Joseph Furphy's Such Is Life

Joseph Furphy's Sltch is Life (1903) opens simply and clearly enough with that memorable, sardonic initial declaration: 'Unemployed at last!'~ The complex reaction of the relief from work, while at the same time the prospect of poverty nnd hunger; the sense of liberntion, while at the same time the hitter reflection that it is only through unemployment that working men nnd women can ever attain the state of leisure and relaxation nvailnhle to the upper classes: all this is succinctly implied. There is a lot said but not said, a lot of social observation and commentary on the economic situation. This is not said, but it is implied. The line of full stops that immediately follows the opening sentence marks an excision. Already, after only three words, an excision, an absence is indicated. It is the clue that indicates that there is the unsaid, the unwritten (or unprinted), to be taken account of in this text, as well as the printed word. The row of full stops may proclaim the absent rather obviously, signposting the existence of the unsaid or the omitted. That there is an absence is not something concealed. A row of full stops often indicates an excision, a censorship authorial or editorial, morn) or political or verbal. Proclaiming the existence of the excised indicates that this unwritten, this unexpressed, is no secret. It presupposes that the narrator and the readers know that a lot of things are continually suppressed and left unprinted or unsaid or unwritten. But this does not mean that they are not there. The absent is not the unknown of the Freudian unconscious: this is not an unknown whose very unknown existence is unknown and unknowable; rather, this is a public proclamation of absence, of the unprinted. It acknowledges the convention whereby certain things are not said or not written. At this point there is not any need to be more specific than that. 'Unemployed at last!' implies that the comment may be political, a comment on the economic organisation of society

MIL TON AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

To get a proper sense of Milton in the English revolution we need to look not only at his work during the revolutionary period, but also at his early writings in the pre-revolutionary years, and at the mature works produced after the restoration. For years now the blandly disseminated view of the pre-revolutionary decades of the early seventeenth century has held that the works of English literature of those years belong to a non-political world. It was a depoliticization made possible by an unawareness of the extent and effects of censorship, and a consequent refusal to decode political meanings from the literary texts. But the revolution did not suddenly appear from nowhere. And if we look at Milton's poetry of the 1630s we can see evidence of the social tensions, and unmistakable assertions of revolutionary sentiments

Alan Sillitoe's Political Novels

Alan Sillitoe's Political Novels

The Politics of Nostromo

The Politics of Nostrom

Christina Stead's Seven Poor Men of Sydney

When Christina Stead's Seven Poor Men of Sydney appeared in 1934 the dominant themes of Australian writing were rural, the characteristic settings were the country, the bush and the outback. There had, of course, been poems and fiction written about the cities; it isn't the case that there were no urban materials. Henry Lawson had written powerfully about urban poverty in the series of stories set in 'Jones' Alley' in the 1890s and had begun his career with the powerful urban ballads 'Faces in the Street' and 'The Army of the Rear'. William Lane's The Workingman s Paradise ( 1892) had described urban conditions in Sydney in the 1890s. But the received impression is of a literature devoted to perpetuating the outback myth of Australia, even though the population was predominantly urban.1 Seven Poor Men of Sydney can be seen as a work confronting and challenging this outback myth

Vietnam Protest

The   war in Vietnam was the first television war, the media war, the media people   said. Brought into the living room of the American people. Well, Graham   didn't have a television and wasn't in America. Television programmed rubbish   and offered no lures. Later it offered lures, though was no less rubbish.   Later he adjusted to it, this the aim, the ambition, the pharmakon, the   nepenthe, sitting in front of the beams hour after hour, wondering how to get   in there, to be on the box. But that was after the war was over and there   were no longer demonstrations and protests and readings and the alternative   press to occupy the time. After the war was over television came into its own   as the great domestic controller. And not only in the house, but in the pubs   too, with its endless screening of horse racing and car racing and mud   wrestling. And in the pubs where there wasn't television, and in some where   there was, music was introduced so no one could talk protest and politics or   anything else for that matter any more, the music was so loud.

Henry Lawson's Socialist Vision

Henry Lawson (1867-1922) was born on the Grenfell goldfield in New South Wales. His father was a Norwegian seaman who had jumped ship in Australia. His mother was the daughter of English immigrants. 'They were supposed to have come of English gipsies and were hop pickers in Kent', Lawson wrote in his uncompleted autobiography.2 His parents separated and Lawson worked with his father as a carpenter and painter, and then went to live with his mother in Sydney: I worked about in various private shops and did a bit of house-painting too. I knew what it was, when I was out of work for a few days in winter, to turn out shivering and be down at the Herald office at four o'clock on bitter mornings, and be one of the haggard group striking matches and running them down the wanted columns on the damp sheets posted outside. I knew what it was to tramp long distances and be one of the hopeless crowd of applicants. I knew what it was to drift about the streets in shabby and patched clothes and feel furtive and criminal-like. I knew all that before I wrote 'Faces in the Street' -before I was twenty. 3 In 1887 the Mayor of Sydney called a public meeting to plan celebrations for Queen Victoria's jubilee. The meeting and its immediate successors were taken over by republicans and freethinkers. 'Recent immigrants from the English working classes and the petty bourgeoisie touched with socialistic principles, aided by the old convict leaven, had humiliated the loyalists', writes Manning Clark.4 A Republican Union emerged, attracting British born radicals like Thomas Walker, George Black and John Norton~ as well as native radicals like J. D. Fitzgerald and Louisa Lawson. Within a month the Republican was launched and Henry helped print it, contributed political articles, and was registered publisher. When the Republican Union split after a year and the Republican ceased publication, Louisa took over the press to produce The Dawn, Australia's first woman's magazine. Henry continued to help print and to contribute. His first book, Short Stories in Prose and Verse (1894) was produced by Louisa on the Dawn press. It was in this context that Lawson wrote his first published poem, 'A Song of the Republic' which the Bulletin published on eight hours day, 188

George Meredith's 'Beauchamp's Career': Politics, Romance and Realism

In 1868 George Meredith's friend Commander Frederick Maxse stood as a Radical candidate at the Southampton election, and was defeated. G. M. Young wrote in his introduction to the World's Classics edition of Beauchamp's Career that "Meredith did not learn his politics from Maxse, but the experiences they shared in the Southampton canvass gave him an insight into the nature of the political animal, whether candidate or elector, which would make Beauchamp's Career, even if it were nothing else, a document-and a most far-sighted document-for the political history of its time." Meredith had gone to Southampton to help Maxse in his campaign, and the grounding in this experience is obvious in the novel, not only in the physical description of the town of Bevisham and its environs, the harbour (Southampton water), the island (Isle of Wight) and the yachting, but also in the central figure of Beauchamp. We need not agree with Siegfried Sassoon that "Beauchamp is Maxse", but the similarities are clear enough-both Maxse and Beauchamp moving from military careers (and retaining their military titles) into radical politics