Patrick White

Australian novelist and playwright

• Born: May 28, 1912
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: September 30, 1990
• Place of death: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Biography

Patrick Victor Martindale White was not only a major Australian novelist but also one of the outstanding English-language writers of the twentieth century. A second-generation Australian, he was born in London in 1912 while his parents were on a visit there. Both his parents belonged to landholding families in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. After his early education in Australia, he was sent to England for four years at Cheltenham, a preparatory school. He returned to Australia to train for life as a grazier but persuaded his family to let him return to England, where he took a degree in modern languages at Cambridge University. He would later stay in England, beginning his literary career. His first novel, Happy Valley, was published in England in 1939. The Living and the Dead was hurriedly completed as White shuttled between America and England awaiting service in World War II; it is, accordingly, the least satisfactory of his novels. The Aunt’s Story, begun in England but completed en route to Australia after the war, represents a major advance and is one of his two best novels. (The Eye of the Storm, written twenty-five years later, is the other.)

After settling in Australia, White entered his major creative period. Believing that Australia lacked a spiritual dimension, he tried to provide that in his next two novels, writing about the two great Australian movements, the pioneer settlement of the land in The Tree of Man and the exploration of the continent in Voss. Though perhaps not his best novel, Voss is often and validly considered the “great Australian novel”; in 1986, it was made into an opera, with the libretto written by David Malouf. The Tree of Man brought world attention to White, and his reputation continued to rise with Voss and Riders in the Chariot, his most ambitious novel, embracing Judaism as well as Christianity, Europe as well as Australia, and aboriginal as well as Caucasian aspects of Australian life.

The Solid Mandala marks the beginning of White’s decline, which continued with the publication of The Vivisector. His achievement was such, however, that he was already a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature when The Vivisector appeared. The Nobel Prize committee looked with disfavor upon the negative portrait of an artist in The Vivisector (the artist dissects his subjects for his own purposes), and it may be this disfavor that spurred White on to a recovery of his powers in The Eye of the Storm. That novel secured for him the Nobel Prize in 1973, the first time that the award was given to an English-language writer outside the United Kingdom or the United States. Yet the Nobel Prize seemed to have constrained White, for the novels that followed The Eye of the Storm are rather slight or unattractive. A Fringe of Leaves tells a good story well but is one of White’s less important works, while The Twyborn Affair and Memoirs of Many in One are decidedly strange and unprepossessing. White later announced that he had finished writing.

White also wrote short stories but showed no special talent for short fiction. His short stories lack the spiritual dimension of his novels and reveal his less pleasant side. They show at times a derisive enjoyment of the characters’ distress and an interest in disturbed states of mind. White also wrote a number of plays. His early plays might have had more significance had they been performed when they were written—The Ham Funeral is an early and interesting example of what was later called the Theater of the Absurd—but the delay lessened their impact and discouraged White’s theatrical career. Late in his life, with his reputation established, he again turned to the theater, but the late plays tend to be marred by moralizing.

It is as a novelist and especially as one of the great stylists of the English language that White will be remembered. He wrote at least four major novels (The Aunt’s Story, The Tree of Man, Voss, and The Eye of the Storm) and one flawed masterpiece (Riders in the Chariot), an achievement few novelists in English can equal. White’s novels were concerned very early with establishing an arbitrary and unclear distinction between the living and the dead (the title of his second novel) or the elect and the nonelect. Mostly his elect are social outsiders with some special gift of perception or creativity—visionaries of a kind. Here White’s homosexuality came into play; he regarded homosexuality as a gift for the artist. As expressed in the works, it becomes an examination of artistic insight as well as the doubleness of human beings in the form of androgyny. Among the ranks of his outsiders are Theodora Goodman, Stan Parker, Laura Trevelyan, the four riders in the chariot, Arthur Brown, Hurtle Duffield, and Elizabeth Hunter. A corollary of this theme is his series of Christ figures, of whom Voss is the first and Arthur Brown the last. After The Solid Mandala, White’s elect figures are stripped of their association with Christ and accorded merely human status, with some unpleasant characteristics, such as those of Hurtle Duffield and Elizabeth Hunter.

One becomes aware in a number of White’s novels of an ongoing battle between the protagonist and his or her mother or a mother figure. That is most obviously the case in The Aunt’s Story, Voss, The Eye of the Storm, and The Twyborn Affair. The Eye of the Storm contains the greatest elevation of the mother in Elizabeth Hunter (a thinly disguised version of White’s own mother) and the greatest self-abasement of her offspring; however, White’s growing self-disgust had already manifested itself in The Solid Mandala. This self-disgust is developed at greater length in the portrait of the artist in The Vivisector and resumed in the two novels The Twyborn Affair and Memoirs of Many in One. There is no mellowing or maturing in the late White, only disintegration. His best work was done in the years 1948 to 1960; after that date, only The Eye of the Storm shows a resurgence of his massive talents. After a long illness, White died at his home in Sydney on September 30, 1990.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Happy Valley, 1939

The Living and the Dead, 1941

The Aunt’s Story, 1948

The Tree of Man, 1955

Voss, 1957

Riders in the Chariot, 1961

The Solid Mandala, 1966

The Vivisector, 1970

The Eye of the Storm, 1973

A Fringe of Leaves, 1976

The Twyborn Affair, 1979

Memoirs of Many in One, 1986

The Hanging Garden, 2012

Short Fiction:

The Burnt Ones, 1964

The Cockatoos: Shorter Novels and Stories, 1974

Three Uneasy Pieces, 1987

Drama:

Return to Abyssinia, pr. 1947

The Ham Funeral, wr. 1947, pr. 1961

The Season at Sarsaparilla, pr. 1962

A Cheery Soul, pr. 1963

Night on Bald Mountain, pr. 1963

Four Plays, pb. 1965, revised pb. 1985-1994 (as Plays; 2 volumes)

Big Toys, pr. 1977

Signal Driver, pr. 1982

Netherwood, pr., pb. 1983

Shepherd on the Rocks, pr. 1987

Screenplay:

The Night of the Prowler, 1976

Poetry:

The Ploughman, and Other Poems, 1935

Poems, 1974

Nonfiction:

Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait, 1981

Patrick White Speaks, 1989

Patrick White: Letters, 1996 (David Marr, editor)

Bibliography

Akerholt, May-Brit. Patrick White. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988. Provides extensive background material on White’s published plays, including details on premiere dates, casts, directors, and set designers, as well as plot summaries and information on the plays’ origins. Addresses recurrent themes in the plays, comments on their technical innovations, and stresses their satiric bent.

Bliss, Carolyn. Patrick White’s Fiction: The Paradox of Fortunate Failure. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. This study offers an excellent introduction to White’s overall thematic concerns. Argues that all White’s writing stems from a paradox—that is, the failures so often experienced by the characters can in fact lead to their successful redemption.

Carroll, Dennis. “Patrick White.” In Australian Contemporary Drama, 1909-1982. New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Focuses on White’s use of symbolism, expressionism, and surrealism, and discusses the plays’ techniques and stage conventions (through A Cheery Soul). Argues that White’s work broke with the realistic Australian drama prior to the 1960’s. Sees younger playwrights moving in new directions after White introduced such experimentation.

Collier, Gordon. The Rocks and Sticks of Words: Style, Discourse, and Narrative Structure in the Fiction of Patrick White. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992. Deconstructs White’s themes and techniques in his fiction.

During, Simon. Patrick White. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Explores the life and works of White.

Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. Vision and Style in Patrick White: A Study of Five Novels. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. Addresses five novels, including The Eye of the Storm, considered by Edgecombe to be White’s greatest. Links the books by exploring the metaphysical thoughts they share and examines White’s distinctive style. This style affirms his novels’ thematic emphasis on alienation, isolation, and the subsequent search for a vision to free the individual from spiritual imprisonment.

Marr, David. Patrick White: A Life. New York: Knopf, 1992. Written with White’s cooperation. The biographer had complete freedom. Even though a dying White found the biography painful reading, he did not ask the author to change a word. A monumental accomplishment, with detailed notes, bibliography, and helpful appendices.

Morley, Patricia. The Mystery of Unity: Theme and Technique in the Novels of Patrick White. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1972. Shows how White’s fiction makes use of the international tradition along with the archetypes of Western literature. Morley argues that, through his intertextuality, White gives a unified view of a world beset by pain and suffering, but one that will offer salvation for those who seek it.

Weigel, John A. Patrick White. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Introduces White and his work by tracing his life and discussing each of his novels, as well as his plays. Although introductory and general, the book serves well the beginning reader of White’s fiction. Includes a secondary bibliography and a chronology.

Whitman, Robert F. “The Dream Plays of Patrick White.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language: A Journal of the Humanities 21, no. 2 (1979): 240-259. Sets out to define White’s purpose in the early plays, discover their sources, and examine their themes. Concludes that they are all dream plays: They rely on distorted theatrical conventions, and in this way they uncover elements from the viewers’ unconsciousness.

Williams, Mark. Patrick White. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Includes many chapters that explore White’s fiction titles in depth as well as discussions centered on the themes and contexts of his works. Bibliography and index.

Wolfe, Peter. Laden Choirs: The Fiction of Patrick White. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. While not taking any particular thematic stand, this book offers a substantial analysis of each of White’s novels. Focuses in part on White’s style, demonstrating how it affects narrative tension, philosophical structure, and the development of character.

Wolfe, Peter, ed. Critical Essays on Patrick White. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990. A wide-ranging collection edited by one of White’s most astute critics. Includes a section of autobiographical essays by White and a helpful bibliography.