Gillian Orr, The Independent. First pub: July 30
Richard Flanagan by Matt Newton, http://www.matthewnewton.com.au/Commercial/People/1/
If there was still a myth that antipodean artists lacked culture, then the latest Man Booker win for Richard Flanagan has put paid to that. And about time, too, says Gillian Orr
“What’s the difference between Australia and yoghurt?” goes a much-loved joke among Brits. “After 200 years, Australia still doesn’t have any culture.”
Zing! Of course, anyone who has actually been to the land of Oz would know that that’s not true. The daughter of an Australian, I lived there for a little while, and all anybody seemed to do was put on a comedy event/art show/dreaded poetry night. Yet while Australians are celebrated for their sporting achievements, they fail to be taken seriously culturally on the world stage. But is that finally changing?
Lovers of xenophobic gags were certainly dealt a blow this week when Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the third Aussie to do so. He insisted that it was a “golden time for Australian writing”. But even he is the first to admit that it has not always been this way. Appearing on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the morning after his win, the 53-year-old agreed that Australian culture has been lacking in the past. “Peter Carey is the greatest Australian writer,” said Flanagan. “He, like me, grew up in a country that was a colony of the mind, where we didn’t have our own culture. Australian publishing really is only about 40 years old. Australian film, Australian television, Australian music, all these things are younger than I am.”
Sure enough, a documentary shown on BBC4 this summer looked at influential Australians in the 1960s who felt that they had to head for London to progress in their chosen fields. Brilliant Creatures: Rebels of Oz profiled four key arrivals – Clive James, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries and Robert Hughes – and their search for British “sophistication”. They came to “beat us at our own game”, as the show’s presenter Howard Jacobson (who missed out to Flanagan in this year’s Booker race) put it.
But, today, while it might be true that plenty of Australians still come over in a bid for success and fame, the view of Australia being a cultural backwater is simply out of date.
“The Australian literary scene has always had an incredible richness – though I do think that there has been increasing international attention in recent years,” says Jemma Birrell, the artistic director of Sydney Writers’ Festival. “Prizes shed light on particular writers and consequently Australian writing more generally. Then there are writers such as David Malouf, Tim Winton, Alexis Wright, Helen Garner, Michelle de Kretser and Steve Toltz who have gained a wide readership throughout the world. But, generally, I do think that there is a long way to go in terms of recognition.”
