Patrick White: A Life (1991)

Written by David Marr

After working as a journalist throughout the 1970s and early ‘80s, David Marr published his first book, Barwick, a biography of Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick, which was an award-winning sensation. In 1984, he published his second book, The Ivanov Trail, and immediately decided to bring his next plan to fruition: a biography of Patrick White. Marr approached White and gained the author’s approval, allowing him access to friends, family members, letters, and archives that he would otherwise have been denied. (White had been opposed to biographies and archives his whole life, but seemed to have mellowed in old age. It seems he decided that, if the story were to be told, it would be best for the storyteller to be someone sympathetic – with the added bona fides of being another gay man of the left, perhaps?)

Marr won a 1985 Literature Board of Australia fellowship ($25,000) to help write the biography, but had to turn down an Australian Bicentennial Association funding offer in 1987, because White would not have approved of being associated with the Bicentenary! In July 1990, Marr brought the final draft to White, who spent nine days going through the work page by page, correcting spelling mistakes and errors. White had no editorial control over the content, however he approved the text despite finding much of it painful, bringing back a lifetime of memories. Marr’s original title for the work was “The Stranger of All Time”. Only a few months later, the author passed away. Prior to publication, Marr wrote a brief concluding passage chronicling the final days and White’s death.

The development on the biography caused the occasional shock within the White’s household. His partner Manoly Lascaris had never known about White’s former lover Spud Johnson, for instance, and was quite taken aback to learn the pair had communicated by letter for years after Lascaris entered the scene

For the 1992 paperback reissue, Marr amended a line about White’s Centennial Park neighbours in 1964, in which he had originally stated that the wife next door could not understand White’s books. Marr claimed the couple were Theodore Simos QC and his wife Helen. However it turned out they didn’t live there at that time, so it must have been the previous neighbours. Mr and Mrs Simos felt they had been unfairly maligned.

Editions:

Random House (AU, July 15 1991, 727pp)
Random Century (AU – 100 limited signed copies in hardback, in a hardbound case)
Jonathan Cape (UK, 727pp)
Vintage (AU, 1992)
Knopf (USA, 1992)
Vintage (AU, 2008, with an afterword by Marr)

Original price: $49.95 (hardback)

Awards: The Age Book of the Year 1991 and also the Non-Fiction Prize

NSW Literary Awards – Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction 1992

National Book Council Banjo Award for Non-Fiction 1992

Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards – Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction 1992

Reviews:

William Fraser, SMH 29/6/1991 and 16/7/1991

A.P. Riemer, SMH 13/7/1991

Peter Craven, Age, 13/7/1991

Owen Brown, Advertiser Magazine 13/7/1991

Susan Chenery, Weekend Australian 13/7/1991

Peter Pierce, Bulletin 23/7/1991

Peter Charlton, Courier-Mail 23/7/1991

Kerryn Goldsworthy, Adelaide Review, August 1991

David Malouf, Australian Book Review, 133 (August 1991)

Robert Gray, TLS 9/8/1991

Sylvia Lawson, London Review of Books, 15/8/1991

Pamela Ruskin, Australian Jewish News 30/8/1991

David J. Tacey, Quadrant 35.10 (October 1991)

Robert Gray, Sydney Review 37 (November 1991)

Kirkus Reviews 15/1/1992:

“ It is an unusually calm, unstraining, unjaded, and even curious work, fascinated with Patrick White but never fawning over or using him (he’d have been hard to use this way anyway) as an illustration of an artistic or psychological conclusion the biographer has come to… His love/hate affair with Australia is the book’s undertheme- -but it merely contributes to what is most unmistakable about White as seen by Marr: the incomparably high fidelity of the man— artistic, personal, social…. Superb.”

Thomas Keneally, LA Times Book Review 15/3/1993

Elizabeth Jolley and Axel Clark, Scripsi 7.3 (1992)

Andrew Sullivan, The Nobel Prize in Misanthropy, NYT Book Review 22/3/1992

Peter Wolfe, Chicago Tribune 29/3/1992

Richard Dyer, “A Great Biography of a Difficult Man”, Boston Globe 7/4/1992

Peter Wolfe, Antipodes 6.1 (June 1992)

Noel Rowe, Southerly 52.4 (December 1992)

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