In the book entitled Last Letter to a Reader, the author re-reads his older books, including the novel discussed in the previous paragraph, and although this method would in all likelihood suggest in the reader of the current book that time is to be emphasised, in the sense that current time is referring back to previous time, the author insists that re-reading cannot re-create a sense of time, but of place, and that re-reading his own books puts him back in a particular mood that recalls a place, and the particulars of that place. The plains from which the book gets its title (this title was not, it might be noted, the author’s first choice of title, as he believed that the title was overly definitive, which may run counter to the sense during the novel of meaning constantly deferred) could lend themselves to metaphorical attachment to the idea of the novelist’s work hiding subtle wonders beneath its seemingly formal style – a style which could be said to be so distinctive that it could be parodied in a fashion such as that the present reviewer is attempting in this piece – but the author, in the book previously mentioned wherein he reviews his own work, points out that his fiction is notable not for its depth but for its breadth, again echoing the physical plains which stretch seemingly endlessly, much like the attempts of the protagonist in this work of fiction to make sense of the myths of the plainsmen through the medium of film, a project which becomes ever-more elusive. I came to a number of conclusions about this book, as is evidenced by my notes, taken during the course of reading the book, and to which I am now referring some days later, but now have some hesitation as to using analogies to explain the content, if that is the right word, of the book, possibly because the novel itself ends in mystification rather than clarification.
The first book I mentioned in the previous paragraph is the novel The Plains, thought of by some who make a profession out of making pronouncements in literary matters as his most notable book, his most successful book, if such a thing can be adjudicated on anything more than sales. The author to which I am referring in the previous sentences is the Australian author Gerald Murnane. On a weeknight recently I took a library book that had lain on the coffee table for some days to bed, with the aim of reading it and then writing down some thoughts on its content and style, in anticipation of, and preparation for, reading the same author’s recent collection of essays, a book that is the outcome of him re-reading his own books, in many cases in their manuscript form. Last Letter to a Reader, Gerald Murnane, Giramondo
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