A collapsing tent of narrative

I occasionally still deliver a lecture I first gave in 1966 though with appropriate variations. One version was published in Quadrant, March-April 1974. There I describe our long tradition of documentary writing or, as H. M. Green called it, “applied writing”.

One of my arguments that I expanded in a series of unpublished lectures was, and is, that from the earliest white settlement to now, writers in this country, and indeed in America and other new world colonies, devoted, and still devote, time and skills to describing matters that older cultures and places take more for granted. I think this tradition delayed the writing of good novels in Australia and also accounts for certain early Australian novels, and indeed novels as late as the 1930s, being over-weighted with descriptions and explanation. It takes time for the generality of authors to find voices to express inner scenery in an external fashion.