Customer Reviews

Australia: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions)

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A big bore. Homogeneous selections. No Aboriginal stories of worth. Sameness of style, plot, location added to drudgery--and I really wanted to be entertained on the 15 hour flight. Few of the stories held my interest. Later I realized that the major problem is that the collection didn't really paint an accurate picture of these incredibly diverse, lively, creative,spontaneous, brave people and fierce, glorious habitats. Not at all the Best of Australia--my Aussie friends (well-read) had not heard of the majority of authors. Not worth the weight to carry home. I threw it out in the hotel.

The literary companion series has the beautiful aim of introducing a range of foreign writers. This book on Australia was published in 1998 and contained 25 works by 26 writers, including one anonymous contribution. There were 17 short stories, 3 excerpts from novels, 3 essays, 1 monologue and 1 Aborigine myth.

The oldest writers were Barbara Baynton (1857-1929), Henry Lawson (1867-1922) and Steele Rudd (1868-1935). The youngest were Archie Weller (1957-), Tim Winton (1960-) and Mandy Sayer (1963-). Other older authors included Katharine Prichard, Eleanor Dark, Xavier Herbert, Judah Waten, Patrick White, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Thea Astley, Christopher Koch, David Malouf, Murray Bail and Peter Carey. Most of these authors are among those included in any extensive anthology of Australian lit, so it's surprising that the previous reviewer's Australian friends didn't recognize their names. Of the writers included in the book, nine were women.

The works in the collection ranged from the 1890s (Baynton, Lawson) to the 1990s (Michael Wilding, Mandy Sayer). Although many of the authors were older contemporary ones, more than half of all the pieces in the book were from the 1980s or after. Earlier decades had one or two works each, except for the 1910s, 20s and 60s, which weren't represented.

The works were divided into sections for "the timeless land" (pieces containing an Aborigine declaration of the unity of man and place and an Aboriginal myth, followed by stories about the English colonists' first landing and the patriotic feeling of a returnee), the bush, passages (on the theme of travel, sometimes involving self-discovery), the beach, and the city. An epilogue contained one experimental story by Carey suggesting Americanization.

Pieces enjoyed the most included White's, written in the 1950 but set in the 19th century, about a man's drunken escapade in the bush and the reactions of his wife and neighbor, women from different classes. From the 1980s, an essay by Koch that blended memories of the Hobart of his childhood and the present, and a story by Weller showing an Aborigine's decline. A story from the 1970s by Bail that poked fun at the sterility of suburban middle-class lives. And Waten's memories from the 1950s of his mother, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who refused to adapt to the new society and went her own way. The story by the youngest writer in the collection, Mindy Sayer, adapted the Cinderella tale to a lowlife district in Sydney. Janette Turner Hospital's described a budding friendship between an educated but naïve teacher and a mature teen. Baynton's story from the 1890s, often reprinted, described in part the terror of a woman left on her own in the bush.

The least interesting works for this reader were a disjointed story written by B. Wongar from the point of view of a dingo; a piece by Winton about a simple man traveling to Melbourne, whose point remained elusive; and the stories by Wilding and Carey. Stories by Lawson, Rudd and Upfield, although maybe not their best-ever creations, added to the collection some humor, sense of the love of country and traditional mateship.

Like other volumes read in this Companion series, the one for Australia seemed worthwhile as a light introduction. The book's limited page-count prevented the inclusion of many other writers such as H. H. Richardson, Vance Palmer, Christina Stead, Hal Porter, Randolph Stow, Frank Moorhouse and Kate Grenville. Or more recent writers who focus greater attention on the experience of recent immigrants.

Stories this reader would've enjoyed seeing in a larger collection:

The bush: Marcus Clarke's "An Up-Country Township/Bullocktown" (1870), Lance Skuthorpe's "The Champion Bullock-Driver" (1921), Frank Dalby Davison's "The Woman at the Mill" (ca. 1930s), Alan Marshall's "The Three-Legged B-tch" (1940s).

The beach: Gavin Casey's "Miner's Holiday" (ca. 1940s).

Passages: Judith Wright's "The Weeping Fig" (1953).

The city: Thelma Forshaw's "The Mateship Syndrome" (1967), Frank Moorhouse's "Five Incidents Concerning the Flesh and the Blood" (1972), Inez Baranay's "The Sex Part" (1980s?), Gerald Murnane's "Land Deal" (1980).

Other anthologies include The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories (1991), Australian Literature: An Anthology of Writing from the Land Down Under (1993), The Oxford Book of Australian Short Stories (1994), The Australian Short Story Collection: 1890s-1990s (1994 and earlier editions), Favorite Australian Short Stories (1995), Contemporary Classics 65-95: The Best Australian Short Fiction 1965-1995 (1996), The Penguin Century of Australian Stories (2000), and The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (expected to be published in 2009).