Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
"Gould's Book of Fish" by Richard Flanagan is a novel that intertwines fiction and autobiography through the life of William Buelow Gould, a character who begins his journey in a poorhouse and eventually finds himself in the penal colony of Sarah Island, Tasmania. The narrative explores Gould's transformation from an unintentional artist to a self-proclaimed painter, driven by survival rather than ambition. Throughout the story, Gould grapples with his identity and the authenticity of his experiences, as he is both an unreliable narrator and a conduit for a larger fictional narrative crafted by another character, Sid Hammet, who discovers Gould's story in a junk shop.
The novel raises thought-provoking questions about the nature of storytelling, truth, and the historical inaccuracies surrounding the penal colony's records. It delves into themes of literary forgery and identity, reflecting broader cultural conversations within Australia about representation and authenticity. As Gould navigates his tumultuous life and ultimately perceives himself as a fish, the narrative blurs the lines between reality and fiction, inviting readers to contemplate the complexity of personal and collective histories. This work is notable for its rich, multi-layered narrative that challenges the reader's understanding of both art and history.
Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 2001
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Who William Buelow Gould was to begin with will never be known. Gould himself has no idea who he really was, other than that he was the product of a nameless man who died making love to a nameless woman who died in the act of childbirth. Young William is brought up in the poorhouse until apprenticed to a stonemason. Unsuited to the heavy work, he runs away to London and begins an odyssey that will take him across the world, finally arriving at the Tasmanian penal colony of Sarah Island.
Indeed, Gould never set out to be a painter at all; all he wanted to do was survive. As luck would have it, in America he falls in with Jean-Babeuf Audubon, with whom he embarks on an abortive business venture. Audubon, not unlike his namesake John James, is a painter of birds, and from him Gould gets the first inkling of what it might mean to be an artist. However, Gould himself has no particular interest in painting until he reaches a situation where claiming to be an artist will conveniently get him out of trouble. At this point, Gould assumes the identity of an artist, helped by having worked for a few months decorating porcelain, and he manages to fake his way as such until, having arrived at Sarah Island, he finds himself employed by the prison doctor.
Tobias Lempriere is desperate to become a fellow of the Royal Society, and he believes that Gould’s skills will help him to secure this coveted position by having Gould paint the fish of Macquarie Harbor. At first, Gould struggles to fulfil Lempriere’s demands; he is more used to painting copies of old master paintings. However, almost in spite of himself, Gould begins to paint in earnest, and he struggles with the fact that he is no longer faking his skills, as he has faked so much throughout his life, but is in fact an artist.
However, the reader learns Gould’s story through words rather than through pictures. Gould is, or so he claims, writing his life story while imprisoned in a cell that is flooded by the tide twice a day, and which also contains the rotting corpse of a man whom Gould has indirectly killed. He is, by his own admission, an entirely unreliable narrator, and the experienced reader will have noticed that someone—perhaps Gould, perhaps someone else—has studded Gould’s narrative with elements of other stories. An episode from Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. (1759-1767) makes an appearance, as does a fragment of plot from Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886). These are stories Gould is unlikely to have come across, which throws open the question of whether this is Gould’s own narrative, or whether Gould even existed.
For Gould’s narrative is in fact being re-created by one Sid Hammet, who found the book in a junk shop and was entranced by the extraordinary paintings and the peculiar, multicolored narrative, until one night he left the book on a pub counter and, so he says, lost it. The narrative that is available to readers is Sid’s recollection of Gould’s narrative rather than the book itself, and it may in turn be wrong. Gould’s own concern in writing his narrative is to record his autobiography, having discovered that the official history of the Sarah Island penal colony is at considerable variance to his actual experience. Whereas Gould sees the island commandant’s megalomanic desire to build an empire, fired by letters (faked letters, it turns out) from the sister of the man whose identity he assumed, Gould discovers that the colony’s official records have been faked. Instead of recording the effects of the commandant’s insanity, they show a colony gradually being established and becoming successful. Which is accurate? It is impossible to say.
Gould escapes from the penal colony and travels into the Tasmanian interior. However, he begins to become aware that the narrative that holds his world together is disintegrating around him. Most significantly, he becomes aware of his own fictional nature, as his world and someone’s re-creation of it begin to collapse into one another. Finally, Gould believes he has become a fish, a weedy sea dragon, and the story comes full circle, as he is now the fish that Sid Hammet is staring at in a tank. Except that nothing is at all certain.
Flanagan’s novel questions the entire nature of fiction and forgery, a subject particularly pertinent in Australian culture, with its long history of literary fakery and reinvention of identity.
Sources for Further Study
The Economist 363 (June 22, 2002): 102.
Entertainment Weekly, May 10, 2002, p. 75.
New Statesman 131 (June 3, 2002): 50.
The New York Times, March 26, 2002, p. E1.
The New York Times Book Review 107 (June 2, 2002): 23.
Publishers Weekly 249 (March 25, 2002): 40.
The Times Literary Supplement, June 7, 2002, p. 21.