The Twyborn Affair

E. Phillips Fox, The Arbour (1910)

“But one can’t always tell, can one? In a world like this.”

Plot: A mysterious Greek woman in a May/December romance during the First World War, with haunting eyes and a longing to disappear from view. A young heir trying his luck at manual labour in the 1920s in a country he thought he had left behind, lusted after by the lady of the estate and lusting himself after his fellow jackaroo. The propreitress of an East End brothel in the nascent months of World War II, forever tainted by her provincialism and unfulfilled love.

Yet all three of these people are one, their tales told in their own styles, brought together through the changing circumstances of Eddie Twyborn, a chameleon in sense of an identity.

Editions:

• Jonathan Cape (UK, September 1979, 432pp)
• Viking (US, April 1980, 432pp)
• Penguin (AU, 1981)
• Gallimard (trans: Jean Lambert, Les Incarnations D’eddie Twyborn, 1983, France)
• Hear-a-Book (Audiobook, 1984, read by Mary Marshall)
• Claassen (trans: Kurt Heinrich Hansen, Die Twyborn Affaere, 1986)
• Royal Blind Society of New South Wales (Audiobook, 1992, read by John Burton)
• Vintage (UK, 1995)
• Bolinda (Audiobook, 2019, read by Jennifer Vuletic)

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Epigraphs:

‘What else should our lives be but a series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.’ – David Malouf

‘My suspicion is that in Heaven the Blessed are of the opinion that the advantages of that locale have been overrated by theologians who were never actually there. Perhaps even in Hell the damned are not always satisfied.’ -Jorge Luis Borges

‘Sometimes you’ll see someone with nothing on but a band-aid.’ -Diane Arbus

---

History: In January 1974, PW visited Melbourne where he viewed a painting, The Arbour, by E. Phillips Fox. Noted politician and activist Barry Jones told PW a (possibly apocryphal) story that the female figure in the painting was in fact adventurer and raconteur Herbert Dyce-Murphy. Allegedly he had lived openly as a woman under the name Edith, partly to serve as a spy. For many years, Murphy intermittently served in a Norwegian whaling fleet in Antarctica, living the rest of his life on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, assisting needy children. Whenever he could, he lived a life that deviated from the binary gender norms of the time. Murphy died in 1971. He became a figure in PW’s mind, “the stranger of all time”.

The timing of this conversation was ideal. For the first time, PW was serioualy consider making his sexuality public. He had lived a fairly open homosexual lifestyle in England in the 1930s. His relationship with Manoly Lascaris was nearing the end of its fourth decade, during which time the couple had played host to writers, socialites, politicians, artists, and ordinary suburban types from around Australia. Nevertheless, in the media and the public sphere, PW was – like almost all homosexuals – a “confirmed bachelor”. Although he felt that the cause of gay rights was important, he also didn’t connect with the more outspoken protests of the younger gay generation. Still, he felt a connection to the community and, more importantly, was beginning to worry that someone would “out” him before he could do it himself.

After A Fringe of Leaves was completed in 1976, PW had worked through all of the main ideas he had wanted to develop in to novels. All except the issue of sexuality. Fringe exhibited a more open sexuality than most of PW’s previous works, and his new novel would take that to a new level. PW began writing The Twyborn Affair in January 1977 and sped through the first draft that year, completing the final draft in late 1978.

Around 1986, David Malouf wrote a film adaptation with the intention of Jim Sharman directing it. The film was never made.

Notes: The novel, which PW knew may be his last due to his age (it wasn’t), functions as something of a tour through the author’s history: “all my novels have been to some extent autobiographical, but the present one is more explicit than the others.” (Letters 506). Part I takes place on the French Riviera, which PW had visited as a young man. Part II recalls his early adulthood as a jackaroo in the Monaro. Part III takes place in the London of the late 1930s, drawn from PW’s own memories.

Sales: The novel was released in London and Australia in late 1979 and became a bestseller, with an initial print run of 25,000 copies. The UK jacket design was by Luciana Arrighi. It was released in the US the following year, receiving seemingly muted but respectful reviews over there.

---

Reviews:

• Guardian 19/9/1979
• A Motion, New Statesman 28/9/1979
• P. Ableman, Spectator, 29/9/1979
• Neil Jillett, The Age, 29/9/1979
• Angus Wilson, Observer 30/9/1979
  • A highly positive review.
• Manning Clark, SMH 13/10/1979
• Hope Hewitt, Canberra Times, 27/10/1979
• Katharine England, Advertiser, 3/11/1979
• Robert Taubman, London Review of Books, 8/11/1979
• G.A. .Wilkes, Weekend Australian, 10/11 November 1979
• Books and Bookmen, November 1979
• Geoffrey Dutton, Bulletin, 27/11/1979:
  • “Patrick White’s revelation of detail has never been more brilliant…. The Twyborn Affair will make some readers uncomfortable; particularly those Australian readers who expect writers to scratch their backs and rub their egos. White, as always, makes the demand of his readers that they share at least some of his own despairing if sometimes amused concern for the human race.”
• Listener, 29/11/1979
• William Walsh, TLS, 30/11/1979:
  • “Not the best, nor the worst.”
• John McLaren, Australian Book Review, Nov 1979
• Geoffrey Tout-Smith, Overland 78, December 1979
• National Times, 7-13 December 1979
• Cited as one of the best books of the year by Barbara Jefferis, Elizabeth Riddell, Nancy Phelan, and Rodney Hall, SMH, 15/12/1979
• Bernard Levin, The Sunday Times (London) 16/12/1979
• Andrew Lloyd James, Bulletin 18/12/1979
• Helen Daniel, Age 26/1/1980
• Veronica Brady, Kunapipi 2.1 (1980)
• Encounter 54 (January 1980)
• Library Journal, 15/2/1980
• Publishers Weekly, 7/3/1980
• Peter Wolfe, St Louis Globe-Democrat, 29/3/ 1980
• Nancy Schapiro,“Mysteries of Sensual Identity”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30/3/1980
• Walter Clemons, Newsweek, 7/4/1980
• Rosemary Dinnage, The NY Review of Books 17/4/1980
• Kirkus Review, 22/4/1980:
  • “Silly? Yes. But out of this baroque, shadowed, I-don’t-give-a-damn invention, White draws some astonishingly lovely tones; the novella-like structure and the things-are-not-what-they-seem lightness allow him to linger on his style, which often responds marvelously. Stare at it too hard and this fabrication will collapse into a pile of sequins. But if you accept the terms of the waltz with Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith, it’s fun and–for White’s shining prose–sometimes even more than that.”
• Benjamin De Mott, New York Times Book Review, 27/4/1980:
  • Muted review, pleasurable but not a masterpiece.
• New Yorker 28/4/1980
• New Republic, 3/5/1980
• Atlantic Monthly, May 1980
• Bruce Allen, Christian Science Monitor 7/5/1980:
  • “As it stands, I’d guess that the book’s frequent force will override objections to its manifest slackness and silliness”
• Book World, 18/5/1980
• Peter Pierce, Meanjin 39.2 (Winter 1980)
• Wall Street Journal, 18/6/1980
• Leonie Kramer, Quadrant 24.7 (Jul 1980)
• Swanee Review 88 (Oct 1980)
• S.A. Ramsay, Ariel 11.4 (Oct 1980)
• W. Seammell, London Magazine 19.12 (1980)

Also published in 1979: David Ireland, A Woman of the Future; Randolph Stow, The Visitants; Italo Calvino, If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler; Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber.

---

Adaptation:

A BBC radio adaptation by DJ Britton, directed by Alison Hindell. Which aired 27 September 2009 on BBC Radio 3.

With Julian Rhind-Tutt (Eddie), Penny Downie (Eadie), Hattie Morahan (Joan), Philip Quast (Don), Leigh Funnelle (Marcia), John Rowe (Angelos / Rod), David Henry (Curly / Greg), Manon Edwards (Peggy / Ada). Piers Wehner (Driver), Emerald O’Hanrahan (Bridie), and Joseph Cohen-Cole (Philip).

Confused? Keen to use some of my content? Check out my Terms and Conditions.