A history of books / Gerald Murnane.
Publication details: Artarmon, N.S.W. : Giramondo Publishing, 2012.Description: 205 p. ; 21 cmISBN:- 9781920882853 (pbk.) :
- A823.3 23
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item reserves | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Melbourne Athenaeum Library | Fiction - Short stories | MUR | Available | 048439 |
A history of books -- As it were a letter -- The boy's name was David -- Last letter to a niece.
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.