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Two Old Men Dying
In perhaps his boldest and most personal novel, Tom Keneally explores the journeys of modern Australians alongside the imagined story of ancient Learned Man whose remains were discovered in Western NSW some decades ago.
Learned Man is the child of the extraordinary cognitive leap that created humankind, as we know it, thought to have sprung from the Rift Valley in Africa and soon after travelling to ancient Australia.
Shelby, the acclaimed documentary-maker, like Learned Man influenced by Heroes, thinks embattled Eritrean society holds promise that it might represent the new cognitive leap, the one that will reconcile our tenderness and our savagery, our reason and our emotions so that we are no longer a dichotomy between the two, so that we are no longer both poets and killers, but a clear-headed and less dichotomised being. Both the old men of the novel have a lens between themselves and reality. Learned Man sees the world through the lens of his responsibility under law. Shelby sees the world through the lens of his camera.
Both men are well aware that their landscape comes to them from elders and hero ancestors. Learned speaks to the heroes in dream-trances, Shelby through his camera. The way the hero ancestors speak to and make demands of Learned, heroes and elders speak to Shelby. Both men, Learned and Shelby, are willing to die and, in a sense, kill for their secret crafts. Learned kills a man to save the women and future of his tribe; similarly Shelby’s fellow cameraman is a sacrifice to the stories his camera must share, in this instance action in the Vietnam War.
Learned Man is the child of the extraordinary cognitive leap that created humankind, as we know it, thought to have sprung from the Rift Valley in Africa and soon after travelling to ancient Australia.
Shelby, the acclaimed documentary-maker, like Learned Man influenced by Heroes, thinks embattled Eritrean society holds promise that it might represent the new cognitive leap, the one that will reconcile our tenderness and our savagery, our reason and our emotions so that we are no longer a dichotomy between the two, so that we are no longer both poets and killers, but a clear-headed and less dichotomised being. Both the old men of the novel have a lens between themselves and reality. Learned Man sees the world through the lens of his responsibility under law. Shelby sees the world through the lens of his camera.
Both men are well aware that their landscape comes to them from elders and hero ancestors. Learned speaks to the heroes in dream-trances, Shelby through his camera. The way the hero ancestors speak to and make demands of Learned, heroes and elders speak to Shelby. Both men, Learned and Shelby, are willing to die and, in a sense, kill for their secret crafts. Learned kills a man to save the women and future of his tribe; similarly Shelby’s fellow cameraman is a sacrifice to the stories his camera must share, in this instance action in the Vietnam War.
336 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2018
9 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Tom Keneally
33 books72 followersSee Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List and The People's Train. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now the subject of a 55 cent Australian stamp.
He has held various academic posts in the United States, but lives in Sydney.
Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List and The People's Train. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now the subject of a 55 cent Australian stamp.
He has held various academic posts in the United States, but lives in Sydney.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 16, 2019
Tom Keneally’s ‘two old men dying’, his latest (33rd!), but surely not his last novel, despite the title, is the consecutively intertwined tales of 40,000 year old ‘Learned Man’, stand-in for Mungo Man, and veteran documentary filmmaker Shelby Apple (get it?), part stand-in for Neil Davis, who sadly didn’t reach old age.
Before I offer my short critique of this novel, I’d like to have a rant. On p109 we meet eye doctor Ted Castwell, stand in for Fred Hollows, who has a passion for John Keats ‘whose poems he could recite in couplets in his aggressive proletarian accent’. It’s just as well Ted’s not around on p42 to see a famous phrase ‘half in love with easeful death’ from one of Keats’ most famous poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ ascribed to Shelley! But worse, in a way, to follow, for an Australian reader anyway (amongst which we can assume Keneally). On p59 one of Judith Wright’s most famous poems ‘Woman to Man’ is misquoted: from the opening line ‘eyeless labourer in the dark’ should be ‘eyeless labourer in the night’. I know it doesn’t impact on the novel, but it’s a bit damn depressing that one of our most distinguished authors and his star editors and who knows who else can miss/write such basic literary errors. These are our gate-keepers. OK, I’ll move on.
Prior to reading ‘two old men dying’ I saw two praising reviews of it in the Australian press. After finishing it, I think the critics here are giving the grand old man of Oz Lit a bit of an easy ride. Overall the writing quality is variable, good and not-so-good, and it probably wouldn’t be worth commenting on except that Keneally in the past has produced such outstanding work. Such as ‘The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith’, which in a different context covers many of the issues raised in this novel. Keneally has slighted ‘Blacksmith’ (due to the strictures of identity politics), yet to this reader it is superior in every way to this novel.
Keneally has set himself a formidable challenge here, particularly in the re-creation of ‘Learned Man’. The main story, that of Shelby Apple, chancer and charmer filming in various exotic locales, is well within his veteran professional skills. He states in his Author’s Note that ‘though some of them (the characters) were instigated by real people, the novel is not a roman a clef’. Well it seems close to one, all the major figures have doubles, even the brief sketch of Castwell’s wife describes Gabbi Hollows. Not that I think it matters. Keneally has regularly fictionalized historical figures, and I have always felt, reading the novels, that he has tried to do justice to the record, or at the very least successfully re-worked the material into convincing fictional form. So, for example, the ‘controversy’ over whether Booker-winning ‘Schindler’s Ark’ was history or fiction seemed misplaced at the time, particularly given the achievement of the writing.
So too here: Keneally does not satirise or defame but rather honours the real life great old men. If he twists their lives into his own story, he can reasonably argue it is for a higher purpose. Of course, it might also seem to some readers, given the extent of the ‘borrowing’, a little slack creatively. Regarding which, it should be noted the Vietnam episode is reminiscent of a similar scene in Chis Koch’s ‘Highways to a War’ (also ghosting Neil Davis).
No slackness is possible in Keneally’s recreation of the life and times of ancient Learned Man. He takes a few cues from Aboriginal cultural mores, but basically has to invent from scratch. The high poetic type of reconstruction he essays is very difficult to pull off, and Keneally, not a poet to my knowledge, does not seem to have the skill set for it (for a superb example see Alex Miller’s massacre description in ‘Landscape of Farewell’). Perhaps the length is partly to blame. There is the occasional noble phrase but for the most part this story stream reads like selections from an antipodean Disney Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ or a Disney Bible for unlettered pagans. Mostly I cringed reading it, plus the accompanying Aboriginal political suck-up: ‘Learned Man went out in the world to let whites learn something very big’, or ‘modern descendants of Learned Man deserved to be treated with national respect as the true owners of Australia’, and so on. We are also forced fed much supernatural goings on. Does Keneally really believe this stuff might have happened? Has he swallowed that old chestnut about primitive peoples possessing magic powers we moderns have lost through being rational and civilized? Anyway, compared to the gravity of Shelby’s story, despite the ingenuity, most of Learned’s tale comes across as cartoonish.
And what about the wise old women? Where are they hiding? All the women in this novel have supporting roles, to the men. It is a story of men overcoming, men succeeding, men holding the power and promise. All a little one sided.
His thirty-third novel from fifty listed publications. Keneally is a graphophile, a compulsive writer. He loves to write, he can’t help himself. Fine, there are good precedents, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates come immediately to mind, going back we have Trollope and Dickens; quality doesn’t need be sacrificed. I have read a good number of Updike and Oates and while not all of what I have read is consistently excellent, I think it’s fair to say that each novel shows a full commitment, to whatever project. You have to doubt you can do it, despite your skills, despite your record, your prizes, it’s possibly beyond you, they’re all unique challenges, and so you put everything you have into it yet again. Keneally is coasting with this novel, leaning back on his formidable skills. But more than these were required to make this novel work in all its parts. Worth reading? Certainly. But if you have limited time, go back to the earlier works.
Before I offer my short critique of this novel, I’d like to have a rant. On p109 we meet eye doctor Ted Castwell, stand in for Fred Hollows, who has a passion for John Keats ‘whose poems he could recite in couplets in his aggressive proletarian accent’. It’s just as well Ted’s not around on p42 to see a famous phrase ‘half in love with easeful death’ from one of Keats’ most famous poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ ascribed to Shelley! But worse, in a way, to follow, for an Australian reader anyway (amongst which we can assume Keneally). On p59 one of Judith Wright’s most famous poems ‘Woman to Man’ is misquoted: from the opening line ‘eyeless labourer in the dark’ should be ‘eyeless labourer in the night’. I know it doesn’t impact on the novel, but it’s a bit damn depressing that one of our most distinguished authors and his star editors and who knows who else can miss/write such basic literary errors. These are our gate-keepers. OK, I’ll move on.
Prior to reading ‘two old men dying’ I saw two praising reviews of it in the Australian press. After finishing it, I think the critics here are giving the grand old man of Oz Lit a bit of an easy ride. Overall the writing quality is variable, good and not-so-good, and it probably wouldn’t be worth commenting on except that Keneally in the past has produced such outstanding work. Such as ‘The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith’, which in a different context covers many of the issues raised in this novel. Keneally has slighted ‘Blacksmith’ (due to the strictures of identity politics), yet to this reader it is superior in every way to this novel.
Keneally has set himself a formidable challenge here, particularly in the re-creation of ‘Learned Man’. The main story, that of Shelby Apple, chancer and charmer filming in various exotic locales, is well within his veteran professional skills. He states in his Author’s Note that ‘though some of them (the characters) were instigated by real people, the novel is not a roman a clef’. Well it seems close to one, all the major figures have doubles, even the brief sketch of Castwell’s wife describes Gabbi Hollows. Not that I think it matters. Keneally has regularly fictionalized historical figures, and I have always felt, reading the novels, that he has tried to do justice to the record, or at the very least successfully re-worked the material into convincing fictional form. So, for example, the ‘controversy’ over whether Booker-winning ‘Schindler’s Ark’ was history or fiction seemed misplaced at the time, particularly given the achievement of the writing.
So too here: Keneally does not satirise or defame but rather honours the real life great old men. If he twists their lives into his own story, he can reasonably argue it is for a higher purpose. Of course, it might also seem to some readers, given the extent of the ‘borrowing’, a little slack creatively. Regarding which, it should be noted the Vietnam episode is reminiscent of a similar scene in Chis Koch’s ‘Highways to a War’ (also ghosting Neil Davis).
No slackness is possible in Keneally’s recreation of the life and times of ancient Learned Man. He takes a few cues from Aboriginal cultural mores, but basically has to invent from scratch. The high poetic type of reconstruction he essays is very difficult to pull off, and Keneally, not a poet to my knowledge, does not seem to have the skill set for it (for a superb example see Alex Miller’s massacre description in ‘Landscape of Farewell’). Perhaps the length is partly to blame. There is the occasional noble phrase but for the most part this story stream reads like selections from an antipodean Disney Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ or a Disney Bible for unlettered pagans. Mostly I cringed reading it, plus the accompanying Aboriginal political suck-up: ‘Learned Man went out in the world to let whites learn something very big’, or ‘modern descendants of Learned Man deserved to be treated with national respect as the true owners of Australia’, and so on. We are also forced fed much supernatural goings on. Does Keneally really believe this stuff might have happened? Has he swallowed that old chestnut about primitive peoples possessing magic powers we moderns have lost through being rational and civilized? Anyway, compared to the gravity of Shelby’s story, despite the ingenuity, most of Learned’s tale comes across as cartoonish.
And what about the wise old women? Where are they hiding? All the women in this novel have supporting roles, to the men. It is a story of men overcoming, men succeeding, men holding the power and promise. All a little one sided.
His thirty-third novel from fifty listed publications. Keneally is a graphophile, a compulsive writer. He loves to write, he can’t help himself. Fine, there are good precedents, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates come immediately to mind, going back we have Trollope and Dickens; quality doesn’t need be sacrificed. I have read a good number of Updike and Oates and while not all of what I have read is consistently excellent, I think it’s fair to say that each novel shows a full commitment, to whatever project. You have to doubt you can do it, despite your skills, despite your record, your prizes, it’s possibly beyond you, they’re all unique challenges, and so you put everything you have into it yet again. Keneally is coasting with this novel, leaning back on his formidable skills. But more than these were required to make this novel work in all its parts. Worth reading? Certainly. But if you have limited time, go back to the earlier works.
February 9, 2019
This felt a bit self-indulgent. The writing and language was a bit pompous, which I felt made it difficult to get into and through. I also felt like it often read like non-fiction, and that if I'm going to read something non-fictiony I would rather be learning about the history of an actual culture, written by an own voices author.
Late in the book I did like the ways that threads started to link the stories.
This wasn't terrible overall, but one for TK fans, and I'm not sure I'd pick up any of his other work based on this
Late in the book I did like the ways that threads started to link the stories.
This wasn't terrible overall, but one for TK fans, and I'm not sure I'd pick up any of his other work based on this
February 10, 2022
An unusual book of blatant appropriation. I think only someone of TK’s standing ( age, whiteness, maleness, no. Of books published) could have gotten this book through an editorial gate. The two stories were not well intertwined, perhaps should have been two novels but the intertwining gave the author the excuse to create a fantasy world of an aboriginal family that lived 40000 years ago without the authority of the cultural story holders. The story told by the present day white man was equally riddled with appropriation. Did the author get permission to tell Fred Hollows’s story with just a flimsy name change? The most startling thing for me was the revelations of the older male gaze. The women in the book were either enablers or objects of desire and had no real voice. If this is typical it explains a lot
August 12, 2019
Great author, awesome topic for a book, great structure. Sadly, poorly executed.
I was excited to start this book. Two parallel stories of old men dying while reflecting on their long lives. One is an 80 year old filmmaker and one is an early homo sapiens living 42,000 years ago in Australia. So much promise, so much potential, yet it failed to deliver. Tom Keneally insists that it is not biographical, that the characters are fiction and yet they are clearly not. Then he tries to cram too many things into a short book. I only finished it because it was the only book I took on a 24 hour flight.
I was excited to start this book. Two parallel stories of old men dying while reflecting on their long lives. One is an 80 year old filmmaker and one is an early homo sapiens living 42,000 years ago in Australia. So much promise, so much potential, yet it failed to deliver. Tom Keneally insists that it is not biographical, that the characters are fiction and yet they are clearly not. Then he tries to cram too many things into a short book. I only finished it because it was the only book I took on a 24 hour flight.
January 5, 2021
What an incredibly compelling novel. I applaud the ability of the author to write two parallel stories in completely different writing styles. It’s a fascinating story based on fact about the 42000 year old Mungo Man remains found a few decades ago by a well known anthropologist. The main protagonists are a well known cameraman and documentary maker and the other an early Homo sapiens living in Australia 42,000 years ago. The stories merge at the end, making sense of why the story is told in parallel form. I really enjoyed this book. I learnt a lot and in particular the ways that Aboriginals think and act. I would recommend this book.
September 22, 2019
The narrative of Learned Man has an almost luminous clarity & brilliance.That of Shelby Apple has all the turgid dross that characterises Keneally's worst writing. The link between the 2 is tenuous at best.
November 29, 2018
A very special book
January 20, 2019
I have enjoyed every other Tom Keneally book I have read, but I really struggled with this one. Unlike his usual novels, this one isn't character driven and I didn't warm to any of his characters.
February 7, 2019
A complex read. Also at times a difficult read. Brimful of ideas and maybe should have been two separate books?
May 13, 2019
This was a struggle to read from start to finish. The story didn’t do it for me and the characters were not engaging.
June 23, 2021
A dream-like imagining of the lives of Indigenous Australians of 42000 years ago.
January 29, 2022
Couldn't get into it at all. Gave it a few goes, might come back at a later date.
April 19, 2025
Found the Shelby Eritrea story interesting. Shelby was horrible and the Indigenous story woeful.
January 13, 2021
Not an easy read to start, but on the whole, very thought provoking and rewarding.
The story is told from 2 perspectives, 40,000 years apart.
Through Learned Man, whose remains were found at Lake Learned, the author tells an imagined narrative that includes many cultural and religious beliefs of the indigenous people of the time, including their laws and punishments, family life and rituals.
The contemporary story follows documentary maker, Shelby Apple, who tries to highlight injustices in the world including indigenous peoples of the Arctic region, the consequences of war in Vietnam, and the poverty in countries such as Eritrea. He befriends the professor who discovered Learned Man and who now wishes his remains to be returned from display to his ancestral grounds.
There are obvious links to Mungo Man and Fred Hollows for the reader to find.
The story is told from 2 perspectives, 40,000 years apart.
Through Learned Man, whose remains were found at Lake Learned, the author tells an imagined narrative that includes many cultural and religious beliefs of the indigenous people of the time, including their laws and punishments, family life and rituals.
The contemporary story follows documentary maker, Shelby Apple, who tries to highlight injustices in the world including indigenous peoples of the Arctic region, the consequences of war in Vietnam, and the poverty in countries such as Eritrea. He befriends the professor who discovered Learned Man and who now wishes his remains to be returned from display to his ancestral grounds.
There are obvious links to Mungo Man and Fred Hollows for the reader to find.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews