Voss (Penguin Classics)

With verbal magic, White creates an entire world, with living memorable characters and events that you experience with all your senses.Consider Voss himself, a would-be explorer of the interior of Australia in the mid-19th century --"All that was external to himself he mistrusted, and was happiest in silence which is immeasurable, like distance, and the potentialities of self. p. 25"'Mr. Voss,' he said, with no suggestion of criticism, 'you have a contempt for God, because He is not in your own image.'" p. 42"... he never allowed himself the luxury of other people's strength, preferring the illusion of his own." p. 63"Alone, he and the blacks would have communicated with one another by skin and silence, just as dust is not impenetrable and the message of sticks can be interpreted after hours of intimacy." p. 163Here are examples of how he can vividly evoke a scene --"Distantly already the barking of strange dogs ws going off like pop-guns, and the dogs of Jildra had begun to whine and to bite at one another's shoulders, to express their joy and solidarity.... The bullocks groaned to a stop and were turning up their eyes, dilating their nostrils, and, to the last, resisting the heavy yokes with their necks. p. 177"... Voss did break the seal of Miss Trevelyan's letter, and was hunching himself, and spreading and smoothing the paper, as if it had been so crumpled, he must induce it physically to deliver up its text." p. 178"Dew was clogging the landscape. Spiders had sewn the bushes together. And then there were those last, intolerably melancholy stars, that cling to a white sky, and will not b put out except by force." p. 187"Prospective saints, he decided, would have fought over such an opportunity, for green and brown, of muck, and slime, and uncontrolled feces, and the bottomless stomach of nausea, are the true colors of hell." p. 263He also sprinkles the text with well-stated insights into human nature --"The prospect of a return to sanity had brought out the streak of madness that is hidden in all men." p. 338"'Dying is creation. The body creates fresh forms, the soul inspires by its manner of leaving the body and passes into other souls.'" p. 353"...the soul is elliptical in shape." p. 379"... if you live and suffer long enough in a place, you do not leave it altogether. Your spirit is still there." p. 434"'Come, come. If we are not certain of the fact, how is it possible to give the answers?'"'The air will tell us,' Miss Trevelyan said." p. 440

This novel Voss, by Australian Patrick White, is not what I expected. Whether it's something much greater, or merely something much different, isn't such an easy question for me. Here's what the editorial blurb on amazon announces:""In 1973, Australian writer Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature." Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is White's best-known book, a sweeping novel about a secret passion between the explorer Voss and the young orphan Laura. As Voss is tested by hardship, mutiny, and betrayal during his crossing of the brutal Australian desert, Laura awaits his return in Sydney, where she endures their months of separation as if her life were a dream and Voss the only reality. Marrying a sensitive rendering of hidden love with a stark adventure narrative, Voss is a novel of extraordinary power and virtuosity from a twentieth-century master.""That is as irrelevant a blurb as I've ever read, but it seemed entirely plausible, given the penchant the Nobel committees have shown for favoring wind-swept grandeur, novels of the soil, foundational and generational epics. Thus I expected a book like Moberg's "Unto a Good Land" or McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove", a narrative as broad as the River Platte, and just as shallow. Voss is anything but shallow. It's as much a hate story as a love story, and its most obvious shortcoming is the author's disinterest in making adventure thrilling.Patrick White was a stylist. A vividly original stylist, whose phrases glitter like the scales of an emerald boa or the jewels of a ceremonial dagger. A poetic stylist, who scatters his sable pearls on black cinders without the slightest concern for the reader's ability to gather them into a necklace of meaning. (Yes, I am trying to imitate him.) Here's a real sample:""On the edge of the ridge, the mare paused for a while, and was swaying and raising her head. Then she plunged downwards toward what she knew was certainty. But in that interval of rest upon the summit, Voss and the rider had touched hands, the same glint of decomposition and moonlight had started from the sockets of their eyes and from their teeth, and their two souls were united in the face of inferior realities. ... Riding down the other side, the young man conceived a poem, in which the silky seed that fell in milky rain from the Moon was raised up by the Sun's laying his hands upon it. His flat hands, with their conspicuously swollen knuckles, were creative, it was proved, if one dared to accept their blessing. One did dare, and at once it was seen that the world of fire and the world of ice were the same world of light; whereupon, for the first time in history, the third and dark planet was illuminated."" That's Patrick White at his most defiantly profound, I admit, but portentous prose is his meat-and-potatoes. At times I was awe-stricken by his intimidating brilliance... and at times I was surfeited, cloyed, bored.White doesn't admire his characters or, by implication, us his readers. His obsidian scalpel cuts through the prideful exterior of every personage in Voss to expose mediocrity. No one escapes his supercilious insights; no one is worthy even of his or her own apologetics. This is a novel about Redemption - Salvation - in which the only salvageable 'virtue' is abject humility, humiliation, penitential excoriation of human selfhood. I've never encountered a writer who treated his invented beings so harshly. As harshly as God treats souls, according to White, with eternal agony. In the metaphysics of White's Christianity, God is Hate.Or at least so it seems to this reader. It's been my "fortune" to find myself confronting three literary geniuses of hateful religiosity in close sequence: Flannery O'Connor in "Wise Blood", Camilo José Cela in "Christ versus Arizona", and now Patrick White in "Voss". All three depict humans as despicable, lost wretches. I'm ready for an antidote, a humanist, a Creator who loves His creations. Any suggestions?

The story starts a little slowly, and it's not a page turner, but the quality of the writing makes up for all that. His characters are flawed, very varied and very true to life. The observations on social mores are exquisitely acute. The unexplored continent of Australia is evoked with words as sparse as the continent itself. The descriptions of the drive of the new European explorers and of the indigenous people are equally weighted with no value judgements.I just love White's power with words. A few sentences were so arresting that I stopped, re-read and savoured them.It's a good meaty read.

I enjoyed small parts of it. It is technically excellent. I didn't care about large parts of it especially all the tedious Jane Austen like bits about love, marriage, family. I would have liked to get to know Voss and Laura more, but they remained aloof to me, despite their humbling experiences. It's a book that i didn't enjoy, but will think about for a long time. It fits in well after reading People in the Trees.I would not read this again, but once was valuable.Going back to Austen, I can't get Elizabeth and Mr Darcy out of my head (Laura and Voss).

A very great masterpiece of the highest order, but not the easiest to read, until you adjust to it's language and the tempo of the storytelling.Repays many times the the time and effort required to read it.Each word is laid down with such care and precision that it resembles an artist creating a wonderful mosaic.

Has aspirations that it signally fails to achieve but will be regarded by some as the Emperor's New Clothes. Read Conrad, Melville or Jane Austen to use your time on more deserving authors capable of exploring some of the themes that White attempts to tackle.

I find myself acknowledging that it is a fine piece of work, but something is lacking, which I can't put my finger on. The character construction is first class, and we get to share each persons journey with them.Both Voss and Laura are complex characters, but they also recognise that in each other. What I find missing is some sort of conclusion, a settling of the argument so to say. When I find myself searching for a simple ending I remind myself that life does not offer simple ending, and so a book that does not either must be closer to real life than stories that are neatly wrapped up. I did enjoy the portrayal of Sydney town, and can relate to the places and street names that I am so familiar with. Overall, it is a fine work. And I would recommend it.