Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs

by Gerald Murnane

  It was a freezing night on the other side of the world because, as every schoolboy knows (and even the wandering schoolboy who later became my wandering, eccentric father would have known in 1910 or 1918 or whenever it was)… as every schoolboy knows, things happen the wrong way round on the other side of the world.

  On the other side of the world (where my father, for all his wandering, never dreamed of going and where I have sometimes dreamed of going but will never go)… on the other side of the world, things happen such as a decent Australian schoolboy (which I believe my father to have been and which I believe he believed me to be)… things happen such as a decent Australian schoolboy can hardly imagine. For example, on cold nights in winter on the other side of the world, snow falls out of the sky and ice forms on the water in wells.

  My father travelled in every state of Australia during his fifty-five years but he kept to the plains and the river basins, and so he never saw snow falling. I have travelled much less widely than my father and yet I have seen snow falling. I saw snow falling faintly on my schoolground for a few minutes on a winter day in 1951.

  Among you people here today, the few people who have already read Inland will understand the importance of what I am about to say. Those people will know that one of the many themes of the book is the theme of Australia’s having been corrupted by Europe. My father believed all his life that Australia had been corrupted by Europe. My father tried all his life to avoid the evils of Europe. He believed that snow was one of the evils of Europe. I had no reason for disagreeing with him.

  Before I began to write this text I knew that I had seen snow falling somewhere once in my life. Not until a few minutes ago did I pause to consider where I had seen the European stuff falling out of the sky.

  I saw snow falling on the suburb of Pascoe Vale, which is about ten kilometres north from the city of Melbourne and about three kilometres west of the place where I was born. The snow fell lightly on a winter day in 1951. The snow fell for only a few minutes, but afterwards I found small heaps of frozen stuff in corners of the schoolground. I was so unused to snow that I called the frozen stuff ice. I had thought it was snow while it was falling, but when I found it on the ground I called it ice.

  I wish I had remembered while I was writing Inland what I only just remembered while I was writing this text. The people here today who have read Inland can imagine what meaning I could have found in the fact of snow – pure, white, corrupt, European snow – having fallen on Pascoe Vale, on the suburb where the red fish lived in the green pond, in the year 1951 of all years.

  One hot afternoon in Australia more than twenty years before I was born, it was, as I said before, a freezing night in Europe. It was not a night to be out in. And any person who had to be out on that night ought not to have been barefoot.

  I often think of that night on the other side of the world. I often try to see in my mind a district of low hills south-west of the Great Plain of Hungary. It is hard to see in your mind a place where you have never been, as it was on a night more than twenty years before you were born. Sometimes I read the words of a man who heard on many a night in his childhood some of the sounds that might have sounded on the night that I often think about.

  Rarely did I succeed in catching something of the mystery. Somewhere a mother called her daughter. ‘Kati-i!’… and in the long, drawn-out cry something of the mystic charm drifted along under the vertiginously high stars. There was no answering cry. One of the pigs grunted once or twice and the hens flapped their wings in the coops.

  The passage quoted is from People of the Puszta, by Gyula Illyés, translated by G.F. Cushing and published in 1971 by Chatto and Windus. People of the Puszta is not a book of fiction.

  It was a hard night to be out in, but a young woman – scarcely more than a child – was out on that night, and she was barefoot. She ought not to have been barefoot. She was the owner of a pair of boots. But she had left her boots behind her in her hurry to be out on that night.

  While the young woman was out on that night, certain sounds sounded such as did not usually sound on cold nights in that part of the world. The sounds were not heard by the boy who grew into the man who wrote the book called in English People of the Puszta. But on his way to school next morning the boy saw on the icy ground a sight that would have enabled him to hear in his mind on that morning, and many times during the rest of his life, the sounds that had sounded on the cold night. The sight that the boy saw on the icy ground is described in his own words translated from the Magyar language into the English language on page 188 of People of the Puszta and on page 161 of Inland.

  The boy who saw the sight on the icy ground on his way to school grew up to become a writer of books. His books were all in the Magyar language, but one of the books was translated into the English language, and I happened to read that book in 1976.

  After I had read the book I tried often to see in my mind the sight that the boy had seen on the icy ground on that morning more than twenty years before I was born. I also tried to hear in my mind the sounds that might have sounded on the cold night before the cold morning. At some time I began to believe that some of those sounds might have been words. I knew that the words would have been words in the Magyar language, but I began to believe that I understood what the words would have been in the English language. As soon as I began to believe this, I began to write Inland.

  Of the three people that I named a little while ago as being alive on the freezing night, which was a summer afternoon in this part of the world… of the three people, the schoolboy who became my father, the schoolboy who became the writer of books in the Magyar language, and the young woman, hardly more than a girl, who had left her boots behind… of those three people all are now dead. But while I was reading Inland I began to think of those people as alive. Today, more than a year after my finishing the writing of Inland, I continue to think of those people as alive.

  I have sometimes been able to suppose that my father has read, translated into the language of ghosts, certain pages the writing of which pages caused me to think of my father as alive.

  I have sometimes been able to suppose also that the writer of books in the Magyar language has read, translated into the language of ghosts, certain pages the writing of which pages caused me to think of the writer of books in the Magyar language as alive.

  I have never been able to suppose that the young woman who left her boots behind in her hurry to be out in the freezing night… I have never been able to suppose that that person has been able to read – even in the language of ghosts – any pages of mine.

  Many times during the three years while I was trying to write the book now called Inland, I had almost decided that I could not finish the book. At those times I used to urge myself to go on writing by seeing in my mind myself sitting in front of a group of people such as you people here today. I used to see myself sitting as I am sitting here, and I used to hear myself saying in the English language, but as though my words would be heard in the language of ghosts by a person who would never read my pages – not even in the language of ghosts – because she had never been taught to read words written or printed on pages… I used to hear myself saying, at last, ‘Your book has been published; your story has been told.’

  (Text of a speech given by Gerald Murnane at the launching of Inland in Adelaide on 9 March 1988; published in Meridian, vol. 7, no. 2, October 1988)

  ‌

  ‌The Typescript Stops Here: Or, Who Does the Consultant Consult?

  The statement in the title may be misleading. No typescript stays for long on my desk. As soon as I’ve written a page or so of comments I send typescript, comments and my recommendation back to the editor. Yet my desk is the end of one road for many a promising piece of fiction. The author, perhaps the friends or advisers of the author, perhaps a literary agent – these people have considered the typescript worth sending to Meanjin. The editor and assistant editor of Meanjin have read the typescript and have liked
it. Then the typescript has been passed on to me, and soon afterwards – sometimes as soon as I’ve read the first couple of pages – the way to publication in Meanjin has been blocked off.

  Meanjin has a poetry editor but a fiction consultant. The difference may not be clear to every reader. The poetry editor receives all the poetry submitted to Meanjin and is wholly responsible for deciding which poems are published. As fiction consultant I receive only a selection of the fiction submitted to the editor.

  About 700 pieces of fiction were submitted to Meanjin during 1988. Each of these pieces was read by the editor; many were read by the assistant editor also. About a hundred pieces of fiction were passed on from the editor to me. Of these hundred I recommended about twenty-five for publication. Among the remainder I found about a dozen promising enough for me to suggest to each author that the piece might be publishable after it had been rewritten.

  I sometimes remind myself that about 600 typescripts of fiction were returned to their authors during 1988 without my having learnt even the titles of the pieces or the names of the authors. Perhaps a few of the 600 stories that I did not see during 1988 might have impressed me more than they impressed the editor or her assistant, but I have never wanted to change the system. I could not find the time to read, let alone to comment on, any more typescripts than I receive already. Besides, I like the checks and balances of the present system. When I take a liking to a story by an unpublished writer, I know that at least one competent judge has already liked the story.

  The question in the title would seem to have been answered by now: as consultant, I consult no one. Yet the matter is not so simple. At the moment when I look for the first time at a piece of short fiction, I find myself performing what might almost be called a mental exercise: I find myself consulting my better self.

  In 1980 I became a full-time lecturer in fiction-writing at a college of advanced education. In each year since then I have had to assess between 300 and 400 pieces of students’ fiction, each piece being of about 2,000 words. I mention this not by way of boasting or complaining but because it has to be mentioned. I have to mention also that I not only read each story from each student; I edit each story and write detailed comments on it. After I’ve spent an hour on a story I sometimes cut short my comments but not my editing. The average story takes about an hour and a half to assess in this way.

  People who hear from me what I’ve just written often ask me whether my tasks as a teacher of fiction bore me. I answer that I’m often bored while I’m reading a student’s story. I say that I’m often irritated and sometimes exasperated. But then I say what is the point of these paragraphs about my teaching duties. I say that I always feel a certain pleasure when I pick up a student’s story for the first time; I feel expectant and hopeful. After I’ve read the first few paragraphs I may be already bored or even irritated, but while I’m preparing to read a story for the first time I’m hopeful that my pleasure will continue.

  As a teacher of fiction-writing I assess each piece of fiction by registering the persistence, or the decline, or the decline followed by the resurgence, of the pleasure that I felt when I began to read the first sentence. As fiction consultant for Meanjin I do somewhat the same. The comments that I type while I read each story for Meanjin are similar to the comments that I write in the margins and on the verso pages of each student’s story. Occasionally a student complains that my comments have a harsh tone. I answer that I was trying to express through my comments not harshness but disappointment. Occasionally an author complains to the editor of Meanjin about my comments. I have not time for entering into correspondence with any author, but I hereby state that I pick up each typescript hoping that I’ll be surprised and delighted and hoping that I’ll have to write only the one comment: ‘Recommended for publication.’

  When I prepare to read a piece of fiction I look forward to learning something that the author could have told me by no other means than the writing of the piece of fiction in front of me.

  When I prepare to read a piece of fiction I look forward to reading something that is true in a way that no piece of scientific writing or philosophical writing or biographical writing or even autobiographical writing can be true. The narrator of ‘Landscape With Freckled Women’ in my book of fiction Landscape With Landscape speaks for me when he claims that he can never be sure of the truth of any words except the words spoken by a character in a work of fiction whose narrator has declared that the character in question is speaking truthfully.

  When I speak or write about what I call true fiction, some people suppose that I think of the best fiction as a sort of confessional writing. I deny this. What I call true fiction is fiction written by men and women not to tell the stories of their lives but to describe the images in their minds (some of which may happen to be images of men and women who want to tell the truth about their lives).

  My experience has been that a writer begins to write a piece of true fiction not knowing what he or she is trying to explain. In the beginning, the writer knows only that a certain image or cluster of images seems to mean something of importance. At some time after the writing has begun, the writer begins to learn what that meaning is. The writer goes on learning while he or she writes. Sometimes the writer is still learning after the writing has been finished or even after it has been published. My experience has been that a writer has to trust his or her better self in order to write true fiction.

  Readers of ill will may suppose that I use the term better self for something that they call the unconscious. Readers of ill will seldom understand any statement not in accordance with fashionable theories of psychology or politics or economics. Readers of good will will understand me when I write that my better self is the part of me that writes fiction in order to learn the meaning of the images in my mind. The same readers will understand me when I write that my better self is the part of me that reads fiction in order to learn the meaning of the images in other minds.

  Most stories passed on to me from the editor of Meanjin have covering notes or letters attached. I try to separate the text of the fiction from its attachments without learning even the name of the author. I prefer to be influenced only by the sentences of the text.

  I read slowly the first sentence of each story. I hear in my mind the sounds of the words and I feel in my mind the rhythms of the sentence as a whole. While I read the first sentence, images appear in my mind. Most of the images have to do with the words of the sentence, but one image seems to lie on the far side of the other images. The far image is at first more a ghostly outline than a clear image. The far image is the outline in my mind of the person who is the source of the sentence in front of my eyes.

  If the first sentence of the text has been a clear and honest sentence, if the sentence has persuaded me that the writer wrote the sentence in order to describe simply and honestly an image or a cluster of images in his or her mind with the aim of learning in due course the meaning of the image or images, then I begin to believe that the image of the person forming behind the other images in my mind will be an image of the better self of the person. In that case also, I begin to feel towards the better self whose image has begun to form in my mind an attitude of trust.

  The term better self in the context of this article is a term that I devised myself. I had thought of using the term ‘implied author’, which is used by Wayne C. Booth in his book about techniques of narration, The Rhetoric of Fiction, but whereas all better selves of writers are implied authors, not all implied authors seem to me the better selves of the writers. I use the term better self for any implied author that I feel inclined to trust on the grounds that he or she seems to have written from the best of motives. The previous paragraph should have made clear what I regard as the best of motives for writing fiction.

  If the first sentence of the text has been a clear and honest sentence, then I begin to read the second sentence. If the first sentence has not been clear and honest, then the images in my mind will be
blurred and the implied author of the sentence will not yet have earned my trust. In that case, instead of beginning to read the second sentence I begin to write the first sentence of the page or so of comments that I address to the editor of Meanjin for the benefit of the author. I may write that the first sentence has seemed vague or unclear or stilted or pretentious. If I write such a comment, I try to explain which word or phrase or which fault in the shape of the sentence caused me to write the comment.

  I go on reading sentence after sentence and writing a comment whenever a sentence has disappointed me. Sometimes, after having read only the first couple of pages, I decide that the story is not interesting enough to be published in Meanjin. To put the matter more bluntly, I decide that the story is too boring to be published in Meanjin.

  Some readers of this article may be surprised to read that the fiction consultant for a publication with the prestige of Meanjin uses for his criteria such everyday terms as interesting and boring. Perhaps those readers will be less surprised if I add that I’m interested, as a reader, in whatever the writer is truly interested in and that I’m bored, as a reader, by anything that bores the writer. Many of the disappointing stories that I read during 1988 seemed to have been written by authors who chose their subjects only because they seemed subjects that would impress an editor or a fiction consultant.