Surely one writes a biography to discover the person rather than to have one’s subject obey preconceived ideas. I had no idea of Clif’s violence when I started out, because I never saw it while he was alive. Having discovered it, I was obliged, ipso facto, to find out what it was about and where it came from; if, indeed it was initiated by a specific event. I think it was latent in him, triggered by an event which then obsessed him and led to a lifetime of his examining the latent violence in men and how other innate qualities arrange themselves around that violence to accommodate it. I think this was a most interesting life’s work, particularly from someone who was a combatant in World War II and who, upon his return to Australia, found himself unable to settle.

Original thinkers, and Clifton Pugh was nothing if not original, are often difficult people to live with. They are likely to be rebuffed and scorned by those who have to deal with them. A belief in the latent violence in men is not pretty, but it was a strong idée fixe in this artist, and when he tried to toss it out in the name of being a better person, his art foundered.

Sally Morrison, Richmond, Vic.

Brenda Niall replies:

Of course I agree with Sally Morrison that biographers must try to understand their subjects. That means accepting contradiction, complexity, mystery. But that’s not the same as being confused. It seemed to me that there was an unexamined tension between Morrison’s apparent wish to see Pugh as a victim and the weight of her text. I didn’t express surprise that many women were attracted to Pugh, but that they put up with his selfishness and abusive behaviour. Granted that Morrison did not herself witness his violence, she does describe and document it. To say that he was an original thinker and therefore ‘difficult’ sounds like special pleading. Does Morrison’s final sentence mean that Pugh’s art failed because he was trying to be a better (non-violent) person? I don’t think her text bears this out.

A river-of-life saga

Dear Editor,

I am sure I’m not the only reader who was fascinated and surprised by the overwhelming response to Cloudstreet and its designation as the ‘Favourite Australian Novel’ in the recent ABR poll – a margin of three to one over its nearest rivals, Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony and White’s Voss.

Winton is a remarkably dedicated and gifted talent, with an international reputation. His fame came early with Cloudstreet (1991), his third novel, part of that enormous expansion of home-grown fiction in the last quarter of the twentieth century that was remarked on in Advances (February 2010). The accolades on my copy of Cloudstreet offer perspectives on Winton’s prodigious talent. In Australia: ‘an impressive novel, generous of imagination, feeling and word, always engaging’ (Helen Daniel, The Age), and, prophetically, ‘I think it’s going to be a classic’ (Sandy Forbes, Canberra Times). In the United Kingdom the reviews were similarly euphoric: ‘A river-of-life Australian family saga … The writing is alive and kicking with a sense of wonder and the absurdity of life and people … profoundly humorous’ (The Guardian).

Cloudstreet won Winton the second of his four Miles Franklin Awards. It has never been out of the news, whether through literary prizes, stage adaptations, television series, school/university syllabuses or on the Internet. Amazon has an e-book, and in January this year it was announced that a screen adaptation will proceed. Cloudstreet is set on the VCE literature course in Victoria, where it is considered alongside the dramatic adaptation by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo. Versatile and engaging, it is well known in the theatre, partly due to the five-hour play which opened in Sydney in 1998 and which has been performed in Zurich, Dublin, London, New York and Washington.

I wonder if this constant flow of publicity influenced the final vote. Does it matter? Art is art, and writers and their works need exposure. I remember hearing a few years ago that it was al- most impossible to buy Patrick White’s novels in Australian bookshops. This may no longer be the case, but for those who have never read White a few film adaptations of his greatest works might be a spur. Film adaptations often lure punters back to the book.

Which raises another point. Do novelists like to have their books made into films? For the publicity, for love of the book, for the money? As both genres are so different, cinema can never replace the book. Both entertain; each has its own integrity. Presumably, writers are happy for adaptations of their works to proceed as long as the script and production remain reasonably ‘true’ to the spirit of the book, in mood and storyline.

Sometimes, however, this rapport does not eventuate, as with the 1979 adaptation of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (which was number eleven in the poll). In that instance, the original storyline was considerably changed. Some readers and filmgoers consider this as having distorted the book’s theme. Unfortunately, Miles Franklin wasn’t around to approve or prevent the adaptation. However, as was reiterated at the time of the film’s release, many who saw the film were drawn to the book, often for the first time. It’s an interesting debate.

Katherine Gallagher, London, UK

The missing

Dear Editor,

Ongoing through the names of the novelists listed in the ABR Favourite Australian Novel Poll, it was intriguing to note the non-appearances. A number of once reasonably well-known or well-regarded Australian authors did not attract a single nomination for any of their novels. They include Marjorie Barnard, Mena Calthorpe, Nancy Cato, Frank Dalby Davison, Jean Devanny, Henrietta Drake–Brockman, Flora Eldershaw, Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett, Ernestine Hill, Kenneth Mackenzie, John Morrison, Brian Penton, and Judah Waten.

The ABR poll provides a fascinating, if slightly disturbing, insight into the level of recognition afforded past Australian authors. If for that reason only, it is an invaluable resource.

Stephen Holt, Macquarie, ACT

Someone must read the stuff

Dear Editor,

Whenever a poll of favourite novels is announced, the true science fiction fan’s pulse quickens, usually followed by an all-too-familiar sense of disappointment as favourite or ‘classic’ science fiction novels fail to make the list – not even turbidly ‘literary’ ones written by the ‘Atwoods’, genre-deniers whose publishers stoutly reject the notion that the books in question could possibly be science fiction, even though they employ all the usual tropes. Most science fiction devotees understand that the rule of thumb applied by literary gatekeepers is, ‘If it’s science fiction it can’t be any good, and if it is any good then it can’t be science fiction’.

With that in mind I perused ABR’s list of 290 nominated Favourite Australian Novels and was quite pleasantly surprised. It was immediately clear that there were science fiction and fantasy novels on the list, including two by authors who were main guests at Sydney Freecon 2009. The most surprising thing to me was the balance of science fiction to fantasy. At the generalist bookstores where most of us buy our books, the ‘SF & F’ section is usually made up of seventy per cent fantasy, twenty per cent science fiction television tie-in books and (if you are lucky!) about ten per cent science fiction.

This time round, it seems that fantasy readers are under-represented. To illustrate this, below I have listed and annotated the science fiction and fantasy titles that I could identify among the complete list. As I haven’t read all 290 books, and as I prefer to read science fiction (the literature of ideas and consequences) rather than fantasy (the literature of moral decisions and their consequences), my list probably understates the real fraction of science fiction and fantasy. Here is my annotated list:

John Birmingham: Weapons of Choice (2004) – SF: time travel alternate history

Peter Carey: Illywhacker (1985) – winner of the 1986 Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel

Isobelle Carmody: Obernewtyn (1987) – post-apocalypse SF from a fantasy writer

Erle Cox: Out of the Silence (1925) – SF: revived ancients with technological powers

Sara Douglass: Darkwitch Rising (2005) – quest fantasy

Greg Egan: Permutation City (1994) and Quarantine (1992) – thoughtful, ‘hard’ SF

Richard Harland: Worldshaker (2009) – steam-punk SF

David Ireland: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (1971) – SF: out of print for decades

Glenda Larke: The Last Stormlord (2009) – quest fantasy

Norman Lindsay: The Magic Pudding (1918) – fantasy

John Marsden: Tomorrow, When the War Began (1993) – SF: the consequences for young survivors/evaders following an invasion

Sophie Masson: In Hollow Lands (2004) – fantasy

Garth Nix: Lirael (2001) – fantasy

Ruth Park: Playing Beatie Bow (1980) – fantasy: time displacement via a children’s game

Neville Shute: On the Beach (1957) – SF: post-nuclear consequences for the living

P.L. Travers: Mary Poppins (1934) – fantasy of a sort that these days might be called ‘wainscoting’ as the action takes place in a normal-seeming world that is oblivious to the magic

George Turner: The Sea and Summer (1987) –SF: Melbourne drowned because of climate change

Patricia Wrightson: Down to Earth (1965) - SF for Young Adult readers

That constitutes eleven science fiction and seven fantasy books out of 290: four per cent and two per cent, respectively. I would like to congratulate the voters on their long memories.

The degree of science fiction is hardly surprising. The number of people who read science fiction (but do not necessarily consider themselves to be ‘SF fans’) is one of those data that polite society prefers to leave undefined, like the proportion of gay people or Green voters, always somewhere between ‘more than one per cent’ and ‘less than ten per cent’, depending on the point you are trying to argue. However, there may be more of us about than people realise. Why else would most chain bookshops devote about ten to twenty per cent of their fiction shelves to science fiction or fantasy, usually much more space than they devote to ‘classics’ (where they hide the science fiction of Huxley, Orwell, Verne and Wells). Someone must be buying the stuff!

The announcement of the ABR FAN Poll prompted an editorial question, ‘Has anyone read all these books?’ It seems unlikely, but if such a person does exist, he or she would of necessity have to be a reader of science fiction (or just to be obsessive about lists of books).

In spite of the prevailing view that science fiction aficionados read only this genre, of the many readers I have met at Futurian meetings, interstate SF conventions, and the Sydney Freecons, I have discovered that they tend to read much more broadly than the average reader. I have never met a science fiction fan who reads only SF.

Garry Dalrymple, Bexley North, NSW