The Acolyte by Thea Astley
"The Acolyte" by Thea Astley is a novel presented through the first-person perspective of Paul Vesper, who recounts his experiences as an acolyte to the blind Australian composer Jack Holberg. The story begins in the unremarkable town of Grogbusters, where Holberg starts as a humble piano player and eventually rises to international acclaim. Vesper, who abandons his engineering career to support Holberg, becomes deeply enmeshed in the composer’s life as he seeks to navigate his own identity against the backdrop of another's genius. The narrative explores themes of artistic creation, human interaction, and the complexities of personal fulfillment, as Holberg's brilliance leads to the deterioration of his relationships, including with Hilda, his devoted wife, and Sadie, his eccentric aunt.
As Vesper grapples with his role and the increasingly flawed Eden they attempt to create, the novel transcends mere domestic drama, raising profound questions about the nature of creativity and its impact on those around the creator. Astley's use of vivid characterization and social critique invites readers to reflect on the follies of human nature. "The Acolyte" represents a pivotal work in Astley’s career, marking her shift towards allegorical storytelling and postmodernist techniques, and is often lauded for its rich symbolism and linguistic experimentation.
The Acolyte by Thea Astley
First published: 1972
Type of work: Allegory
Time of work: The early 1950’s to the late 1960’s
Locale: Northern Queensland and the coastal area near Surfers Paradise in Southern Queensland (Australia)
Principal Characters:
Jack Holberg , a blind musician and composerPaul Vesper , the narrator and “the acolyte” to HolbergSadie , Holberg’s aunt and his former guardianJamie , Holberg’s sonHilda , Holberg’s wifeIlse , Hilda’s sister and the mother of Jamie
The Novel
Told in the first person by “the acolyte,” Paul Vesper, Thea Astley’s novel traces the career of a fictional Australian musician and composer named Jack Holberg. Beginning in obscurity as a piano player in Grogbusters, a dreary little Queensland town, the blind Holberg eventually gains international recognition as a composer. Vesper, who had met Holberg during his less renowned period, gives up an engineering career to serve the great man—in a sense, to become his eyes.
After Holberg spends several years studying in Europe and making a name for himself, he returns to Australia, where the home audiences acclaim his work, impressed with its success abroad. Holberg marries Hilda, one of the two sisters he and Vesper knew during the early days, and settles with her, with Vesper, and with his aunt in a spectacular house along the Pacific coast not far from Surfers Paradise, a famous Australian resort. In this idyllic setting, Holberg composes, assisted by Vesper; Hilda acts the perfect wife; and Sadie pursues her gambling interests in nearby Surfers Paradise. Vesper and his entourage create their own paradise where art dominates, all activity centers on Holberg and his composition, friends gather, and everyone lives in harmony. At first they succeed, but before long, the Eden they have attempted to build develops flaws.
Altogether immersed in another man’s genius, Vesper begins to question his own individuality. Hilda ignores her husband’s sexual promiscuity and subordinates herself to his will, even feigning blindness at times. Sadie, her health deteriorating, starts to doubt the worthiness of her nephew to whom she has given so much. Then, Hilda’s sister arrives, revealing that her child Jamie is Holberg’s son. Gradually, Holberg’s obsession with his work, the pain of his blindness, and his consequent selfishness and lack of consideration for others destroy all those around him. His art, though, continues to flourish.
These bare details of plot may suggest that The Acolyte is a sort of domestic soap opera with interludes devoted to analyzing musical genius. Nothing could be further from the truth. In his account of service to the composer, Vesper offers a rich subtext that raises diverse questions: how the creative process works, how it affects its human vessel, and how the person possessing genius interacts with those around him. As well, Vesper proves an astute social critic and a witty observer of the human condition and its endless follies.
Through the skilled use of first-person narrative, Astley has managed both to tell a memorable story and to amplify it until the events and those enacting them form a modern-day symbolic allegory picturing the timeless human desire for fulfillment—artistic, personal, and spiritual.
The Characters
Because Vesper relates the events from his point of view, he emerges as the central character, even if he intends for Holberg to do so. On himself, Vesper seems unduly harsh, because in all of his relationships he suggests that he lacks sincerity and depth. To cover up these defects, he assumes a flippant air, refusing to take anything seriously. He denigrates his role as acolyte to the great man, seeming at times to wallow happily in the humiliating situation he has created. From behind the facade Vesper presents, though, another Vesper materializes, one who proves capable, witty, sympathetic and kind, and in his final action, strong.
As Holberg’s fame grows, even as his genius develops to its fullest, he degenerates as a human being. Or so Vesper portrays him. At the beginning of their relationship, Holberg—in spite of his blindness and poverty—had about him a contagious charm, a lack of self-concern, a naturalness that enraptured all those who met him. At the end of the novel, then, does Vesper do Holberg justice? Or is he jealous of the master, therefore wanting to belittle him? Is he disappointed in the man to whom he had given himself as an acolyte? Those questions Vesper does not answer, could not even if he wanted to do so.
A first-person narrator always affects characterization, because the reader views everyone through the eyes of the narrator, who may or may not be reliable. Vesper gives all the others who appear in the narrative distinctive shape, whether they play large or small roles. In addition to the immediate family, a number of minor characters figure, including friends, music critics, fellow artists, and admirers. Among this colorful array, Sadie, an Australian Auntie Mame, stands out. A social misfit, for whom Astley always expresses special empathy, Sadie satirizes in her behavior some of the cruder aspects of Australian life. She spends much of her time in Surfers Paradise, which embraces what many Australians consider the most vulgar aspects of their country’s national character. Sadie on the loose in the famed resort offers Vesper endless opportunities for social criticism.
Sometimes gentle, other times cruel, at points fair, then unfair, often contradictory in his estimations, Vesper proves himself a capable viewer of the human comedy. He stocks his store of adventures as an acolyte with a variety of personages, all imperfectly human. Yet no matter how foolishly they may act or how disconcerted he may become with them, Vesper ultimately sympathizes, for they, like him, belong to that host of lost ones, wanderers in a world without certainty.
Critical Context
The Acolyte marked a turning point in Astley’s writing. Her five previous novels were more realistic, even though they veered into the same kind of social criticism and religious questioning. With this work, however, Astley set aside traditional narrative conventions and turned to allegory. In the novels that have followed, she has continued to experiment and to develop her postmodernist tendencies toward distortion, dislocation, and fragmentation of the fictional process.
Often criticized for her pyrotechnic language (sometimes called “precious” by reviewers), in The Acolyte, Astley allows her narrator outlandish stylistic freedom, even to the extent that he laughs at his linguistic excesses. Also, as though Astley might well be answering her critics, the narrator lambasts the critical establishment, calling them “the abominable knowmen.” As well, he packs his story so full of symbols that they sometimes appear to turn on themselves and ridicule their own pretensions.
In an interview, Astley named The Acolyte her one work she likes most. Perhaps in it she has come nearest to expressing those concerns that obsess her—and that continue to dominate her writing.
Bibliography
Books and Bookmen. Review. XVIII (April, 1973), p. 138.
“An Interview with Thea Astley,” in World Literature Written in English. XXVI (1986), p. 264.
Matthews, Brian. “Life in the Eye of the Hurricane: The Novels of Thea Astley,” in Southern Review: An Australian Journal of Literary Studies. VI (1973), pp. 148-173.