AustLit

Such is Life: Being Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins. Joseph Furphy's title gives an indication of the complexity of the narrative that will unravel before a persistent reader. In chapter one, the narrator, Tom Collins, joins a group of bullockies to camp for the night a few miles from Runnymede Station. Their conversations reveal many of the issues that arise throughout the rest of the novel: the ownership of, or control of access to, pasture; ideas of providence, fate and superstition; and a concern for federation that flows into descriptions of the coming Australian in later chapters. Each of the characters provides a portrait of bush types that Furphy uses to measure the qualities of squatters and others against popular ideas of the 'gentleman'. Furphy's choice of a narrative structure to create a 'loosely federated' series of yarns is itself a critique of popular narratives populated by stock characters who are driven by action that leads to predictable and uncomplicated conclusions. Tom Collins, the unreliable narrator, adds further complications by claiming to 'read men like signboards' while all the time being unknowingly contradicted by circumstances that become obvious to the reader.

In each subsequent chapter Tom Collins leads the reader through a series of experiences chosen from his diaries. In chapter two, Collins meets the boundary rider Rory O'Halloran and his daughter, Mary, a symbol of the coming Australian whose devotion to her father will have tragic consequences in chapter five. There are many links between chapters like this one that remain invisible to Collins, despite his attempts to understand the 'controlling alternatives' that affect our lives. In chapter three Tom loses his clothes crossing the Murray River and spends the night wandering naked until he is able to steal a pair of pants after diverting attention by setting fire to a haystack. In chapter four Collins helps an ailing Warrigal Alf by deceiving several boundary riders who have impounded Alf's bullocks. In chapter five, among other yarns of lost children, Thompson completes the tragic tale of Mary O'Halloran, connecting with the events of chapter two. Chapters six and seven take Tom Collins back to Runnymede Station where he attempts to avoid an unwelcome union with Maud Beaudesart. He also meets the disfigured boundary rider, Nosey Alf, whose life story Furphy has threaded throughout the narrative, signs not perceived by Tom Collins. When Collins returns to Runnymede at the end of the novel, Furphy ties up more loose narrative threads, but Tom Collins, the narrator, remains oblivious to the end.

In short, Such Is Life 'reflects the preoccupations of [the 1890s]: contemporary capitalism, ardent Australian nationalism, the difficulties of pioneering pastoralism, and speculation about a future Australian civilization. It was instantly seen as a major example of the "radical nationalism" of the time and praised for its realistic representation of life on the frontier in the 1880s. But it was forty years before many readers realized that the novel was also a subtle comment on fiction itself and that within it were hidden stories that revealed a world of "romance" within its "realist" representation of life. Such Is Life can be read as the first experimental novel in Australian literature and the first Australian literary expression of a twentieth-century sensibility of the provisionality of life and reality.' (Julian Croft, 'Joseph Furphy.' in Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 230.)

Rigby's Romance is a revised and expanded version of the original chapter five in the Such is Life typescript (1898).

The narrator, Tom Collins, is on his way from Echuca to Yooringa to fulfil a contract to clear a Riverina run of cattle. Hoping to meet his old friend, Jefferson Rigby, Collins is surprised by an encounter with Rigby's former sweetheart, Kate Vanderdecken, who has come to Australia in search of Rigby. Collins arranges an introduction before heading to the banks of the Murray River to fish for a thirty-pound cod he has heard is in the area. He is joined by the bullockies Steve Thompson and Robert Dixon, characters from Such is Life, and several others: a kangaroo-hunter named Smith; a trapper named Furlong; a farmer named Binney and his brother-in-law, the Methodist minister Harold Lushington; and, eventually, Rigby himself. Like The Buln-buln and the Brolga, Rigby's Romance involves a series of yarns told in different styles about politics, ethics, religion and law. All hinge in some way on failed love affairs, but, as is his way, Rigby's love story about a local German publican soon evolves into a long sermon on Christian socialism, and he forgets about the appointment he has made with Kate Vanderdecken.

Furphy expressed a preference for Rigby's Romance later in life. Like The Buln-buln and the Brolga, it can be read as an independent work. In revision, Furphy changed the narrative in significant ways, particularly in his expansion of Rigby's sermons on state socialism. In other cases, he probably transferred text from the original chapter two to fill in details at the beginning of the novel. And so, despite its independence as a work, Rigby's Romance retains many cross-references to the larger original work, most notably the presence of Tom Collins as an unreliable narrator.

The Buln-buln and the Brolga is a long story that is a revised and expanded version of the second chapter of the original Such is Life. The action takes place in the township of Echuca where the narrator, Tom Collins, is waiting to meet a representative of the firm for which he works. While waiting for his associate to arrive, Collins meets a childhood friend, Fred Falkland-Pritchard, the titular buln-buln or lyrebird, so-called because of his reputation for lying. Tom also meets Barefooted Bob, the titular brolga. The three spend an evening together with Fred's wife, and the two swap yarns. Fred's yarns get taller and taller, but Bob accepts them as the truth, as Fred's wife has done throughout their marriage. Bob tells stories of violent encounters with Aboriginal people on the frontier, delivered with a bluntness that intrigues Mrs Falkland-Pritchard. The story can stand on its own as a study of an individual's perception of reality, specifically the fiction of reality or the reality of fiction. But it retains intriguing links to its original version in the typescript, made even more so by Furphy's methods of transferring sections of text during revision.