Robert Hefner Winton on Cloud Nine After Reviews Canberra Times
This is my fourth post in a little sub-serial looking at the Miles Franklin Award by decade.
Equally with the start iii, written back in 2016, I don't plan to listing all the decade'southward winners, as you tin find them on the Award's official site. Instead, I'll share some interesting snippets, inspired past my Trove meanders. This by and large involved The Canberra Times and The Australian Jewish News, because this catamenia is all the same within copyright, pregnant the NLA can merely digitise newspapers which have given them permission to exercise and so.
Men in the ascendant (again)
In my 3rd decade post (linked beneath), I noted the increase in awards fabricated to women. Just five awards were won past women in the offset two decades combined, only in the third decade, four of the ix awards went to women. This reflected, I suggested, the flowering of writing by Australian women in the belatedly 1970s and 1980s. Yet, information technology wasn't to terminal. In the 4th decade, viii of the nine awards made went to men – and the woman who did win generated i of the Award's biggest controversies (see below). Without spoiling my fifth decade post, this "bias" towards men continued for another x years or more, which inspired, among other things, the establishment of the Stella Honor in 2012 … but, I'1000 jumping alee. Let'southward stay in the nineties for the moment.
The skewing towards men, non surprisingly, carried through to the shortlists, with 31 men shortlisted over the decade to eighteen women. However, when it comes to multiple listings, 4 writers, two men and 2 women, were shortlisted iii times: Rodney Hall and David Malouf, Thea Astley and Janette Turner Hospital (who has never won it).
The men who won included previous winners Peter Carey, Tim Winton, and Rodney Hall. The others were Tom Flood, David Malouf, Alex Miller, Christopher Koch and David Foster. I acknowledge that I didn't know Tom Alluvion, only Dorothy Hewett was his mother. His winning book, Oceana Fine, was his only novel.
There wasn't much discussion well-nigh the skewing back and so, but I did love Celal Bayari, who wrote in the the University of New South Wales' Tharunka newspaper almost Elizabeth Jolley missing out in 1989:
Jolley practiced book (ha ha)
JOLLEY'Due south latest has just been omitted from the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award. That is a existent shame considering The Sugarmother is a bully book.
Controversy (i)
The controversy concerned Helen Demidenko's novel, The hand that signed the paper, which won in 1995. Bill (The Australian Legend) summarised the controversy beautifully in his mail on the volume, and so why reinvent the wheel? Bill wrote:
For the benefit of non-Australians, the controversy surrounded the awarding of the 1995 Miles Franklin Laurels to Helen Demidenko forThe Hand that Signed the Paper, the story of a Ukrainian family unit collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust. The granting of the Accolade to an anti-semitic work was justified on the grounds that Demidenko was telling the story of her people, until Demidenko, who would attend speaking engagements dressed in the costume of a Ukrainian peasant daughter, was finally unmasked every bit Helen Darville, a University of Queensland student of entirely English background.
This was a multi-pronged controversy – and Nib explores some of the prongs in his excellent post. There were criticisms of the piece of work itself: it was uneven and poorly written, it was racist/anti-semitic, it distorted history. There were criticisms of the writer'southward deception regarding her groundwork, with some saying that the only reason they accepted this unpleasant book'southward win was because the author was speaking for "her" people. (This feeds into electric current discussions almost who can write what.) At that place was give-and-take about literary criticism – almost whether it's all most the text, or whether other considerations, like the author's background, are relevant to assessing a piece of work. There were discussions about the line between fact and fiction, particularly since Demidenko/Darville herself called her work "faction". At that place were criticisms of plagiarism, which were subsequently overturned. There were suggestions that the writer, around 24 at the time, was a disturbed young adult female to be pitied. And, in that location were criticisms of the judges – of their decision in the first identify, their refusal to admit they were wrong, and their non engaging in word. The novel was plainly shortlisted for the Victorian Premier'south Literary Honour, and and then quietly un-shortlisted before the announcement. The controversy raged for months.
The book, past the way, had previously won the 1993 The Australian/Vogel LiteraryAward for unpublished manuscript, and in 1995 it besides won the ALS Gold Medal.
The Canberra Times' literary editor at the fourth dimension, Robert Hefner, suggested that the volume "could well testify to be one of the about divisive books in Australian history". Not surprisingly, information technology sold well. Past August 1995, according to her publisher, it had sold 25,000 copies, and they were preparing to republish it under the author's real proper noun.
Controversy (two)
Lest you think, even so, that this was the merely Miles Franklin Laurels controversy of the decade, retrieve once more. The ongoing issue of the "Australian content" requirement raised its caput during the decade too. In 1994, when Rodney Hall won for The grisly wife, The Canberra Times reports that, "The Georges' Wife [Elizabeth Jolley], and Frank Moorhouse'southward G Days, were butterfingers because the judges decided they did not accept enough Australian content".
No laurels (over again)
In both the 2nd and third decades, there was a year in which no accolade was made. It happened again this decade but for a purely administrative reason, to do with changing the award's timing from year of publication to year of annunciation!
The value of awards
Given I've posted on the value of awards recently, I'll conclude by sharing a couple of points that came out of this little piece of inquiry.
David Malouf said, on winning in 1991 with The peachy world,
"An laurels like this is a bit like the Archibald to painting. Both are extremely well known and important … People who don't necessarily buy a volume when it starting time comes out are interested to run across what books plough up on the curt list and which volume wins. That kind of interest is e'er very of import."
He also admits that winning awards offers reassurance:
"Writers are very diffident, basically. They're always hundred-to-one of themselves and information technology'south always good when y'all are offered approval for what you have done"
Similarly, Alex Miller, who won in 1993 for The ancestor game said:
"I decided it was terrific to be short-listed and that was that, and I just got on with my piece of work, and and then when I was told last Midweek I actually couldn't believe it … It's enormous validation and acknowledgment, for certain.
Information technology's a fleck of a watershed, isn't information technology, winning something like Miles Franklin."
And Rodney Hall, winning in 1994 with The grisly wife, said "this has picked me upwardly".
I mentioned in a higher place sales for Demidenko/Darville'south volume, but that had the "benefit" of controversy. Tim Winton'south 1992-winning Cloudstreet experienced a boost in sales. The Canberra Times reported less than 2 months after Winton's win:
… Tim Winton returned recently from a xxx-day promotional tour of the United States, where Graywolf's beautiful hardback edition of his Miles Franklin Award-winning novel Cloudstreet has already sold more than 12,000 copies. In Australia, where information technology was published past McPhee Gribble and Penguin, sales have topped 60,000.
Let's go out the quaternary decade there!
By posts in the serial
- First decade
- Second decade
- Third decade
Source: https://whisperinggums.com/2021/08/02/monday-musings-on-australian-literature-miles-franklin-award-the-fourth-decade-1988-1997/
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