The Living and the Dead

by Patrick White

To hesitate on the edge of life or to plunge in and risk change - this is the dilemma explored in this novel, which is set in 1930s London and portrays the complex ebb and flow of relationships within the Standish family. The author was the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Classics, Nobel Prize, Novels, 20th Century, Historical Fiction

358 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

There is more than one author by this name on Goodreads. For the Canadian Poet Laureate see "Patrick^^^^^White".

Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian author widely regarded as one of the major English-language novelists of the 20th century, and winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Born in England while his Australian parents were visiting family, White grew up in Sydney before studying at Cambridge. Publishing his first two novels to critical acclaim in the UK, White then enlisted to serve in World War II, where he met his lifelong partner, the Greek Manoly Lascaris. The pair returned to Australia after the war.

Home again, White published a total of twelve novels, two short story collections, eight plays, as well as a miscellany of non-fiction. His fiction freely employs shifting narrative vantages and the stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature."

From 1947 to 1964, White and Lascaris lived a retired life on the outer fringes of Sydney. However after their subsequent move to the inner suburb of Centennial Park, White experienced an increased passion for activism. He became known as an outspoken champion for the disadvantaged, for Indigenous rights, and for the teaching and promotion of art, in a culture he deemed often backward and conservative. In their personal life, White and Lascaris' home became a regular haunt for noted figures from all levels of society.

Although he achieved a great deal of critical applause, and was hailed as a national hero after his Nobel win, White retained a challenged relationship with the Australian public and ordinary readers. In his final decades the books sold well in paperback, but he retained a reputation as difficult, dense, and sometimes inscrutable.

Following White's death in 1990, his reputation was briefly buoyed by David Marr's well-received biography, although he disappeared off most university and school syllabuses, with his novels mostly out of print, by the end of the century. Interest in White's books was revived around 2012, the year of his centenary, with all now available again.

Sources: Wikipedia, David Marr's biography, The Patrick White Catalogue

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relationship inside and outside the family… Subtleties and nuances of feelings… The Living and the Dead is written in the moodily metaphoric and convolutedly modernistic style.
In the present Elyot sees his sister Eden to the Victoria station and puts her on a train going abroad…

They were like two Chinese boxes, one inside the other, leading to an infinity of other boxes, to an infinity of purpose. Alone, he was yet not alone, uniting as he did the themes of so many other lives.

The novel is a panorama of the past… There are a mother and her son and her daughter… And of course there is a father but he exits the stage quite soon…

She saw very few people now. She had the baby brought downstairs and left on the hearthrug, where she played with him. Soon he was walking across the room. It all happened logically enough, in what had become the smooth, dull, colourless passage of time. She did not expect events, or events themselves, in such environment, became eventless and accepted. It was with no great sense of discovery that she found she was going to have a second child. This was the inevitable outcome of a settled relationship. Whatever the discrepancies in taste, their separate ways, she was Willy’s wife. There were the nights he spent beside her in her bed.

Time goes… Elyot is an adult now…

He no longer questioned the emotional crises with which Hildegard’s life seemed swept. Dusk and his own feelings, the scent of ivy on a wall and the pulse in his own throat, announced a rightness in her sentiments. He was overflowing with a sentimental devotion, that he wanted to, had somehow to express. Remembering Werther, he had a suspicion that this was probably a Great Love.

Eden grows up as well…

Her daughter this first day made her breathless, uncertain of herself, full of considerations, almost as if it were a first maid, certainly not her daughter. And the hair, the heavy, black fringe, drenching the shore of the white face, was new, done in this different way. It was strange how intimidating the mere physical changes could be.

Nature gets its dues… Love affairs… And love always brings along its charms and its disenchantments.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this collection comes from the last few words of James Joyce's famous short story The Dead.

White's idiosyncratic approach to language and sentences makes me love him with a passion.

Patrick White is one of my absolute favourite authors. Still meaning to re-read everything.

[Szplug · Rating 3 out of 5]

White's sophomore novel—and one of the few with a non-Australian setting—shows scattered glimpses of his future greatness, but is marred by his ill-fitting Joycean influences which, unfortunately, render the entire composition somewhat sterile and brittle—very little of the living and too much of the dead. I, at least, found myself wondering why I was spending time following the saturnine rituals of White's dysfunctional London family during the period when the Spanish Civil War held Europe's dilated eyes: neurotic, rebellious daughter; neurotic, intellectual son; and neurotic, repressed mother. The opening sentence—Outside the station, people settled down again to being emotionally commonplace—in many ways sets the tone for the entire novel: this is a tale of an emotionally commonplace city, with the family in White's focus pushing about that dead, settled centre from which the living must struggle to escape—by means of artistic, sexual, or revolutionary energies with perils all their own. Later in life, White himself would refer the book as the drabbest, dreariest thing ever written, and though this is a decidedly harsh condemnation, it's not that far off of the mark. White was even then such a deft, artistic writer that he manages moments of incandescence and sublimity; but those moments are much too interspersed with relentless misery and ponderous relations to elevate this book above the average.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A character based novel mainly set in London during the 1930s. It is about the Standishes. Catherine, the mother, Elyot the son and Eden the daughter.

Catherine separated from her husband due to his infidelity. Elyot and Eden are raised by the family maid Julia and other guardians during World War One. Elyot is a Cambridge graduate, becoming a professional writer. He goes alone in his intellectual endeavors. Eden is a bookshop attendant with leftist views. Her first lover is a married man.

Whilst this novel does not have much plot momentum, the author compassionately provides insights into the minds of his characters. The questioning of oneself, the self delusions and their individual motivations.

Patrick White fans should find this book a worthwhile read. Readers new to White should begin with ‘The Tree of Man’ (1955), or ‘The Eye of the storm’. (1973)

This book was first published in 1941. The author’s second novel.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mixed opinion on this one: the style is very much in line with Virginia Woolf and certainly bears the theme of the distance to life, the impotence to dare to live. Yet the story does not convince and regularly there are also weak passages. Reading halfway aborted.

[Jayden McComiskie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual quite dark and great character building. There's jazz, sex, abortion, gin and civil war. A highly underrated White book. My favourite line appears at the end of the novel: "then we are here, we have slept, but we have really got here at last."

[Brynhild Svanhvit · Rating 2 out of 5]

AVISO: CONTIENE DESTRIPES.

AVISO SOBRE LA EDICIÓN:
Si alguien va a leerla, no recomiendo en absoluto la edición que he leído yo, la de Seix Barral, de 1972 y traducida por una tal Idalia Cordero. Está plagada de errores de imprenta, en algunos párrafos se refieren a personajes femeninos usando adjetivos y participios en masculino (a Julia incluso la llaman "Julio" un par de veces), y no traducen los abundantes textos, en la primera mitad de la novela, en francés o alemán. Lo peor- vergonzoso incluso - es que en un momento mencionan la novela Wuthering Heights, y la traductora no solo no sabe que esa novela se llama en español Cumbres borrascosas, sino que cree que esas palabras son alemanas, y simplemente pone "en alemán en el original" a pie de página. Una traductora profesional del inglés que no reconoce una de las novelas inglesas más leídas dentro y fuera del país, y encima no distingue inglés de alemán, debería dedicarse a otra cosa.

Londres, un año indeterminado a finales de la década de los 40. Elyot y Eden, hermano y hermana, van a la estación de Victoria, donde se despiden apresuradamente y sin emoción, y Eden sube a un tren; no sabemos adónde va, ni por qué, ni por cuánto tiempo. Elyot vuelve lentamente a una casa vacía - se da a entender que la madre de ellos vivía allí, pero ya ha muerto - y se siente solo y deprimido.

En el siguiente capítulo, se retrocede varias décadas y se muestra a la madre, Catherine, que va a reunirse con su novio y a presentarse a la familia de este. A partir de entonces, ya se narra la vida de la familia en orden cronológico. Catherine se casa con su novio, Willy, con la desaprobación de la familia de este, que es rica y piensa que Catherine solo lo quiere por su dinero; durante unos años viven muy bien, y nacen Elyot y Eden, pero después, un revés económico y las infidelidades de Willy hacen que se separen. Catherine y Willy se reencuentran un día en Francia, durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, donde él ha ido como soldado y ella como enfermera, pero no se reconcilian, y Willy muere en la guerra; sus padres le dan una renta a Elyot para que pueda estudiar, pero después no parecen volver a tener contacto con sus nietos.

La novela avanza, centrando cada capítulo en Elyot o en Eden, y ya casi al final en Catherine también. Después de que los tres personajes tengan varias relaciones frustradas y unas vidas notablemente vacías e infelices, Catherine muere de cáncer, y Eden, cuyo último novio había ido a luchar en la guerra civil española y había muerto allí, decide ir también a España, no se sabe muy bien a qué. La novela termina reescribiendo el primer capítulo, en que Elyot y Eden se despiden y Elyot se da cuenta de lo solo que está.

Si la novela me ha parecido sosa, es porque ningún personaje parece sentir ninguna emoción, ni mucho menos transmitirla. Es como si un robot hubiera querido escribir una novela en que a seres humanos les pasan cosas humanas, pero todos los personajes que inventa siguen siendo robots. De niños, Elyot y Eden son horribles y egoístas, pero aun así son más creíbles que cuando son adultos. Una cosa que me ha chocado es que el autor simplemente se salta los años formativos de los protagonistas: pasa de cuando son niños de siete u ocho años a cuando ya son adolescentes, y luego salta diez años más y ya están casi en la treintena. No vemos ni uno de sus años de escuela ni universidad; no los vemos con grupos de otros niños ni adolescentes. Cuando termina el colegio, y antes de ir a la universidad, Elyot pasa un año estudiando en Alemania, y tiene una aventura con, literalmente, la primera chica que encuentra, la hija de su casera. Termina el año, se vuelve a Inglaterra olvidándose al momento de la chica, y lo siguiente que se nos dice de él es que han pasado diez años y ya es un escritor profesional. ¿Cómo ha evolucionado el personaje? ¿Cómo ha llegado a ser escritor? ¿Qué ha estudiado, qué piensa, sobre qué escribe?

El caso de Eden es peor: a los ocho años es una niña cruel y odiosa que no soporta a las otras niñas; lo siguiente que sabemos es que a los dieciocho es la amante de un hombre casado, que la abandona, ella descubre que está embarazada y aborta; y de golpe pasan diez años más y está trabajando en una librería. Y entonces resulta que tiene otro novio, el cual se va a España a luchar por no sabemos qué bando, porque en ningún momento se nos ha hablado de su ideología (recuerdo que una vez dice que "pensaba mucho en política", y ya), y al morir él se va ella. ¿A qué? ¿Qué piensa hacer? ¿Qué piensa?

Hay otros personajes, como la criada Julia, que lleva sirviendo a la familia más de veinte años y no parece tener ni un atisbo de personalidad, o las dos mujeres que forman un cuestionable triángulo "amoroso" con Elyot: Muriel, una judía de clase alta, y Connie, "amiga" de la infancia de Elyot y Eden (más bien, coincidieron unos meses, en los que Eden la atormentaba y Elyot pasaba de ella). Elyot se acuesta con Muriel, pero realmente no le interesa; y Connie está enamorada de Elyot, pero él sigue pasando de ella. Elyot parece tener el corazón de piedra o la sangre de horchata: no quiere a Muriel, no quiere a Connie, no se inmuta cuando su madre muere; no pone ninguna objeción a que su hermana se vaya sola a un país en guerra; no sabemos qué escribe, no sabemos qué quiere. Oh, y en cuanto a la madre, después de los capítulos iniciales, pasa a un plano tan secundario que casi nos olvidamos de que está ahí, hasta que de repente comienza una relación con un saxofonista más joven que ella, se emborracha y hace el ridículo en una fiesta, y a la semana se muere de cáncer.

Si lo que pretende transmitir el libro es que los personajes no tienen ningún propósito en la vida y experimentan tanta pasión y alegría y dolor y miedo como un trozo de corcho común, enhorabuena, lo ha conseguido. No he sentido más que desconcierto al ver cómo saltan décadas en que nos cuentan nada y cómo les ocurren cosas sin que apenas reaccionen. No me gusta nada la técnica narrativa de Patrick White, pero supongo que algo bueno habría en los siguientes libros si le dieron un premio Nobel.

[Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good grief this book took some doing.
Now I know this chap won the Nobel Literature prize back in the 1970s, but this is second novel is a pain to read: narrative structure interweaves with dialogue and memory, words spoken and unspoken mash together in sometimes beautiful and sometimes incomprehensible drifts of words.
Centred on a family it details the floatiness and lack of engagement of the upper middle class in post war Britain. Relationships form and dissolve, sex happens, occasionally passions are roused, but the general tone is one of grey fluff.
That is until one of their acquaintances Joe goes to help out in the Spanish Civil War and is killed. And then there is some semblance of engagement with life.... but ultimately this is a book about selfish point scoring people who hurt not just themselves but those who love them or could be loved by them, in a way of keeping them at arm’s length. It’s so fake you want to scream at them to do the right thing and just get on with living rather than ossifying in a London house.
It’s taken me two weeks to get through this, because of work and #LentBookClub, but mainly because the book bored me. There are occasional moments of beauty (fog lifting likened to a paper bag bursting to release th scenery; Eden when she is in love with Joe in a seaside B and B; Elyot being known well “without stopping to think what this means, accepted the face as beginning and end”), so it’s not a total waste.
But it’s somewhat like walking a beach, and finding the odd seashell!

[Terry Wheeler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing here is so assured and very masterly. I often stopped and reread sentences or paragraphs that had a true poetry about them. The setting and style recalled Virginia Wolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' but unfortunately the plot here did not hang together as well as that novel does. White is missing the great myths that captured his imagination with the later novels. You get the impression after reading this novel that White did not think very much of London in the 1930s.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick White’s sombre-toned second novel, published in 1941, chronicles the unfulfilled lives of Catherine Standish and her children Eden and Elyot. Written during the 1930s when the author was in his twenties, The Living and the Dead is a novel of impressive historical scope and acute psychological discernment. In this story, set in London, Catherine first enters our sights in the early years of the century as a flighty young woman named Kitty Goose who is seeking to rise up in the world. To this end she marries Willy Standish and has two children with him. But Willy—weak, irresponsible, easily led astray—indulges in affairs and loses money through rash investments, and the two separate. In the latter half of the novel, the author explores his characters’ inner lives. Following WWI, Catherine, bearing her reduced circumstances with a stiff upper lip, is left on her own to raise her children, though she does retain her housekeeper, Julia Fallon. Eden grows up impulsive and quick-tempered, while Elyot is brainy, diffident, and aloof. Both reach adulthood aimless and unmoored: rather than actively choose directions for themselves, each seems content to drift along a path of least resistance. Though years have passed, mother, son and daughter remain together under the same roof. But they live very separate lives. Among the three members of the Standish family there are few disclosures and little emotional support. Eden, outgoing and curious about life and love, finds work as a clerk in a bookstore. Elyot, retreating into a world of pure intellect, becomes a writer and critic. Catherine, pragmatic, self-absorbed, obsessed with keeping up appearances, embarks on an affair with a man some years her junior, an American musician named Wally Collins. The relationship takes her out of her comfort zone, into nightclubs and seedy bars. But Wally has lots of women, and when he tires of Catherine, he treats her with contempt. Eden, whose sympathies have been sparked by the civil war in Spain, after being spurned by a businessman who got her pregnant, falls in love with Joe Barnett, a carpenter. Elyot writes his books and spends a great deal of time agonizing over his feelings toward other people and wondering what they expect of him. When a childhood friend, Connie Tiarks, reappears in their lives and makes plain her attraction to him, Elyot, horrified, rejects her. Instead, he falls into a relationship with Muriel Raphael, a frivolous socialite with artistic pretensions, but this liaison fizzles before any physical expressions of warmth or love take place. By this time Elyot’s emotional paralysis has assumed its place squarely at the novel’s core. In two scenes where he finds himself alone with Joe Barnett, he seems about to emerge somewhat from his shell, but social constraints, his own reticent nature, and the risk of humiliation prevent any expression of admiration or fellowship. Life goes on. Joe, spurred to act on his leftist sympathies, leaves England to fight in the Spanish Civil War, where he is killed. Catherine’s health declines. Eden, lonely and disillusioned but resolute, casts aside family obligations and follows her dead lover to Spain.

The Living and the Dead is not an easy novel. White’s prose, filled with fractured, disorienting constructions, is ceaselessly probing, occasionally opaque, and buzzing with detail. The narrative perspective shifts without warning from one scene to the next and sometimes within a single scene. White occasionally dabbles with stream-of-consciousness, which allows him to evoke his characters’ psychological states vividly and poignantly, but which can also leave the reader scratching his head. A bracingly original novel, The Living and the Dead comes across as experimental, the work of a prodigiously talented and ambitious young writer flexing his muscles and trying various narrative strategies on for size. It is probably not Patrick White’s most satisfying or wholly realized work of fiction, but as an early work by a Nobel winner whose novels and stories remain as exhilarating as they were the day they were published, it is well worth seeking out.

[Monty Milne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading this was like wading across a waist high river of soapy froth. The words bubbled away in front of me and left nothing behind. I got to the end of each page and, in bafflement, turned back to the beginning…I recognised nouns, verbs, adjectives…I know the meaning of these words, but somehow White’s prose seems to drain them of all meaning and introduce a deadening sense of confusion and opacity.

I have no idea what White thought he was trying to achieve and I really have no interest in finding out any more. I thought this was one of the most baffling and tedious pieces of prose I have ever tried to wade through. I could not get to the end, although I ploughed on for many, many pages. I could not tell you anything about this because by some strange property of anti-writing, each time I turned the page the memory of what I had just tried to read vanished, as if by some occult process the page became entirely blank once its words had been viewed.

It is a mystery to me why this is considered great literature, or why others can derive profit or enjoyment from it. After abandoning it, I discovered that White was influenced by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf – the two twentieth century writers whom I detest above all others. That explains a lot. I would only add that I am fully aware that my subjective reaction as a reader (and perhaps as a bad reader) does not mean to imply that this is a bad novel, or a novel from which others might derive pleasure. But nothing will induce me to read anything more by this author.

[Sammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

White's second novel, The Living and the Dead is set in a grim, mournful, expectant London, waiting for WWII to properly commence. Its three central characters are a mother and her two adult children, each of whom faces disappointment, self-reflection, and more disappointment.

White was around 27 when he started the novel, and he spent the first two years of WWII working on the project, zipping between London (where he was struggling to find success) and New York (where he was critically acclaimed early on, and where he was closer to the man he had fallen in love with during this youthful period). Ultimately, surely to his surprise, White would end up - after the war - back in Australia, and in a relationship with a man very different to those he had met thus far. Perhaps then it seems fair to say that this novel is a different path to those with which White would have his great successes. I don't think it entirely works, but I think it may be a necessary step in his growth.

Funnily enough, this is less successful than his first - Happy Valley - even though that felt like a student writer aping his idols. However that may not be surprising. There, White could emulate much of what made his idols great. Here, he is still clearly inspired by Eliot and Joyce and others, but he is trying to find his own voice. It is more of an ambitious project in a sense, and that is the sense in which it fails. London never fully comes into view; White feels at something of a remove from most of his characters; and even his closest stand-in - the sensitive and clearly homosexual Elyot - is hazy, in no small part because White isn't able to confirm or expand upon the character's sexuality at all, even as he fails in his numerous heterosexual relationships. It all feels rather opaque, and not entirely deliberately. As critics have remarked frequently, it's a joy that his next novel was The Aunt's Story, beginning a run of masterpieces that would lead to White being named the first (and thus far, only) Australian Nobel Laureate for Literature.

So, in conclusion: this is a bit of an oddball member of the White canon, but an interesting portrait into his young literary mindset, if nothing else.

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this early White novel as much as I did Voss, The Tree of Man, Riders in the Chariot, or The Vivisector, but this was no less immersive, and it held me hostage in the same sort of hypersensitive, hyperjudgmental world that White created in those novels, where words are not to be trusted to accurately describe the inchoate inner life. The focus was less clear for me in this novel—a family and its wrestling with the meaning and purpose of their lives against the interwar backdrop of a fractured and fractious England—but that "lack of focus" may have been the point.

[Carmilla Voiez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story follows the lives and loves of the Standish family. Set in class-conscious 1930s London, the narrative explores the strengths and weaknesses of highly-civilised people and their relationships, and suggests that a little wildness is preferable. The characters suppress their desires to fulfil social expectations, leading to boredom, frustration and a sense of inauthenticity.

"to recognise the pulse beyond the membrane, the sick heartbeat, or the gangrenous growth, this was too much, even at the risk of sacrificing awareness, and the other moments, the drunken disorderly passions of existence, that created but at the same time consumed."

The pages of full of startlingly effective descriptions -

"He looked down at his blue veins. Time had mapped his hands with a fatal geographic scene."

"the street lights that have no respect for the personal existence, shaved his face down to the bones,"

He resented her, as a small but fierce spotlight on many moments that he wanted hidden."

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catherine Standish, long abandoned by her husband, drifts from affair to affair, with the "presents" that men give her helping to maintain a certain standard of life, while relatives pay for her children's education. These children, brother and sister Elyot and Eden, grow up distanced from their mother and each other, seeming only attached to their nanny, Julia, who later becomes cook and maid-of-all-work in this moody and secretive household.

I found this enjoyable and involving despite the negative qualities of the highly-strung characters and the narrative's disconcerting jumps in time.

[Harriet S · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book details the empty lives of an upper class family in 1930s London. They seem to be emeshed in futility and faded glory for most of the book. The book published in 1941 seems to be looking back on a way of life that will soon be swept away. We see a foreshadowing of this in the death of one of the characters in the Spanish civil war
I didn't find it an easy read, as others have commented. It was like reading Virgina Woolf or James Joyce without being as good as either of them.
I enjoyed Patrick White's Voss more

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel deserves the attention of a more accomplished reader than I. As a complete work it is possible to appreciate White’s brilliance. However, I often found it difficult to engage with White’s choice of Elyot as device to passively observe characters and themes throughout. This is notable as it is one of few novels I have read that makes use of the 2nd person, albeit inconsistently, adding a layer of difficulty. The painfully beautiful sketches of Kate and Connie are very memorable.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

White's second novel is a deliberately paced experiment in some of the stylistic tropes that would feature in his later work. I detect the influence of Lawrence and Woolf here, but there are many passages that could have been written by no one else that I've ever read. I understand that his next, The Aunt's Story, is where it all really kicks in (I've know what to expect, having read Voss) so we'll see.

[James Connolly]

My final Patrick White novel. The exponential growth in his writing from Happy Valley shows. While he's dwarfed by his literary heroes here trying to be Joyce, trying to be Lawrence, you sense the cusp of greatness that is to follow.

[Dave Schumacher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious and boring

[Shaun Heenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

High 3.5

[Sel Rou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story but drags on and is sometimes convoluted to follow

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read, this early novel of White's explores the inner complexities of three upper middle class characters in 1930s London.

[Dianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

slow starting...