Patrick White (1) (1912–1990)

Patrick White saved the best till last, The Twyborn Affair is his last great novel, written when he was in his late sixties and it proves to be a masterpiece. It has the structure, the form and the sensibility that some of his earlier work strived to attain. The passion is still there but the overly written sentences have been pared back and White takes his readers on an unforgettable journey, writing with more clarity and with more wisdom about his characters habitual struggle with their show more relationships and their sexuality.

Patrick White believed that his homosexuality was the key to his greatness as a writer. He felt that it gave him an intuitive approach to the art of writing and was at times at a loss to find himself being criticised as being too intellectual. White has been quoted as saying “My homosexuality gives me all the insights that make me a great writer” and David Marr in his biography [Patrick White: A life] says:

White was one of those homosexuals who see themselves as part woman and part man: not so much a woman as to be effeminate, but enough to understand and share feminine virtues. He admired in others signs of his own ambivalence: men of unexpected gentleness and women with masculine strength.”

Eddie Twyborn is the hero of Whites book, we meet him in part one as Eudoxia or Madame Vatatses a 25 year old woman in a relationship with a 60 year old Greek man Angelos Vatatses. In part 2 he is Eddie Twyborn a ranch hand or jackeroo working on a farm in rural Australia and in part 3 he is Mrs Trist the owner and madame of a fashionable brothel in Chelsea London. It is White’s skill as a writer that make the Eddie of these three incarnations totally believable. The character flows from one part to another searching for identity, for love perhaps, but finally reaching an acceptance of his own sexuality..

Part 1 starts with Joannie a very respectable woman married into the rich Australian Golson family who are temporarily living in the South of France. It is 1914 and the storm clouds of the coming war are making the Golsons prepare for their return to Australia. Joannie is struggling to write a letter to Eadie Twyford an old friend with whom she had a lesbian relationship, but while out for a drive she spies the Vatatses couple and becomes fascinated by Eudoxia. They meet in town and an uneasy social visit sparks with sexual tension. White continues the story from the first person perspective of Eudoxia who realise that her man smell had really shocked poor Joannie Golson. Angelos and Eudoxia leave town and Angelos dies in a shabby hotel, while Joannie completes her letter to Eadie Twyford.

Eudoxia has become Eddie Twyford in part 2, now a decorated war hero who has returned to his family in Australia. He soon leaves to take up a job as a farm hand at a remote sheep station. He is accepted as a hard working ranch hand and is seduced by the bosses wife. White recalls his own experience as a jackeroo to paint perhaps his best picture of life in a remote sheep station; the hard life, the unforgiving landscape in frosty winters and hot summers, the sexual tensions that exist between the men and with the women. A visit from the Golsons and an explosion of repressed sexuality causes Eddie to flee again.

Eddie’s third incarnation is as Mrs Trist, who has drifted into establishing a fashionable brothel in London. She takes her sexual pleasure vicariously now through the girls who work for her. She becomes well connected with the minor nobility many of them struggling to keep up standards in a time just before the second world war. White has taken his story back to the pre-war tensions of the first part, where Eddie is again an established woman, who is now wooed by Gravenor; a Lord and frequent visitor to the brothel. White brings his story round almost full circle, but now Eddie/Mrs Trist has come to terms with his/her sexuality, she has found love with Gravenor, but knows it is not for her, there is a poignant meeting with her mother Eadie Twyford, before the war brings her story to an end. White is equally at home with life in the brothel and the weekend visits to houses in the country, his ear for the speech patterns of this slightly desperate set is as assured as his farm hands rough conversations at the sheep station.

White has one of his characters say “Old men know more perhaps, but never grow as wise as they hope”. This pithy summary of the human condition serves White very well I think. All his novels are autobiographical to a certain extent. In [The Vivisector] he had explored the passions of an obsessional artist, in [The Eye of the Storm] he had worked through his difficult relationship with his mother and his love of the stage. [Voss] and [The Tree of Man] had been his love/hate relationship with Australia and its people; here in [The Twyborn Affair] he at last delves deeply into his own sexual identity and in doing so has created his finest novel. A must read for anyone interested in Patrick White, one of the literary greats of the 20th century. A five star read. show less

File under: novels whose eponymous character is not the most interesting character in the book. Right alongside 'Anna Karenina,' 'Lila,' 'Moby Dick,' and the central book in this tradition, 'Frankenstein.'

Anyway, this Patrick White novel, you will be surprised to learn, is about the internal states of a small number of characters, the heroes among whom don't fit in, the villains among whom fit in very well. The heroes are mystics and idealists, gazing longingly through this (natural) world show more at the forms; the villains are fixated on this (human) world.

Other White books with the same idea focus on one character (Vivisector), three characters (Riders in the Chariot), or three-characters-in-one (Twyborn Affair). Voss has two, which makes it unique among those I remember reading, though I suspect Tree of Man has two, and I think that's true also of The Solid Mandala, which I 'read' at uni and don't remember at all.

Despite the predictability, and his astonishing limitations (he's like Cormac McCarthy, except whereas McCarthy is *all* externality, White is all internality; I doubt he ever wrote a scene with more than two people in it without feeling uncomfortable, or satirical) White finds a way to make his work work. "Voss" works because Voss, an explorer, has an obvious narrative to hold it together, so it feels less flabby than "Riders". It helps that the narrative is historically based (Leichardt, which I've probably spelt wrong), and so White can focus on what he does well, i.e., psychology, sentences and mysticism. show less

White is fascinating: he has precisely two tools in his kit, and when they're working, I couldn't care less about his failure to, you know, structure his books or think through his incredibly vague ideas. When the two tools aren't working, I can't stomach more than about 15 pages at a time.

Luckily, in 'Riders', White is at or near peak. As seasoned readers will know, White can't focus on more than two people at a time, which means that almost every scene/chapter/section/book he's ever show more written involves two or fewer people. Here, I do not care, because the individuals are so fascinating--whether they fill me with joy, as in the case of Mordecai; with hatred for my country, as in with Dubbo (a victim of it) or the Mrses Jolley and Flack (the victors); love, as with Mrs Godbold; or deep ambivalence, as with Miss Hare. And their interactions are things of stupendous wonder.

I do not care about White's failings, because he hits you over the head with things like:

"Where fippancy is absent, truth can only be inferred"

and

"I am afraid it may soon be forgotten that our being a people does not relieve us of individual obligations" (I can't help but wonder if White and Arendt stole each other's ideas)

and, gloriously--I say this as someone who isn't much impressed by descriptions in literature--

"the plump, shiny, maculated birds, neither black nor grey, but of a common, bird colour, were familiar as her own instinct for air and twigs. And one bird touched her deeply, clinging clumsily to a cornice. Confusion had robbed it of its grace, making it a blunt thing, of ruffled gills."

The flipping and flopping between incredible precision--plump, shiny, maculated, ruffled gills--and intentional generalities--bird colour, a blunt thing; the way the initial hards cs pile up higher and higher, and then, just when you think you're done, he throws in one more to start the final sentence, and then lets you relax into grace: not many can pull that off. Don't worry, the bird is okay in the end, too. Similarly, there's a scene at the end of chapter 12, too long to quote, in which a train makes its way through the city, which is simply too good.

Well, well. It is also, in the end, a book about how good will triumph over evil, and how nature mysticism, art, the major world religions and general kindness are all one, and all good. The plot is a fine, but overly schematic, retelling of the great world religious myths. That's okay. White, like Joyce, is a great wordsmith, and it would be silly to read him for ideas--not because his ideas are bad or wrong, but they are uninteresting. I, too, hope that good triumphs over evil.

But that train in the city: "Sodom had not been softer, silkier at night than the sea gardens of Sydney. The streets of Ninevah had not clanged with such metal. The waters of Babylon had not sounded sadder than the sea, ending on a crumpled beach, in a scum of French-letters." Nobody is better than White at coming close to intellectual and aesthetic collapse and somehow saving his sentences with a phrase. show less

I have long been an admirer of Patrick White's novels and this has some of his finest mature writing style. Set in the 19th century it tells the story of Ellen; a woman who survives poverty, an unfulfilled marriage, a shipwreck, extreme conditions amongst an aboriginal tribe and finally a re-introduction to civilization. White uses a stream of conscious technique to great advantage to reveal the inner turmoils of characters facing extraordinary situations. This is particularly true of Ellen show more whose consciousness lurches from dream state to events from her past to her present ordeals.

The story takes a little time to get going as Ellen's backstory needs to be told in a lengthy flashback and as the author says:
"It seemed to Mrs Roxburgh that the whole of her uneventful life had been spent listening to men telling stories and smiling to encourage them"
How ironic this is as Ellens story becomes famous throughout Australia. The shipwreck and fight for survival amongst the aborigines is vividly told as the writing changes gear and propels the story forward.

Patrick White explores major themes in this story such as: womens place in society and in the real world, a civilization that permits slavery and criminal colonies, cannibalism, sexual desire and native communities amongst others.

A book to keep and to reread. show less