What do you think?
Rate this book
The Permit
"This novel would certainly be banned by the Ministry of Permits. Perhaps it should be banned by all governments. When Donald Horne's hero applies for the mysterious permit 37A he is thrown into a political maze of lies and twisted truths. Even after the shock ending, conspiracy continues." -- from rear panel blurb.
- GenresFiction
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1977
9 people want to read
About the author
Donald Horne
56 books13 followersDonald Richmond Horne AO was an Australian journalist, writer, and public intellectual. He was editor of The Bulletin, The Observer, and Quadrant, and was best known for his 1964 book The Lucky Country.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 26, 2023
Everyone my age knows the name of the Australian journalist, writer, and public intellectual Donald Horne AO (1921-2005) because everyone my age has either read The Lucky Country (1964), or heard everyone else talk about it so much that they thought they didn't need to read it themselves. Indeed, the title of that book went into the vernacular where it is misused all the time to signify what a beaut country Australia is. Misused because, as the blurb at Goodreads tells anyone who looks it up:
Ouch. But true. It was still mostly true when I read it in my young adulthood, even after three years of a progressive government in 1975. Greg at Goodreads thinks it was still true in 2015 and in comments we can see that a reader called Terry Wang thought so too in 2021 ... but I think that's a bit harsh... though you do have to wonder a bit about an electorate that ...
Let's not get sidetracked.
Most people, however, do not know that Horne also ventured into writing fiction. There is probably a good reason for this. As always I am open to correction, but I suspect that his sole venture into the novel, The Permit, which was published in 1965 by the independent publishing company Sun Books, sank like a stone into oblivion. Because, alas, it isn't very good at all. It's derivative, tedious and predictable.
Five or ten pages into 'Monday', the first chapter of this ponderous satire, and a reader will recognise its origins in Franz Kafka's posthumously published The Castle (1926, Das Schloss). With chapter headings named by the days of the week, the reader of The Permit will find by the heavy-handed end of 'Tuesday' that actually, it would be better to re-read The Castle.
And that's what I did. I'd already read The Castle round about 1982, probably as a set text for my BA, but I had a Naxos audio book, narrated brilliantly by Allan Corduner, and translated by David Whiting, and it was a fresh and refreshing experience to revisit this classic of absurdism.
As you can see at Wikipedia, The Castle:
Bureaucrats and politicians have always been cheap targets, but at least Kafka's absurdism is entertaining. K arrives in a village to take up a position as a land surveyor, but it turns out that there has been a mix-up and there is no position. To sort this out, he embarks on a quest to meet with a bureaucrat called Klamm but he soon discovers that the village is so intimidated by the authority of the Castle, that his efforts are considered highly problematic and he gets himself into all sorts of bother. Not least when he decides to marry Frieda so that he overcomes the problem of not having a residency permit. To get accommodation he has to take up work as a cleaner. Although the reader knows that nothing K can do is going to resolve his problem, nothing in the novel is predictable, and much of the absurdism seems perfectly real.
Horne's The Permit, however, plods through his scenario with weighted boots.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/04/26/t...
Horne took Australian society to task for its philistinism, provincialism and dependence. The book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past.
Ouch. But true. It was still mostly true when I read it in my young adulthood, even after three years of a progressive government in 1975. Greg at Goodreads thinks it was still true in 2015 and in comments we can see that a reader called Terry Wang thought so too in 2021 ... but I think that's a bit harsh... though you do have to wonder a bit about an electorate that ...
Let's not get sidetracked.
Most people, however, do not know that Horne also ventured into writing fiction. There is probably a good reason for this. As always I am open to correction, but I suspect that his sole venture into the novel, The Permit, which was published in 1965 by the independent publishing company Sun Books, sank like a stone into oblivion. Because, alas, it isn't very good at all. It's derivative, tedious and predictable.
Five or ten pages into 'Monday', the first chapter of this ponderous satire, and a reader will recognise its origins in Franz Kafka's posthumously published The Castle (1926, Das Schloss). With chapter headings named by the days of the week, the reader of The Permit will find by the heavy-handed end of 'Tuesday' that actually, it would be better to re-read The Castle.
And that's what I did. I'd already read The Castle round about 1982, probably as a set text for my BA, but I had a Naxos audio book, narrated brilliantly by Allan Corduner, and translated by David Whiting, and it was a fresh and refreshing experience to revisit this classic of absurdism.
As you can see at Wikipedia, The Castle:
Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
Bureaucrats and politicians have always been cheap targets, but at least Kafka's absurdism is entertaining. K arrives in a village to take up a position as a land surveyor, but it turns out that there has been a mix-up and there is no position. To sort this out, he embarks on a quest to meet with a bureaucrat called Klamm but he soon discovers that the village is so intimidated by the authority of the Castle, that his efforts are considered highly problematic and he gets himself into all sorts of bother. Not least when he decides to marry Frieda so that he overcomes the problem of not having a residency permit. To get accommodation he has to take up work as a cleaner. Although the reader knows that nothing K can do is going to resolve his problem, nothing in the novel is predictable, and much of the absurdism seems perfectly real.
Horne's The Permit, however, plods through his scenario with weighted boots.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/04/26/t...
December 15, 2015
An funny satire on the petty bureaucratic empires and factional politics of state government. A well-told story, it revolves around a young man who complains of being unfairly treated by the Department of Permits, and when he's not listened to by public servants, he takes his story to the tabloid The Daily Trumpet, who blow it up to have a go at the tired government of the day.
He becomes a week-long political scandal as the infighting ministers of the Progressive Party (a thinly veiled Labor Party) try to outdo one another in their incompetence and backstabbing. A dysfunctional show trial that goes the wrong way, a perfunctory bureaucrat who doesn't know how to say a sentence which means anything, leaked personal information that goes spectacularly wrong, and journos and MPs who together drink themselves silly in the Parliament House bar or their offices... I suspect this could be any parliament in Australia, whether 1965 or 2015.
Donald Horne writes as a preface:
This story is set in a city. Not any particular city. Just a city. In the general tone of the place, and in its forms, it is an Australian city. But the kind of things that happen in the story are not limited to Australian cities.
It is largely a study in faction: of how there are times when men decide their actions not from belief but because they compete with each other and hate each other.
The people in it are fictitious. But the kind of incidents that occur - although put together in a fictitious way - will be familiar enough to anyone who has observed the spectacle of men engaged in collective action.
It has some stylistic similarities to The Marmalade Files by Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann in its fast pace, easy read, and parallels to modern day politics.
He becomes a week-long political scandal as the infighting ministers of the Progressive Party (a thinly veiled Labor Party) try to outdo one another in their incompetence and backstabbing. A dysfunctional show trial that goes the wrong way, a perfunctory bureaucrat who doesn't know how to say a sentence which means anything, leaked personal information that goes spectacularly wrong, and journos and MPs who together drink themselves silly in the Parliament House bar or their offices... I suspect this could be any parliament in Australia, whether 1965 or 2015.
Donald Horne writes as a preface:
This story is set in a city. Not any particular city. Just a city. In the general tone of the place, and in its forms, it is an Australian city. But the kind of things that happen in the story are not limited to Australian cities.
It is largely a study in faction: of how there are times when men decide their actions not from belief but because they compete with each other and hate each other.
The people in it are fictitious. But the kind of incidents that occur - although put together in a fictitious way - will be familiar enough to anyone who has observed the spectacle of men engaged in collective action.
It has some stylistic similarities to The Marmalade Files by Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann in its fast pace, easy read, and parallels to modern day politics.
December 1, 2014
A fun diversion. Beaurocracy at work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews