we
grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of
a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to
the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable
objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we
scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same
family, farting, slobbering, perpertually mislaying teeth and
bifocals." (from Three Uneasy Pieces, 1987)
Patrick White was born in London of Australian
parents. His youth was spent partly in Australia, where his father
owned a sheep farm, and partly in England. At the age of 13 he was
sent to Cheltenham College, an experience which he hated and
referred as a 'four-year prison sentence'. He returned the to
Australia and worked for two years as a jackaroo on a remote sheep
station and started then to study French and German literature at
Cambridge, and receiving his B.A. in 1935. White settled in London
and wrote several unpublished novels...
|
|
From The
Complete Review
Excerpt:
Patrick White is one of the major
English-language writers of the second half of the twentieth
century, and still the grand old master of Australian literature.
His strong narrative voice and his wrenching tales make him an
always fascinating read. White's books evolved from the very
traditional to, ultimately, the very experimental. Even in his
early work he is resolutely modern, trying to do more with fiction
than most novelists care or dare to.
His novels are deceptive, with their weight and
their stories which are frequently placed earlier in this century
-- or in the last. White wrestles with the profound questions of
our age, never opting for the easy answers (there are no
"happy endings" or even truly positive resolutions in
his work). He gives the reader food for thought -- often, it
seems, too much for comfort...
|
|
|
|
Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
|
|
