Once again it’s Karen’s (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon’s (Stuck in a Book) “Year Club” week. This time the year is 1962, and it runs from today, 16th to 22nd October. As has become my practice, I am devoting my Monday Musings to the week.
The 1960s was an exciting decade for those of us who lived it. Change was in the air, and we truly thought we were making a fairer society. (Little did we know.) Wikipedia describes it thus:
Known as the “countercultural decade” in the United States and other Western countries, the Sixties is noted for its counterculture. There was a revolution in social norms, including clothing, music (such as the Altamont Free Concert), drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, civil rights, precepts of military duty, and schooling.
I was in primary school in 1962, and my life was simple and stable. It wasn’t until the mid to late 60s that I became caught up in the excitement in the air. This is not only because I was a bit older, I think, but because the momentum was still building in the early part of the decade. However, there were hints of change in my 1962 research. But, let’s start with the books …
I found books published across all forms, but given my focus is fiction and I want to keep things a bit tight here, I’m just sharing a selection of 1962-published novels:
- James Aldridge, A captive in the land
- Thea Astley, The well dressed explorer (Lisa’s review)
- Elizabeth Backhouse, Death of a clown
- Martin Boyd, When blackbirds sing (Lisa’s review)
- Patricia Carlon, Danger in the dark
- Gavin Casey, Amid the plenty
- Nancy Cato, But still the stream
- Jon Cleary, The country of marriage
- Robert S. Close, She’s my lovely
- Frank Clune and P.R. Stephenson, The pirates of the brig Cyprus
- Kenneth Cook, Chain of darkness
- Dymphna Cusack, Picnic races
- David Forrest (pseud. for David Denholm), The hollow woodheap
- Catherine Gaskin, I know my love (Brona’s review)
- Stuart Gore, Down the golden mile
- Helen Heney, The leaping blaze
- George Johnston, The far road
- Elizabeth Kata, Someone will conquer them
- Eric Lambert, Ballarat
- Joan Lindsay, Time without clocks (Brona’s review)
- David Martin, The young wife
- John Naish, The cruel field
- John O’Grady, Gone fishin’
- Nancy Phelan, The river and the brook
- Criena Rohan (pseud. for Deirdre Cash), The delinquent
- Donald Stuart, Yaralie
- Geoff Taylor, Dreamboat
- Ron Tullipan, March into morning
- George Turner, The cupboard under the stairs (Lisa’s review)
- Arthur Upfield, The will of the tribe
Children’s literature was going strongly at the time, with books published by authors still remembered as writers of our children’s classics, such as Nan Chauncy, Ruth Park, Ivan Southall, P.L. Travers, and Patricia Wrightson.
There were very few literary awards at the time. The ALS Gold Medal went to Vincent Buckley’s Masters in Israel, and for the first time since I started taking part in the Year Club, the Miles Franklin Award was in existence. It was shared by the Thea Astley and George Turner novels listed above. There was also, though Wikipedia doesn’t list it, the ACTU Dame Mary Gilmore Award, but I plan a special post on it, so watch this space.
Writers born this year are mostly still around though I haven’t reviewed many: Matthew Condon, Alison Croggon (my post on her memoir), Luke Davies, and Craig Sherborne. Deaths included the novelist Jean Devanny and poet Mary Gilmore. The librarian Nita Kibble (for whom the Nita B Kibble Awards – now seemingly in abeyance – were named) died this year, as did the critic HM Green.
The state of the art
Of course, I checked Trove to see what newspapers were saying about Australian literature, and fiction in particular, and will just share two threads I found.
First Nations Australians
With the devastating loss of The Voice referendum here last weekend, I would like to start with some First Nations (or Aboriginal) Australians that came up in my Trove travels, which mainly involved references to writers including Aboriginal characters in their books. One was Helen Heney (1907-1990) whose father was the first Australian-born editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. Heney wrote several novels – plus social commentary, translation and a biography – but the one published in 1962 was The leaping blaze. It is set in a station in western New South Wales, which is now in the hands of the latest generation, the “spinster” Evangeline Wade. The Canberra Times’ reviewer (January 5, 1963) explains that Evangeline has been frustrated through her life, and now wants power over others. Part of her plan is to create an “aboriginal station on her property as. an experiment”, but this plan, says our reviewer, is “motivated more by a desire to gain further power than it is to further native welfare”. Unfortunately, our reviewer continues, the novel lacks a clear focus, which
is a pity because Miss Heney is essentially a writer of ideas. She is not just telling a story. / She is obviously out to give her views on a number of sociological problems but the canvas is too large for anything more than a casual sketching of them.
The other novel I want to share is Yaralie by Donald Stuart (1913- 1982) which tells “the story of the daughter of a white father and a half-caste mother, and the people among whom they live”. The Nepean Times’ reviewer (October 11) writes:
Told with a good deal of warmth, the story is set in a native settlement in north-west Australia during the depression and deals with the ever-present problem concerning the treatment of the aborigines in a white Australia.
Donald Stuart is new to me, but seems worth following up. His work is sure to be dated now we have First Nations people telling their own stories, but he’s part of a tradition. Wikipedia says
Stuart attempts to view the world from the Aboriginal point of view, making him one of the few Australian writers, along with anthropologists such as T.G.H. Strehlow, Charles Pearcy Mountford, Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, to even attempt to come close to a personal knowledge of Aboriginal people.
Realist literature and The Australasian Book Society
The main thread I found through Trove, however, concerned communist writers and realist literature. This emphasis might be partly due to the fact that Trove’s content in this period is somewhat skewed as the Australian Communist Party’s newspaper, Tribune, has been digitised, because, like The Canberra Times, they have given permission despite still being under copyright.
However, before I searched Trove, I had already noticed the significant number of authors in the list who were Communists – often members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) – or Communist-sympathisers, so the slant may be real to some degree! Anyhow, what these writers tended to write were realist (or social realist) novels, the preferred genre for Communist writers.
It was clear from several articles that these social realist writers felt under-appreciated at home. The Tribune regularly reported on the success of Australian social realist writers overseas. On January 17, the Tribune wrote that CPA-member Dorothy Hewett’s realist 1959 novel, Bobbin Up, about women in a spinning factory, was “becoming a novel of world repute” with translations being published, or to be published, in the German Democratic Republic, Rumania, Hungary and, very likely, the Netherlands.
And on February 7, under the heading “Success despite critics”, the Tribune advised that another book by an Australian Communist author was garnering interest overseas ‘despite class-prejudiced criticisms by Australian daily press “experts”.’ Progressive authors like Katharine Prichard, Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett, and Mona Brand were being published overseas, it said, and now they’d heard Judah Waten’s Shares in murder, “a murder story that is different because of its social exposure content” was to be serialised in New Berlin Illustrated, and published in book form in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and, they expected, the Soviet Union.
It is this very Judah Waten who, in another article, is scathing about Australia’s literary darlings of the time. On March 28, again in the Tribune, he wrote:
In Australia today the writers who are acclaimed in the daily press, win awards and prizes are those distinguished for the obscurity of their prose, their irrational characters, their dream symbolism, parallels to ancient myths, feudal attitudes and pornography.
Who are these writers? Patrick White? Hal Porter? Thea Astley too perhaps?
I also noticed that many of the books praised in the Tribune were published by the Australasian Book Society, so I went hunting, and found a seminar was held about it in 2021. The seminar promo described the Society as
a mid-twentieth-century, book-club style, cooperative publisher with a subscription model that promised four books a year to members and distribution through unions, industry associations, education organisations and the communities of the organised left in Australia, including the communist party. It sought to find readers who did not read literature and to develop writers who did not yet write it.
Fascinating. In 1962, this Society celebrated its 10th anniversary … but, like the Dame Mary Gilmore Prize, I think it deserves its own post.
Meanwhile, just to show that not all my research ended up at the Tribune, I’ll close with a review from The Canberra Times of Ron Tullipan’s novel March into morning, which was published by the Australasian Book Society in 1962, and won the Dame Mary Gilmore prize. It tells the story of a man “who started life as a ward of the State and was hired out to a slave-driving cocky, whose only interest in him was how to exploit him”. Writing on September 29, reviewer G.C.P. says it
may sound like one of those hopeless novels whose authors are only concerned to spit into Authority’s eye and point out wickedness in high places. / Fortunately, it is not, and reads more like an honest piece of reporting.
G.C.P. assesses its strengths and weaknesses, and concludes that “it is not great literature, [but] it is a very readable book”. Judah Waten would probably see this as damning it with faint praise!
Sources
- 1962 in Australian Literature (Wikipedia
- Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, Annals of Australian literature, 2nd ed. OUP, 1992 (with Bill’s help)
Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1954 and 1940.
Do you plan to take part in the 1962 Club – and if so how?
Whispering Gums 
Wonderful insight I love how these clubs make us dive into what happened in Books that year
Thanks Stu … and I was interested to read about all the translations happening for Australian books. More than I had realised but I guess you don’t always hear about your country’s books elsewhere.
Such an interesting post, thank you! It’s fascinating to hear what was happening all over the world in our year – thanks for sharing this!
Thanks Karen. I really enjoy the Year club and doing these.
Ah, the ’60s ..
Glad you mention children’s lit, because my favourite roster in the public library where I was working in ’62 saw me upstairs in the children’s section – but, alas !, not discovering any new Australian books there.
My second-eldest sister was over in Melbourne making friends with people like Dorothy Hewitt and I was agog at the idea of ‘someone I knew’ having Communist friends.
This – “Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1954 and 1940” – is a great way to look at our literary happenings, ST !
Thanks MR … I love doing these. This time I could have written twice as much, hence the planned extra posts.
You can always write twice as much, ST: none of us minds !!
Be careful what you wish for!
LOL Obviously The Nepean Times’ reviewer didn’t care to mention Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo as ‘one of the few’ …
BTW I’ve also reviewed The Far Road (https://anzlitlovers.com/2012/08/27/the-far-road-1962-by-george-johnson/) Terrific book, it’s about the ethics of journalism, reporting on the horrors of the Sino-Japanese war.
I’m (probably) going to cheat for the 1962 club, and just list the 1962 books I’ve already done. Twice now, I’ve put aside my chosen book and read an entire something else, and I keep thinking, if not for the club, I’d have tossed this. And really, that’s not a good reason for reading a book…
Ah I’ll add that Lisa … I didn’t look for every book, just the few I thought I’d remembered.
And I don’t think that’s a cheat, and no, it’s not a good enough reason for writing a post.
I think that was Wikipedia, not the Nepean Times. You make a fair point about KSP, though I think the point there was that Stuart wrote several novels (six, I think) about First Nations characters, so it was a significant aspect of his work.
Dear WG:
Judah WATEN is a personal hero of mine – and Elizabeth Kata(yama)’s Someone Will Conquer Them is a very thinly disguised version of her time during WWII in the Japanese hill station town of Karuizawa – as a kind of Australian internee.
Enjoyed reading through these musings of 1962. Currently in Washington DC…
Jim Kable
>
Thanks Jim. I’ve known about Waten since I was a teen or in my early 20s but I’m still to read him! My bad! I have read Elizabeth Kata, but not that book. Sounds interesting. Enjoy DC!
It was only as I scrolled down the comments that I also realised that I knew the name Elizabeth Kata. My mum had a copy of A Patch of Blue on her bookshelf when I was growing up which I read when I was about 12. I’m not sure I realised she was Australia…
Yes, this is the book I know her for too Brona. I read it back in my teens, and I’m trying to remember whether I kept Mum’s copy or not, in our downsizing, as I know it was one she kept in her downsizing!
A lovely post, thank you for all that research!
Thanks Liz, I really enjoy doing these. What will our next year be and what will I find?
Sue, I did some research….Dorothy Hewett…I could find only one book in the local bookstore in the Netherlands, Alice in Wormland. It appears Ms Hewett has not reached our libraries, found nothing she has written. I read her short story collection A Baker’s Dozen. It is not a collection I really liked. Has anybody else read it?
Thea Astley? You know I’m a fan…finally read all her novels. Love her style.
Thanks for this post with backround info about Australian literature
Thanks Nancy. I’m glad this post is being useful.
No I haven’t read Hewett’s collection, though I’d like to read some of her stories at least. I’m not surprised that you couldn’t frd her easily there in bookshops. I think it would be a challenge here, though hopefully a bit more than you found. And yay, Thea!
That is quite the list for 1962. Continues to highlight how much Australian lit there is.🌻
Thanks Pam, It does.
BTW, I’ll email you but I plan to be in Hobart for a few days (30 Oct to 4 Nov). Perhaps we could meet at Fullers?
That would be great. Confirming my email- psbparks at ymail dot com
Great, will be in touch. I assume you mean gmail?
No. ymail. Related to yahoo
Great thanks-I hadn’t seen that one.
I’ve read The Well Dressed Explorer by Thea Astley. I suspect a few contributors to this blog will like it, I did a hell of a lt, but IMO it is very much of its times.
Must get a copy of George Turner’s The Cupboard Under the Stairs, I tell myself often.
I read it and consider it in the Top 5 T. Astley books.
Not only a satire about a very selfish philandering man but a
scarifying portrait of a couple’s marriage (..like Thea and her husband Jack).
I have read 3 by Thea and have the rest sitting here unread. I will hit the bio after reading her oeuvre out. It may tell me a lot about here and why she wrote, I presume.
I just finished reading all of het novels….it took me a few years!
That’s impressive … well done.
Thea Astely is the first writer that I have read all of the published novels. It was a challenge and a goal to see how a writer’s writing progressed in the course of her writing career. Do you have another suggestion of a Australian writer that could be my next ‘reading goal’ …read all novels?
Oh that’s a good question … Christina Stead could be a good option. I assume you’d like someone who is no longer with us and who had a significant career? And you are looking at women writers?
Yes, women writers…what about Jolley?
Yes, Jolley would be an excellent and more recent choice. I think her work is even in quality if that makes sense.
I read once that “…in a single year she received 39 rejection slips
…yet she persisted.” That made an impression on me so I think she will be the next goal! 15 novels to discover!
Yes, that was in the beginning of course. She’s a great next project.
As far as modern writers go, Richard Flanagan would be easy to complete, Nancy. All his work is readily available. I am heading to towards completing David Ireland with only 2 books to go, but his works are not that readily available. I have a fair few of Jessica Anderson’s books but have only read the excellent Tirra Lirra by the River. I intend to read here out eventually. Others may have better ideas than me.
Great suggestions, thanks! Just finished Flanagan’s NF “Toxic” but not attempted any of his fiction. Jessica Anderson…I read her collection of short stories “Stories from the Warm Zone”…absolutely wonderful. So she’s a “yes” for future reading. The Glass Canoe and loved it! : “…
He went to the races looking for the golden fleece
…and got shorn. (pg 74)
So he is also on the list!
Jessica Anderson is great – and doable – as she wasn’t overly prolific.
If you are including men, there’s Patrick White of course. And so many others but I’d throw in, particularly, David Malouf. Flanagan is interesting because he plays with voice/form/genre more that some.
Amy Witting, small output, but great writer. Taught with Astley, approved of by White.
Oke, now I have Stead, Jolley, Witting, Flanagan, White and Malouf….as possible “complete series challenges”. I think in Jan 2024 I can start by reading 1 book by each author! Challenge withing a challenge ! Need a reading list for each ….so more research! Should I go chronologically? I think a BiNGO card would be good…so now I need 2 more authors to complete a bingo card + 1 free space for any author I choose!
Ha ha bingo card. I love Garner but novels are only part of her oeuvre. You haven’t mentioned Anderson (again) in your list. Or, how about Elizabeth Harrower – a small oeuvre but good.
Good ideas fourtriplezed. I am a lazy completist as I get too distracted by all the writers I want to read.
The bio is excellent … and it does illuminate her beautifully I think.
It’s one I haven’t read yet. Should have done it for this week but way too distracted right now.
I know Australia is heavily influenced by other countries, particularity England, but it really hit me just how much when you wrote, “the first Australian-born editor…” I mean, 1962 and they finally got someone who was BORN in Australia, which doesn’t even mean aboriginal, just BORN there.
Oh sorry Melanie, no that wasn’t in 1962. It was the father of the author I was writing about. His life dates were 1862 to 1928 and he became editor In 1903.
Oh! I misunderstood. My apologies. Still, 1903…
That’s Ok, Melanie, and yes, still 1903.
I found the Wikipedia page and am so impressed; I stalled on my attempt to volunteer there (limited to making a couple of corrections, whereas I’d planned to add content for some of the literary pages) but your research has inspired me once more. Although my original interlibrary-loan-request didn’t come quickly enough for me to participate, I’ll still read James Baldwin’s Another Country this year; there was a LOT happening in 1962 for sure.
Thanks Marcie. The year Aus Lit pages are great, and then when we do these Years and 1 research them in Trove and the Annals I always end up adding to them. I created quite a lot of pages from scratch in Wikipedia when I retired, but now I tend to just do some editing. Its very satisfying.
And yes, 1962 was a busy year…the more recent Karen’s and Simon’s year choice is, the more difficult it is to select a book, l’ve found.