The Eye of the Storm

Sidney Nolan, Adelaide Lady #4 (1964)

“I don’t understand why Anglo-Saxons reject the warmth of the family.”

“They’re afraid of being consumed. Families can eat you.”

Plot: In her large Sydney home, Elizabeth Hunter is dying, attended by her longtime German Jewish housekeeper, a succession of hired nurses, and a solicitor with a long memory. Elizabeth is a dominating force who heavily influenced her two children, both of whom have lived in Europe for many years and return to be with their mother. Sir Basil, a famous, womanising actor based in London, is down on his luck financially. His sister Dorothy, the Princess de Lascabanes, has long left her colonial past behind to develop a new identity, and a return to Australia is especially confronting for her. Both siblings hope to reconcile with their past – and perhaps gain something from their mother’s death.

Elizabeth is plunged into the past, especially memories of her deceased husband Bill, and a revelatory moment on Brumby Island when she came face to face with the eye of a storm, and an incredible sense of calm and meaning like never before. But the past looms large and has space for everyone: Basil, Dorothy, the housekeeper Lotte who survived the Holocaust, the passionately loyal solicitor Arnold Wyburd, and the three nurses who give in to its demands despite their own personal doubts. Each of these figures must reassess their lives in the wake of this startling woman…. Yet her true complexity will never be understood by those closest to her, especially not her children, who have yet to experience anything as transcendent as has she.

Editions:

• Jonathan Cape (UK, September 1973, 608p)
• Claassen (Germany, Im Auge des Sturms, trans: Matthias Buttner, 1973)
• Viking (US, January 1974, 593pp – went through six printings in the first year)
• Penguin (AU, 1975 – went through ten printings in 15 years)
• Avon Books (US, 1975)
• Gallimard (France, trans: Suzanne Netillard, L’oeil du cyclone, 1978)
• Canadian National Institute for the Blind (Audiobook, 1978, read by Carmen Matthews)
• Royal Blind Society of NSW (Audiobook, c. 1980, read by John Dease)
• Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind (Audiobook, 1985, read by Penny Dunphy)
• Vintage (UK, 1995)
• Random House (AU, 2018)
• Bolinda (Audiobook, Deirdre Rubenstein, 2019)

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Epigraphs:

I was given by chance this human body so difficult to wear. – Noh Play

He felt what could have been a tremor of heaven’s own perverse love. – Kawabata

Men and boughs break;/ Praise life while you walk and wake;/ It is only lent. – David Campbell

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History: The idea of the novel came to PW in late 1969. He finished the draft in January 1971 in his home at Centennial Park, which lent some of its geography to the house within the novel. PW refined the book throughout 1972. The Eye of the Storm was pivotal in PW winning the Nobel Prize, having been read by the judges prior to its publication. The judges had considered PW previously on two occasions. With rumours of the Prize, and increased critical assessment of his work in general, PW earned his largest paperback advance for this novel, at $12,500. Early titles included “At the Centre” and “Within the Eye”.

The Eye of the Storm was deliberately released in the UK before the USA, a reversal of normal procedure, as PW was annoyed by negative US reviews for previous books. He hoped that the expected praise from Commonwealth reviewers would create some hype in the US. In this case, the Nobel Prize rather created the hype for him.

Notes: The family’s country home, Kudjeri, is PW’s memory of Belltrees, the country estate of his father. Elizabeth draws on PW’s mother Ruth – he called the character “a great beauty, bitch, charismatic figure, destroyer, and affirmer all in one” – especially in her death on the toilet, with a maid nearby, which was how PW envisaged Ruth’s final moments. Basil’s monogrammed ivory brushes are based on presents Dick White gave his son. Basil himself was partly modelled on the great Sir Donald Wolfit, a famous ham actor.

Sister Maria de Santis was raised by refugees from Smyrna, one of countless examples of the great Greek catastrophe of 1922 looming large in PW’s work. The trip to Brumby Island recalls PW’s own trip to Fraser Island to investigate his next novel, A Fringe of Leaves. Elizabeth nursing the dying Bill is based in part on PW’s own parents, although in real life they were never estranged.

Of seeing into herself and beyond her materialistic existence, PW said of Elizabeth: “She remained a bitch because there was that side of her nature too. But she did have, I think, more insights after the storm.”

Sales: Released in the UK just one month prior to PW winning the Nobel, the novel opened to several negative or indifferent reviews, to the author’s surprise. The novel had a UK print run of 23,000, roughly on par with the number sold for The Vivisector. The novel received some warmer reviews in Australia, where it was released mere weeks before the Nobel announcement.

However with the news of the Nobel announcement, Viking had time to double its print run to 18,000, and the book needed to be reprinted; PW had become a US bestseller, with 25,000 copies sold within 3 months. The reviews – to be fair – were not uniformly positive, but an appreciation of the writer as a Nobel Laureate was certainly different than his US reputation as a recurrent manufacturer of literary doorstops.

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Reviews:

• Michael Ratcliffe, Times 6/9/1973
  • “I never believed in The Eye of the Storm for more than a few sentences at a time. The magic is fatally flawed by both slickness and indecision, and out of its light-fingered collapse there rises a Johnsonian world of the daft and the greedy, ruled by cruelty, stupidity, and hate.”
• William Trevor, Guardian 6/9/1973
• William Walsh, New Statesman 7/9/1973
• Marian Wiggin, Sunday Times 9/9/1973
• Paul Bailey, “King Lear down under”, Observer 9/9/1973
  • Negative review, calling it White’s “latest baggy monster”.
• Francis King, Sunday Telegraph, 9/9/1973
• Tom Rosenthal, TLS, 21/9/1973:
  • Not completely negative but calling the book “a work of misanthropy at best, of hatred at worst.”
• Neil Jillett, Melbourne Herald, 29/9/1973
• Edward Weeks, Atlantic Monthly, ??/1973
• Peter Smark, “White’s best novel since Voss”, ??, 30/9/1973
• Kylie Tennant, SMH, 6/10/1973
• Brian Kiernan, The Age 6/10/1973
• Adrian Mitchell, Adelaide Advertiser 6/10/1973
• Martha Duffy, Time 14/10/1973
• Cedric Flower, Bulletin 20/10/1973
• David Rowbotham, Courier-Mail 10/11/1973
• Economist 10/11/1973
• Geoffrey Dutton, Australian Book Review, November, 1973
• Carl Harrison-Ford, The Australian 29/11/1973
• Dorothy Queen, Meanjin 32.4 (Dec 1973)
• Veronica Brady, Westerly 4 (Dec 1973)
• Clement Semmler, SMH, 8/12/1973
• Peter Acrkoyd, Spectator 231 (1973)
• John McLaren, Overland 57 (1973)
• R. Beston, Hemisphere (Dec 1973)
• Leonie Kramer, Quadrant, 18.1 (1974)
• A.F. Bellette, Ariel 5.3 (1974)
• Kirkus Reviews, January 1974
• Anatole Broyard, New York Times, 2/1/1974
• Shirley Hazzard, NYT Book Review 6/1/1974
  • “One seeks among debased superlatives for words that would convey the grandeur of The Eye of the Storm not in destitute slogans but in tribute to its high intellect, its fidelity to our victories and confusions, its beauty and heroic maturity.”
• Edward Weeks, Atlantic Monthly, Feb 1974
• Village Voice, 7/2/1974
• DK Mano, National Review, 15/2/1974
• John Skow, Harper’s, March 1974
• George Steiner, New Yorker 4/3/1974
  • Thought White wrote scenes of “transfiguration“ incredibly but felt that the book was too grim.
• Christopher Ricks, New York Review of Books 4/4/1974

Also published in 1973: Christina Stead, The Little Hotel; William Goldman, The Princess Bride; Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago; Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Breakfast of Champions.’

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Film Adaptation

The Eye of the Storm (2011) is to date the only film adaptation of a White novel. Two of the supporting roles went to two of PW’s favourite theatre actors during his 1970s-1980s revival period, Robyn Nevin and John Gaden.

The film ran into funding problems after casting was announced in early 2010. Funds were established from Film Victoria but Screen Australia allegedly made strong demands for certainty on foreign sales and distribution before they handed over money. By the end of March, the producers had only just amassed the $12m budget to film in Melbourne (despite the film still being set in Sydney). To the surprise of many, given that the filming of a White novel could be considered a landmark moment, Screen Australia ultimately did not come through with funding. The organisation believed that genre films were where the audience (and thus the money) could be found.

The film shot for 10 weeks in what was described as a situation where everything came together at the last minute, being able to assemble the cast and budget with no time to spare. The most notable change in the adaptation is that Elizabeth’s three nurses have been reduced to two.

The film’s score premiered before the film, performed by Julien Wilson and the Paul Grabowsky Trio at the Forum Theatre, Melbourne on 12/6/2011.

The film premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July 2011.

Dir: Fred Schepisi; screenplay: Judy Morris, starring: Geoffrey Rush (Basil Hunter), Charlotte Rampling (Elizabeth Hunter), Judy Davis (Dorothy de Lascabanes), with Robyn Nevin (Lal Wyburd), Helen Morse (Lotte), Colin Friels (Athol Shreve), Maria Theodorakis (Sister Mary de Santis), Alexandra Schepisi (Sister Flora Manhood), and John Gaden (Arnold Wyburd). Producers: Antony Waddington and Gregory Read.

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