White's second novel, The Living and the Dead is set in a grim, mournful, expectant London, waiting for WWII to properly commence. Its three central characters are a mother and her two adult children, each of whom faces disappointment, self-reflection, and more disappointment.

White was around 27 when he started the novel, and he spent the first two years of WWII working on the project, zipping between London (where he was struggling to find success) and New York (where he was critically acclaimed early on, and where he was closer to the man he had fallen in love with during this youthful period). Ultimately, surely to his surprise, White would end up - after the war - back in Australia, and in a relationship with a man very different to those he had met thus far. Perhaps then it seems fair to say that this novel is a different path to those with which White would have his great successes. I don't think it entirely works, but I think it may be a necessary step in his growth.

Funnily enough, this is less successful than his first - Happy Valley - even though that felt like a student writer aping his idols. However that may not be surprising. There, White could emulate much of what made his idols great. Here, he is still clearly inspired by Eliot and Joyce and others, but he is trying to find his own voice. It is more of an ambitious project in a sense, and that is the sense in which it fails. London never fully comes into view; White feels at something of a remove from most of his characters; and even his closest stand-in - the sensitive and clearly homosexual Elyot - is hazy, in no small part because White isn't able to confirm or expand upon the character's sexuality at all, even as he fails in his numerous heterosexual relationships. It all feels rather opaque, and not entirely deliberately. As critics have remarked frequently, it's a joy that his next novel was The Aunt's Story, beginning a run of masterpieces that would lead to White being named the first (and thus far, only) Australian Nobel Laureate for Literature.

So, in conclusion: this is a bit of an oddball member of the White canon, but an interesting portrait into his young literary mindset, if nothing else. ( )

Patrick White’s sombre-toned second novel, published in 1941, chronicles the unfulfilled lives of Catherine Standish and her children Eden and Elyot. Written during the 1930s when the author was in his twenties, The Living and the Dead is a novel of impressive historical scope and acute psychological discernment. In this story, set in London, Catherine first enters our sights in the early years of the century as a flighty young woman named Kitty Goose who is seeking to rise up in the world. To this end she marries Willy Standish and has two children with him. But Willy—weak, irresponsible, easily led astray—indulges in affairs and loses money through rash investments, and the two separate. In the latter half of the novel, the author explores his characters’ inner lives. Following WWI, Catherine, bearing her reduced circumstances with a stiff upper lip, is left on her own to raise her children, though she does retain her housekeeper, Julia Fallon. Eden grows up impulsive and quick-tempered, while Elyot is brainy, diffident, and aloof. Both reach adulthood aimless and unmoored: rather than actively choose directions for themselves, each seems content to drift along a path of least resistance. Though years have passed, mother, son and daughter remain together under the same roof. But they live very separate lives. Among the three members of the Standish family there are few disclosures and little emotional support. Eden, outgoing and curious about life and love, finds work as a clerk in a bookstore. Elyot, retreating into a world of pure intellect, becomes a writer and critic. Catherine, pragmatic, self-absorbed, obsessed with keeping up appearances, embarks on an affair with a man some years her junior, an American musician named Wally Collins. The relationship takes her out of her comfort zone, into nightclubs and seedy bars. But Wally has lots of women, and when he tires of Catherine, he treats her with contempt. Eden, whose sympathies have been sparked by the civil war in Spain, after being spurned by a businessman who got her pregnant, falls in love with Joe Barnett, a carpenter. Elyot writes his books and spends a great deal of time agonizing over his feelings toward other people and wondering what they expect of him. When a childhood friend, Connie Tiarks, reappears in their lives and makes plain her attraction to him, Elyot, horrified, rejects her. Instead, he falls into a relationship with Muriel Raphael, a frivolous socialite with artistic pretensions, but this liaison fizzles before any physical expressions of warmth or love take place. By this time Elyot’s emotional paralysis has assumed its place squarely at the novel’s core. In two scenes where he finds himself alone with Joe Barnett, he seems about to emerge somewhat from his shell, but social constraints, his own reticent nature, and the risk of humiliation prevent any expression of admiration or fellowship. Life goes on. Joe, spurred to act on his leftist sympathies, leaves England to fight in the Spanish Civil War, where he is killed. Catherine’s health declines. Eden, lonely and disillusioned but resolute, casts aside family obligations and follows her dead lover to Spain.

The Living and the Dead is not an easy novel. White’s prose, filled with fractured, disorienting constructions, is ceaselessly probing, occasionally opaque, and buzzing with detail. The narrative perspective shifts without warning from one scene to the next and sometimes within a single scene. White occasionally dabbles with stream-of-consciousness, which allows him to evoke his characters’ psychological states vividly and poignantly, but which can also leave the reader scratching his head. A bracingly original novel, The Living and the Dead comes across as experimental, the work of a prodigiously talented and ambitious young writer flexing his muscles and trying various narrative strategies on for size. It is probably not Patrick White’s most satisfying or wholly realized work of fiction, but as an early work by a Nobel winner whose novels and stories remain as exhilarating as they were the day they were published, it is well worth seeking out. ( )

As usual quite dark and great character building. There's jazz, sex, abortion, gin and civil war. A highly underrated White book. My favourite line appears at the end of the novel: "then we are here, we have slept, but we have really got here at last." ( )

“The drabbest dreariest thing ever written” was Patrick White’s comment on this his second novel published in 1941. He didn’t like it much, but I think there is much to admire. There is already here a fine writer at work, a worthy successor to the innovative modern novelists of the early 20th century. The third year of the second world war was perhaps not the best time to publish such a novel; it received mixed reviews in England, was largely ignored in White’s native Australia and was only generally well reviewed in America..

White’s prose can be dense, sudden shifts in time, changes to points of view and the use of stream of consciousness can make his writing appear difficult and in The Living and the Dead the narrative drive does not really get going until the second part, which is half way through the novel. There is some very fine writing in the first part, but there is also the sense of a young writer flexing his muscles and being a little self conscious.:

“Everything in Germany was too green. There was a hectic feverish tone about the undergrowth, from which you could detach a smell, strange and repellent, of rotting leaves. Passing a cemetery at dusk, the urns wept white draperies”

The novel starts with Elyot Standish seeing off his sister Eden at one of the large London train stations. Characters that will feature later in the novel flash through Elyot’s mind “Elyot wandered in the street homeward in fact, but in a sense directionless, in his own train of thought” and when he gets home he is “Alone, he was not yet alone, uniting as he did the themes of so many other lives.” White has then set up the catalyst for his story and this dramatic departure is the culmination of events leading up to it. We are plunged further back in time to Elyot’s mother Kitty Goose who makes a marriage into a higher strata of society. Willy Standish her husband is a gentleman artist, but he proves to be untrustworthy and when he loses money on the stock exchange; Kitty now Mrs Catherine Standish seeks a way out of her marriage. Elyot and Eden are old enough to be evacuated during the war and Mrs Standish with the help of an admirer the wonderfully named Aubury Silk is able to leave her husband and live in some comfort. White relates the children's lives as evacuees, their friendship with Connie Tiarks and then there is another time shift to Elyot in his late teens. White has predicted a German defeat in the war and Elyot visits Germany where he has his first difficult encounter with a young woman. Another jump in time and Elyot and Eden are living with their mother in a house near Sloane Square in London

The groundwork has been laid and now in part 2 White wrestles with the major themes of his novel: class structure and the paralysis of the wealthy, the failure of love and a general lack of purpose in the years after the war. White introduces some superb new characters; Muriel Raphael a Jewess and owner of an art gallery, Lady Adelaide Blenkinsop a society hostess, Wally Collins a jazz musician and lover of Mrs Standish. Other characters from part one are developed further; Julia Fallon the former nurse and part time servant and Connie Tiarks the sad lumpy childhood friend hopelessly in love with Elyot. It is left to the most vital of the new characters; the carpenter Joe Barnett to state that he believed in “the living as opposed to the dead”. Here we come to the crux of the novel; The Living and the Dead; who are the living and who are the dead? Elyot with his failure to love, his scholarly work and his detachment from those around him is among the dead. Joe who will go off to fight in the Spanish Civil war is among the living, although he ends up dead. Eden it appears can only be among the living when she is with Joe; she wakes up next to Joe in bed and White says of her:

“Oh dear she sighed sleepily, I am impotent, quite impotent, but in love, in love, this has happened, and this, and this, then why not. She drifted in a bell tone that came from seaward. Then there was just the sound of frost.”

There are many brilliant passages of writing, but White truly delivers early in part 2, with his portrayal of one of Lady Blenkinsop’s dinner parties. He skilfully changes the point of view from Lady Blenkinsop to Elyot Standish as the meal progresses. His use of stream of consciousness is masterly in the passage where Elyot thinks of the painting in the drawing room by Poussin: this leads him to think of a meeting with Joe in his workshop and those thoughts are interrupted by snatches of conversation around the dinner table, which become enmeshed in his conversation with Joe. Suddenly his reverie is interrupted by Muriel Raphael sitting next to him who asks him what he finds in a painting by Poussin:

“Elyot closed the door very quickly on the more private personal moments. Even then, Muriel’s smile. He had to defend himself.
I enjoy his conviction. His detachment. Particularly his detachment."

Elyot is indeed one of the dead; a repressed homosexual.

There are many such moments like this where the reader gasps at White’s skill as a novelist. He gets inside his characters, they are true to themselves. The diner party scene also shows White’s power as a humorist: there is wit, irony and some wonderful puns, but I can’t quite forgive him for this one though, when the abortionist says to Eden “Its many a hole I've got the theatre out of”.

The Living and the Dead is not a well structured thought out novel. The second world war is in full swing in parts of White’s novel and yet it hardly registers. Joe’s decision to fight in the Spanish civil war holds no conviction, it feels more like a plot device. Patrick White is interested in his characters; their failures in life and in love, everything else is subservient to this. There are difficulties for the more casual reader: White expects his readers to concentrate, his use of modernist techniques can make the reader work hard to figure out what is going on. But any hard work is worth it as there is so much to enjoy. Patrick White is not yet at the height of his considerable powers, but still head and shoulders above most writers of his generation. This early novel is a four star read. ( )

Gemengd oordeel: de stijl ligt erg in de lijn van Woolf en draagt zeker het thema van de afstandelijkheid, de onmacht te leven, te durven leven. Maar toch overtuigt het verhaal niet en regelmatig zijn er ook ronduit zwakke passages. Lectuur halfweg afgebroken. ( )