The Vivisector

Sidney Nolan, The Galaxy (1957-1958)

“It was going to be a long trudge to the Elysian Fields.”

Plot: Hurtle Duffield is born in poverty to a large family but is removed by a wealthy couple keen for a child, happy to sweeten the deal with a little cash. Hurtle’s new parents alternately ignore and oppress him, while he finds human connection only in the servants and his disabled, spiky foster sister Rhoda. Between the bold colours of the Australian landscape and the wealth of colour on display in Europe, Hurtle discovers his artistic values, escaping the family as a young man to pursue a career as an artist. He is scared he will die “before he had dared light the fireworks still inside him.” Hurtle’s love of his art is all-encompassing, leading him to dissect those around him for the purposes of his work, and destroy his relationship with the prostitute Nance Lightfoot. He evolves from a struggling young painter to an arrogant, disillusioned, financially secure artist. Here, he is torn between his vulgar side and the façade of Sydney society, exemplified by his childhood friend, art-collector Olivia Hollingrake.

Years later, impacted by a stroke which affects his speech, Hurtle finds himself with a young disciple named Lethbridge, a new love in the form of a young pianist, Kathy Volkov, and a reunion with his cat-loving sister. At last, he is celebrated through a retrospective exhibition where the aged Hurtle himself is a shadowy figure, overhearing the conversations of others. He meets his end in a revelatory moment discovering the colours and shapes he has sought for – unsuccessfully – his entire life through art. He can die in front of the blessed blue colour he has searched for his whole life, the artistic rendering of the truth he has sought in the way that some seek God.

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Editions:

• Jonathan Cape (UK, October 1970, 642pp)
• Viking (US, July 1970, 567pp)
• Claassen (Der Maler, 1972, trans: Wilhelm Borgers and Erwin Bootz)
• Penguin (AU, 1973)
• Avon Books (US, 1975)
• Gallimard (trans: Georges Magnane, Le vivisecteur, 1979)
• Vintage (UK, 1994)
• Vintage (AU, 2011)
• Random House (AU, 2012)
• Audiobook (Bolinda – Humphrey Bower, 2014)

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Epigraphs:

‘As I see it, painting and religious experience are the same thing, and what we are all searching for is the understanding and realisation of infinity.’ – Ben Nicholson

Cruelty has a Human Heart,/ And Jealousy a Human Face; /Terror the Human Form Divine,/ And Secrecy the Human Dress./ The Human Dress is forged in Iron,/ The Human Form a fiery Forge,/ The Human Face a Furnace seal’d,/ The Human Heart its hungry Gorge. -William Blake

They love truth when it reveals itself, and they hate it when it reveals themselves. -Saint Augustine

He becomes beyond all others the great Invalid, the great Criminal, the great Accursed One – and the Supreme Knower. For he reaches the unknown. -Rimbaud

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History: PW developed an interest in painting during his early relationship with Roy de Maistre in the late 1930s, and since his return to Australia in 1947 had gradually collected an array of artworks, many by notable Australians. PW’s first novel written since he moved to inner Sydney, The Vivisector leaves behind suburban satire for a new landscape: that of urban society. Hurtle Duffield is the culmination of PW’s series of artists and visionary geniuses, among them Elyot Sandish, Voss, Alf Dubbo, and Waldo Brown.

PW’s longest novel, he completed the first draft in February 1968 before setting off on six months of international travel. When he returned, PW made substantial changes. The first draft had been written through the eyes of several characters. Even as he neared the end of that process PW realised this was not the right way to approach the story. He revised this in the second draft, as well as adding some memories of his trip to Greece during the sequence where Hurtle Duffield visits that country.

The Sydney Morning Herald requested the rights to serialise the book before its publication as a novel (a format that was going out of style by 1970) but PW felt that this long book in particular would not work in serial format. Having parted ways with his UK publisher, Eyre & Spottiswoode, over his reluctance to accept awards and publicity, PW found himself the subject of a bidding war among other publishing houses. He ultimately signed with Jonathan Cape, receiving a £5,000 advance with royalties beginning at 15%.

In the mid-1970s, filmmaker Paul Cox (The Golden Braid) was interested in making a film of The Vivisector. But when he spoke to PW, the author preferred to see The Tree of Man made first. Cox investigated the possibility of writing a Tree script just so he could get access to the film rights for Vivisector! Nothing came of either.

Notes: Many elements were based on memories from PW’s life. Birdie Courtenay decorating and rallying at the Town Hall is modelled on Ruth’s actions during and after WWII. The model Boo Hollingrake is based on PW’s cousin Nellie Arrighi. Hurtle’s wealthy childhood home, “Sunningdale”, is based on PW’s childhood home Lulworth. Young Rhoda stamping on a tube of toothpaste was a memory of PW’s from his own childhood. When Hurtle and Nance are swept into a blowhole, it is reminiscencent of a near-death experience PW had on Kangaroo Island in the summer of 67-68; Nin Dutton saved his life.

Hurtle Duffield came from many sources. He exhibits elements of Roy de Maistre (Roy’s brother’s name was Hurtle) and Sidney Nolan. David Marr notes that the model for some of the character’s middle years was the artist Godfrey Miller, who was rich but lived in squalor. Hurtle’s physicality was taken partly from the poet David Campbell, whom PW admired as both a person and a poet. His paintings themselves are mostly inspired by Francis Bacon. Importantly, though, Hurtle is no one person. PW takes half a dozen figures and transmutes them into a new being, one whom Marr argues is a version of PW himself.

PW revisits his own work here, unusually, with the story of Hurtle Duffield’s grandfather who decided to ride through the centre of Australia in the 19^th century, but barely made it out of Sydney; he is a sort of deflated version of Voss.

According to several fans, the 1983 song “The Love Cats” by The Cure was inspired by this novel. Robert Smith, the English rock band’s lead vocalist, had been absorbed in White’s novels, and was struck by the scene in which Hurtle learns about a sack of cats being drowned.

Sales: The novel was published first in the USA in July 1970. Viking printed 13,000 copies but had only 4,000 by Christmas. This was a new low for US sales, despite favourable reviews, continuing the downward trend in hardback. (This is also reflected in what seem to have been fewer reviews in major US publications.)

In October, when the novel was published in the UK and Australia, it was substantially better off, selling 12,000 copies in the UK and 10,000 in Australia, requiring a second printing. The Vivisector seems to have been his biggest seller in Australia thus far, perhaps his most talked-about novel since The Tree of Man.

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Reviews:

• Kirkus Reviews, July(?) 1970:
  • “True, much of this has a savage and single-minded obsession which overrides the rank and disfigured aspects of existence but in the end the artist has isolated himself from the world and the book has collaterally immolated itself in its own grand conception.”
• Jody Haberland, Library Journal, August 1970:
  • “one of the year’s most important events”.
• National Observer, 17/8/1970
• Peter Michelmore, SMH, 22/8/1970
• John Thompson, Harper’s Magazine, September 1970:
  • “splendid”
• Clement Semmler, Australian Book Review 9.12 (Oct 1970)
• Brian Kiernan, The Australian 17/10/1970
• Evan Williams, SMH 17/10/1970:
  • “There are passages that I found tedious and difficult… But all of this would be largely beside the point, for at the end of The Vivisector, we are left with the certain knowledge that we have been in the presence of a work of art of overriding vitality and intellectual force, an august and ambitious novel that leaves us, like all great works of creative imagination, with a true and permanent enlargement of our understanding and experience… his most humane and accomplished achievement.”
• John Berger, Times 22/10/1970:
  • Positive review of the book’s power although felt it was a “romantic decadent” view of an artist.
• Robert Nye, Guardian 22/10/1970
• TG Rosenthal, New Statesman 23/10/1970
  • “The Vivisector, like a great painting, must be looked at again and again, to be allowed to create its reverberations. White will find it difficult to do anything better than this haunting, obsessed, and magnificent novel.”
• Cliev James, TLS 23/10/1970:
  • “In the end [Duffield] goes down in a flurry of language which may have been inspired by Finnegan’s Wake but which unfortunately recalls a Spaniard in the Works… It is characteristic of White to have no style, but rather a manner — an inflated manner. And it is characteristic of an inflated manner that you cannot ease off without lapsing into a deflated manner.”
• Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser 24/10/1970
• Julian Symons, Sunday Times 25/10/1970
• Stephen Wall, Observer 25/10/1970
• D.J. O’Hearn, The Age 31/10/1970
• Patrick Cosgrave, Spectator, 31/10/1970
• Owen Webster, Bulletin 31/10/1970:
  • “[N]ot the greatest of his works… but it is the easiest to read, the longest, and undeniably a majestic achievement.”
• Derek Mahon, Listener 5/11/1970
• Dorothy Green, Canberra Times 7/11/1970
• David Pryce-Jones, New York Times Book Review, 8/11/19790
• Barry Humphries, Sunday Review 22/11/1970
• John Beston, Westerly, Dec 1970
• John Beston, Makar Dec 1970
• Richard N. Coe, Meanjin 29.4 (Dec 1970)
• Also noted as several critics’ choices of the year in 4/12/1970 p.14 SMH
• David Rowbotham, “Patrick White’s most daring novel”, Courier-Mail, 5/12/1970
• Manning Clark – in “Several personal favourites”, The Age 26/12/1970
• John McLaren, Overland 46, Summer 1970-71
• Thelma Herring, Southerly 31.1 (1971)
• Charles Osborne, London Magazine 10.10 (Jan 1971)
• Wiliam Walsh, Encounter 36.5 (May 1971)
• Hudson Review, Spring 1971

Also published in 1970: Leon Uris, QB VII; Dal Stivens, A Horse of Air; Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon; Oodgeroo Noonuccal, My People; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

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