(A Novel) Anthony John Browne 2011

My Brother’s Keeper (A Novel) Anthony John Browne 2011 Centre for Creative Writing, School of Communication Studies Primary supervisor: James George A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Table of Contents 1. Attestation of Authorship 2 2. Intellectual Property Rights 3 3. Confidential Material 4 4. Abstract 5 5. Exegesis: Between Thorns 7 6. References 31 7. Thesis: My Brother’s Keeper (A Novel) 32 2 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Attestation of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Candidate’s Signature: Anthony John Browne 3 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Intellectual Property Rights All intellectual property, including copyright, is retained by the candidate in the content of the candidate‟s thesis. For the removal of doubt, publication by the candidate of this or any derivative work does not change the intellectual rights of the candidate in relation to the thesis. 4 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Confidential material 1. The content of the candidate’s thesis is confidential for commercial reasons, that is, the possible publication of the thesis, or a derivative of it, as a work of creative fiction for sale. 2. This confidentiality remains after any commercial publication. For the removal of doubt, publication does not change the intellectual property rights of this or any derivative work. 5 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Abstract The Thesis My Brother’s Keeper is a novel about the intersecting lives of three young Australians, trying to find their way in the world against a backdrop of the Vietnam War and small town cultural stereotypes. Rose is a teenage mother. She planned to leave Broken River to attend university but her pregnancy means this has been all but forgotten. A collection of classic novels is the only way she keeps a tenuous hold on her dreams. Hers is a life of solitude, both enforced upon her by the isolated location where she lives, and also psychological, as she turns her back on those who rejected her when her pregnancy became apparent. She becomes financially and psychologically dependant on Connor, her husband. Connor works at the local sugar mill. Like Rose he did not plan to be a parent at such a young age and sees his future as a life of drudgery, working 10 hour shifts at the mill for a minimal wage and coming home to raise a family. He feels trapped and longs for an escape, dreaming of surfing away from it all. Connor’s twin brother Regan has, it would seem, escaped. After being expelled from school he goes to Sydney, and finds work as an errand boy for shady property developer Frank Sheldon. Regan soon finds himself moving ahead in Sheldon’s organisation, with the trapping to show for it. The conscription ballot is to prove a turning point for all three characters. Regan is drafted, but Connor, seeing an opportunity to escape, offers to take his place, enabling 6 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Regan to stay in Sydney and continue building his capital. Connor’s decision shatters Rose’s world, leaving her alone, and ultimately venerable to the unhealthy interest that Regan has in her. Then both Regan and Connor find that the escape from Broken River they have chosen for themselves is an illusion. Connor is exposed to the horror of war and is shot and seriously injured. His scars run deeper and her returns from Vietnam a changed man. Regan’s loss of a bag containing money that Frank Sheldon destined for a corrupt council official shows how fragile his escape is, and he finds himself on the run, his life threatened. Both men come back to Broken River, back to Rose, asking her to decide between them, or for herself. The Exegesis Between Thorns examines the themes of Cultural Stereotyping, the Divisiveness of War, Vietnam War metanarratives and ideas surrounding Individualisation and Actualization. I also discuss technical and stylistic challenges that I encountered in the writing of My Brother’s Keeper, and how I worked to overcome these challenges, as well as major influences on my writing and research undertaking to underpin my work. 7 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Exegesis “If the sugar refining company won’t save me…..who’s gonna save me?” Midnight Oil, 1990, Blue Sky Mining “The place comes first. If the place isn’t interesting to me then I can’t feel it. I can’t feel any people in it. I can’t feel what the people are on about or likely to get up to.” Tim Winton, 2008, Sydney Morning Herald Books Section “It's really got me worried…..I'm goin' nowhere and I'm in a hurry” Don Walker (Cold Chisel), 1978, Khe Sanh 1.0 Introduction My Brother’s Keeper is novel about the lives of three young people from rural Australia who, in different ways, try to escape the confines of small town life and the ghosts of their past to make their way in a nation at a turning point in its history. They are a product of their upbringings, of the choices they have made, and of circumstance. But they are also firmly anchored to their time and place, Australia at the end of the 1960s. The Vietnam War has divided the nation as well as their lives. They are from a traditional white working-class town, where you work hard, pay taxes and have kids. But they all dream of a life beyond this, and each make decisions to pursue this dream, with disastrous results. 8 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 Whilst their background and the war weighs heavily on their lives, it is ultimately their own choices that effect their outcomes. In this Exegesis I will examine these themes in more detail, discuss issues of technique encountered when writing this novel, and look at how my story relates to other work, influences to and from the world at large, and also to myself personally. 2.0 Methodology 3.1 Technical Challenges In the early stages of writing My Brother’s Keeper I struggled to write in my character’s voice. Instead the voice was that of an omniscient narrator’s voice. This issue meant that I couldn’t get close to the characters in my story; as a result my readers would not be able to connect with them, and their story could not be told. It stripped the narrative of life. A technique I used to combat this was to write the narrative sections in third person subjective POV, in character’s vernacular voice, at times slipping into free indirect speech, where the voice is dialogue without speech marks. I wrote as if each point of view character was actually telling the story. Surprisingly for me as a male writer, I found Rose’s voice first. Regan came next, then finally Connor. I feel I still have some work to do in future rewrites and edits to ensure my novel really reads strongly from each character’s point of view, especially the male point of view characters Regan and Connor where there is scope for the greater use of vernacular. Rose’s voice is vernacular too, but in a different way, softer, more reflective 9 Anthony Browne My Brother’s Keeper Master of Creative Writing 2011 I also found difficulties in transitioning between different point of view characters and changes in place. My narrative moves constantly between my main protagonists, who are, for much of the story, in separate locations. I partially addressed this issue by writing each point of view character in their own chapter or distinct section so as to avoid confusing the reader. I rigidly adhered to a strict chronological order to events, with the exception of embedded flashbacks (written in third person subjective), which were clearly signalled. I used flashbacks and interior monologues to maintain contact in the eyes of the reader between my characters, even when they were separated by time and place. 3.2 Stylistic Challenges A major stylistic issue that I had to overcome was over-familiarity with some aspects of my narrative to the abundance of stories about both the Vietnam War, and the Australian underworld. This overfamiliarity meant that I risked writing in a way that gives the impression of cliché. As I have mentioned previously, when I set out to write My Brother’s Keeper I had no desire to write a novel about war. I toyed with leaving out all the war sequences; that is removing the four chapters when Connor is in Vietnam out of the story all together. However not only did this unbalance the narrative, leaving Connor underwritten, it made it impossible to develop Connor’s character in a way that would show the effect that fighting had on him, which was vital in terms of explaining his motivations in the story’s finale.

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