The Cult of the Author. By: Lever, Susan Australian Literary Studies
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The cult of the author. the universities, humanities academics are being By: Lever, Susan encouraged to mount large research projects Australian Literary Studies, 00049697, Oct93, Vol. regardless of the publication opportunities for the 16, Issue 2 results of this research. A subsidy system might rectify this imbalance between research and publication -- at present, the Literature Board's The recession can be blamed for almost every publishing scheme costs less than $350,000 a year. negative aspect of contemporary Australian life, so it is difficult to know whether it is responsible Given the difficulties of literary critical for the safety that marks current publishing of publication, it can be no surprise that only two Australian literary criticism, or whether this kind kinds of critical books are currently appearing -- of publishing has always been limited in its range. the collections of essays by many hands such as The parameters of such publishing are only too those surveyed by Ken Stewart in the previous obvious -- a tiny group of potential buyers, a issue of Australian Literary Studies, and the tinier group of publishers dominated by author-centred works under survey here.[1] multinational interests, and a group of potential Where the many-hand collections differ very little authors aware that they must write with the other from the publication of essays in journals such as two groups in mind, in order to be published at ALS, the author-centred books probably provide all. more accurate evidence of the state of publishing and criticism. Here, the public educational sphere and the private commercial one become interdependent, One way in which these market constraints on forced to adjust their different goals for mutual publishing distort the critical debate is by survival. It is anomalous that academic writers favouring books based on the premise that the must rely on market-oriented commercial Australian author is not merely alive, but verging publishers when the market conditions are so on the immortal, a romantic figure, apart from unattractive, but most university presses left the mere readers, and gifted with special insight and field years ago. As a result, publishers, with their divine talent. All of these books tend (in various eye to accountancy returns, direct the careers of degrees) to emphasise the relationship between academics, who declare themselves interested in the author's life and work, at the expense of the the pursuit of a knowledge untainted by the relationship between the author's work and other marketplace. To be published, a literary critic cultural formations. The notion of literature as must compromise with the needs of an part of a wider culture, placed in literary history educational market, which is dominated by and a marketplace, is sacrificed to the cult of the secondary school curricula. The frequent charge personality. Indeed, the market for Australian that criticism of Australian literature is fiction is so strained that the promotion of conservative and untheoretical emerges from this individual writers is an essential part of its situation -- where the literary critic who wants to survival. The 'star' system ensures some media publish a book must aim to reach a general public attention and sales for writers, and literary in order to have a viable market at all. The criticism must ride on the backs of 'star' authors. chances of having a risky, cutting-edge book of literary criticism published in Australia seem Karen Lamb's little book on Peter Carey, The minimal. Given this situation, we should be Genesis of Fame, unashamedly takes the grateful that commercial publishers bother with reputation and promotion of the writer as the literary critical books at all, let alone that these centre of its discussion. Lamb gives an outline of books manage to offer something to a Carey's career, describing the various critical postgraduate reader. responses to his work at each stage and the predictable tendency of critics to align his fiction Shouldn't the Australian Research Council take a with his life -- son of a businessman, science hint from the Literature Board's publishing dropout, advertising copywriter. It is a success program and institute a subsidy for publishers story, though, with the life and art flourishing producing important non-commercial academic together. There may be a subversive counter- books in the humanities? Particularly in literary argument going on here, but Lamb is not explicit criticism, the 'state of the art' work is likely to be about the ways in which fame may feed fiction, less expensive to produce than it is to publish, so and even create demands for a certain kind of the Research Council's current policy of funding fiction. research does not address the real area of need in the humanities. Once again, policies created to You'll get more insight into this by reading the suit expensive science research are being applied Peter Carey section of Sue Woolfe and Kate to the very different circumstances of the arts. In Grenville's Making Stories: How ten Australian novels were written. Here Carey explains the way of people. This book serves more as an account he expanded his drafts as he wrote Oscar and of the social and economic conditions for postwar Lucinda, so that each initial sentence became a baby boomers than a document of the paragraph, the paragraphs became chapters and relationship of writing to other forms of work. so on. In this way, a concise, tautly-written set of Like other middle-class children of their ideas became the rather prolix novel which won generation, most of the writers here acquired the Booker prize. If he wasn't so rich and famous, tertiary education and had no difficulty finding the reader might pity Carey as he discusses his the unskilled, casual jobs which their children are besetting doubts and the numerous drafts needed undoubtedly finding hard to cadge. What an easy for each book. time we all had! Like Marion Halligan, Kate Jennings, John Forbes and James McQueen able All of the writers in Making Stories talk about to walk into an office, factory or department store their writing and rewriting, their doubts and small and be given temporary work, always knowing moments of satisfaction in a way which is, I that we were the educated class who would be suspect, designed to put off any aspiring writer able to move on, while our less-educated from joining their ranks. As each of the writers workmates might suffer a lifetime of repetitive attest, writing a novel requires years of labour. unrelenting persistence, a kind of compulsion which is more like a mental sickness than a form Most of these contributions amount to little more of romantic inspiration. The book provides than stories of the middle-class life, told with insights into individual foibles and devices. varying degrees of skill and insight. Despite Thomas Keneally's drafts prove that far from Marion Halligan's protest that middle-class being a one-draft writer he works over his women must be allowed to write about the material many times; it's just that the later drafts experiences of middle-class women, Toads don't seem to improve much on the first one. suggests that such women continue to be denied Helen Garner's collected fragments of the wider class experience available to men in conversation and description read just as well as Australia. John Forbes tells his removalist's yarns her final formation of them into the novel, The in order to show that there is no relationship Children's Bach. In the case of Jessica Anderson, between his life and his art, and Gillian David Ireland and Finola Moorhead, the method Rubinstein and James McQueen struck me as of creation seems to contain within it all the interesting people. David Foster picks up the excellences and failings of the different novels irrelevance of the work question when he says, 'If they published. Patrick White manages a you have a motorcycle licence and no criminal posthumous subversion, though, by leaving record, there's probably a job as a postal worker behind a phony first draft of Memoirs of Many in waiting for you too.' One to mock the whole enterprise of seeking the source. But don't look here for evidence that the experience of work has made the writers sensitive Making Stories is a fascinating book. Its to the conditions of life for their fellow interviews, because directed at the task rather than Australians. The general impression (with a few at the life, reveal more about the processes of exceptions) is that these writers -- caught as they writing, reading and criticism than any of the are in the cult of personality -- are far too more biographical interviews on the market. interested in themselves and not enough in other Clearly, it hopes to gain the attention of creative people. They all know that most people writing classes and high school teachers -- some experience work as a soul-destroying, rather difficult exercises are appended in the demoralising necessity, but this makes their Teachers' notes. But I suspect it will prove more escape from daily tasks into the life of art even interesting to literary critics and readers. The book sweeter. Elizabeth Jolley and David Foster feel a does suggest, though, that most of these remorseful sympathy for the workmates they left Australian writers are haphazard artists, collecting behind in hospitals and post offices, but the other bits and pieces, then working away until a novel writers seem happy to categorise the work emerges. Does this explain the demise of the experience as 'just material'. narrative in Australian fiction? Perhaps students of creative writing should not be encouraged to Toads reinforces the impression that fiction and follow these masters too closely.