Customer Reviews

Patrick White Letters

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I read 2 negative reader reviews of this book on the day I bought it and thought I had thrown my money down the drain. Luckily we all come at books from a different perspective and I am very pleased I stumbled on this 677 page volume of letters written from 1919 to 1990. Reading this is like sitting in someones living room unseen and hearing all from the everyday to the important being discussed. It gives us a strong human connection to this hugely talented, crotchety, driven, private, argumentative man of strong opinions and unpredictably diverse views of the world. Rather than writing him off as a typical Australian as previous reviewers have, I found his letters fascinating, surprising, and a damn good read and his life and thought are very un-typical of Australians of his era in my view. The fact that my house is in walking distance of Dogwoods made their Castle Hill life doubly pertinent to me but in any event I would have enjoyed the book immensely. White's comment about wishing to spend his time on his acreage at Dogwoods rather than 'watching a landscape slowly destroyed by a race whose most pronounced gift is that of creating ugliness' was prescient, a McDonalds now stands nearby opposite a shopping centre carpark. Certainly worth a read.

What an awful life! As an Australian this dreadful, wizened old cockroach of a man makes me ashamed. Nothing but boring twisted hatred and ingratitude. Why publish such a book at all?

patrick white is one of the 20th century's finest novelists - his thick tome of letters compiled by david marr was given to me by someone who knew of patrick white only as a writer from my country- I was living in TX at the time feeling acute homesickness of which, upon reading the book, was immediately cured by page 2 when the reasons why I left australia in the first place came vividly galloping towards me with a loud yawn. The scratchy nib of discontentment mark 400 pages of this old sod's rather boring snippy life with his companion manoly. His mandarin mouthed mug scowling at u courtesy of the brush strokes of Brett on the cover really tell u the whole sad story .. dinner parties, gossip, gardening, writing, gossip, travelling, bitching, writing etc go on and on -- most telling aspect is that patrick wanted all his correspondence destroyed after being read - obviously not enough of his friends took him seriously - so why should we ...