Moonlite

"Let's give our thanks to God," says the priest. "What are you bawling for, MacDuffie?"
"I'm thinkin of the poor people drowned, sir. Jolly disaster from their points of view."
"They don't have a point of view. Now get a bucket and form a chain."

I find it hard to understand why David Foster is so forgotten in the annals of Australian literature (especially as he is still alive as I write this review!). Perhaps it is because he has so long eschewed cities and artistic hubs in favour of an almost hermit-like existence. Perhaps it's just that he's deliberately challenging both in his use of words and in his equal-opportunity-offensiveness. Perhaps it's that he's too blatantly anti-colonial for conservative readers but at the same time not show more politically correct, to the chagrin of progressives? I certainly can't imagine him at the self-congratulatory writers' festival panels that litter our nation's capital cities. Perhaps it's all of the above.

Moonlite is a startling novel, a comedy in the style of... who? John Barth, perhaps, is the nearest analogue I can think of. Finbar MacDuffie is born in the nineteenth century on a remote Scottish island. During his early years, the primitive inhabitants of the island face all of the consequences of "progress": the coming of dictatorial religion, the commercialising of their culture to attract tourists, science and rationalism triumphing over their way of life, disease, and finally diaspora. Foster has great fun with both the light and serious scenes in the first half of the novel, highlights including the impeccably flawed logic of the dogmatic Reverend Campbell, and the beautiful sequences of the residents catching birds along the perilous rocky coasts of their island. (Finbar's involvement in the extinction of the great auk is a cleverly written little puzzle in itself.)

Britain claims the discovery of the New West Highlands in much the same way as a schoolboy claims the discovery of a dead cat in a busy street; and for much the same reasons, no one who knows this claim to be false would think of disputing it.

As Finbar reaches his teens, we follow him on two journeys: first to an English university where he struggles with the insular world of academia and exposure to alcohol, and then to the colonies - Australia (or, as it's called here, the New West Highlands) - where he finds a world unwilling to step out from the shadow of its English mother, but also unable to fully accept the wonders of its landscape and its multicultural existence.

In all honesty, dear reader, the Australian interlude, which takes up the final 50 pages, didn't delight me like the rest of this exhilarating novel. Perhaps because it feels so breakneck compared to the generous time Foster spends building up the world of Moonlite's youth. And I'm really not sure what moral - or even narrative - to take from the final 10 pages. (A literal moral delivered late in the book after a delightful allegory is: "don't expect to find any justice in the world".) But that may be my denseness, rather than any flaw in Foster's writing.

Still, this is a wicked piece of misanthropy revelling in the contradictions and obscenities at the heart of the experience of civilisation. A healthy retelling of so many of our cultural myths. A piece of Australian literary history unfairly neglected, and worth visiting. show less