Patrick White
NYRB Classics ($24.95)
by Kiran Bhat
I have been stranded in Australia due to the lockdown regulations, and curious to re-assess my opinions on the country’s canonical literature, I found myself returning to the author Patrick White. I do not regret this decision. If you’re looking to get a taste of Australian literature, White is one voice above all that must be read; Henry Lawson comes close, Christina Stead even closer, but among White’s many novels, story collections, and plays are at least four books of literary importance, which puts him a cut above the rest. There’s a reason why he won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, and why he remains so critically appreciated.
White’s novel Riders in the Chariot, available in the U.S. via the NYRB Classics series, offers a good example of his work. Riders in the Chariot details the lives of four very different Australians in an imaginary suburb of Sydney: a crazy heiress, a German Jewish refugee, a devout housewife, and an Aboriginal artist. All four are united because they have imagined a horse-drawn chariot. Each character interprets their vision differently, but the Biblical undertones of the vision are almost always in the background as the characters continue to live their lives.
Few writers combine mysticism and modernism as well as White. Of course, there is Faulkner, who wrote about the problems of the American South in a Biblical sort of register, and obviously Tagore, who came from a mystic literary background. What makes White different is landscape—he came from the rigid red soil of the Australian bush, and that is the territory he must unearth.
White also came from an Anglican background, and the combination of his inquiries into faith and the roots of his Australian culture combine beautifully in Riders in the Chariot. The book questions our perception of the infinite in a way that is neither dogmatic nor intrusive. The genuine curiosity White has towards the faithful recalls the great novels of Russian literature, but done in a hollow tone and desiccated language that only the Australian outback could have inspired.
Chris Bohjalian is the author of 22 books, three of which (so far!) have become movies. His books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Salon. Bohjalian is a recipient of the Walter Cerf Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, the ANCA Freedom Award for his work educating readers about the Armenian Genocide, and the Anahid Literary Award, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sheila O’Connor is the author of six novels. Her most recent book, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts and Fictions, combines memoir and historical research to reconstruct the buried history of incarcerated girls, and it won the Minnesota Book Award. Her other books include Where No Gods Came, Tokens of Grace, and the novels for young readers Sparrow Road and Keeping Safe the Stars. O'Connor is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Hamline University, where she serves as fiction editor for Water~Stone Review.
Tickets to this virtual event include a signed copy of Everybody: A Book About Freedom. Each registered attendee will also receive a special “Everybody” button with their book, and be entered into a raffle to win an 18K gold-plated sterling silver necklace which celebrates Laing’s brilliant new book. Winner announced during the event!
Olivia Laing is the author of three acclaimed works of nonfiction, To the River (2011), The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), and The Lonely City (2016), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and has been translated into seventeen languages. Her first novel, Crudo, was a New York Times Notable Book and won the 2019 James Tait Black Prize. She writes for the Guardian, New York Times, and frieze, among many other publications. Her collected writing on art, Funny Weather, was published in 2020. The recipient of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize in nonfiction, Laing lives in Suffolk, UK.
Kim Todd is an award-winning author of books about science and history, including Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotic Species in America and Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis. Her essays and articles have appeared in Smithsonian, Salon, Sierra Magazine, and Orion. Todd’s work has also appeared in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 and has been featured on NPR's Science Friday. She teaches on the MFA faculty at the University of Minnesota, and has given lectures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Yale University, the Getty Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Denver Botanical Garden, among other places. A senior fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program, Todd lives in Minneapolis with her family.
Kathryn Nuernberger is an essayist and poet who writes about the history of science and ideas, renegade women, plant medicines, and witches. Her latest book is The Witch of Eye (Sarabande Books), which is about witches and witch trials. She is also the author of the poetry collections RUE, The End of Pink, and Rag & Bone, as well as a collection of lyric essays, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her awards include the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA fellowship, and notable essays in the Best American series. She teaches poetry and nonfiction for the MFA program at University of Minnesota.
Join Rain Taxi for a special lunchtime conversation on politics, prose, and pictures with graphic novel creation duo Ted Rall and Pablo Callejo. Their new book, The Stringer (NBM Publishing), is an ode to when fact-based journalism mattered, set at an important turning point a few years ago, as well as a globe-trotting, action-packed, timely statement about how a society without a vibrant independent culture of reporting can degenerate into chaos. Don’t miss this chance to hear these trans-continental collaborators talk about their work!