Wake In Fright

John Grant is a schoolteacher in a two-Shack, one pub town in the west of New South Wales. He has a 5 week break over the Christmas holiday, and he's heading to Sydney, to see a young woman that he is in love with. She has no such feeling for him, but he means to see if he can convince her otherwise.
He has 20 pound notes in his wallet as well as the check from his savings from his wages for the past term. 140 pounds.
He has to travel a great distance on the Friday train from the tiny Town to a town called Boondanyabba, where he will get a plane to Sydney the next morning.
"even before the train pulled into the siding, he could hear the singing. On every slow train in the West they sing, the stock men and the miners, the general show more storekeepers and the drifting workers; the Aborigines and the half-castes shyly joining in on the outskirts. And somebody always has a mouth organ, and they sing with desperate, tuneless gayety the songs of the American hit parades which filter through the networks of the Australian broadcasting commission or from the static-ridden apparatus of the occasional country radio station."

A town cop befriends John in a pub where he is drinking a beer, before going to look for a place for a bite to eat. He tells him that the School, the name for the restaurant and pub, is the best place in town for food. It's also another name for the Two-up game. More commonly still it was simply referred to as "the Game."
He eats his meal, which is not very good, and does not feel like going back to his hotel yet. So he starts watching in the room where they're playing the Game. He soon convinces himself to join in, and lays down a 10 pound note.
There's so many men crowded around the square where the game is played, that when the game is called, and he's won, he doesn't know where or how he gets his money.
He starts to walk away, when the man who helped him put down his bet, tracks him down, and gives him his winnings,
"Grant looked ashamedly at the money and gestured remote thanks to the man who had rescued it. He was putting the money in his wallet when he experienced an entirely new emotion - the remorse of a gambler who has not put all his money on a successful wager. He paused with the money halfway into his wallet. He had 22 pounds 10 shillings. Twice that was 50 pounds, Twice 50 was 100. Twice a 100..."

He ends up winning 200 pounds. He scoops the money up, stashes it in his pockets, and goes back to his hotel room. The reader thinks, "yay, john, that's the way!" When he's back in his hotel room, he spreads out the money, and looks at it. He lays on the bed, and thinks about it. Thinks about what he could win if he took all that money and put it back down to bet, why, he could win so much money that he could impress Robyn! So he goes back to the School. He loses all the 200 pounds he has just won. He starts to leave in sadness and shame, but then asks his old friend the town cop if he can cash his check.
"Just 3 minutes after he had received the money for his check, he had lost it.
The cry of 'heads!' Had no effect on him; but a moment or two later there was the dull, bruising shock of realization. He watched blankly as the hands scraped away the money he had laid down. He Kept on looking at the bare carpet where it had been, until suddenly another growth of notes flowered there, and the Game was going on."

Now John has no money but the 10 pounds back from the deposit of turning in his hotel room key. He has no idea what he's going to do. Walking with his two suitcases, down the street of the "Yabba," he turns into a pub, and buys at 10 pence schooner of beer.
He is befriended by the man sitting next to him, who insists on buying him drinks. Telling him that he's completely out of money has no effect on his new friend, and he tells him " don't worry about it, as long as you're with me!" They drink, and drink, and then they go to the man's house for lunch. The wife seems unfazed by this, and serves them lunch. They go back into the parlor and begin drinking again.
Two friends come by and join them in the drinking. Then another man comes and joins them, named "Doc." (Talk later confesses to John that he is a medical doctor and an alcoholic.)
The night turns into a drunken Haze for john. And he wakes up in the house of Doc. He has a shattering hangover, but Doc serves him flat beer, encouraging him to drink the "hair of the dog."
He tells them they will be picked up by Dick and Joe, and will be going kangaroo hunting. Grant doesn't remember making these plans, but Doc assures him he did.
What follows is one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever read in any book. Here's an excerpt:
"Grant clung to the seat, fascinated, watching through the windscreen the fluctuating approach of the kangaroo. Up it went and down, then up, up, and down, a wild gray figure bearing down on them as though in passionless attack.
It turned 10 yards from the car, but Dick, quite mad now, pulled the car around and ran the animal down.
It disappeared quite suddenly under the bonnet.
A thud, the car lifted, skidded, rocketed almost over on to its side, righted itself and stopped.
Grant looked out of the rear window as the others tumbled out. A gray bundle was flopping about in the dust behind the car.
Following the others over to the broken mess, Grant saw Dick draw a long-bladed knife from a sheath at his side, kneel down, and cut the animal's throat. It died then.
'It's not worth cutting up,' said Dick. The kangaroo had split open and trailed entrails for a dozen yards. Its body was so shattered that bones stood out from the skin every few inches, white and glistening."

"Grant reached it, and if he had not known the men in the car were watching he would have turned back for his rifle. He stood behind the animal, wishing it would move. Then he put a hand on its shoulder. It was furry and warm. It's chest was heaving. When he was that close, the animal had two heads. Janette had had two profiles the other night.
Grant leaned back and struck at the kangaroo with his knife. The blade slit a deep gash down its back and the blood came out, a thin line on the fur, black in the spotlight. Still the kangaroo did not move.
Oh god! What was he, John Grant, schoolteacher and lover, doing out here under the contemptuous Stars butchering this warm gray beast?
He leaned forward and drove the knife into the white fur on the kangaroo's chest. The blade went in easily, deeply, but the kangaroo would not die.
Its flesh closed hard around the blade and Grant had to drag it out.
Sobbing, he drove the knife into its chest and its back again and again, and it stood there, mute, unprotesting, but it would not die.
Grant stood away for a moment, Drew His hands across his eyes and heard the yells of encouragement from the car.
He put his left arm across the kangaroo's shoulder and pulled his head back and began hacking away at its throat. In time the blood gushed out, warm on his hands, and he could feel the head pulling further and further back until at last the kangaroo shuddered terribly and felk to the ground.
Grant grabbed it by the tail and began hauling it back to the car.
And as he stumbled in front of his load he pulled down the shutters in his mind and just walked and dragged and drew the blanket of drunkenness over his being again."

The scenes in this book spiral down and down and down until you think surely he's reached the bottom. But he hasn't. Things get worse and worse for John Grant.
Although this is one of the most horrifying books I've ever read, it's also one of the books that made the most impression on me. It's great writing, and a fantastic invention of an author's mind. show less

This is a classic tale of the civilised man from the coast going mad in the barbarous interior. John Grant is a country-town school teacher on his way back to Sydney for the summer. However, because of problems with his flight, he gets stuck for one night in the Yabba, a town based on Broken Hill in the West of NSW. Author Kenneth Cook spent time in Broken Hill himself and he recreates the atmosphere in brilliantly cynical fashion. Wake in Fright was his first novel and it's certainly the most well known.

As young school teachers everywhere, except perhaps Norway, Grant is pretty broke. He is befriended by the local policeman, Jock Crawford, in a pub and introduced to 'two up' a coin tossing game that men bet on. The copper is only too show more happy to shout Grant beers as he gets them for free while on duty. The peer pressure to drink beer is immense throughout the book, and the amber liquid, that initially gives relief from mental anguish, inevitably leads to greater horrors.

There is a girl Grant loves in Sydney but he isn’t confident of his chances with her given his financial situation. Two up is an oh so simple game - and the intoxicated Grant after some initial success throws his pay cheque - that needed to last him the entire summer - away gambling on it. He now has no way of leaving the Yabba - no money for food or shelter. However, there will always be somebody happy to buy him a beer and tell him what a great place the Yabba is - it's a sinister form of hospitality and friendliness that he really would be better off without. John Grant can't see the beauty of this place on the edge of the outback, for him it's the South Canaan of the Philistines and Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one.

What follows is a bizarre and grueling, but I don't doubt true to life, account of alcoholism, illicit sex, philistinism and animal cruelty. There is a great movie version of this book, but the kangaroo hunt is my least favourite sequence in it. In the book the hunt is very well written and heart rendering - the hacked-up kangaroos give no clear sign of their pain through crying or facial expressions, and that makes the cruelty of the shotgun and knife wielding 'hunters-for-kicks' all the more unbearable. Often I find that human on animal cruelty is more horrifying than human on human cruelty in literature. Don't be put off, there are funny parts in this book too - it's certainly an original work and an interesting comment on Australian society. It’s one of the best Australian novels I’ve read, and I don't know of any work close to this tragic (semi-)satire written by a New Zealand author.

Five stars here and one of those cases where you are happy that a cult movie led you to a really interesting book. In the novel there are possibly even more beers imbibed than in the movie - and that's saying something. Have a look for yourself, someone has made a highly entertaining montage featuring every drink of booze in the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_6HqRkdU98&t=1s show less

This book's grim reputation had me expecting some sort of outback Deliverance, but it thankfully never quite reached that level of depravity. Which is not to say that you should lend Wake in Fright to your grandmother - this modern classic is certainly not for the fainthearted.

Having made a couple of bad decisions on his way back to Sydney for the holidays, schoolteacher John Grant finds himself stranded, alone and virtually penniless, in Bundanyabba. Known locally as 'The Yabba', it is the sort of desolate outback town where 'mateship' means rampant violence and very, very hard drinking. (Indeed refusing to have a beer with someone is the gravest insult imaginable, as Grant soon discovers.) Kenneth Cook captures the menace that show more underpins this particular strand of Australian masculinity very effectively. Wake in Fright provides a fascinating insight into a particular time and place in Australian history; one that many would prefer to forget. show less

Scratching around in the archives of Australian fiction is still unearthing some great books for me. A work colleague who I often talk books with told me about a book he read years ago, Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook. He was unable to tell me much, as it had been a long time ago, but it was enough to stir my curiosity and after laying my hands on it, I devoured the book in two nights.

John Grant is a young school master doing time in the outback before securing the prized position of city teacher. His first year is now up and it is a short hop from Tiboonda to Bundanyabba before boarding the plane to Sydney for six glorious weeks. But through a series of adverse encounters with the locals, Grant’s escape from the one night stop-over is show more destroyed and he tumbles head on into the very scary world of the 1960s rural outback, where surviving means pubs, booze, gambling, shooting, isolation and finally, denigration.

How can all this happen in a few days? Much of the blame lies directly at Grant’s feet. The classic human weaknesses are beautifully honed in his character and as a reader you find yourself growling through gritted teeth …”You idiot! What are you doing?” But Cook has taken the very human ability of rationalizing anything to clear the way for idiocy to new heights, and you are left to watch as Grant heads downhill faster than the proverbial roller-coaster.

But Cook has also given life to the location, particularly that of Bundanyabba (don’t you love that name!). Its isolation, characters and heat laden atmosphere go a long way to capturing Grant and entombing him in a backward hell. The country, the landscape itself, seems to pull its victims in until they disappear into the dry river beds like the first rains of the season.
This way of portraying Australia’s outback (an evil, yawning land of menace) seems to have been in style during the 60s and 70s. Maybe even as far back as the 50s. I’ve read hints of it in Kennelly, Malouf and even Winton gives the earth a dark heart at times.

Is this how Australia’s new people viewed their country for many years? Was there, is there still, a fear of her wild, sunburnt heart? Or does it just make good writing material … after all, isolation is a fearful thing for most of us. What better way of feeding the fear than the sheer desolation of outback Australia. Enter … Wolf Creek! show less

Stuck in fictional western NSW mining town (based on Broken Hil) with no money things go down hill pretty quickly for school teacher John Grant. You can almost feel oppressive outback heat and increasing claustrophobia of Grant's situation - unable to escape the town and its inhabitants

The film adaption of "Wake in Fright" is one of the most disturbing I have ever seen and deserves greater acclaim. The novel does not reach the same heights of the film but there is still much to like about Kenneth Cook's finest moment.

A suburban teacher is forced to work at a very remote locality in order to pay off his university fees and while heading back to Sydney for holidays, lands in an outback town (in the film it's clearly Broken Hill but it could be anywhere). There things go downhill quickly.

Then as now, Australian outback small towns and its residents are seen as friendly if slightly eccentric. Don't be fooled, many are not. Read "Wake in Fright" if you don't believe me.

It is disturbing, it holds you enthralled as you watch this continual car crash. John Grant keeps getting it wrong and is the perfect example of the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hardly one character in this short story emerges unscathed, even the rural communities of Australia take a heavy beating.
Compelling reading