21st Century Literature discussion
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Border Districts
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Border Districts - Background and General (No Spoilers) (June 2019)
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I'll be here and have read Murnane before, with Tamarisk Row being my last book.
I read it last week and will join the discussion. It's the first and only book I've read by Murnane so far.
Mod
I just ontained a copy and will be reading it too.
I noticed some have not read much Murnane in the past, and I think it might benefit you to get a sense of the author and his work. If any of you are able I suggest reading the author's foreword to the Giramondo reprint edition of a Tamarisk Row and perhaps the first 10 pages of the novel, especially the chapter, Clement builds a racecourse. If you use electronic devices the above would be available in a preview.Tamarisk Row was the author's first novel from 1974 and the pages I mention discuss things that are revisited in Border Districts.
I also suggest reading this interview from 2015. The author is a bit contentious and arrogant in the interview, but I think it gives a sense of the author, his intelligence, and his attention to exactness.
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/eight...
Thanks for the link to the interview. It was enlightening. As you said, he does come across as being a little contentious and arrogant, but I don't have a problem with that because I think the guy is brilliant and fascinating and meticulous in his craftsmanship.
The only book of his I've read is Border Districts: A Fiction, and that just blew me away! I'm still gushing :)
I have my copy, meant to just take a peek, and straight away found it hard to put down. I plan to read it slowly over the next few weeks.This is my first Murnane. I'd actually never heard of him before this book came up. I'm looking forward to all the links above--thanks!
Mod
It startled me to see Murnane's name listed among on list of contenders for a Nobel in Literature. I am still figuring out what is considered to make his voice uniquely powerful. So far, I am intrigued by these words: "I cannot recall having believed, even as a child, that the purpose of reading fiction was to learn about the place commonly called the real world. I seem to have sensed from the first that to read fiction was to make available for myself a new kind of space. In that space, a version of myself was free to move among places and personages the distinguishing features of which were the feelings they caused to arise in me...."
Given that I usually test on the "thinking" side rather than the "feeling" side of personality tests, it will be curious to me if Murnane's writing opens me to greater awareness to feelings initiated by words, material objects, experiences... I perhaps have gotten a bit of that in the opening passages about light and colored glass -- perhaps because they evoke a window that I relished as a child, in the stairway of my grandmother's home .
I'm here and this is my first Murnane. I think I will be appreciative of insight provided by those who have read Tamarisk Row.
Mod
I read Border Districts in July last year, and although I enjoyed it, I did have some reservations. The only other book by Murnane that I had read before was A Million Windows and the two felt very similar - I wrote at the time it was as if the author had popped outside for a cigarette and then come back and carried on with the same monologue.One thing that I would say is that the memory of these books has stayed with me, they are different to so many others. The style and the insular feel is very unique. Murnane does not want to travel widely, instead being quite content to live his life vicariously through the lives and books of others.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...A review of Tamarisk Row and Border Districts by John Self earlier this year which is the reason I purchased the And Other Stories editions of these two books. I suspect I will like Tamarisk Row as I tend to enjoy books recalling Catholic education by now-atheist narrators.
Ang wrote: "https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...A review of Tamarisk Row and Border Districts by John Self earlier this year which is the ..."
I will be interested in your thoughts once you have read Tamarisk Row, Ang. I view them as bookends to a writing career.
"In the end his books aren’t really about the characters they describe, but about the mind behind those characters: the singular, fascinating consciousness that gives them life."From the Guardian review -- adds credence to the autobio nature of Murnane's writing?
The Monthly Review is lovely. Excerpts with a comment or two:"Gerald Murnane is Australia’s most distinguished unread writer. His writing, clean and sure, gleams like a stately river moving towards its estuary; it’s unread because, like that river, he meanders and coils back into himself so severely that following it can be a test of patience. But patience is a virtue that is rewarded. {Not all readers agree on that 'rewarded' bit!}
"This is Murnane’s 13th book and its subject is the same as that of the other 12: a variation on what it is like to be this man, fastidiously conscious of his ongoing experience. His references are the lodestones of his private mythology: horseracing, racing colours, the grasslands, the colour of a woman’s hair, the way the light refracts through coloured glass, books he once thought interesting. He is always deliberate, never histrionic; the descriptive words “mild” and “pale” often occur.
"This narrator, steadfast in his determination to write only what can be explained in the language he knows, is unnamed. He suggests this is a work of imaginative fiction, but the facts of Murnane’s life coincide with those of the narrator’s. These facts encourage reveries about a parallel existence, fanciful conjectures of what his life might have been in another time, in another house, or perhaps if he were a woman. His mind teems with half-glimpsed but retained images that fasten time in an eternity that is happening now. {Do I buy that, or is this critic being imaginative?}
"This method of capturing experience, life itself, allows him to move in it as if it were space. {Hmmm? Borders? Districts?} He mentions another writer in another continent at another time as “a man with translucent panes for eyes”. The same might apply to Murnane, although he sees things obliquely, following the shimmer at the corner of vision rather than the straightforward image."
Lily wrote: "The Monthly Review is lovely. Excerpts with a comment or two:"Gerald Murnane is Australia’s most distinguished unread writer. His writing, clean and sure, gleams like a stately river moving towar..."
Nice excerpts, Lily. Thank you.
Lovely descriptions of Murnane's writing.
Lily wrote: "The Monthly Review is lovely. Excerpts with a comment or two: ..."I really appreciate you pulling out these excerpts, Lily. They help me clarify why I enjoyed some things about his style, but had difficulty with his tone:
"...what it is like to be this man, fastidiously conscious of his ongoing experience." Maybe a little too fastidiously conscious for me.
Also this, "He is always deliberate, never histrionic; the descriptive words “mild” and “pale” often occur." I think this should have been a red flag for me. I prefer some histrionics now and again!
Kathleen wrote: "Lily wrote: "The Monthly Review is lovely. Excerpts with a comment or two: ..."I really appreciate you pulling out these excerpts, Lily. They help me clarify why I enjoyed some things about his s..."
Thanks, Kathleen. I would like to get through all of them, but will probably only manage one every day or so for awhile. (My f2f club meets Saturday and deserves some similar work -- Where the Crawdads Sing !?) I tried to get to the Paris Review one, but didn't succeed, even with the help of our library resources. I don't know if trying more is worth it, 'cause it may just be an excerpt from the novel itself. I didn't get "close enough" to be certain. New Statesman also has an excellent article, but haven't found a direct link to it yet -- haven't really tried, found it through a "literary resource." The date, name, author are: February 7, 2019, "Landscapes of the Mind," by Chris Power.
Gleanings from Jamie Fisher's review in the Washington Post: "Throughout his career, Murnane, Australia’s stealthiest Nobel candidate, has drawn parallels to J.M. Coetzee for his emphasis on the artificiality of fiction and for his mythical geography that reduces countries to allegories and characters to archetypes. 'Border Districts' lives resolutely in the narrator’s own head. Like Marilynne Robinson’s 'Gilead,' it is a philosophical proposition as much as a work of fiction — and often an act of devotion.
"In 'Border Districts,' Murnane reminds us, reworking Kafka, that 'a person might learn all that’s needed for salvation without leaving his or her own room.' {Sounds like Whitman or even Dickinson.} The narrator reads his own memories as deeply as a monk studies scripture in his cell and imprints his inner life on the world around him. Space has rarely been so tenderly observed or so irrelevant.
"Early in the novel ... the narrator describes how the men of Cromwell’s England smashed the colored glass from each cathedral they passed. As a boy, he would have seen this act as a triumph of unvarnished reality over vanity. In later life, he is not so sure. 'A part of my seeing,' he surmises, is 'my investing the glass with qualities not inherent in it . . . a refraction of my own essence, perhaps.' Murnane’s mischievous suggestion is there is no point in trying to see the world as it is. Your own mind sanctifies and stains the glass."
sanctify -- cleanse from moral corruption and pollution; to impart or impute sacredness, inviolability, title to reverence, venerability, or respect to (From M-W online subscription)
(Not certain have correct author link for Jamie Fisher....)
21st Century Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
Where the Crawdads Sing (other topics)A Million Windows (other topics)
Border Districts (other topics)
Tamarisk Row (other topics)
Tamarisk Row (other topics)
This thread is for general and background discussion, so please do not discuss the contents of the book in detail - I will start a separate spoiler discussion tomorrow. At this stage it would be useful to know who will be participating in the discussion, and it would be interesting to know whether any of you have read Murnane before.
Reviews (these may contain spoilers):
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
https://www.theparisreview.org/fictio...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/02/t...
https://www.ft.com/content/1ac6a6a6-2...
https://www.newstatesman.com/Gerald-m...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/re...