WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.299 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are wading 00:00:04.299 --> 00:00:07.000 into some truly turbulent waters. We're looking 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.279 at a figure who is quite possibly the most contradictory 00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:12.320 character we've ever profiled. Oh, absolutely. 00:00:12.640 --> 00:00:15.539 Imagine a man who is an absolute national icon, 00:00:15.820 --> 00:00:18.940 yet he spent a huge portion of his life, you 00:00:18.940 --> 00:00:21.600 know, loathing the very society he lived in. 00:00:21.780 --> 00:00:24.140 It's a study in friction, isn't it? We're talking 00:00:24.140 --> 00:00:26.460 about someone born into the Australian aristocracy. 00:00:27.079 --> 00:00:29.960 A wealthy grazier's son who ends up becoming, 00:00:30.079 --> 00:00:33.280 well, a radical left -wing activist. And not 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:35.259 just any activist. This is the only Australian 00:00:35.259 --> 00:00:37.880 to ever win the Nobel Prize in literature. Exactly. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:40.600 And when he wins it, his reaction isn't joy or 00:00:40.600 --> 00:00:43.340 pride. He describes the experience as a terrifying 00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:46.079 and destructive experience. Who says that? It's 00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:47.740 incredible. We are, of course, talking about 00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:50.439 Patrick White. And the mission for this deep 00:00:50.439 --> 00:00:52.780 dive is to really unpack the life of this man. 00:00:53.229 --> 00:00:55.130 We want to understand how he wrote these massive 00:00:55.130 --> 00:00:57.590 visionary stories about individuals clashing 00:00:57.590 --> 00:00:59.750 with what he called a materialistic conformist 00:00:59.750 --> 00:01:02.729 society. And, you know, how his own personal 00:01:02.729 --> 00:01:05.250 isolation, his own feeling of being an outsider, 00:01:05.489 --> 00:01:08.590 actually fueled a literary revolution in Australia. 00:01:08.709 --> 00:01:11.730 To do that, we have a really rich stack of sources. 00:01:12.439 --> 00:01:15.060 We're looking at his biography, critical reception 00:01:15.060 --> 00:01:17.680 of his work, which, as we'll see, was often just 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:20.540 brutal. Unbelievably so. We've got specific analyses 00:01:20.540 --> 00:01:23.159 of his novels like Voss and The Tree of Man, 00:01:23.340 --> 00:01:25.480 his personal letters, which are fascinating, 00:01:25.659 --> 00:01:28.239 and the detailed records of his political evolution. 00:01:28.540 --> 00:01:30.359 So it's a pretty comprehensive picture we're 00:01:30.359 --> 00:01:33.000 trying to build. Right. So before we get into 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:34.980 the weeds of his life, let's address the big 00:01:34.980 --> 00:01:38.000 so what question. Why does Patrick White matter 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:40.799 to someone listening today who might not be a 00:01:40.799 --> 00:01:43.500 huge literature buff? I think it matters because 00:01:43.500 --> 00:01:46.140 White fundamentally changed the landscape of 00:01:46.140 --> 00:01:48.540 Australian storytelling. Before him, the prevailing 00:01:48.540 --> 00:01:53.379 style was this very dry, dun -colored realism, 00:01:53.599 --> 00:01:55.500 as it was called. What does that mean, dun -colored? 00:01:55.739 --> 00:02:00.319 It means kind of drab, brown, factual. It was 00:02:00.319 --> 00:02:02.599 all about the bush, the hardship, the external 00:02:02.599 --> 00:02:05.120 reality, you know, describing the flies and the 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:08.180 heat. White came along and brought high modernism 00:02:08.180 --> 00:02:11.439 to the outback. He challenged the idea that Australian 00:02:11.439 --> 00:02:14.780 stories had to be simple or purely descriptive. 00:02:15.139 --> 00:02:17.159 So he was saying there's more going on here than 00:02:17.159 --> 00:02:20.120 just sheep and dust. Exactly. He wanted to show 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:23.099 that the Australian landscape, and more importantly, 00:02:23.259 --> 00:02:26.439 the Australian soul, was capable of immense, 00:02:26.620 --> 00:02:29.860 complex, spiritual drama. He wanted to write 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:31.939 about the inner world. He essentially forced 00:02:31.939 --> 00:02:34.319 the culture to grow up whether it wanted to or 00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:37.039 not, which it seems it mostly did not want to 00:02:37.039 --> 00:02:39.340 do. It kicked and screamed the whole way. Okay. 00:02:39.780 --> 00:02:41.939 So to understand the man, we have to start with 00:02:41.939 --> 00:02:45.259 the boy. And honestly, his start in life sounds 00:02:45.259 --> 00:02:47.159 like something out of a Dickens novel or maybe 00:02:47.159 --> 00:02:49.240 a Henry James novel. It really does. So he's 00:02:49.240 --> 00:02:51.719 born in 1912, but the first complication is he's 00:02:51.719 --> 00:02:54.020 not born in Australia. He's born in Knightsbridge, 00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:56.169 London. Right in the heart of the empire. His 00:02:56.169 --> 00:02:58.469 parents, Victor and Ruth, were these incredibly 00:02:58.469 --> 00:03:01.509 wealthy Australians from a pastoralist dynasty. 00:03:02.009 --> 00:03:04.629 They were on what was basically an extended honeymoon 00:03:04.629 --> 00:03:07.610 that lasted for years. They only moved back to 00:03:07.610 --> 00:03:09.889 Sydney when Patrick was about six months old. 00:03:10.069 --> 00:03:13.069 So that initial displacement, that sense of not 00:03:13.069 --> 00:03:15.810 quite belonging in either place, it sort of set 00:03:15.810 --> 00:03:18.129 the tone for his entire life. And he wasn't exactly 00:03:18.129 --> 00:03:20.430 a rough and tumble Bush kid, was he? Oh, God, 00:03:20.490 --> 00:03:23.349 no. Far from it. He was an incredibly fragile 00:03:23.349 --> 00:03:26.199 child. At four years old, he developed severe 00:03:26.199 --> 00:03:29.099 asthma. And this is a really crucial detail. 00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:31.620 Why? I mean, lots of kids have asthma. Well, 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:34.460 back then, in the early 20th century, a serially 00:03:34.460 --> 00:03:37.000 sick child was often kept apart. There was a 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.360 fear of, you know, infection or just the general 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.120 fragility. So he lived in a flat with his sister, 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:44.900 a nanny, and a maid, while his parents lived 00:03:44.900 --> 00:03:46.879 in an adjoining flat. Wait, in a separate flat? 00:03:47.319 --> 00:03:50.639 As a toddler? Yes. A profound level of separation. 00:03:50.939 --> 00:03:52.879 He spent a huge amount of time alone, and you 00:03:52.879 --> 00:03:54.939 can see how that would foster a rich inner life, 00:03:55.020 --> 00:03:57.360 a powerful imagination. He had to create his 00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:00.000 own world. He had to. He fell in love with the 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:02.400 theater early on. His mother would take him to 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:05.280 pantomimes. But his real emotional connection, 00:04:05.460 --> 00:04:08.419 interestingly, wasn't with his parents. It was 00:04:08.419 --> 00:04:11.120 with his nurse, a woman named Lizzie Clark. I 00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:13.659 love that detail from the files. that she was 00:04:13.659 --> 00:04:15.639 the one who taught him to always tell the truth 00:04:15.639 --> 00:04:17.980 and not blow his own trumpet it's wonderfully 00:04:17.980 --> 00:04:20.910 ironic isn't it The man who would become this 00:04:20.910 --> 00:04:24.110 world famous author, this towering figure being 00:04:24.110 --> 00:04:26.610 told not to be boastful. And it seems like a 00:04:26.610 --> 00:04:28.629 part of him really took that to heart, that wariness 00:04:28.629 --> 00:04:31.589 of fame. It stayed with him his whole life. But 00:04:31.589 --> 00:04:33.949 the real trauma, and I don't think that's too 00:04:33.949 --> 00:04:36.750 strong a word, came when he was 13. His parents 00:04:36.750 --> 00:04:39.329 did what wealthy colonial families did back then. 00:04:39.470 --> 00:04:41.910 They shipped him off to an English public school. 00:04:42.149 --> 00:04:44.350 Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire. Sounds 00:04:44.350 --> 00:04:47.029 very fancy. It sounds fancy, but White had a 00:04:47.029 --> 00:04:49.149 different name for it. He called it an expensive 00:04:49.149 --> 00:04:52.170 prison. An expensive prison. That says everything. 00:04:52.490 --> 00:04:56.230 He absolutely hated it. You have to try and put 00:04:56.230 --> 00:04:58.670 yourself in his shoes. He's this colonial boy 00:04:58.670 --> 00:05:01.910 in a very rigid, class -obsessed British system. 00:05:02.029 --> 00:05:04.730 He's immediately an outsider. He gets mocked 00:05:04.730 --> 00:05:06.910 for his Australian accent. On top of that, he's 00:05:06.910 --> 00:05:09.899 dealing with his health, the asthma. And crucially, 00:05:09.980 --> 00:05:12.100 he was already certain of his own homosexuality. 00:05:12.139 --> 00:05:15.540 So imagine it. You're a teenager in the 1920s 00:05:15.540 --> 00:05:19.000 in this sadistic, puritanical, hyper -masculine 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.240 boarding school environment. And you're hiding 00:05:21.240 --> 00:05:23.319 your sexuality. You're being mocked for your 00:05:23.319 --> 00:05:25.379 background. And you can't breathe properly. The 00:05:25.379 --> 00:05:27.240 sense of alienation must have been absolute. 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:30.199 It was. The sources say he never forgave his 00:05:30.199 --> 00:05:32.480 mother for sending him there. That's a heavy, 00:05:32.540 --> 00:05:34.680 heavy burden to carry through life. It completely 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:37.699 solidified the sense of being an alien. He wasn't 00:05:37.699 --> 00:05:39.420 fully Australian. because he was in england but 00:05:39.420 --> 00:05:40.980 he was never going to be english because he was 00:05:40.980 --> 00:05:43.420 australian and he wasn't one of the boys because 00:05:43.420 --> 00:05:45.959 of his artistic nature and his sexuality so he 00:05:45.959 --> 00:05:48.660 just withdrew into himself completely into books 00:05:48.660 --> 00:05:52.019 into his own head but he did have an escape plan 00:05:52.019 --> 00:05:54.680 right yeah he had this dream of being an actor 00:05:54.680 --> 00:05:58.060 he did he pleaded with his parents to let him 00:05:58.060 --> 00:06:00.560 leave school early to go on the stage and they 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:03.160 being you know very practical wealthy landowners 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:06.899 were horrified by this an actor In their family. 00:06:06.920 --> 00:06:09.120 They wanted him to run a sheep station. So they 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:11.709 struck a compromise. A very Australian compromise. 00:06:12.050 --> 00:06:14.430 He could leave school early without his final 00:06:14.430 --> 00:06:16.790 exams, but only if he went back to Australia 00:06:16.790 --> 00:06:20.350 to try life on the land. The classic go jackarooing 00:06:20.350 --> 00:06:23.129 and toughen up strategy. See if they can knock 00:06:23.129 --> 00:06:25.329 the artistic nonsense out of him. Precisely. 00:06:25.449 --> 00:06:29.329 So in 1929, he returns to New South Wales. He 00:06:29.329 --> 00:06:31.730 works as a jackaroo in the Monara district and 00:06:31.730 --> 00:06:33.850 then at Walgett out in the middle of nowhere. 00:06:34.050 --> 00:06:36.370 And this is where the contradiction just deepens. 00:06:36.449 --> 00:06:38.829 How do you mean? Well, physically, he was completely 00:06:38.829 --> 00:06:51.360 unsuited for. The experiment failed. The experiment 00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:55.019 failed. But, and this is the crucial but, the 00:06:55.019 --> 00:06:57.360 landscape itself seared itself into his brain. 00:06:57.540 --> 00:06:59.839 He may have hated the work, the sheer physical 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:02.519 labor, but the starkness of the Australian bush 00:07:02.959 --> 00:07:05.420 The quality of the light, the silence, the colors, 00:07:05.579 --> 00:07:08.259 it all planted the seeds for his future descriptions. 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:11.060 So he was failing as a farmer, but he was gathering 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:13.660 the raw material he would need to write The Tree 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:16.620 of Man and Voss. Exactly. He was absorbing the 00:07:16.620 --> 00:07:19.319 very essence of the place, even as he was rejecting 00:07:19.319 --> 00:07:21.800 the life that was expected of him there. Okay, 00:07:21.860 --> 00:07:23.560 so the sheep station experiment is officially 00:07:23.560 --> 00:07:27.300 a bust. What's next? His parents must be at their 00:07:27.300 --> 00:07:30.430 wits' end. His mother, Ruth, still had ambitions 00:07:30.430 --> 00:07:33.170 for him, if not a grazier than perhaps a diplomat. 00:07:33.189 --> 00:07:35.910 Something respectable. So the next step was Cambridge. 00:07:36.230 --> 00:07:39.269 He goes to King's College in 1932 to study French 00:07:39.269 --> 00:07:41.329 and German literature. That must have been a 00:07:41.329 --> 00:07:43.970 monumental shift for him, from the dust and isolation 00:07:43.970 --> 00:07:46.149 of Walgett to the ancient halls of Cambridge. 00:07:46.689 --> 00:07:49.490 Massive. This is where he finally finds his intellectual 00:07:49.490 --> 00:07:52.860 home. He discovers the heavy hitters of modernism. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:56.120 He's reading Proust, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, 00:07:56.300 --> 00:07:58.740 Gertrude Stein. He's traveling to France and 00:07:58.740 --> 00:08:01.439 Germany. He's finally realizing that literature 00:08:01.439 --> 00:08:04.240 can be more than just a simple story. It can 00:08:04.240 --> 00:08:06.939 be an exploration of consciousness itself. Precisely. 00:08:06.939 --> 00:08:09.800 That you can map the internal world just as you 00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:12.319 can map a continent. He also published a collection 00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:14.240 of poetry around this time, didn't he? The Plowman. 00:08:14.399 --> 00:08:19.120 He did in 1935. And this is classic Patrick White. 00:08:19.959 --> 00:08:22.160 He later grew to hate it so much that he tried 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:25.199 to suppress it. He literally went around buying 00:08:25.199 --> 00:08:27.620 up secondhand copies so he could burn them. Wow. 00:08:27.899 --> 00:08:30.759 He was always his own harshest critic, wasn't 00:08:30.759 --> 00:08:33.779 he? From the very beginning. But Cambridge gave 00:08:33.779 --> 00:08:36.080 him the intellectual foundation and the confidence 00:08:36.080 --> 00:08:38.779 he needed. It validated his artistic impulses. 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:41.179 Okay, let's move into the 1930s. He's graduated. 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:43.360 Instead of becoming a diplomat, which I'm sure 00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:45.860 his mother was still hoping for, he decides to 00:08:45.860 --> 00:08:48.360 become a writer in London. And he's not exactly 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:51.340 a starving artist in a garret. Not at all. His 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:54.179 father gave him a very generous allowance, 400 00:08:54.179 --> 00:08:56.200 pounds a year, which was a lot of money then, 00:08:56.379 --> 00:08:59.539 and later he inherited a legacy of 10 ,000 pounds. 00:09:00.019 --> 00:09:02.960 So he had the freedom to write without worrying 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:06.259 about paying the rent. He was living in London's 00:09:06.259 --> 00:09:09.159 Pimlico district, mixing with artists and writers. 00:09:09.460 --> 00:09:11.440 And this is where he meets a really pivotal figure, 00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:14.340 Roy de Maistre. Yes, the Australian painter. 00:09:14.930 --> 00:09:17.970 This relationship was absolutely crucial. De 00:09:17.970 --> 00:09:20.649 Maistre was a lover for a time, but more importantly, 00:09:20.850 --> 00:09:24.450 he became a mentor, an artistic guide. He taught 00:09:24.450 --> 00:09:26.649 White to see things differently. He taught him 00:09:26.649 --> 00:09:29.230 to write from the inside out. What does that 00:09:29.230 --> 00:09:31.230 mean exactly, from the inside out? It sounds 00:09:31.230 --> 00:09:33.289 a bit abstract. Well, it means moving away from 00:09:33.289 --> 00:09:35.899 pure naturalism. You know, just describing what 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.100 a chair looks like or what a house looks like. 00:09:38.220 --> 00:09:40.820 It means trying to describe how the chair feels 00:09:40.820 --> 00:09:42.759 to the person sitting in it or how the house 00:09:42.759 --> 00:09:45.039 feels to the person looking at it. It's about 00:09:45.039 --> 00:09:47.539 projecting the internal psychological state of 00:09:47.539 --> 00:09:50.240 your characters onto the external world. The 00:09:50.240 --> 00:09:52.720 landscape reflects the soul. So the weather isn't 00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:54.799 just weather, it's a state of mind. That's it, 00:09:54.860 --> 00:09:56.860 exactly. And that becomes the absolute signature 00:09:56.860 --> 00:09:59.740 style of Patrick White. But then, as happened 00:09:59.740 --> 00:10:01.960 to so many people of his generation, history 00:10:01.960 --> 00:10:04.870 intervenes in a big way. World War II breaks 00:10:04.870 --> 00:10:07.669 out. Right. The bohemian life in London comes 00:10:07.669 --> 00:10:10.669 to an abrupt end. White joins the Royal Air Force 00:10:10.669 --> 00:10:13.409 as an intelligence officer. He's posted to North 00:10:13.409 --> 00:10:15.710 Africa, the Middle East. And this leads us to 00:10:15.710 --> 00:10:18.049 what is arguably the single most important meeting 00:10:18.049 --> 00:10:20.779 of his entire life. Without a doubt. Alexandria, 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:24.159 Egypt, 1941. It's the middle of the war. Everything 00:10:24.159 --> 00:10:26.899 is uncertain. And White meets a Greek army recruit 00:10:26.899 --> 00:10:29.379 named Manoli Lascaris. And this wasn't just a 00:10:29.379 --> 00:10:31.519 wartime fling. This was something else entirely. 00:10:31.799 --> 00:10:33.519 This was it. This was the defining relationship 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:36.259 of his life. White's own words for it are just 00:10:36.259 --> 00:10:39.159 so beautiful and so precise. He described Manoli 00:10:39.159 --> 00:10:42.039 as the central mandala in my life's hitherto 00:10:42.039 --> 00:10:45.940 messy design. Wow. The central mandala. That's 00:10:45.940 --> 00:10:48.789 so much more than just saying my soulmate. It 00:10:48.789 --> 00:10:51.730 is. A mandala is a symbol of wholeness, of order, 00:10:51.850 --> 00:10:54.450 of a spiritual center. It suggests that before 00:10:54.450 --> 00:10:57.409 Manoli, White felt his life was scattered, chaotic, 00:10:57.470 --> 00:11:00.070 without a core. Manoli provided that center. 00:11:00.350 --> 00:11:02.870 And they remained partners for the rest of their 00:11:02.870 --> 00:11:05.649 lives. For nearly 50 years. But here's a twist. 00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:09.750 The war ends. White has a choice. He can stay 00:11:09.750 --> 00:11:12.029 in London, where the literary culture is, where 00:11:12.029 --> 00:11:14.669 his publisher is, or he can go back to Australia. 00:11:15.179 --> 00:11:17.200 And you would think, given how much he struggled 00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:19.980 with Australia later on, that he would have jumped 00:11:19.980 --> 00:11:22.309 at the chance to stay in London. He was tempted, 00:11:22.509 --> 00:11:25.509 but he also had this great fear of becoming what 00:11:25.509 --> 00:11:28.750 he called that most sterile of beings, a London 00:11:28.750 --> 00:11:31.809 intellectual. He was afraid he would dry up, 00:11:31.870 --> 00:11:34.850 become too cynical, too detached from real life. 00:11:35.070 --> 00:11:37.389 But he was still terrified of going back to Australia. 00:11:37.669 --> 00:11:40.190 Absolutely. He associated it with his prison 00:11:40.190 --> 00:11:42.970 years, with failure. It was actually Manali, 00:11:43.190 --> 00:11:44.850 the Greek, who had never even been there, who 00:11:44.850 --> 00:11:46.669 pushed for it. He wanted to start a new life 00:11:46.669 --> 00:11:49.210 somewhere new. That is fascinating. The Greek 00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:50.950 partner is the one who wants to go to the Australia. 00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:53.340 Australian bush. White wrote that he ultimately 00:11:53.340 --> 00:11:56.100 relented because it was Manoli's illusion. And 00:11:56.100 --> 00:11:58.259 he sensed that Manoli's illusion was a better, 00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:01.659 healthier thing than his own jaded reality. So 00:12:01.659 --> 00:12:04.519 in 1948, they packed their bags and returned. 00:12:04.759 --> 00:12:07.759 And they don't move to a trendy inner city suburb. 00:12:07.820 --> 00:12:11.059 They buy a farm. Dogwoods. They bought a small 00:12:11.059 --> 00:12:13.460 farm at Castle Hill, which back then was on the 00:12:13.460 --> 00:12:16.159 semi -rural fringe of Sydney. I just love the 00:12:16.159 --> 00:12:18.379 image of this. You have Patrick White, this. 00:12:18.669 --> 00:12:20.970 Cambridge -educated intellectual who reads Proust 00:12:20.970 --> 00:12:25.250 and Mann and Manoli Lascaris, this cultured, 00:12:25.250 --> 00:12:28.990 cosmopolitan Greek man. And what are they doing? 00:12:29.009 --> 00:12:31.129 They're growing vegetables and breeding dogs. 00:12:31.470 --> 00:12:33.789 Pedigree schnauzers, to be exact. They also sold 00:12:33.789 --> 00:12:36.149 milk and cream and flowers. They were working 00:12:36.149 --> 00:12:39.029 the land. Imagine buying a schnauzer puppy in, 00:12:39.090 --> 00:12:42.490 say, 1950 and having no idea that the breeder 00:12:42.490 --> 00:12:45.350 is in his spare room at night writing the great 00:12:45.350 --> 00:12:47.889 Australian novel. It's an incredible juxtaposition. 00:12:47.889 --> 00:12:50.409 But for White, it was an immense struggle. He 00:12:50.409 --> 00:12:52.549 was working the farm all day and trying to write 00:12:52.549 --> 00:12:54.509 at night, exhausted. And initially, the reception 00:12:54.509 --> 00:12:57.669 for his work in his home country was, well. It 00:12:57.669 --> 00:12:59.649 was cold. His book, The Ant Story, came out around 00:12:59.649 --> 00:13:01.990 this time. It did. And this really establishes 00:13:01.990 --> 00:13:03.809 the pattern that defines the first half of his 00:13:03.809 --> 00:13:06.210 career. The Ant Story was praised in the United 00:13:06.210 --> 00:13:08.509 States. The critic James Stern in the New York 00:13:08.509 --> 00:13:10.909 Times absolutely loved it, called it a work of 00:13:10.909 --> 00:13:14.009 genius. And in Australia. Crickets. It was largely 00:13:14.009 --> 00:13:17.429 ignored, or if it was reviewed, it was misunderstood. 00:13:18.129 --> 00:13:20.909 Why the disconnect? Why did the Americans and 00:13:20.909 --> 00:13:22.950 the British get it when the Australians didn't? 00:13:23.179 --> 00:13:24.980 I think the literary cultures in America and 00:13:24.980 --> 00:13:27.299 Britain were just more accustomed to modernism 00:13:27.299 --> 00:13:30.000 by that point. They were used to Virginia Woolf, 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.379 to James Joyce, to Faulkner. Australian critics 00:13:33.379 --> 00:13:35.379 at the time were still very much wedded to the 00:13:35.379 --> 00:13:38.639 old Bush ballad tradition, you know, realistic, 00:13:38.779 --> 00:13:41.399 straightforward storytelling. So white style, 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:43.960 the stream of consciousness, the shifting perspectives, 00:13:44.220 --> 00:13:47.659 this intense focus on the interior life of a 00:13:47.659 --> 00:13:50.159 lonely spinster. It was just alien to the local 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:52.200 critical establishment. They didn't have vocabulary. 00:13:52.519 --> 00:13:54.600 to appreciate what he was doing. He must have 00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:56.980 felt incredibly isolated. He's finally come home 00:13:56.980 --> 00:13:59.059 and he's still an outsider. He was. He wrote 00:13:59.059 --> 00:14:00.980 this heartbreaking line where he described himself 00:14:00.980 --> 00:14:04.740 as a despised colonial in England and an artist 00:14:04.740 --> 00:14:07.240 in horrified Australia. He felt he didn't fit 00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:10.340 in anywhere. And that isolation led to a real 00:14:10.340 --> 00:14:13.100 crisis. He seriously questioned whether he should 00:14:13.100 --> 00:14:16.159 even keep writing. But then something happened 00:14:16.159 --> 00:14:21.460 out there at Dogwoods. A moment in the mud. 1951. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.000 It had been raining for what felt like forever. 00:14:24.179 --> 00:14:26.899 A typical Sydney deluge. White was out on the 00:14:26.899 --> 00:14:29.340 farm, slipped and fell flat on his back in the 00:14:29.340 --> 00:14:32.360 thick squelching mud. And he just lay there and 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:34.679 started cursing. Cursing God. Cursing a God he 00:14:34.679 --> 00:14:36.279 was pretty sure didn't exist. He was an atheist 00:14:36.279 --> 00:14:38.860 at this point. But in the middle of this rage, 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.580 this torrent of curses, he had a kind of epiphany. 00:14:42.580 --> 00:14:45.059 What was the realization? He realized that his 00:14:45.059 --> 00:14:47.759 own personal scheme of things, his own intellectual 00:14:47.759 --> 00:14:50.639 arrogance was just too foolish and small, that 00:14:50.639 --> 00:14:52.539 there had to be something more. It wasn't a sudden 00:14:52.539 --> 00:14:54.940 conversion to a specific doctrine, not at all, 00:14:54.980 --> 00:14:57.399 but it was an awakening to a spiritual dimension 00:14:57.399 --> 00:15:00.200 in life. It led him to believe in God in some 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:02.799 form. And that moment of spiritual crisis in 00:15:02.799 --> 00:15:04.940 the mud. That moment inspired his next novel, 00:15:05.080 --> 00:15:07.240 The Tree of Man. Which is a novel about an ordinary 00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:09.340 couple in the land, right? Yeah. Stan and Amy 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:12.159 Parker. Yes. He said he wanted to show every 00:15:12.159 --> 00:15:16.139 possible aspect of life. Birth, death, marriage, 00:15:16.419 --> 00:15:19.340 work, joy, suffering through the lives of these 00:15:19.340 --> 00:15:22.539 very ordinary, uneducated people. He wanted to 00:15:22.539 --> 00:15:24.840 show that even in a simple life of milking cows 00:15:24.840 --> 00:15:27.399 and clearing scrub, there are these moments of 00:15:27.399 --> 00:15:30.100 immense spiritual revelation. But while he was 00:15:30.100 --> 00:15:32.519 finding God in the mud, he was also looking at 00:15:32.519 --> 00:15:35.419 the broader Australian society around him and 00:15:35.419 --> 00:15:37.820 seeing something he hated. This is where we get 00:15:37.820 --> 00:15:40.779 his famous concept of the great Australian emptiness. 00:15:40.879 --> 00:15:43.879 This is one of the most famous and scathing cultural 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:46.700 critiques in Australian history. White looked 00:15:46.700 --> 00:15:49.779 at the booming suburbia of 1950s Australia, the 00:15:49.779 --> 00:15:53.980 Menzies era, and he saw a spiritual vacuum. Let's 00:15:53.980 --> 00:15:55.759 unpack the quote because it is absolutely brutal. 00:15:55.879 --> 00:15:58.480 He described it as a society where the mind is 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:00.799 the least of possessions. And where muscles prevail. 00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:03.279 It's so cutting. He talked about the buttocks 00:16:03.279 --> 00:16:05.940 of cars growing hourly, glassier. The buttocks 00:16:05.940 --> 00:16:08.139 of cars. That is such a specific, miserable, 00:16:08.320 --> 00:16:11.120 and kind of disgusting image. It perfectly captures 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:13.620 that obsession with shiny material surfaces. 00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:16.519 He said that for Australians, food just means 00:16:16.519 --> 00:16:19.240 cake and steak and culture meant nothing. He 00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:21.340 was criticizing a culture that he felt valued 00:16:21.340 --> 00:16:24.399 materialism and physical prowess above everything 00:16:24.399 --> 00:16:26.919 else, above intellect, above art and above the 00:16:26.919 --> 00:16:29.639 spirit. It sounds like he was essentially calling 00:16:29.639 --> 00:16:32.309 the whole country a bunch of bogans. In a way, 00:16:32.389 --> 00:16:34.210 yes. And look, there's definitely a strain of 00:16:34.210 --> 00:16:36.450 snobbery in it. We can't deny that. But I think 00:16:36.450 --> 00:16:38.210 it was deeper than just snobbery. I think he 00:16:38.210 --> 00:16:40.509 was genuinely anguished by it. He felt that the 00:16:40.509 --> 00:16:43.409 country had this incredible mystical landscape 00:16:43.409 --> 00:16:45.950 and this huge potential, but that the people 00:16:45.950 --> 00:16:48.429 were content with mediocrity. They were afraid 00:16:48.429 --> 00:16:51.250 of the deep dive, to borrow our phrase. They 00:16:51.250 --> 00:16:53.470 were afraid to look at their own souls. So he 00:16:53.470 --> 00:16:56.009 writes The Tree of Man in 1955 and then Voss 00:16:56.009 --> 00:16:59.049 in 1957 really as a direct challenge to this 00:16:59.049 --> 00:17:02.779 emptiness. Exactly. Critical Divide just widens 00:17:02.779 --> 00:17:05.799 into a chasm. Overseas, The Tree of Man is hailed 00:17:05.799 --> 00:17:08.039 as a masterpiece. It gets compared to Tolstoy. 00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:11.539 But in Australia. The poet A .D. Hope, who was 00:17:11.539 --> 00:17:14.039 a major gatekeeper of literary taste at the time, 00:17:14.220 --> 00:17:16.220 writes a review that has now become infamous. 00:17:16.559 --> 00:17:20.180 He called White's prose pretentious and illiterate 00:17:20.180 --> 00:17:24.880 verbal sludge. Illiterate verbal sludge. I mean, 00:17:24.880 --> 00:17:26.539 you can't get much more insulting than that. 00:17:26.619 --> 00:17:28.240 He's not just saying it's bad. He's saying the 00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:31.289 man can't even write a proper sentence. No. And 00:17:31.289 --> 00:17:34.029 Hope genuinely believed it. He hated the style. 00:17:34.269 --> 00:17:36.730 White didn't always use standard grammar. He'd 00:17:36.730 --> 00:17:39.309 break sentences into fragments. He'd use adjectives 00:17:39.309 --> 00:17:42.569 as nouns. He was pushing language to its absolute 00:17:42.569 --> 00:17:45.410 breaking point to try and describe things that 00:17:45.410 --> 00:17:47.630 are hard to describe, these mystical interstates. 00:17:47.670 --> 00:17:49.910 But to a traditionalist like Hope, it just looked 00:17:49.910 --> 00:17:52.349 like a mess, like bad writing. Exactly. It was 00:17:52.349 --> 00:17:54.549 a clash of two completely different ideas about 00:17:54.549 --> 00:17:56.470 what a novel should be. And what about Voss? 00:17:56.910 --> 00:17:58.490 That's the big one, the one about the explorer, 00:17:58.730 --> 00:18:01.150 right? Yeah. Loosely based on Ludwig Leichhardt? 00:18:01.269 --> 00:18:04.430 Very loosely, yes. It's about a megalomaniacal 00:18:04.430 --> 00:18:06.670 German explorer who leads an expedition into 00:18:06.670 --> 00:18:09.230 the heart of the Australian desert. But it's 00:18:09.230 --> 00:18:10.910 not really an adventure story in the traditional 00:18:10.910 --> 00:18:14.049 sense. It's a story about a man trying to conquer 00:18:14.049 --> 00:18:17.630 his own pride, his own ego. The desert is a metaphor 00:18:17.630 --> 00:18:20.160 for the soul. It's a metaphysical journey. And 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:23.119 eventually, slowly, the tide starts to turn in 00:18:23.119 --> 00:18:26.500 Australia, too. It does. It had to. His next 00:18:26.500 --> 00:18:29.960 novel, Writers in the Chariot, in 1961, was the 00:18:29.960 --> 00:18:33.599 real turning point. It was so powerful, so undeniable, 00:18:33.640 --> 00:18:36.019 that it finally won over most of the local critics. 00:18:36.220 --> 00:18:38.240 He started winning the Miles Franklin Award, 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:40.740 which is Australia's top literary prize. He won 00:18:40.740 --> 00:18:42.839 it twice, actually. And then he famously refused 00:18:42.839 --> 00:18:44.880 to be considered for it anymore. That's right. 00:18:45.539 --> 00:18:47.740 After his second win, he wrote to the committee 00:18:47.740 --> 00:18:50.039 and asked them to remove his books from consideration. 00:18:50.700 --> 00:18:53.460 He told them to give the prize to younger, emerging 00:18:53.460 --> 00:18:56.200 writers who needed the recognition and the money 00:18:56.200 --> 00:18:58.319 more than he did. Which is a nice counterpoint 00:18:58.319 --> 00:19:00.559 to his reputation for being an arrogant curmudgeon. 00:19:00.700 --> 00:19:02.680 It shows the complexity, doesn't it? He could 00:19:02.680 --> 00:19:04.740 be incredibly generous, but he did it on his 00:19:04.740 --> 00:19:06.960 own terms. Okay, let's fast forward to 1973. 00:19:07.779 --> 00:19:11.880 The big one. The phone call from Stockholm. The 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:14.950 Nobel Prize. The absolute pinnacle of literary 00:19:14.950 --> 00:19:17.490 achievement. And the citation from the Swedish 00:19:17.490 --> 00:19:20.029 Academy is so important here. They awarded it 00:19:20.029 --> 00:19:22.990 to him for his epic and psychological narrative 00:19:22.990 --> 00:19:25.829 art, which has introduced a new continent into 00:19:25.829 --> 00:19:28.930 literature. Introduced a new continent. Oh. That 00:19:28.930 --> 00:19:32.099 is a huge claim. It's immense. It's an acknowledgement 00:19:32.099 --> 00:19:35.680 that before Patrick White, Australia wasn't really 00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:38.539 on the map of world literature in a serious, 00:19:38.660 --> 00:19:41.640 modernist way. He put it there. So pop the champagne, 00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:44.400 right? National hero status braids down the street. 00:19:44.539 --> 00:19:47.450 Hardly. White's reaction was classic Patrick 00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:50.230 White. He was horrified. He didn't want it. He 00:19:50.230 --> 00:19:52.269 gave an interview where he said the machinery 00:19:52.269 --> 00:19:55.210 behind it seems a bit dirty. He felt that suddenly 00:19:55.210 --> 00:19:58.410 becoming this global celebrity this public figure 00:19:58.410 --> 00:20:01.430 would completely destroy his privacy and his 00:20:01.430 --> 00:20:03.589 ability to work. And this is where we get that 00:20:03.589 --> 00:20:06.609 quote from the start. He called it a terrifying 00:20:06.609 --> 00:20:08.990 and destructive experience. Terrifying and destructive. 00:20:09.190 --> 00:20:11.390 And he meant it. He refused to for the ceremony 00:20:11.390 --> 00:20:13.970 in Sweden. Can you imagine? The king of Sweden 00:20:13.970 --> 00:20:15.730 is waiting to hand you the medal and you just 00:20:15.730 --> 00:20:18.450 send your mate instead. That's exactly what he 00:20:18.450 --> 00:20:21.230 did. He sent his friend, the painter Sidney Nolan, 00:20:21.490 --> 00:20:24.769 to collect it for him. It was a massive snub 00:20:24.769 --> 00:20:27.549 to all the pomp and circumstance that he despised. 00:20:27.730 --> 00:20:30.549 But, and this is a really key, but he didn't 00:20:30.549 --> 00:20:33.660 just pocket the prize money. No. He used the 00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:36.160 entire sum to establish the Patrick White Award. 00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:39.759 And the criteria for that award is very specific 00:20:39.759 --> 00:20:42.859 and very revealing. It is. It's specifically 00:20:42.859 --> 00:20:46.299 for Australian writers who have made a significant 00:20:46.299 --> 00:20:49.900 and ongoing contribution to literature, but who 00:20:49.900 --> 00:20:52.480 haven't received adequate recognition. In other 00:20:52.480 --> 00:20:55.220 words, he wanted to help the outsiders, the ones 00:20:55.220 --> 00:20:57.240 who were struggling for recognition, just like 00:20:57.240 --> 00:20:59.440 he had struggled for those first 20 years. That 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:02.700 brings us to the next and maybe most surprising 00:21:02.700 --> 00:21:06.299 phase of his life. Because after the Nobel, he 00:21:06.299 --> 00:21:08.759 doesn't just retire to his garden. He becomes, 00:21:08.839 --> 00:21:11.220 well, he becomes loud. He becomes the activist. 00:21:11.339 --> 00:21:13.859 And this is a genuine shock to people who only 00:21:13.859 --> 00:21:16.099 knew him as the conservative grazier's son who 00:21:16.099 --> 00:21:18.000 had voted for the Liberal Party, which is the 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:19.920 conservative party in Australia, for years and 00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:22.200 years. What changed? What was the catalyst? I 00:21:22.200 --> 00:21:25.079 think the 1960s changed him as it changed so 00:21:25.079 --> 00:21:27.779 many people. He saw the world shifting. But for 00:21:27.779 --> 00:21:30.079 White, it was a radical shift to the left. He 00:21:30.079 --> 00:21:32.099 became a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War. 00:21:32.259 --> 00:21:34.400 And not just in a signing petitions kind of way. 00:21:34.539 --> 00:21:37.039 No, not at all. He got up on stage at rallies 00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:39.700 and illegally incited Young Den not to register 00:21:39.700 --> 00:21:42.519 for the draft. That was a serious crime. He was 00:21:42.519 --> 00:21:45.099 putting his freedom and his reputation on the 00:21:45.099 --> 00:21:47.920 line. He also got heavily involved in environmentalism, 00:21:47.940 --> 00:21:50.750 which was quite ahead of its time. He did. He 00:21:50.750 --> 00:21:52.589 fought against a proposal to build an Olympic 00:21:52.589 --> 00:21:55.509 stadium in Centennial Park in Sydney. He fought 00:21:55.509 --> 00:21:58.490 against sand mining on Fraser Island. He saw 00:21:58.490 --> 00:22:01.910 the great Australian emptiness as not just spiritual, 00:22:02.029 --> 00:22:05.809 but also physical. This willingness to destroy 00:22:05.809 --> 00:22:08.549 natural beauty for profit. But the big political 00:22:08.549 --> 00:22:11.109 turning point, the moment of no return, seems 00:22:11.109 --> 00:22:14.630 to be 1975, the dismissal of the Whitlam government. 00:22:15.049 --> 00:22:17.210 This was the moment that turned him into a fervent 00:22:17.210 --> 00:22:19.769 Republican. When the Governor General Sir John 00:22:19.769 --> 00:22:22.170 Kerr, who is the Queen's representative, dismissed 00:22:22.170 --> 00:22:24.230 the democratically elected Prime Minister Gough 00:22:24.230 --> 00:22:27.049 Whitlam, White was absolutely apoplectic. He 00:22:27.049 --> 00:22:29.730 saw it as a profound betrayal of Australian democracy. 00:22:29.990 --> 00:22:32.529 He did. He saw it as a colonial relic, the crown 00:22:32.529 --> 00:22:35.410 interfering in a sovereign nation. In protest, 00:22:35.569 --> 00:22:37.890 he returned his Order of Australia, the highest 00:22:37.890 --> 00:22:40.029 civil honor, and he spent the rest of his life 00:22:40.029 --> 00:22:42.549 arguing passionately for an Australian republic. 00:22:43.180 --> 00:22:45.299 And then there was the issue of nuclear disarmament. 00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:48.039 He called it the most important moral issue in 00:22:48.039 --> 00:22:50.839 history. By the 1980s, he was a regular fixture 00:22:50.839 --> 00:22:53.539 at protest marches. You have to picture this. 00:22:53.740 --> 00:22:57.539 This elderly, frail, Nobel Prize winning intellectual 00:22:57.539 --> 00:23:00.480 who was notoriously private, marching in the 00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:02.339 streets with the punks and the unionists and 00:23:02.339 --> 00:23:04.880 the hippies all chanting against the bomb. It's 00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:07.769 an amazing image. But while he was fighting all 00:23:07.769 --> 00:23:10.609 these external battles, he was also dealing with 00:23:10.609 --> 00:23:14.329 some very intense internal conflicts, which he 00:23:14.329 --> 00:23:17.630 then made public. In 1981, he published his memoir, 00:23:17.890 --> 00:23:20.509 Flaws in the Glass. This book was a bombshell 00:23:20.509 --> 00:23:22.950 for two main reasons. First, he came out publicly 00:23:22.950 --> 00:23:25.049 as homosexual. Now, everyone in his artistic 00:23:25.049 --> 00:23:27.210 circle knew, of course, but this was a formal 00:23:27.210 --> 00:23:30.170 public declaration to the entire nation at a 00:23:30.170 --> 00:23:31.910 time when that was still a very brave thing to 00:23:31.910 --> 00:23:34.089 do. And the second reason. The burning of the 00:23:34.089 --> 00:23:36.859 bridges. The book contained... absolutely scathing 00:23:36.859 --> 00:23:39.720 portraits of many of his former friends. He was 00:23:39.720 --> 00:23:41.799 vicious about people he felt had let him down. 00:23:41.940 --> 00:23:44.279 He insulted Sidney Nolan, the man who collected 00:23:44.279 --> 00:23:47.279 his Nobel Prize for him. He insulted the opera 00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:51.160 singer Joan Sutherland. Why? I mean, why torch 00:23:51.160 --> 00:23:54.079 those lifelong friendships so publicly? White 00:23:54.079 --> 00:23:57.089 valued truth above all else. or at least his 00:23:57.089 --> 00:23:59.490 version of the truth. He felt Nolan had sold 00:23:59.490 --> 00:24:01.809 out, that he'd become too commercial, too cozy 00:24:01.809 --> 00:24:04.509 with the establishment. White had this incredibly 00:24:04.509 --> 00:24:07.170 puritanical streak, and if he felt you had compromised 00:24:07.170 --> 00:24:09.490 your artistic integrity, you were dead to him. 00:24:09.569 --> 00:24:12.029 Simple as that. Nolan considered suing him, right? 00:24:12.210 --> 00:24:15.549 He did. The friendship ended instantly and irrevocably. 00:24:15.769 --> 00:24:18.369 It really shows that White was not an easy man. 00:24:18.809 --> 00:24:21.269 He was prickly, unforgiving, and held people 00:24:21.269 --> 00:24:24.470 and himself to impossibly high standards. Speaking 00:24:24.470 --> 00:24:26.910 of burning things, he also famously burnt his 00:24:26.910 --> 00:24:30.190 own work. Yes. This is another key part of his 00:24:30.190 --> 00:24:32.789 controlling nature. Before moving houses and 00:24:32.789 --> 00:24:34.910 then again later in life, he built a bonfire 00:24:34.910 --> 00:24:37.289 and burnt most of his private papers, manuscripts, 00:24:37.509 --> 00:24:40.250 letters, journals. He wanted to control his legacy 00:24:40.250 --> 00:24:42.829 completely. He didn't want academics and biographers 00:24:42.829 --> 00:24:44.690 picking through his unfinished drafts and his 00:24:44.690 --> 00:24:46.650 private thoughts. He wanted the finished work 00:24:46.650 --> 00:24:49.109 to stand alone. Let's pivot then to the themes 00:24:49.109 --> 00:24:51.309 of that work. We've mentioned the great Australian 00:24:51.309 --> 00:24:54.789 emptiness, but what is the core philosophy that's 00:24:54.789 --> 00:24:57.500 really driving his novels? I'd say at the center 00:24:57.500 --> 00:25:00.200 of almost all his books is the search for reality. 00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:04.230 But not social reality. Not who is marrying whom 00:25:04.230 --> 00:25:07.130 or who's making money he was interested in a 00:25:07.130 --> 00:25:10.430 higher reality a spiritual or metaphysical reality 00:25:10.430 --> 00:25:12.990 the truth behind the curtain exactly his characters 00:25:12.990 --> 00:25:15.490 are almost always trying to grasp a truth that 00:25:15.490 --> 00:25:18.230 lies just behind the veil of ordinary everyday 00:25:18.230 --> 00:25:21.890 life and crucially the people who are most likely 00:25:21.890 --> 00:25:25.109 to see this truth are the outsiders the explorers 00:25:25.109 --> 00:25:28.670 the artists like in vos yes but also the simple 00:25:28.670 --> 00:25:31.170 -minded as he would have called them in his novel 00:25:31.170 --> 00:25:33.289 the solid mandala One of the main characters 00:25:33.289 --> 00:25:35.490 is a brother who is intellectually disabled, 00:25:35.609 --> 00:25:37.470 yet he is the one who has the true spiritual 00:25:37.470 --> 00:25:40.210 connection to the world. White believed that 00:25:40.210 --> 00:25:42.769 those on the margins of society, the outcasts, 00:25:42.769 --> 00:25:45.769 the failures, the mad, often saw more clearly 00:25:45.769 --> 00:25:48.410 than the successful conformist pillars of the 00:25:48.410 --> 00:25:50.950 community. And where did his own spirituality 00:25:50.950 --> 00:25:53.230 fit into all this? You mentioned he wasn't a 00:25:53.230 --> 00:25:55.640 standard Christian. Not at all. He once described 00:25:55.640 --> 00:26:00.539 himself brilliantly as a lapsed, Anglican, egotist, 00:26:00.559 --> 00:26:03.299 agnostic, pantheist, occultist. That is a mouthful. 00:26:03.380 --> 00:26:05.519 Let's break that down. It basically means he 00:26:05.519 --> 00:26:07.799 picked and chose what he needed. He believed 00:26:07.799 --> 00:26:09.759 in a god, but not the one from the prayer book. 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:12.180 He was deeply influenced by Jungian psychology. 00:26:12.539 --> 00:26:15.420 He dabbled in the tarot and other forms of mysticism. 00:26:15.700 --> 00:26:18.619 And the pantheist part is key. He believed the 00:26:18.619 --> 00:26:21.119 divine was present in everything, in a rock, 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:24.549 in a gob of spit, in a twisted tree. God wasn't 00:26:24.549 --> 00:26:27.529 in a church. God was in the mud. In his later 00:26:27.529 --> 00:26:29.490 career, he really started to push the boundaries 00:26:29.490 --> 00:26:32.289 of identity in ways that feel incredibly modern. 00:26:32.470 --> 00:26:35.069 The Twyborn Affair from 1979 is a prime example. 00:26:35.250 --> 00:26:37.569 It explores gender fluidity in a way that was 00:26:37.569 --> 00:26:40.230 decades ahead of its time. The protagonist lives 00:26:40.230 --> 00:26:42.349 as a woman, then as a man in the trenches of 00:26:42.349 --> 00:26:44.150 World War I, then as a woman again running a 00:26:44.150 --> 00:26:46.769 brothel. White was exploring this radical idea 00:26:46.769 --> 00:26:49.269 that the soul has no fixed gender. And his final 00:26:49.269 --> 00:26:52.799 novel, Memoirs of Many in One. A bawdy, wild, 00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:55.299 hilarious, and terrifying book about senility 00:26:55.299 --> 00:26:57.839 and the disintegration of the self. He was writing 00:26:57.839 --> 00:26:59.960 about the mind falling apart as he himself was 00:26:59.960 --> 00:27:02.680 facing his own physical decline. He really did 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:05.680 not mellow with age, did he? Not one bit. In 00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:08.380 1988, for the bicentenary of British settlement 00:27:08.380 --> 00:27:10.380 in Australia, the whole country was throwing 00:27:10.380 --> 00:27:13.319 this massive year -long party. White refused 00:27:13.319 --> 00:27:15.579 to publish anything that year. He issued a statement 00:27:15.579 --> 00:27:18.099 saying, circuses don't solve serious problems. 00:27:18.359 --> 00:27:20.859 He thought the celebration was a dishonest spectacle 00:27:20.859 --> 00:27:23.500 that was ignoring the plight of indigenous Australians 00:27:23.500 --> 00:27:26.299 and the country's unresolved bloody history. 00:27:26.660 --> 00:27:30.000 Let's talk about the end. He died in 1990. He 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:32.640 did. He died at home in his house in Centennial 00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:35.559 Park. He'd been suffering for years from osteoporosis 00:27:35.559 --> 00:27:38.400 and glaucoma. He was in a lot of pain. And his 00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:41.200 legacy. Is there a Patrick White Museum, a writer's 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:43.500 house you can tour? No. And that's absolutely 00:27:43.500 --> 00:27:45.579 by his design. His house is privately owned. 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:48.079 There's no institute, no foundation bearing his 00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:50.960 name, apart from the award. In a way, he has 00:27:50.960 --> 00:27:52.839 vanished back into the landscape, just like his 00:27:52.839 --> 00:27:55.819 character Voss did. But his influence is undeniable. 00:27:56.279 --> 00:27:58.819 Every serious Australian novelist writing today, 00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:01.099 people like Peter Carey, Tim Winton, Richard 00:28:01.099 --> 00:28:03.720 Flanagan, they are all in one way or another 00:28:03.720 --> 00:28:06.119 writing in the space that Patrick White cleared 00:28:06.119 --> 00:28:08.759 for them. So this is where it gets really interesting 00:28:08.759 --> 00:28:11.900 for me. We have this man who spent his whole 00:28:11.900 --> 00:28:15.400 life attacking his country. He called his people 00:28:15.400 --> 00:28:18.279 materialistic, its culture empty, its suburbs 00:28:18.279 --> 00:28:22.000 ugly. He insulted its heroes. And yet he is its 00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:24.539 most decorated and revered writer. It raises 00:28:24.539 --> 00:28:27.259 the fundamental question, was his difficult nature, 00:28:27.480 --> 00:28:30.180 his constant criticism? actually the ultimate 00:28:30.180 --> 00:28:32.839 form of patriotism. How so? Explain that. Well, 00:28:32.859 --> 00:28:34.619 think about it. If you don't care about a place, 00:28:34.779 --> 00:28:36.859 you just ignore it. You leave. You don't spend 00:28:36.859 --> 00:28:39.259 50 years of your life screaming at it to be better. 00:28:39.519 --> 00:28:41.480 White attacked the great Australian emptiness 00:28:41.480 --> 00:28:44.259 because he desperately wanted to fill it. He 00:28:44.259 --> 00:28:46.859 wanted Australia to have a soul. He forced a 00:28:46.859 --> 00:28:50.099 young, insecure, sunburnt culture to look in 00:28:50.099 --> 00:28:52.380 the mirror and see not just the cheerful surface, 00:28:52.440 --> 00:28:54.700 but the darkness and the divinity underneath. 00:28:55.160 --> 00:28:57.660 So by being un -Australian, in the way that term 00:28:57.660 --> 00:29:00.000 is often used, meaning not being a cheerful, 00:29:00.119 --> 00:29:02.220 easygoing mate, he was actually doing the most 00:29:02.220 --> 00:29:04.200 patriotic thing he could have done. I think so. 00:29:04.299 --> 00:29:06.779 I think he loved the country enough to tell it 00:29:06.779 --> 00:29:09.900 the hard truths, even if it made everyone, including 00:29:09.900 --> 00:29:13.359 himself, miserable. That is a powerful and very 00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:16.799 provocative thought to end on. Patrick White. 00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:21.339 The man who hated the buttocks of cars, but loved 00:29:21.339 --> 00:29:23.900 the mystical light on the gum trees. A complex 00:29:23.900 --> 00:29:26.079 man for a complex continent. You couldn't have 00:29:26.079 --> 00:29:28.420 one without the other. Thanks for listening to 00:29:28.420 --> 00:29:30.819 this deep dive. If you've never picked up a Patrick 00:29:30.819 --> 00:29:33.559 White novel, maybe start with Voss or The Tree 00:29:33.559 --> 00:29:35.559 of Man. It might be a challenge. It might feel 00:29:35.559 --> 00:29:37.960 like verbal sludge at first, but hey, muscles 00:29:37.960 --> 00:29:39.920 shouldn't prevail over the mind, right? Absolutely. 00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:41.619 Give it a try. See you next time.