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thesincoucher's review
5.0
This was an incredible read - as I'm an unashamed bookworm, it's difficult to resist a book about writers even if they are fake, specially in a book of such skill as this one. It was funny, sad and moving but it felt in general like a dark comedy. Most of the authors you will find here were jerks or were jerked around. As it's supposed to be a history of the Australian literary scene, it feels instinctually like the right note to take.
I loved that it was the whole book, with all the paratext, that was in on the joke, so to speak. I loved the section on Rachel and all of her input in the text (even the author photo!). I really loved that each mini-biography gave more information to the reader so they had a clear picture of the literary landscape that gave the impression that not even the "author" had. It was just a very clever, very funny book that I would recommend to everyone.
I loved that it was the whole book, with all the paratext, that was in on the joke, so to speak. I loved the section on Rachel and all of her input in the text (even the author photo!). I really loved that each mini-biography gave more information to the reader so they had a clear picture of the literary landscape that gave the impression that not even the "author" had. It was just a very clever, very funny book that I would recommend to everyone.
mgeake's review
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
cassiel's review
challenging
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
coreyzerna's review
4.0
Quite a clever book, although I felt my lack of reading experience meant many (funny) literary references flew over my head, still a delightful read
kali's review
5.0
How to describe this ‘novel’? It is brilliantly funny satire, ostensibly sixteen biographical vignettes of fictitious literary notables in the Australian writing scene. The characters dip into each others’ stories, building up a picture of shady characters, imposters, and unsettling mysteries.
arirang's review
5.0
Eye Books is a small, independent publisher, founded in 1996 with the aim of publishing books about the extraordinary things ordinary people have done: people who decide to stop talking about their dreams and actually go out and grab them, and Lightning Press their much newer fiction imprint.
Ryan O'Neill's Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers won the Australian PM's Award for Fiction and Lightning Press have now brought this wonderful book to a UK audience.
The premise - as the title suggests - is biographies of sixteen important Australian writers over the last 150 years. Presented ostensibly as non-fiction, the book is in fact satirical.
The first author featured is Rand Washington, the pulp science-fiction writer, overt racist and possible murderer (anyone standing in the way of his career usually meets an oddly convenient - for Rand Washington - end). He first hones his craft as a disciple of H.P. Lovecroft who gives him some helpful feedback: As well as advising the boy to buy a dictionary and thesaurus, Lovecraft warned him that filling his stories with extremist views on race could, as Lovecraft knew from personal experience, alienate editors.
Next we have Matilda Young, the "Whinging Matilda" whose poetry is constantly frustrated by the patriarchy, starting, in her childhood, with her step father. After confiscating her paper and ink, and then foiling her attempts to write with berry juice on her wallpaper, followed by tea-leaves and vinegar on the wooden slats of her mattress, he catches her sharpening a knife, proclaiming that she will resort to the only liquid left to her, blood. Laughing he dares her to cut herself, to be met with the retort: it's not my blood I'm going to use. And decades later, when she attains international, but not domestic, acclaim and wins the Nobel Prize, the only coverage in the Australian press is in a local paper: Sydney housewife wins writing competition.
Then we have Arthur Ruthra, founder of the breakaway Kangaroulipo after he falls out with the official Oulipan movement in Paris, who attempts increasingly bizarre experiments such as typing his 'Repression: A Novel Written Under Constraint' entirely with his nose. He eventually dies, of taking too much ecstasy, in a calculated snub to his rival George Perec, who obviously can't conceive how anyone can overdose on Es. Poor Arthur. The only constraint he couldn't overcome was his lack of talent, Perec writes to Italo Calvino.
If sixteen similar but separate sketches was all the book amounted to it would still be a very amusing read, albeit one might argue Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas had already done something similar. But there is pathos amongst the humour, and some ultimately important points to be made about the self-importance and chauvinism of the literary scene. The issue of sexism is addressed in a number of stories, but while racism is also tackled, none of the writers featured, apart from one literary critic featured on a couple of pages, are themselves indigenous, perhaps because O'Neill didn't want to parody this part of the culture (but see below re the index).
Many of the stories and characters are rooted in real-life figures - there is a reason most of the authors featured are dead. There is a lot that no doubt escaped me and would be more obvious to those with knowledge of the 20th Century Australian literary scene, but the real-life Ern Malley hoax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley) is given a further, wonderfully Borgesian, twist in O'Neill's book and one character Addison Tiller, is based on Steele Rudd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_Rudd) and the Dad and Dave characters he created but came to despise in their popularised radio incarnations.
And as the novel progresses, the story builds as the lives of the sixteen authors, plus those of a host of other characters (publishers, proof readers, academics) cross into each other to make a complex story and one with plot twists and revelations. And perhaps the best story of all is saved for last, the brief biography of Sydney Steele, anecdotes about whom feature throughout the stories of the other 15, but whose literary output had the longevity of a Spinal Tap drummer.
The stories become so entangled that the reader is at times thankful for the helpful index provided at the end, contributed, we're told by O'Neill's troubled, and now recently deceased, wife.
And here we see another dimension as the intertextuality and playfulness extends to the book itself. The 'By the Same Author Page' includes O'Neill's real-life fiction "The Weight of a Human Heart: Stories", but also the entirely fictitious non-fiction works "Ordinary People Doing Everyday Things in Commonplace Settings: A History of the Australian Short Story" and "The Sacred Kangaroos: Fifty Overrated Australian Novels" as well as two biographies of the authors in this book.
The acknowledgements at the end are also part of the story, describing his altercation with Tim Winton after "Ordinary People ..." failed to win the Pennington Prize for non-fiction (a prize named after one of the fictitious authors in the book and from a shortlist comprising others). One wonders if the altercation was perhaps prompted by the blurbs quoted on the website of the Kanganoulipo movement (https://www.kanganoulipo.com/about-us/) for O'Neill's previous novel:
And in a real-life twist, having named the book in tribute to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Careers, the book went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize.
O'Neill has acknowledged the potential overlap with Nazi Literature in the America both in the novel, where the fictional O'Neill lists Bolano's book as a factual source, and in interviews by the real-life O'Neill (https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog/ryan-oneill-chats-about-fake-australian-authors-and-their-brilliant-careers/)
Pale Fire is also a clear inspiration, and O'Neill has named Nabakov as his favourite writer (https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4975:open-page-with-ryan-o-neill&Itemid=1336&idU=2) which in the novel he twists to have Nabakov take his inspiration from one of his authors, Peter 'Pin' Darkbloom.
And the index itself, assembled one recalls ostensibly by his troubled and now deceased wife, is also part of the novel, and repays close reading. Buried amongst the other entries are:
shoddy research 4-7, 37-41, 94-101, 154-9, 183-94, 209-18
indigenous writers, lack of 1-176, 179-259 [see my comments above]
Plagarisms,
of Roberto Bolano 154-6, 158, 161
and indeed the very last entry of all, the last words in the whole book, provides the final, albeit rather well-telegraphed, revelation in the plot.
A truly memorable read - one that deserved the prize recognition it achieved in Australia and one I hope to see get similar recognition it the UK.
Ryan O'Neill's Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers won the Australian PM's Award for Fiction and Lightning Press have now brought this wonderful book to a UK audience.
The premise - as the title suggests - is biographies of sixteen important Australian writers over the last 150 years. Presented ostensibly as non-fiction, the book is in fact satirical.
The first author featured is Rand Washington, the pulp science-fiction writer, overt racist and possible murderer (anyone standing in the way of his career usually meets an oddly convenient - for Rand Washington - end). He first hones his craft as a disciple of H.P. Lovecroft who gives him some helpful feedback: As well as advising the boy to buy a dictionary and thesaurus, Lovecraft warned him that filling his stories with extremist views on race could, as Lovecraft knew from personal experience, alienate editors.
Next we have Matilda Young, the "Whinging Matilda" whose poetry is constantly frustrated by the patriarchy, starting, in her childhood, with her step father. After confiscating her paper and ink, and then foiling her attempts to write with berry juice on her wallpaper, followed by tea-leaves and vinegar on the wooden slats of her mattress, he catches her sharpening a knife, proclaiming that she will resort to the only liquid left to her, blood. Laughing he dares her to cut herself, to be met with the retort: it's not my blood I'm going to use. And decades later, when she attains international, but not domestic, acclaim and wins the Nobel Prize, the only coverage in the Australian press is in a local paper: Sydney housewife wins writing competition.
Then we have Arthur Ruthra, founder of the breakaway Kangaroulipo after he falls out with the official Oulipan movement in Paris, who attempts increasingly bizarre experiments such as typing his 'Repression: A Novel Written Under Constraint' entirely with his nose. He eventually dies, of taking too much ecstasy, in a calculated snub to his rival George Perec, who obviously can't conceive how anyone can overdose on Es. Poor Arthur. The only constraint he couldn't overcome was his lack of talent, Perec writes to Italo Calvino.
If sixteen similar but separate sketches was all the book amounted to it would still be a very amusing read, albeit one might argue Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas had already done something similar. But there is pathos amongst the humour, and some ultimately important points to be made about the self-importance and chauvinism of the literary scene. The issue of sexism is addressed in a number of stories, but while racism is also tackled, none of the writers featured, apart from one literary critic featured on a couple of pages, are themselves indigenous, perhaps because O'Neill didn't want to parody this part of the culture (but see below re the index).
Many of the stories and characters are rooted in real-life figures - there is a reason most of the authors featured are dead. There is a lot that no doubt escaped me and would be more obvious to those with knowledge of the 20th Century Australian literary scene, but the real-life Ern Malley hoax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley) is given a further, wonderfully Borgesian, twist in O'Neill's book and one character Addison Tiller, is based on Steele Rudd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_Rudd) and the Dad and Dave characters he created but came to despise in their popularised radio incarnations.
And as the novel progresses, the story builds as the lives of the sixteen authors, plus those of a host of other characters (publishers, proof readers, academics) cross into each other to make a complex story and one with plot twists and revelations. And perhaps the best story of all is saved for last, the brief biography of Sydney Steele, anecdotes about whom feature throughout the stories of the other 15, but whose literary output had the longevity of a Spinal Tap drummer.
The stories become so entangled that the reader is at times thankful for the helpful index provided at the end, contributed, we're told by O'Neill's troubled, and now recently deceased, wife.
And here we see another dimension as the intertextuality and playfulness extends to the book itself. The 'By the Same Author Page' includes O'Neill's real-life fiction "The Weight of a Human Heart: Stories", but also the entirely fictitious non-fiction works "Ordinary People Doing Everyday Things in Commonplace Settings: A History of the Australian Short Story" and "The Sacred Kangaroos: Fifty Overrated Australian Novels" as well as two biographies of the authors in this book.
The acknowledgements at the end are also part of the story, describing his altercation with Tim Winton after "Ordinary People ..." failed to win the Pennington Prize for non-fiction (a prize named after one of the fictitious authors in the book and from a shortlist comprising others). One wonders if the altercation was perhaps prompted by the blurbs quoted on the website of the Kanganoulipo movement (https://www.kanganoulipo.com/about-us/) for O'Neill's previous novel:
His fiction has been described as “refreshing, funny, devastating” (Megan Mayhew Bergman) “acerbic, playful and serious” (Cate Kennedy) and “Stop harassing me, I will never give you a blurb, you desperate hack” (Tim Winton).
And in a real-life twist, having named the book in tribute to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Careers, the book went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize.
O'Neill has acknowledged the potential overlap with Nazi Literature in the America both in the novel, where the fictional O'Neill lists Bolano's book as a factual source, and in interviews by the real-life O'Neill (https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog/ryan-oneill-chats-about-fake-australian-authors-and-their-brilliant-careers/)
I heard about Roberto Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas which explored a similar form, of biographies of fictional fascist Latin American writers. Before beginning my book, I decided to read Bolano’s in order to see if my ideas were too similar to his. Fortunately, Bolano had done different things in his book than I intended to do in mine, and relieved, I continued to mull over my book in a vague way.
Pale Fire is also a clear inspiration, and O'Neill has named Nabakov as his favourite writer (https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4975:open-page-with-ryan-o-neill&Itemid=1336&idU=2) which in the novel he twists to have Nabakov take his inspiration from one of his authors, Peter 'Pin' Darkbloom.
And the index itself, assembled one recalls ostensibly by his troubled and now deceased wife, is also part of the novel, and repays close reading. Buried amongst the other entries are:
shoddy research 4-7, 37-41, 94-101, 154-9, 183-94, 209-18
indigenous writers, lack of 1-176, 179-259 [see my comments above]
Plagarisms,
of Roberto Bolano 154-6, 158, 161
and indeed the very last entry of all, the last words in the whole book, provides the final, albeit rather well-telegraphed, revelation in the plot.
A truly memorable read - one that deserved the prize recognition it achieved in Australia and one I hope to see get similar recognition it the UK.
muninnherself's review
5.0
Amusing and convincing faux biographies of imagined Australian writers
This has been much recommended and in turn I recommend it. A parody of literary biography which will leave you wishing you could actually read some of the books the characters are supposed to have written. And it has a funny index which is always good.
This has been much recommended and in turn I recommend it. A parody of literary biography which will leave you wishing you could actually read some of the books the characters are supposed to have written. And it has a funny index which is always good.
kjcharles's review
This is absolutely brilliant. Like, the sort of brilliant that I'll be going BY THE WAY YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK to random people on the bus for months.
The premise is that it's a collection of biographies of Australian literary figures. We get a foreword, a number of accounts of literary lives told by a literary biographer, and an index. Keep with me here, okay?
Obviously, the whole thing is a fictional construct. The bios are often very funny and excoriating about a lot of things including the publishing industry, literary movements, authorial self-delusion, poetry magazines, men, and how absolutely bloody awful book people are. Also the deep-rooted racism and misogyny of the Australian literary scene. I imagine there's a fair few references that I didn't get because I don't know much about Aus-lit, but I didn't notice the lack--there wasn't that sense that some satire has of the author excluding any readers who aren't part of the in-group he criticises. Anyone with a working knowledge of twentieth century literature could happily follow this, I'd think.
It's more than just a satire, of course. The biographies intersect in lots of ways as the book progresses, and we come to solve all sorts of puzzles in earlier stories and understand the references. I won't spoil the way it's brought to a climax; I will say, do not read out of order, and don't skip the index.
There are some fantastic running jokes and deadpan gags, and construction so nicely done that I may actually have to read the whole thing again through just to see it click into place. Immensely satisfying.
The premise is that it's a collection of biographies of Australian literary figures. We get a foreword, a number of accounts of literary lives told by a literary biographer, and an index. Keep with me here, okay?
Obviously, the whole thing is a fictional construct. The bios are often very funny and excoriating about a lot of things including the publishing industry, literary movements, authorial self-delusion, poetry magazines, men, and how absolutely bloody awful book people are. Also the deep-rooted racism and misogyny of the Australian literary scene. I imagine there's a fair few references that I didn't get because I don't know much about Aus-lit, but I didn't notice the lack--there wasn't that sense that some satire has of the author excluding any readers who aren't part of the in-group he criticises. Anyone with a working knowledge of twentieth century literature could happily follow this, I'd think.
It's more than just a satire, of course. The biographies intersect in lots of ways as the book progresses, and we come to solve all sorts of puzzles in earlier stories and understand the references. I won't spoil the way it's brought to a climax; I will say, do not read out of order, and don't skip the index.
There are some fantastic running jokes and deadpan gags, and construction so nicely done that I may actually have to read the whole thing again through just to see it click into place. Immensely satisfying.
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