Patrick White Books

This is a collection of short novels and stories by the 1973 Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Most of the stories analyse in thorough detail the same themes, studying with ruthless detachment the behaviour and thoughts of ageing couples who have drifted apart as incomprehensibly as they originally came together or irrational eruptions of violence or senseless rebellion against the superficial orderliness of mediocre lives.

Three of the stories stand out from the collection: "A Woman's Hand", "The Night the Prowler" and the story which gives the collection its name ""The Cockatoos".

In "A Woman's Hand" an elderly couple meet an old bachelor friend of the husband. Even though she is appalled at the shabby life the friend, a retired sailor lives, and even though she does not particularly care for him or for her husband's friendship for him (and in fact rather dislikes the ex-sailor), she decides to intervene in his life by throwing him together with a spinster friend of hers, who used to be an uncomplaining lady's companion. Rather unexpectedly, the bachelor and the spinster, decide to marry, for companionship in their old age, only to drive each other to madness. Two stories are brilliantly intertwined by the author. The first couples' life unfolds in White's characteristic detailed fashion in front of our eyes and constitutes an elegantly written winding down of a rather uneventful life. The second story unfolds in fits and starts, from snippets of news, conversations or observations and is the slow unravelling of the the second couple, which leads to the spinster's commitment to a mental institution and in the bachelor's probable suicide. The title is grimly ironic, since the wife's excuse for meddling in the bachelor's life is that she feels his life and home lacks a woman's hand.

"The Night the Prowler" particularly remind me of some of Graham Greene's short stories from the 1930s and 1940s but also pre shadow some of White's better known novels like "Riders in the Chariot". A sexual molester breaks into a solid, middle class home and apparently rapes a young woman. Her life falls apart, her parents are bewildered by the changes she carries out in her own life and in the end never ever really try to understand or reach out to her. However, as the story unfolds, we learn that though a man did break into her bedroom, she reversed their position, terrified the rather pathetic would-be molester and starts a double life in which she prowls her middle class neighbourhood at nights, breaks into other homes and vandalizes them in cold rage.

"The Cockatoos" again explores the relationship between an ageing couple in a small, drab, nondescript outback town, who have given up speaking to each other. As with many small towns in the literature, the story of the couple cannot be told without involving some of their neighbours: the woman with whom he has a rather long-standing and passionless affair, the woman's irritable neighbour, a gossipy would be do-gooder, his wife and their outsider son. A mob of white cockatoos inexplicably descends on the town and we are carried along with them as they visitate the characters of the story, touching and changing their lives. The mob is a brilliant literary device and Patrick White makes it work to perfection, carefully blending observation, points of view and staying away from heavy handed symbolism
which would have ruined the whole delicate effect. The couple starts reaching out, and there is a hint of locked doors being slowly unlocked, of light dawning and hearts blossoming, or perhaps more accurately budding, recovering a measured sense of wonder, a creaking, halting reconciliatory motion, a growing sense of potential for sharing and of falling away from everyday mediocrity. At this point, the whole delicate structure which has been painstaking built up is, it most be said, brilliantly smashed, as the irritable neighbour slides into madness and starts shooting at some of the cockatoos to stop them from eating his magnolia blossoms, only to end up shooting the husband who has rushed out of his lover's house. The rest of the story is anticlimactic, and though it hints that some fragile common bond has somewhat diffidently touched the widow and the lover, it also shows that the senseless violence which erupted from the irritable neighbour has also taken seed in the outsider son and will continue its destructive path.

White is a brilliant craftsman and his prose carries you along effortlessly. I have always considered that Patrick's White most fatal flaw in his writing is his lack of closure: his endings do not end, they simply peter out. Even in his short stories, White is a novelist, his stories are rarely surprising in their development, let alone their dénouement, and in this sense bear little resemblance to such master storytellers such as Graham Greene or the undeservedly lesser known V.S. Pritchett. White simply and slowly overwhelms you with a sense of inevitability for which there is no neat ending; perhaps it can be said that White does not bother to end his stories: he simply decides when the reader can continue the story on his own.

I read 2 negative reader reviews of this book on the day I bought it and thought I had thrown my money down the drain. Luckily we all come at books from a different perspective and I am very pleased I stumbled on this 677 page volume of letters written from 1919 to 1990. Reading this is like sitting in someones living room unseen and hearing all from the everyday to the important being discussed. It gives us a strong human connection to this hugely talented, crotchety, driven, private, argumentative man of strong opinions and unpredictably diverse views of the world. Rather than writing him off as a typical Australian as previous reviewers have, I found his letters fascinating, surprising, and a damn good read and his life and thought are very un-typical of Australians of his era in my view. The fact that my house is in walking distance of Dogwoods made their Castle Hill life doubly pertinent to me but in any event I would have enjoyed the book immensely. White's comment about wishing to spend his time on his acreage at Dogwoods rather than 'watching a landscape slowly destroyed by a race whose most pronounced gift is that of creating ugliness' was prescient, a McDonalds now stands nearby opposite a shopping centre carpark. Certainly worth a read.

What an awful life! As an Australian this dreadful, wizened old cockroach of a man makes me ashamed. Nothing but boring twisted hatred and ingratitude. Why publish such a book at all?

patrick white is one of the 20th century's finest novelists - his thick tome of letters compiled by david marr was given to me by someone who knew of patrick white only as a writer from my country- I was living in TX at the time feeling acute homesickness of which, upon reading the book, was immediately cured by page 2 when the reasons why I left australia in the first place came vividly galloping towards me with a loud yawn. The scratchy nib of discontentment mark 400 pages of this old sod's rather boring snippy life with his companion manoly. His mandarin mouthed mug scowling at u courtesy of the brush strokes of Brett on the cover really tell u the whole sad story .. dinner parties, gossip, gardening, writing, gossip, travelling, bitching, writing etc go on and on -- most telling aspect is that patrick wanted all his correspondence destroyed after being read - obviously not enough of his friends took him seriously - so why should we ...

Quite possibly the worst book I have ever read. The characters are annoying and bland and the writing itself is superfluous and confusing. I felt that I had to force myself to finish it and then was angry that I didnt put it down halfway through. This book has nothing to say and is annoyingly terrible.

When I started reading this book, I got lost quickly. I just couldn't follow the story line. I had the choice of putting it away, going back to the beginning, or keep reading. I did the latter. There have been times I've done that with books that lost me early on. Some came back to life rather quickly. However, "Memoirs of Many in One" never did come around. There were moments when it seemed like I was coming out of a coma and actually followed the narative for several pages. Soon enough the book lapsed back into a confusing chaotic mish mash of I don't know what. The story intends to be the memoirs of an eccentric woman. It reads like an erotic aristocratic acid trip. I suspect that someone else may come away with the opinion that this is a briliant attempt to recreate the thought process of a deranged individual. If so, they will have probably invested a lot more time in this book than I felt it was worth to me.

Patrick White is a Nobel Prize-winning author which is why I tried to read this book in the first place. I read up on the purpose of the award and I came away thinking that the Academy wanted to award someone from Australia. (No offense to the many talented artists in Australia but does this mean Antarctica's next?). I have read a novel of his; "A Fringe of Leaves", a collection of short stories; "The Cockatoos" and now a novella; "Memoirs of Many in One". I have two other works of his yet to read; "Voss" and "Riders in the Chariot". Both are more highly rated than the aforementioned works. Both are lengthy novels. Based on my introduction, it will be a monsoon if I ever get around to reading either of them.

It is difficult to overstate our disappointment with this book. As outstanding as "White Water Massif Central" by Peter Knowles is..."White Water Pyrenees" is not. My wife and I have IK'd over 1000 miles,
canoe camping class II-III French rivers and found WWMC an invaluable guide.
IGN map #905 "France Canoe-Kayak et Sports d'Eau Vive" shows hundreds of miles of seeming suitable Canoe camping rivers in the Pyrenees but absolutely none of these river miles are included in "White Water Pyrenees". This book presents very limited information on higher level runs on remote tributaries but no information on runs that might be suitable for canoe/kayak touring. The book's forward describes itself as "deliberately brief...to leave you the buzz of discovery". A guide book designed not to guide...hmmm quite a concept.
My wife and I posponed making our airline reservations and other trip planning for over six weeks...waiting for WWP, what a waste of time.
The only thing WWP has in common with WWMC is the cover and photos...otherise we found White Water Pyrenees basically empty of any useful trip planning information.