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Why has Patrick White fallen into neglect? The TLS has some answers:
Like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner, Patrick White was a practitioner of High Modernism, a style and an approach almost no one attempts today. This is fashion, and fashions pass. Henry James was considered unreadable in the 1930s; today he is as widely read and admired as any serious writer in the language. And White’s particular form of Modernism was always problematic. As early as 1955, the poet A. D. Hope declared, in reviewing The Tree of Man: “When so few Australian novelists can write prose at all, it is a pity to see Mr White, who shows on every page some touch of the born writer, deliberately choose as his verbal medium this pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge”. “Dun-coloured realism” was how White later, in his essay “The Prodigal Son”, characterized Australian fiction; Australian writers were either “schoolmasters or journalists”. He was much exercised by the fact that Hope, a fierce anti-Modernist, was a Professor. So the antagonists lined up.
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In lieu of it being “DELURKING” week (or so I’ve heard, over in blog land) You are supposed to comment on blogs you read all the time but never say anything.
I have never commented, so, I wanted to take the time and let you know even though I don’t comment, I READ you all the time, and LOVE THIS BLOG! so, um, thanks.
I’ve yet to attempt Patrick White, which is embarassing considering I’m Australian and there’s a dearth of good Australian novelists out there. It seems odd that he was never required reading in school, and I’m thinking now that it has something to do with his detractors.