Página inicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquise No Site
Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados do Google Livros

Clique em uma foto para ir ao Google Livros

Carregando...

M. Barnard Eldershaw : Plaque with laurel, essays, reviews & correspondence

de M. Barnard Eldershaw

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaConversas
921,976,628 (4)Nenhum(a)
The extraordinary literary collaboration of Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw is represented in this selection of their writing which reflects both their political concerns and their promotion of literary and cultural policy in Australia between the wars.
Nenhum(a)
Carregando...

Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

Exibindo 2 de 2
Contains a great range of letters and essays from M. Barnard Eldershaw, the pseudonym of two important female Australian writers of the 20th century Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw, as well as the text of their forgotten novel [b:Plaque with Laurel|48924536|Plaque with Laurel|M. Barnard Eldershaw|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|74324660] (1937) which was never published in Australia. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
"Have you read any of his stuff? ...
I don't like it terribly", Ailsa confessed, "but, of course, it's very good."


It's an odd feeling to be the first person to review an older work on Goodreads. In one corner, that combo of excitement to share a novel with the world, a soupcon of smugness, and a hefty dash of nervousness that one does the book justice. In the other corner, a sorrow and wonder at why the book has been so neglected. In the case of Plaque with Laurel (1937), the latter is not hard to explain. Thankfully, the former makes up for it.

Australian authors [a:Marjorie Barnard|1056281|Marjorie Barnard|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png] and [a:Flora Eldershaw|5309226|Flora Eldershaw|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], both Sydneysiders born in 1897, met at university and - in the late 1920s - began writing as a pair under the pseudonym M. Barnard Eldershaw. Their first novel, [b:A House Is Built|4703054|A House Is Built|M. Barnard Eldershaw|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1515447440l/4703054._SY75_.jpg|4767379], was a great success, coming at a time when family sagas were en vogue and Australian history was a subject of renewed interest. Their subsequent works - novels, essays, non-fiction history, short stories - were more self-consciously literary, a challenge at the best of times but certainly not high on the to-do list of most residents of Depression-era Australia. The women continued to write alongside more mundane jobs, and played key roles in the literary circles of the time, alongside most of the influential Aussie left-wing writers of their generation.

Plaque with Laurel was the fourth of their five novels, and their least successful - although not because of a lack of literary merit. By 1937, they were "highbrow" rather than popular, and - as with their previous works - Plaque was published first in London (common for Australian writers of the time), but this time never got a showing in Australia. Its small print run did not sell out before war came, obliterating the book's memory. Contrary to the desires of publishers, the novel also was not a roman a clef - that is, a novel thinly disguising real-life personages behind its cast. That perhaps could have made a few sales. It was not formally printed in Australia (to my knowledge) until 1995, by the University of Queensland Press. Barnard and Eldershaw would carry on writing through the war, but they finished their collaboration after their next novel - [b:Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow|4688442|Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow|M. Barnard Eldershaw|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1550665662l/4688442._SY75_.jpg|4739028] - a post-apocalyptic savaging of modern conservatism and capitalism, also sold poorly and then attracted the wrong kind of attention in the post-war anti-commie world.

There was another challenge. Australia was still defining itself culturally. It had, after all, been an island of several smaller British colonies until, in 1901, they came together as a federation. It was a country whose capital city, Canberra, had only commenced construction in 1913. The first Parliament to be based there was in 1927. Australia was still seen as a British outpost, as culturally inferior, as imitative or at best naive. Most artists of talent left the country for long periods, leaving the popular fiction to balladeers and superficial writers of character. And those who chose to stay faced an uphill battle to publish anything at all - abroad they were seen as colonials, at home they were seen as upstarts. "Artistic" was a dangerous thing to be. In the eyes of mainstream Australian culture, artistic women were opinionated, and artistic men were all poofs.

So a novel set in the new city of Canberra centered around a bunch of writers... well, that was hardly going to become a bestseller, was it?

And yet Plaque is lovely. It's not as ambitious as Tomorrow nor as captivating as House, but it is a gem.

"Literature's a pure accident", she told herself, "and largely a myth...

Set over the course of three-and-a-half days in the nation's capital, we follow a writers' conference. It brings together rising stars and falling ones, those at the centre of the literary world and those hovering on the fringes, upstarts, poseurs, wanderers, and philosophers. At the centre of it all is a plaque to be installed on the wall of the National Library, opened by a politician with no artistic taste, in honour of a recently deceased luminary, Richard Crale. Crale's former wife, his mistress, his war buddies, and his acolytes are among the conferees, and their memories of this deceased writer - this lacuna in the text of the conference - form much of the meat of the novel. He was a great artist, no one doubts. His status as a man remains open for debate.

The novel takes us - tightly and in depth - day by day through the conference, from boisterous meals to awkward ones, through nature tours and quiet nights, large gatherings and individual wanderings, predicted ceremonies and those much more unpredictable. Although I know it is impossible, it wouldn't surprise me if the great American film director [a:Robert Altman|21573|Robert Altman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1221790073p2/21573.jpg] had read this book as a youth. The book reminded me of nothing so much as an Altman film. Like a rippling ocean, or a tapestry, different characters emerge at points to share their tales. Tragedies, comedies, romances, dialogues, each appears before our eyes and disappears again. Some characters are central, others peripheral, appearing when need be before returning to the great mass. Each of the figures views each other figure differently, as of course we do, and in the manufactured confines of a conference (inside a manufactured city, at that), their relationships are strained and rewritten in a host of different atmospheres. The novel is consistently engaging. It is also, incidentally, beautifully written.

"They stood in silence looking out over the famous scene, and equally oblivious of it. Their conversation had run out to the last drop. It was the first time that they had had anything really important to say to one another; they knew that it would be the last. All that they were capable of giving one another as human beings they had now given. Their relationship had shrunk again to its habitual insignificance. The pause became a vacuum."

It's fair to say that there are perhaps too many characters to keep track of in a novel such as this (although this is true of many Altman films). Yet the "interwoven vignette" approach to narrative means we focus on the individual moments, treating each page like a short story, without as much necessity to locate the minor characters within a broader arc. What is perhaps grandest about this novel is Barnard Eldershaw's "spirit of place". The moments - the initial drive from Sydney to Canberra, forming a kind of prologue, in which the various figures pass each other on the road; the weary anticipation of the staff at the hotel; a bushwalk; an unexpected manhunt; a melancholy late night peeping into people's rooms - are rife with perfect details. Plaque feels lived-in, truly atmospheric, and the moments of amusement and pathos emerge truthfully from the passing of the days.

"Haven't you noticed that when people praise Canberra it's always for something that isn't there?"

Finally, there is Canberra itself. The city was my home for six years in the 2000s, and it's absorbing to see it in its infancy, as when a disturbed member of the conference finds himself alone at night on the site earmarked for a future cathedral, now St. Christopher's. The first novel ever set in the capital city, Plaque resonates with the strange stillness of the new and its determined attempts to develop urbanity and history. Its the perfect metaphor for Australian literature in the 1930s. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Exibindo 2 de 2
sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
Você deve entrar para editar os dados de Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Compartilhado.
Título canônico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Lugares importantes
Eventos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Idioma original
CDD/MDS canônico
LCC Canônico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

The extraordinary literary collaboration of Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw is represented in this selection of their writing which reflects both their political concerns and their promotion of literary and cultural policy in Australia between the wars.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo em haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Nenhum(a)

Links rápidos

Gêneros

Sem gêneros

Classificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)

208Religions Religion With Respect to Particular Groups of People

Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)

Avaliação

Média: (4)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4 1
4.5
5

É você?

Torne-se um autor do LibraryThing.

 

Sobre | Contato | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blog | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Históricas | Os primeiros revisores | Conhecimento Comum | 203,219,512 livros! | Barra superior: Sempre visível