The Letters of Patrick White

by David Marr

Patrick White spent his life writing letters. He wanted them all burnt, but thousands survive to reveal him as one of the greatest letter-writers of his time. Patrick Letters is an unexpected and final volume of wonderful prose by Patrick White. Only a few scraps of his letters have been published before. Here his 70-year correspondence sees the light of day for the first time. From the aftermath of the First World War until his death in 1990, letters poured from Patrick White's they are shrewd, funny, hauntingly beautiful, dramatic, pig-headed, camp and above all relaxed. He wrote novels to sway a hostile world, but letters were for Patrick White was an old man before he wrote fiction as free and open as the best of his letters.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

608 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Eminent Australian journalist, author, and progressive political and social commentator. David Marr is the multi-award-winning author of Patrick White: A Life, Panic and The High Price of Heaven, and co- author with Marian Wilkinson of Dark Victory. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian Australia and the Monthly. He has been editor of the National Times, a reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch. He is also the author of two previous bestselling biographical Quarterly Essays: Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd and Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott. His areas of expertise include Australian politics, law, censorship, the media and the arts. David Marr began his career in 1973 and is the recipient of four Walkley awards for journalism. He also appears as a semi-regular panellist on the ABC television programs Q&A and Insiders.

Reviews

[Sammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I live for this. What a great volume. White is unequivocally the greatest writer Australia ever produced, and this volume came about as a result of David Marr's landmark biography of White, written with the man's consent and published shortly after his death. Something like 20,000 letters from or to White were found by Marr during this process, and here he reprints a generous selection from across the author's life. From pondering his early novels during WWII (in which, in Europe, he met his lifelong partner Manoly) to his final years sharing his many thoughts on the state of Australian literature, this is a gem of a collection.

I can understand why many reviewers have given this less than 5 stars. This is a supplementary volume for White fans. It will be of interest to those who have read a few of the works, but the story of White's life - and especially of the critical fortunes of his career - only really makes sense in light of his body of work: 12 novels, 3 short story collections, an autobiography, several well-received plays, and one screenplay.

As someone so famously private during his lifetime, we are lucky that White had a change of heart in his final years, and allowed Marr such unfettered access. (If not, his equally reclusive partner would no doubt have imposed strict conditions on these letters after White's death.) The letters are more focused on White's personal life and thoughts about society than on his work but, again, read in tandem with Marr's biography and the canon itself, this makes sense. An endlessly fascinating, self-deprecating, brilliant, thorny, endlessly intellectual mind at work.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first full collection of letters I've read - I had no idea how entertaining and informative they would be, including with Mr Marr's impeccable footnotes and editing. By turns cheeky, vindictive, vulgar and revealing of a complex mind at work. Thoroughly enjoyable.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read, especially for Patrick White fans. You gain a very good idea of his character, the number of friends he kept up a correspondence over a long period of time, his love of his partner, Manoly, (a relationship that lasted over 45 years - until White's death), how novels took him on average two years to write, his moral stances, his philanthropy, his love of original paintings by present day artists, his love of opera and plays, his grumpiness and what he reckonised as his vice - his lack of forgiveness. He didn't discuss his novels much but had plenty to say about books he read, countries he visited, his illnesses, the fact the he was the cook in the household. He was fortunate to be able to live off his inheritance and royalties from his books. After he won the Nobel Prize in 1973 with the $82,000 prize money, he established a Trust to award a sum of money each year for old Australian novelists who were not well off.

[Maria Hrickova · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.6