TY  - BOOK
AU  - Murnane,Gerald
TI  - A history of books
SN  - 9781920882853 (pbk.) :
U1  - A823.3 23
PY  - 2012///
CY  - Artarmon, N.S.W.
PB  - Giramondo Publishing
KW  - Short stories, Australian
KW  - Australian
KW  - Autobiographical fiction
KW  - gsafd
KW  - Short stories
N1  - A history of books -- As it were a letter -- The boy's name was David -- Last letter to a niece
N2  - This new work by Gerald Murnane is a fictionalised autobiography told in thirty sections, each of which begins with the memory of a book that has left an image on the writer's mind. The titles aren't given but the reader follows the clues, recalling in the process a parade of authors, the great, the popular, and the now-forgotten. The images themselves, with their scenes of marital discord, violence and madness, or their illuminated landscapes that point to the consolations of a world beyond fiction, give new intensity to Murnane's habitual concern with the anxieties and aspirations of the writing life, in the absence of religious belief. A History of Books is accompanied by three shorter pieces of fiction which play on these themes, featuring the writer at different ages, as a young boy, a teacher, and an old recluse
ER  -