/lit/ - Literature

>inb4 Lewis Woolston
He should kill himself

>>22990400
First up an acknowledged national classic.
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton.
The story of two families, the Lambs and the Pickles, fleeing personal tragedies and coming together over twenty years. Full of the tragedy and triumph of life this is a much loved classic that's never been out of print since in was released in 1991 and deserves its place in our national canon.

>>22990400
Second cab off the rank is a darker gem but nonetheless a classic.
Praise by Andrew McGahan.
Labelled as part of the "Grungelit" movement of the 90's but actually so much more. Praise is the story of a loser Gordan Buchanan, who finds his dead end job in a bottle shop too challenging and decides to go on the dole instead. A barmaid, Cynthia Lamonde, latches onto him, she has severe excema, a history of heroin addiction and is a chronic nymphomaniac.
For a while it works. They drift through life in a haze of alcohol, drugs and sex.
Brilliant novel, it's what Bukowski would have written had he been Australian.

>>22990400
I’m in Australia now for the first time :D
I recommend The Plains by Gerald Murnane

>>22990400
Time for a family saga.
The Harp in the South Trilogy by Ruth Park.
The story of an Irish Catholic family in the slums of Sydney in the middle of last century.
Controversial at the time of its release because according to the government at the time Australia did not have slums. Equally heart warming and heart breaking this is a family saga that will stay with you for years.

>>22990400
I read a horrible Australian book called The Plains where the main character stands around in the plains talking about the plains and nothing happens.

>>22990400
Next up is a slightly more obscure classic but one worth hunting down.
Haxby's Circus by Katherine Susannah Pritchard.
This could be called "Stoicism: the novel" as its major theme is how to deal with life when it gives you a rough hand.
In the early 1900's Dan Haxby takes his travelling circus around the various towns of rural Australia. His beautiful daughter Gina Haxby is the star of the show until one night she takes a fall off a horse and is reduced to a pain stricken hunchback for the rest of her life.
She then has to find a way to go on. How do you live when what made life worth living has been taken from you?
Deep, profound and worthwhile, this is a classic that should be more widely read.

>>22990400
Another slightly obscure classic.
The Pea Pickers by Eve Langley.
Argueably Australia's first Queer novel this tells the story of two girls who travel the country working on farms. There is an undercurrent of loss and love and hints that the life they really want is out of their reach.
Touching and affecting, a beautiful and poetic addition to the national canon.

>>22990400
Finally some depression core.
The Battlers by Kylie Tennant.
Based on her experiences during the great depression of the 1930's this novel tells the story of a small band of misfits "on the track" looking for work and dodging the police.
A compassionate, humane novel, this is a real masterpiece of Australian lit.

>>22990406
Fuck yourself cunt! I'll outlive you all!

>>22990433
It’s essential to the work itself that nothing happens. You got filtered anony.

>>22990527
>It’s essential to the work itself that nothing happens.
Okay that doesn't make it worth reading.

>>22990400
Obligatory David Chalmers mention

>>22990530
In itself, no, obviously not. I think you ought try to be more thoughtful anon :(

>>22990541
I gave that damn book a fair shake. Yes, I could see that all the nothing happening was intentional.It started to strike me as humorous toward the end, though I wasn't sure if that was intentional.

>>22990400
>Poets
Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, Bernard O'Dowd, Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Breaker Morant, Christopher Brennan, Frederic Manning, William Baylebridge, Kenneth Slessor, Ronald McCuaig

>Writers
Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Katherine Mansfield, Jack Lindsay, Patrick White, Gerald Murnane

>Painters/sculptors
Eugene von Guerard, John Russel, Arthur Streeton, Norman Lindsay, Rayner Hoff

>History
Eureka Stockade, Bushrangers, New Guard

>Composers
Percy Grainger

>To the paganists Australia was a new arcadia. Its climate, its light, and even the seaward orientation of its habitable parts suggested ancient Greece. They also felt that the healthy outdoors lifestyle which most Australians then lived was itself leading to a Classical and athletic perfection of human form. Thus Rayner Hoff, the leading sculptor of this group, was outraged when another artist claimed that his 1927 torso Australian Venus was idealized rather than being (as it was) a realistic depiction of a radiantly healthy flesh-and-blood Australian woman.

I worshipped, when my veins were fresh,
A glorious fabric of this flesh,
Where all her skill in living lines
And colour (that its form enshrines)
Nature had lavished: in that guess
She had gathered up all loveliness.
All beauty of flesh, and blood, and bone
I saw there; ay, by impulse known,
All the miracle, the power,
Of being had come there to flower.
Each part was perfect in the whole;
The body was one with the soul;
And heedful not, nor having art,
To see them in a several part,
I fell before the flesh, and knew
All spirit in terms of that flesh too.

But blood must wither like the rose:
’Tis wasting as the minute goes;
And flesh, whose shows were wonders high,
Looks piteous when it puts them by.
The shape I had so oft embraced
Was sealed up, and in earth was placed—
And yet not so; for, hovering free,
Some wraith of it remained with me:
Some subtle influence that brings
A new breath to all beautous things,
Some sense that in my marrow stirs
To make things mute its ministers.
I fall before the spirit so,
And flesh in terms of spirit know—
The Holy Ghost, the truth that stands
When turned to dust are lips and hands.

>>22990400
Its also Florida day!

I was going to pawn my keyboard for food money today, but nope! Normie Day means everything's shut, so I'm starving until Monday.

Just fucking kill me. I'm not fit for life.

>>22990764
You should add Charles Harper to the list of poets and Frank Hardy to the list of writers. Though desu "Power without glory" probably won't make much sense to people overseas who don't know much about late 19th century to mid 20th century Australian history.

>>22990400
Why does everyone always mention this Gerald Murnane guy? He's not even that good.

>>22990876
How did you end up in this predicament?

>let's celebrate the date which marks the beginning of the genocide of the oldest culture on earth!
fuck off

>>22990892
>Power Without Glory is a 1950 historical novel following the life and ambitions of John West, a politician born into a working-class family who rises to prominence in Australian federal politics.
Wow that sounds interesting...

>>22991310
>let's be a latte belt wanker from Melbourne and virtue signal about how much we love Abos even though we live nowhere near the black cunts.

Get fucked faggot

>>22991600
The story around the novel is even more interesting. The real life person whom the main character is based on tried to sue for defamation when the book came out. Halfway through the case he dropped it after his lawyers advised that to prove the character was based on him he would need to admit to several serious crimes.

>>22991611
That's not very interesting.

>>22990400
More like Australia Gay

>>22991270
Filtered. Best living writer.

Recommend me some good books by and about abbos and their culture.

Patrick White is the best.

I read and hated The Plains and I made it about 30 pages into a Patrick White book before throwing it out the window. One day I will find a "classic" Australian author I like.

>>22991270
pretty sure its just some aussie autist who likely is using him as an attempt to justify his nation's (lack of) culture

>>22992946
You never even read him.

>>22990554
I found it a sophisticated metafictional experiment that raises questions about not only art, but every level of human endeavour, through the vehicle of the relationship between a people and their land, written in aesthetically pleasing prose.

>>22992946
Btw I am NOT aussie at all. I’m literally >>22990425

>>22993146
>I found it a sophisticated metafictional experiment
I guess I can't disagree with this. But, in my opinion, a novel needs to have additional things, like an absorbing plot and characters who are more than mannequins, to justify my sitting down to read 200 pages. Attempting an interesting experiment isn't enough.

>there are countless romance novels about native Americans

>none about native Australians

But why?

>>22993150
Fuck off fag. You are not me.

>>22993184
It's theory fiction. You should know that before picking up a book. Besides, it's what like 120 pages long. It's not some 700 page tome, that'd be masturbation.

>>22993360
>It's theory fiction.
Great. It still doesn't justify its own existence. I would have accepted it if it were a short story, but 200 pages is too much. You can't expect a reader to humor you for that long just because you have a neat experiment you want to try out.

>>22993398
Dude it's not 200 pages and it's quite interesting if you are interested in that branch of fiction/philosophy. It would be wrong to say his writing is dry; Part 3 is one of the tensest, almost philosophical horror sort of stuff in any book of the 20th century. And he gets all that out of merely a picnic, some rainbearing clouds, the vast stretch of plains and a camera.

>>22993304
There's this but it's gay and clearly written so the author can get social justice good boy points, not written to make people cum. Someone could probably make a killing writing aboriginal smut.

>>22993423
>Dude it's not 200 pages
The copy I have is 200 pages.

>It would be wrong to say his writing is dry
I agree.

>Part 3 is one of the tensest, almost philosophical horror sort of stuff in any book of the 20th century. And he gets all that out of merely a picnic, some rainbearing clouds, the vast stretch of plains and a camera.
I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong to like it. I'm pleased (truly!) if you got enough out of it to justify your having read it. But as far as I'm concerned, an intentional non-story about un-characters standing around and kind of doing something but not really doing anything isn't enough to justify my sitting down and giving the author my attention for 200 pages. If it'd been 10 pages, fine. If DFW had given us 200 pages of Wardine instead of four or five I'd make roughly the same complaint.

>>22993184
>>22993398
>>22993602
A novel doesn’t “need” to have anything, let alone vehicle chases and explosions to justify itself to people who hate what it’s trying to do.
>If DFW had given us 200 pages of Wardine instead of four or five I'd make roughly the same complaint
That would be interesting too depending on where he ran with it. “Things happening” are nice but they’re not the final telos of serious literature and art in general. I find something that constantly tries to justify itself to the reader to be masturbation aid much more than what you call so.

>>22990400
Bump

>>22990439
>How do you live when what made life worth living has been taken from you?

Tell me cunt, this shit is like 282 pages

>>22991270
>>22992946
Murnane is interesting in the same way that Chris-Chan is interesting: unabated autism.

Murnane has a filing cabinet that is not to be opened until after his death and the only thing inside of it is a bunch of letters he never sent to other authors about how bullshit and stupid they are.

His poetry book is one of my favourites. Murnane is pathetic at poetry to the point that it becomes interesting again.

He is obsessed with horse races and has spent over two decades devising an incredibly specific and boring system of simulation in order to write a book of false horserace statistics.

He is basically Georges Perec with devastating mental retardation.

Murnane is awesome.
He is /ourcunt/

>>22994553
I'm with this guy.
Not everything needs to have a point.

>>22997020
I'd be interested to read the letters in that filing cabinet.
Dear Tim Winton, let me explain why Cloudstreet is garbage and you are a hack...

>>22996993
Are grown up books too difficult for you?

Read Kangaroo by D H Lawrence ya fuckin cunts

>>22990425
Fuck off we're full

>>22997558
Yes. Help me.

>>22990400
I liked Seven Types of Ambiguity.

>>22994553
>A novel doesn’t “need” to have anything, let alone vehicle chases and explosions to justify itself to people who hate what it’s trying to do.
Yeah, that's not what I said. I expect a novel to have plot and characters if the author expects me to devote my time to reading it. "It's an experiment" is not, in itself, sufficient justification for printing out a book and asking people to read it. Maybe you have different criteria. Maybe if you received 200 blank pages between two covers you'd applaud the brilliance of the author. I have different expectations than you do.

Why hasn't anyone in Australia written poetry with Greek prosody? Australian is one of the few English accents with phonemic syllable length.

>>22990439
Sounds like the plot to Million Dollar Baby (2004).

>>22990433
Kek, me too. Plains plains plains. South Australians should be shot out of a cannon.

>>22999813
One of the Jindyworobaks probably did. There's heaps of Australian verse and epic poety from that era now forgotten to time.

>>23000222
The Jindyworobaks deserve to be forgotten and I hope to never hear mention of them again for the rest of my life.

>>23000262
Why's that mate?

How many of you had to read "Tomorrow when the war began" in school? The 2010 movie came out when I had to do a report on it and my class and I went to go see it at the cinema, there were classes from other schools there as well, we could then be dismissed from school from there. Feels like yesterday ;_;

>>23000267
Any desire to make Australia its own civilization contradistinct to the entirety of the West and just as great is delusory, especially under the influence of Aboriginal 'culture'.

>>23000285
This man isn't a fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cl4u5KicBM

>>23000285
At my school the dumb-dumbs had it assigned, whilst in the A-stream we did Euripides and a bonus Shakespeare (Othello from memory).

>>23000307
It was worth a crack.

>>22990768
I got to the postscript of This Vital Flesh and was much more impressed with Baylebridge's mature essays he wrote in the 1930s compared to the youthful Nietzchean epics pre-WW1 from that collection. Shall continue reading him and get to the sonnets. The youthful stuff has flashes and he clearly matures.

>>23000315
No, it's not. It's the ideas of someone deprived of culture and not enough education to see it. You don't just will civilisations into existence. It's a petty, hubristic and uneducated hometown mentality.

anyone read any helen garner? i'm interested in the children's bach, it's getting reprinted over here in march

>>22999190
Plot and characters can be literally anything you define them to be so that isn’t any sort of rigorous criteria unless you hold them to some dogmatic prescriptive cultural standards. Also the novel obviously has both unless you think having a name is a prerequisite for a character, which would rule out a lot of unnamed characters throughout literature. Plus the movement of material in space a la the naturalistic novel is not necessarily “things happening” any more than any other type of literature such as the novel of ideas, but that’s a philosophical debate.
>>22997871
I’m a bong on holiday not an immigrant.

>>23000343
>You don't just will civilisations into existence.
Yes you do.

>>23000447
Delusional. Let's just create a period of artistic culture equal to the Renaissance, we'll just will it!

>>23000470
>*adds to manifesting collage*
How else would it start mate? It's always a discretionary act of will. Every culture is an accumulation of past and present decisions.

>>23000479
>Every culture is an accumulation of past and present decisions.
In the same way the human body evolved as an accumulation of past and present decisions. Not only are most of these 'results' of decisions not foreseeable in the slightest, most are not possible through any decision you could hope to make. It is absurd to think of existence, at any level, as the product of decisions and results.

>>23000504
With a stroke of a pen you can completely change a culture, literally re-write it. You're projecting an internalised impotence here mate. All you or I have to do is become the next Shakespeare or Milton.

>>23000521
>With a stroke of a pen you can completely change a culture, literally re-write it.
No, you can't. Your conception of cultural creativity is so literal that it would require an organization of forces tantamount to a religious cult, which would destroy more of value than whatever the new work of art brought. Dante's enormous influence on his country's language and culture does not amount to a recreation of either, nor could he hope of that, since he was a product of his country and culture. I've yet to see a writer create his own story and background, and to do so would be to make his art rootless and devalued entirely.

>All you or I have to do is become the next Shakespeare or Milton.
Shakespeare and Milton were born for their greatness, and prepared for by periods of cultural felicity. Geniuses of their mark do not come around every day. Go ahead and be the next Shakespeare if you think otherwise.

>>23000352
Haven't read that one but i read Monkey Grip and saw the movie. Both pretty good.