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/lit/ - Literature

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15671494 No.15671494 [Reply] [Original]

Has this country produced a single great work of literature?

>> No.15671501

>>15671494
Fictional lands can't produce literature

>> No.15671506

>>15671494
aimee terese's twitter

>> No.15671529

>>15671506
Lol definitely.

Well, Coetzee's work written in Australia after he left south africa is certainly lesser quality to his early stage but maybe the best the continent has produced still.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a great film based on an Australian gothic novel. Haven't read it but I like the movie.

Let's include New Zealand to make it easy, because Katherine Mansfield is fire bars

>> No.15671542

>>15671494
How many great works of literature had Americans completed in 1750, 150 years after English colonists came there

Expect good things over the next century

>> No.15671544

>>15671529
>Picnic at Hanging Rock
I love the first 30 minutes and the entire aesthetic of this film. It's probably one of the most angelic/dreamlike movies I've ever seen. It's really stunning. But overall I really dislike it, because after the girls disappear it's a boring slog.

>> No.15671573

On The Beach was good
Wasn’t The Thornbirds supposed to be good too?

>> No.15671584

Cloudstreet is pretty dope

>> No.15671601

>>15671542
The difference is Australia doesn't get the benefit of maturing a unique identity prior to being enmeshed in high speed global communication networks. Whatever truly unique culture was going to develop out of the nation was nipped in the bud and now it is just another nation tending toward the end of history's homogeneous sludge.

>> No.15671856

>>15671601
The landscape and weather alone will inform a different strand of art but I think you're right in that it will be largely homogeneous. Who knows though maybe the East Asian influence will be felt with the rise of China, especially with the stake it already holds in the economy

>> No.15673626

>>15671494
The Rings of Saturn is actually an australian coproduction

>> No.15673927

>>15671494
Something for the pain, Gerald Murnane

>> No.15674157

>>15671542
>Expect good things over the next century

For sure. The Chinese are a very industrious people.

>> No.15675360

>>15673626
didn't know this

>> No.15675370

Is patrick white good? Only aussie author I know

>> No.15675481
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15675481

Richard Flanagan is really good. pic related is great.

>> No.15675528
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15675528

Nobody has mentioned Greg Egan.

>> No.15675598
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15675598

>> No.15675694

>>15675370
i got 100 pages through Voss and put it down. Might restart it tonight. the blurb compares it to Tolstoy, but idk man

>> No.15675722

>>15675694
Why did you drop it?

>> No.15675847

Does anybody rate Gerald Murnane? this thread sparked a memory of this bloke who basically never left his home town -- The New York Times, in a big feature published on 27 March 2018, called him "the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of".

>> No.15675852

>>15671494
What do you expect from a country of convicts?

>> No.15675969

>>15671856
>The landscape and weather alone will inform a different strand of art

But there are no avenues for high art in Australia. Everything we produce is milquetoast suburban dramas catering to middle aged women because those are the only people who buy books. I picked up that "Boy Swallows Universe" book because it was a mate's coffee table and I almost spat out my drink the prose was so fucking poor. It was honestly far, far worse than I was even imagining, and I had low expectations going in. I had guessed it would be bland but generally readable,but every single page was so chock full of cliches it would get you laughed out of even the shittest university creative writing class. And that's what passes as good literature in this country? Well, it is what sells.

>> No.15675982

>>15675847
read him and absolutely hated it

>> No.15675987

>>15675847
I've only read Border Districts but for me it tended too far toward experimentation without balancing it with readabiltiy. It's the same issue I have with William H. Gass. It's not that I find it wanky, and I generally appreciate the thesis behind it, it's just that it's not particularly enjoyable to read. Maybe I should try his earlier stuff or his short stories first.

>> No.15675996

>>15671494
it produced AC/DC, at least.

>> No.15676002

>>15671573
>On The Beach was good
Actually an English novel
>>15673927
niceeeee, i thought i was the only one that read that
>>15675847
Murnane is wonderful imo. Inland is his best, but he is super repetitive. All his novels are basically the same, so this anon >>15675987 may have had a bad first start, since Border Districts very much reads as an epilogue to the rest of his work. I don't think it works as a stand-alone very well.

>> No.15676008

The Aussiad

>> No.15676011

>>15671501
To be honest, if I was stuck on an island with Australian women I probably wouldn’t get much writing done either.

>> No.15676022

>>15676008
based

>> No.15676030

>>15671494
Randolph Stow's novels are GOAT

>> No.15676035
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15676035

This book is good
>>15675847
I like Murnane, but he does tend to elicit fairly mixed reactions from people

>> No.15676060

>>15675969
This is the tragedy of Australian writing. There are pockets where you can find some great stuff- any cunt who got out during the 30s-40s, the Sydney push writers, Dorothy porter, pi o, Lionel Fogarty. The story of ern malley is representative of this place. But yeah, the publishing industry is directed to bourgeois taste and most of that is literary realism. It’s trite and dull and liberal. Yuck. A group needs to form to gain any attention. Isolated I’m sure there are great writers, they just go unnoticed because the publishing industry needs to embed a writer into a current conversation. It’s often the case that culture war dross is the conversation that sparks interest. I hope you write Australian anons. For our sake.

>> No.15676072

>>15675847
like an annoying graduate student decided to layer the maximum amount of half-baked metaphors on top of one another, all in service of some misreading of post-structuralism. anti-literature, banal

>> No.15676106

>>15676060
NO
I WON'T

>> No.15676140
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15676140

>>15676060
I will be that man


Some day. Hopefully.

>> No.15676165

I wish i was australian

>> No.15676184

>>15676165
It's not so great mate

>> No.15676188

Australia only has a few million people. Not really fair to compare it to literary giants like the US, Russia or Ireland

>> No.15676189

>>15676165
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QCgqQdmr0M

>> No.15676214

Capricornia by Xavier Herbert is excellent and very raw, the kind of thing Cormac McCarthy might have been influenced by

The Female Eunuch is feminism kino

The Man Who Loved Children is incredibly warm and comfy

Blood On The Wattle is basically a harrowing encyclopedia of aboriginal massacres, it almost becomes farcically comical as you realise how many and how close together they all were

The Dreaming by Damien Broderick is bonkers LSD time travel sci fi that has some truly beautiful passages

And The Ass Saw The Angel is atmospheric incel creeper southern gothic and quite nasty

Peter Carey is one of the few Australian novelists who doesn't describe landscapes the way one describes a woman they can't fuck (fuck Tim Winton)

All of David Stratton's books are essential if you want to get into Australian movies or film in general

I mostly read Australian stuff. I work in the cafe at the museum library so I pick up a lot of books and get free tickets to writer's festivals and whatnot.

>> No.15676308

>>15676188
Straya's population is much larger than Ireland.

>> No.15676314

>>15676308
I'm fairly sure that was a joke

>> No.15676333

replace /lit/ with films and its the same shit, thank god I'm in NZ where things aren't so bad but seriously I pity any directors over there who have to make some cheesy abo drama lacking any soul to get any type of funding, they really do suck balls when it comes to art.

>> No.15676441

>>15675598
Fucken Warnie

>> No.15676451

>>15676165
Living in a foreign country as an Australian really highlights how much more people like us than Americans. It's pretty funny.

>> No.15676471

The Aussian Cycle.

>> No.15676530

>>15671494
i wish i were australian just so i could have the c-word pass

>> No.15676646
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15676646

>>15676165
i wish i wasn't

>> No.15676714
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15676714

>>15671542
>Expect good things over the next century

>> No.15676751

>>15671529
>Let's include New Zealand...

As an Aussie I can tell you right now to fuck off.

>>15676333
Pretty much this, too much boongcentric shit these days. At least we made "the castle" (film) before all that shit, NZ's equivalent is Boy, which is based off moldy culture. Actually a lot of your best films involve pot smoking, wife beating maoris lol.

>> No.15676787

>>15676530
its not as acceptable as the memes imply

>> No.15676808

>>15676787
You're wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TsNL3uBw1g

>> No.15676828

My diary desu

>> No.15676959

>>15676188
Aus has 5x the population of Ireland.

>> No.15676987

>>15676959
australia has a hundred times more irish people than ireland has

>> No.15677007

>>15676214
>And The Ass Saw The Angel

Fantastic book. I make sure to read it once a year.

>>15676333
>>15676751
The Proposition, Priscilla & Romper Stomper all say Hi. NZ just tells the same story over & over e.g. Boy, Whale Rider, Once Were Warriors etc.

>> No.15677028
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15677028

*revolutionises Nietzschean vitalism*
*establishes tanned Anglo-Celtic mannerbund*

>> No.15677041

>>15676214
Melbournite.

...
Perish!

>> No.15677049

>>15676787
maybe if you live in hellbourne and work at starbucks

>> No.15677063

>>15677049
unless you're in some backwards inbred bogan village in northern territory or something it's the same all over australia

>> No.15677068
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15677068

I despise living here. There is a great, great curse on this land and its inhabitants. I would flee to Europe (my ancestral homeland) if I did not think that this malaise would follow me as some universal spectre!

>> No.15677087

>>15677063
Correct, most Australians are gay urbanites who may as well live in california

>> No.15677089

>>15671501
Say that to Borges.

>> No.15677102

>>15677068
move to ireland to be with your anglo-celtic brethren the rural villages especially need population fast as they're all dying

>> No.15677118

>>15677102
That would be the plan, Anon. But I don't want to bring the curse back to Ireland.

Do you understand my anxiety?

>> No.15677125

>>15677118
what curse, did eat the gum nuts and turn gay?

>> No.15677132

>>15677125
The curse on this land and all of its inhabitants.

>> No.15677231

>>15677028
Is that an onahole?

>> No.15677242

>>15676333
Australian film was genuinely great in the 70s. The same era as when the New Hollywood directors were making kino, but on a smaller budget. Like with New Hollywood, Australian film died when they decided to stop taking risks. It's a shame the two best Australian films from that era (Wake in Fright and Walkabout) were both made by non-Aussies lol but I would still count them as 'Australian' films, even if it is kind of cheating, because a film is much bigger than just its director.

>> No.15677252

>>15677102
As a descendant of Irish immigrants this is literally a dream of mine. But surely those villages are dying because of a lack of jobs, no? What would one do to live?

>> No.15677266

>>15677028
Alright, fell for the meme. Just ordered this from a bookshop in NSW.

>> No.15677284

>>15677068
I don't mind generally living in Australia, like the day to day stuff, but the media landscape and civic life is enough to make one suicidal.

>> No.15677290

>>15677284
>>15677252
Mass Australian writer exodus back to Iberian-Germanic homelands when?

>> No.15677430
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15677430

>>15675847
I've read A Lifetime on Clouds and A Season on Earth. Clouds was published in the 1970s and is basically the first half of Season with a different ending, while Season was only published recently.
Both are worth reading. Clouds on its own reads something like a Catholic response to Portnoy's Complaint, but Season gets more serious in its second half and goes much more into Catholicism. I assume it was cut originally to try and give it wider appeal.

>> No.15677601

>>15676787
get fucked cunt what circles do you mosey about in ya fuckin skirt

>> No.15677636

>>15677266
where'd ya order this from ya good cunt?
just had a look online and cant find anything ay

>> No.15677708

>>15677636
Abebooks.

I may very well have taken the last affordably priced copy.

Sucked in, if so.

>> No.15678469
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15678469

>> No.15678617

>>15676787
Sure don't say it to your mum, but I hear it probably every day.

>> No.15678696

>>15671494
Mansfield is Kiwi, does that count?

>> No.15678792

>>15676451
Don't let it go to your head, we just like your accents.

>> No.15678943

>>15678792
i am surprised people like our accents. they always sound awful when i hear it

>> No.15679968

>>15678792
>>15678943
>accents
they have more than one?

>> No.15679997

>>15679968
there are subtle variations due to which region of australia you are from