Patrick White: A Life (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

An admirably readable biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author of Voss , The Tree of Man , and many other books, this work is full of detail on White's family and prosperous background, the events and people in his life, his writing habits, his religious beliefs, his cantankerousness and temper, his causes and doubts, his attraction to the theater, and much more. White helped Marr gain access to people and material, even authorizing him to collect his letters, "the backbone of this book." Marr deals intelligently with important issues (among them, White's rootedness in and dissatisfaction with Australia, his sense of himself as an outsider, his relation to his mother, and, in particular his homosexuality, which White considered central to his novelistic and theatrical ability), avoiding psychoanalytical speculations and other intrusions. White reviewed the book shortly before he died, finding it "so painful he often found himself reading through tears. He did not ask Marr to change a line."--Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The sleeper biography of this and recent years, Australian journalist Marr's book has more than amplitude and its subject's blessing (White actually got to read most of the book before his death in 1990) going for it: It is an unusually calm, unstraining, unjaded, and even curious work, fascinated with Patrick White but never fawning over or using him (he'd have been hard to use this way anyway) as an illustration of an artistic or psychological conclusion the biographer has come to. Like many of the best Nobel winners of recent decades, White- -who wrote some of the most extraordinary prose of the century--is more known by name than read. But rather than academically reintroducing us to White's great achievement, novel by novel, Marr wisely sticks to using the books as clues to White's life. It's a procedure that can mislead yet here doesn't--for White himself was never false, played no games with his life and art, made no toying distinctions or feints. Wealthy, homosexual, asthmatic, brutally candid, White looked to follow or start no circle; he was traumatically educated in England, served in the African campaign in WW II, and then--with his lover and companion of what would be 40-some years, the beautifully named Greek, Manoly Lascaris--he returned to a puritanical, philistine Australia to do his major work. His love/hate affair with Australia is the book's undertheme- -but it merely contributes to what is most unmistakable about White as seen by Marr: the incomparably high fidelity of the man-- artistic, personal, social. Generous yet monastic by temperament, White struggled with doubt and pride in a refreshingly premodern way--all of which Marr captures. And as the best literary biography ought to do, this one sends us hungrily back to the novels--to see what they encompassed but also, too, to relish how the complexity of the author's own character boosted their art. Superb. (Thirty-pages of photographs.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Knopf; First U.S. edition (February 11, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394574354
• ISBN-13: 978-0394574356
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.8 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,863,413 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous biography about a not very likeable person, March 20, 2000

By	saliero (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

I found the biog hard to put down, unlike White's fiction which I find easy to put down! Marr has written a scholarly yet entertaining biography, and you really feel you come to know something about an Australian icon - our only Nobel laureate in literature.

In everything i have read (including White's own portrait of himself, Flaws In The Glass) he comes across as a horrible man - a misogynist, but with some political principles with which I might agree.

Nevertheless, that is not the point of literature, or art, to be loved by one and all. White's voice certainly added immensely to the cultural life of this country, and it is worth getting to know something about his life and works. Marr's book is an excellent place to start.