MALOUF, WHITE, MARR, DESSAIX AND THE TWYBORN AFFAIR

WATCHING A SLOW T V PANEL PRESENTATION  

ON PATRICK WHITE I AGAIN ENCOUNTERED THE NOTION THAT THE TWYBORN AFFAIR IS HIS GREAT NOVEL (MANY, INCLUDING ROBERT DESSAIX SEEM TO THINK SO). DAVID MARR TALKS ABOUT THE 'CLARITY' OF THE PROSE. 

AN OTHER PANELIST, DAVID MUSGRAVE, 

HAS A GO AT EXPLAINING WHITE'S PROSE EXTRAVAGANCE IN TERMS OF A SORT OF PREQUEL 'PARODY', AN IDEA I FOUND FRUITFUL. 

CLICK HERE

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE TWYBORN AFFAIR IS AS CLOSE TO RIDICULOUS AS WHITE COULD BE.

WHAT FOLLOWS IS MY 1997 ATTEMPT TO ADDRESS IT IN TERMS OF OTHER GAY WRITING RELATED MATTERS.

SAD END TO A MESSY BUSINESS

In David Marr’s biography of Patrick White we read of White’s complimenting David Malouf on his novel Johnno. It had (according to Malouf’s interpretation of this compliment) ‘saved everyone from the difficulties: the special pleading of homosexuality and the messy business of writing about sex between men. Malouf saw in White a genuine aesthetic reluctance to tackle the theme’. Well Malouf would, wouldn’t he? Marr himself passes with deceptive grace over the embarrassment of it all with scarcely a backward glance.

But White was to attempt to overcome his aesthetic reluctance. He waited until the gay libbers whom he so despised had effectively changed the climate and then came out with the The Twyborn Affair. He evidently thought this was some kind of statement, something that would ’earn me complete ostracism in Australia’. How disappointed, how perplexed he must have been when no-one batted an eyelid. Why would they? It was too late. Besides, the novel challenges nothing and its handling of homosexuality collides with the ludicrous. No-one could be offended by Eadith/Eddie, s/he is too remote from any reality,  too charmingly bizarre, a doomed character flitting through a series of historic and exotic landscapes, an Orlando persistently dragged back to earth by a burden of testicles. ‘Aesthetic’ is the appropriate word, for Eadith/Eddie is out of Aestheticism, s/he owes herself to Ronald Firbank and  Aubrey Beardsely (Luciana Arrighi, White’s niece, got it right when she drew White à la Beardsley for the novel’s jacket).

Novels do not challenge social structures; they are too dependent on them. This is perhaps why so many post modernists, formed in deconstruction, are impatient with the form.

We in the lesbian and gay writing movement failed, I think it can be said, to produce a good novel. The form itself - your form - defeated us.

You could be forgiven for not having noticed our existence, for not registering our passing. There were forces at work which were determined you wouldn’t, which applied themselves to making sure we only ever got to speak to one another; which did their best to make sure we were trapped in an echo chamber which would end up sending us mad.

We were compelled to write The Well of Loneliness over and over again. Yes, you allowed us our obsession, the autobiographical, (clever move that) because it was ipso facto dismal and therefore unreadable. Our styles were awkward or dull for we had no confidence, could assume no readership. And the experimental is a guarantee of obscurity. We were desperate for (forgive the expression now that Political Correctness lies stillborn) ‘positive images’. We were condemned to propaganda by our need for different paradigms. We yelled too loud and spoke too softly, we minded our p’s and q’s and didn’t know what we were talking about until we’d said it and then we were informed we’d been given our chance.

When? Where? Tell me that. Where were we given our opportunity, our part in the debate. Where were we ever in the (as they like to say now) discourse?

When she was challenged on this Jennifer Lee, then editor of Meanjin claimed she was always publishing lesbian and gay writing. When her claim did not live up to investigation she informed the press that she had to be careful, didn’t everyone agree? because the book went into schools and she had to consider subscriptions. The economic rationalist spin was smart, especially as it enabled her to avoid, while invoking, the Corruption of Youth. Pity if she actually thought school kids read the journal.

We would not have expected to be published in Southerly (have they published anything homo yet?). The Old Left vagaries of Overland were about as discouraging.

Where were our spokespeople to speak?

You had Malouf, you had Marr, oh you had White, Jolley whose lesbians are rather just that and you had the woman who wouldn’t be in Robert Dessaix’s 

Oxford Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing. An Anthology because people might think she was a lesbian (I don’t know either, you’ll have to ask him). You had your editors and reviewers who were wilfully ignorant, rigorously unfair, who were chosen for their lack of sympathy in the name of objectivity though none of us got a go at saying something like Oh not another hetero dishwash! Why can’t these people understand they’re trying to live a Cold War illusion in the service of capitalism?  Nor would we; we would have been too conscious of our responsibilities, the rarity of this opportunity. You had it all on your side.

We didn’t even have Humphrey McQueen. And many others who can’t be named because ... well that would be outing, wouldn’t it? You must have been thrilled when outing came along, it so maintained the status quo, so insured our invisibility, our silence. So ethical, Privacy.

So we did it for ourselves and you ignored what we did and now Queer’s put out that fatal tentacle of conciliation which means our funny little desperate characteristic moment is being diluted by the new post modernisms.

Queer has discovered that homosexuality can be integrated into the endlessly deconstructive discourses. Of the Univers(ity). It can pass. It thinks. After all, Meanjin finally saw its way, it went queer. For an issue. With a couple of guest editors. It was rather a disappointment but then it was meant to be, fifteen years too late. You queers don’t think Heat’s going to publish you by any chance, do you? May as well try Quadrant it seems to me.

We had our journals, our magazines, our publishing houses, our community radio programs in which we attempted to deal with the messy business. Yeah they weren’t big but they were there and they left things - products, artifacts of the spirit - for the future.

The mess was rich. Still is, and more tractable now.

Who knows if what we did with it will be found to have any interest.

Yep, we’ve had our day. We’re getting on and we can’t much be bothered any more. And you’ve taken us over. For your own purposes. Heavens, the queers are published by the multinationals, in glossy magazines, advertisers court them.

You must be relieved. That leaves you with Senator Harradine, sensationally placed to manipulate the Government. What’s he want? Fifties Catholicism, no less. With the cold self-righteousness of Robert Manne. You can just bet his deep disturbing by Darville as Demidenko has afforded him no insight and sympathy beyond that which he started out with - for European Jewry. That leaves you with Simon Leys into whose translation of Confucius I believe we make it as a Note  in which he troubles about our changing the meaning of the word ‘gay’; it is Leys’ view we are plainly and stridently not. Poor Confucius. Which leaves you with Pauline Hanson who understands we are ‘not natural’.

Sorry to tell you but  - hey you, Family Member! - that leaves you stuck in a past overrun by those without vision, those who’ve never had faith the world could be a better place.

Enjoy.

                                                               Ian MacNeill