AustLit

The novels and collections of fiction that represent Gerald Murnane’s first major period of writing and publishing (1974-95) portray Murnane-like personages and narrators. Clement Killeaton’s boyhood in Tamarisk Row (1974) mirrors Murnane’s experiences in Bendigo as a child; Adrian Shard’s inner life in A Lifetime on Clouds (1976) approximates Murnane’s adolescent awkwardness and obsessive fantasies; the partial Künstlerromane of several Murnane-like writers in Landscape with Landscape (1985) are drawn from their author’s experiences in his late teens, then as a bachelor in his twenties and as a husband and father; Inland (1988) draws from his epiphanic discovery of Hungarian writer Gyula Illyés’ Puszták népe (People of the Puszta) – a book that had a deep and strange impact on Murnane, stimulating a literal and literary haunting – combined with childhood experiences (and, perhaps, a curious but chaste relationship with his female editor at Heinemann);2 and the stories in Velvet Waters (1990) and Emerald Blue (1995) appear to be increasingly personal and revealing, despite the distancing devices that Murnane employs, which serve to deter readerly presumptuousness. Murnane has teased readers with a series of enduring images and motifs (two-storey buildings, blue and gold coloured reflections, flat grasslands, horseraces, nesting areas, etc.) and this tendency has only intensified since the later phase of his writing career began, with the publication of Barley Patch in 2009.' (Introduction)