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Their Brilliant Careers
The fantastic lives of sixteen extraordinary Australian writers.
A work of remarkable scholarship from one of the foremost literary biographers of our time, Their Brilliant Careers is an enthralling and magisterial study of the lives of sixteen neglected Australian writers.
In these impeccably researched mini-biographies, Ryan O’Neill portrays the greatest fools, geniuses, liars and lunatics of Australian letters from the last hundred and fifty years.
Among the authors whose lives are skilfully chronicled are Rand Washington, bestselling science fiction writer and fascist; Addison Tiller, master of the bush yarn; and the Antipodean Agatha Christie, Dame Claudia Gunn. Taken together, these insightful portraits of forgotten writers create nothing less than a shadow history of Australian literature.
An absurd, addictive, highly original book about books.
WINNER: Australian PM's Award for Fiction
SHORTLISTED: Miles Franklin Literary Award
288 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2016
34 people are currently reading
575 people want to read
About the author
Ryan O'Neill
23 books51 followersRyan O'Neill was born in Scotland, and lived and worked in Lithuania, Rwanda and China before settling in NSW, Australia.
His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Meanjin, Westerly, New Australian Stories, Sleepers Almanac and Best Australian Stories. He is also a fiction editor for Etchings.
Ryan's short story collection, The Weight of a Human Heart, is published in Australia by Black Inc, in the UK by Old Street Publishing, in Israel by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir and in the US by St Martin's Press.
His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Meanjin, Westerly, New Australian Stories, Sleepers Almanac and Best Australian Stories. He is also a fiction editor for Etchings.
Ryan's short story collection, The Weight of a Human Heart, is published in Australia by Black Inc, in the UK by Old Street Publishing, in Israel by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir and in the US by St Martin's Press.
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June 25, 2019This is absolutely brilliant. Like, the sort of brilliant that I'll be going BY THE WAY YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK to random people on the bus for months.
The premise is that it's a collection of biographies of Australian literary figures. We get a foreword, a number of accounts of literary lives told by a literary biographer, and an index. Keep with me here, okay?
Obviously, the whole thing is a fictional construct. The bios are often very funny and excoriating about a lot of things including the publishing industry, literary movements, authorial self-delusion, poetry magazines, men, and how absolutely bloody awful book people are. Also the deep-rooted racism and misogyny of the Australian literary scene. I imagine there's a fair few references that I didn't get because I don't know much about Aus-lit, but I didn't notice the lack--there wasn't that sense that some satire has of the author excluding any readers who aren't part of the in-group he criticises. Anyone with a working knowledge of twentieth century literature could happily follow this, I'd think.
It's more than just a satire, of course. The biographies intersect in lots of ways as the book progresses, and we come to solve all sorts of puzzles in earlier stories and understand the references. I won't spoil the way it's brought to a climax; I will say, do not read out of order, and don't skip the index.
There are some fantastic running jokes and deadpan gags, and construction so nicely done that I may actually have to read the whole thing again through just to see it click into place. Immensely satisfying.
The premise is that it's a collection of biographies of Australian literary figures. We get a foreword, a number of accounts of literary lives told by a literary biographer, and an index. Keep with me here, okay?
Obviously, the whole thing is a fictional construct. The bios are often very funny and excoriating about a lot of things including the publishing industry, literary movements, authorial self-delusion, poetry magazines, men, and how absolutely bloody awful book people are. Also the deep-rooted racism and misogyny of the Australian literary scene. I imagine there's a fair few references that I didn't get because I don't know much about Aus-lit, but I didn't notice the lack--there wasn't that sense that some satire has of the author excluding any readers who aren't part of the in-group he criticises. Anyone with a working knowledge of twentieth century literature could happily follow this, I'd think.
It's more than just a satire, of course. The biographies intersect in lots of ways as the book progresses, and we come to solve all sorts of puzzles in earlier stories and understand the references. I won't spoil the way it's brought to a climax; I will say, do not read out of order, and don't skip the index.
There are some fantastic running jokes and deadpan gags, and construction so nicely done that I may actually have to read the whole thing again through just to see it click into place. Immensely satisfying.
February 9, 2019
Eye Books is a small, independent publisher, founded in 1996 with the aim of publishing books about the extraordinary things ordinary people have done: people who decide to stop talking about their dreams and actually go out and grab them, and Lightning Press their much newer fiction imprint.
Ryan O'Neill's Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers won the Australian PM's Award for Fiction and Lightning Press have now brought this wonderful book to a UK audience.
However despite its huge promise this is a book that so far has received little attention in the UK, with scandalously no reviews at all by UK reviewers on Goodreads - this in fact being the first; perhaps because customs difficulties have prevented the publishers from being able to distribute many copies.
The premise - as the title suggests - is biographies of sixteen important Australian writers over the last 150 years. Presented ostensibly as non-fiction, the book is in fact satirical.
The first author featured is Rand Washington, the pulp science-fiction writer, overt racist and possible murderer (anyone standing in the way of his career usually meets an oddly convenient - for Rand Washington - end). He first hones his craft as a disciple of H.P. Lovecroft who gives him some helpful feedback: As well as advising the boy to buy a dictionary and thesaurus, Lovecraft warned him that filling his stories with extremist views on race could, as Lovecraft knew from personal experience, alienate editors.
Next we have Matilda Young, the "Whinging Matilda" whose poetry is constantly frustrated by the patriarchy, starting, in her childhood, with her step father. After confiscating her paper and ink, and then foiling her attempts to write with berry juice on her wallpaper, followed by tea-leaves and vinegar on the wooden slats of her mattress, he catches her sharpening a knife, proclaiming that she will resort to the only liquid left to her, blood. Laughing he dares her to cut herself, to be met with the retort: it's not my blood I'm going to use. And decades later, when she attains international, but not domestic, acclaim and wins the Nobel Prize, the only coverage in the Australian press is in a local paper: Sydney housewife wins writing competition.
Then we have Arthur Ruthra, founder of the breakaway Kangaroulipo after he falls out with the official Oulipan movement in Paris, who attempts increasingly bizarre experiments such as typing his 'Repression: A Novel Written Under Constraint' entirely with his nose. He eventually dies, of taking too much ecstasy, in a calculated snub to his rival George Perec, who obviously can't conceive how anyone can overdose on Es. Poor Arthur. The only constraint he couldn't overcome was his lack of talent, Perec writes to Italo Calvino.
If sixteen similar but separate sketches was all the book amounted to it would still be a very amusing read, albeit one might argue Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas had already done something similar. But there is pathos amongst the humour, and some ultimately important points to be made about the self-importance and chauvinism of the literary scene. The issue of sexism is addressed in a number of stories, but while racism is also tackled, none of the writers featured, apart from one literary critic featured on a couple of pages, are themselves indigenous, perhaps because O'Neill didn't want to parody this part of the culture (but see below re the index).
Many of the stories and characters are rooted in real-life figures - there is a reason most of the authors featured are dead. There is a lot that no doubt escaped me and would be more obvious to those with knowledge of the 20th Century Australian literary scene, but the real-life Ern Malley hoax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley) is given a further, wonderfully Borgesian, twist in O'Neill's book and one character Addison Tiller, is based on Steele Rudd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_...) and the Dad and Dave characters he created but came to despise in their popularised radio incarnations.
And as the novel progresses, the story builds as the lives of the sixteen authors, plus those of a host of other characters (publishers, proof readers, academics) cross into each other to make a complex story and one with plot twists and revelations. And perhaps the best story of all is saved for last, the brief biography of Sydney Steele, anecdotes about whom feature throughout the stories of the other 15, but whose literary output had the longevity of a Spinal Tap drummer.
The stories become so entangled that the reader is at times thankful for the helpful index provided at the end, contributed, we're told by O'Neill's troubled, and now recently deceased, wife.
And here we see another dimension as the intertextuality and playfulness extends to the book itself, just like this review.
The 'By the Same Author Page' includes O'Neill's real-life fiction "The Weight of a Human Heart: Stories", but also the entirely fictitious non-fiction works "Ordinary People Doing Everyday Things in Commonplace Settings: A History of the Australian Short Story" and "The Sacred Kangaroos: Fifty Overrated Australian Novels" as well as two biographies of the authors in this book.
The acknowledgements at the end are also part of the story, describing his altercation with Tim Winton after "Ordinary People ..." failed to win the Pennington Prize for non-fiction (a prize named after one of the fictitious authors in the book and from a shortlist comprising others). One wonders if the altercation was perhaps prompted by the blurbs quoted on the website of the Kanganoulipo movement (https://www.kanganoulipo.com/about-us/) for O'Neill's previous novel:
And in a real-life twist, having named the book in tribute to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Careers, the book went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize.
O'Neill has acknowledged the potential overlap with Nazi Literature in the America both in the novel, where the fictional O'Neill lists Bolano's book as a factual source, and in interviews by the real-life O'Neill (https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog...)
Pale Fire is also a clear inspiration, and O'Neill has named Nabakov as his favourite writer (https://www.australianbookreview.com....) which in the novel he twists to have Nabakov take his inspiration from one of his authors, Peter 'Pin' Darkbloom.
And the index itself, assembled one recalls ostensibly by his troubled and now deceased wife, is also part of the novel, and repays close reading.
Buried amongst the other entries are:
shoddy research 4-7, 37-41, 94-101, 154-9, 183-94, 209-18
indigenous writers, lack of 1-176, 179-259 [see my comments above]
Plagarisms,
of Roberto Bolano 154-6, 158, 161
of Paul Fulcher, see Gumbles Yard
Indeed the very last entry of all, the last words in the whole book, provides the final, albeit rather well-telegraphed, revelation in the plot, which fits with the recurring theme of literary plagiarism in this memorable book and review.
Ryan O'Neill's Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers won the Australian PM's Award for Fiction and Lightning Press have now brought this wonderful book to a UK audience.
However despite its huge promise this is a book that so far has received little attention in the UK, with scandalously no reviews at all by UK reviewers on Goodreads - this in fact being the first; perhaps because customs difficulties have prevented the publishers from being able to distribute many copies.
The premise - as the title suggests - is biographies of sixteen important Australian writers over the last 150 years. Presented ostensibly as non-fiction, the book is in fact satirical.
The first author featured is Rand Washington, the pulp science-fiction writer, overt racist and possible murderer (anyone standing in the way of his career usually meets an oddly convenient - for Rand Washington - end). He first hones his craft as a disciple of H.P. Lovecroft who gives him some helpful feedback: As well as advising the boy to buy a dictionary and thesaurus, Lovecraft warned him that filling his stories with extremist views on race could, as Lovecraft knew from personal experience, alienate editors.
Next we have Matilda Young, the "Whinging Matilda" whose poetry is constantly frustrated by the patriarchy, starting, in her childhood, with her step father. After confiscating her paper and ink, and then foiling her attempts to write with berry juice on her wallpaper, followed by tea-leaves and vinegar on the wooden slats of her mattress, he catches her sharpening a knife, proclaiming that she will resort to the only liquid left to her, blood. Laughing he dares her to cut herself, to be met with the retort: it's not my blood I'm going to use. And decades later, when she attains international, but not domestic, acclaim and wins the Nobel Prize, the only coverage in the Australian press is in a local paper: Sydney housewife wins writing competition.
Then we have Arthur Ruthra, founder of the breakaway Kangaroulipo after he falls out with the official Oulipan movement in Paris, who attempts increasingly bizarre experiments such as typing his 'Repression: A Novel Written Under Constraint' entirely with his nose. He eventually dies, of taking too much ecstasy, in a calculated snub to his rival George Perec, who obviously can't conceive how anyone can overdose on Es. Poor Arthur. The only constraint he couldn't overcome was his lack of talent, Perec writes to Italo Calvino.
If sixteen similar but separate sketches was all the book amounted to it would still be a very amusing read, albeit one might argue Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas had already done something similar. But there is pathos amongst the humour, and some ultimately important points to be made about the self-importance and chauvinism of the literary scene. The issue of sexism is addressed in a number of stories, but while racism is also tackled, none of the writers featured, apart from one literary critic featured on a couple of pages, are themselves indigenous, perhaps because O'Neill didn't want to parody this part of the culture (but see below re the index).
Many of the stories and characters are rooted in real-life figures - there is a reason most of the authors featured are dead. There is a lot that no doubt escaped me and would be more obvious to those with knowledge of the 20th Century Australian literary scene, but the real-life Ern Malley hoax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley) is given a further, wonderfully Borgesian, twist in O'Neill's book and one character Addison Tiller, is based on Steele Rudd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_...) and the Dad and Dave characters he created but came to despise in their popularised radio incarnations.
And as the novel progresses, the story builds as the lives of the sixteen authors, plus those of a host of other characters (publishers, proof readers, academics) cross into each other to make a complex story and one with plot twists and revelations. And perhaps the best story of all is saved for last, the brief biography of Sydney Steele, anecdotes about whom feature throughout the stories of the other 15, but whose literary output had the longevity of a Spinal Tap drummer.
The stories become so entangled that the reader is at times thankful for the helpful index provided at the end, contributed, we're told by O'Neill's troubled, and now recently deceased, wife.
And here we see another dimension as the intertextuality and playfulness extends to the book itself, just like this review.
The 'By the Same Author Page' includes O'Neill's real-life fiction "The Weight of a Human Heart: Stories", but also the entirely fictitious non-fiction works "Ordinary People Doing Everyday Things in Commonplace Settings: A History of the Australian Short Story" and "The Sacred Kangaroos: Fifty Overrated Australian Novels" as well as two biographies of the authors in this book.
The acknowledgements at the end are also part of the story, describing his altercation with Tim Winton after "Ordinary People ..." failed to win the Pennington Prize for non-fiction (a prize named after one of the fictitious authors in the book and from a shortlist comprising others). One wonders if the altercation was perhaps prompted by the blurbs quoted on the website of the Kanganoulipo movement (https://www.kanganoulipo.com/about-us/) for O'Neill's previous novel:
His fiction has been described as “refreshing, funny, devastating” (Megan Mayhew Bergman) “acerbic, playful and serious” (Cate Kennedy) and “Stop harassing me, I will never give you a blurb, you desperate hack” (Tim Winton).
And in a real-life twist, having named the book in tribute to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Careers, the book went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize.
O'Neill has acknowledged the potential overlap with Nazi Literature in the America both in the novel, where the fictional O'Neill lists Bolano's book as a factual source, and in interviews by the real-life O'Neill (https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog...)
I heard about Roberto Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas which explored a similar form, of biographies of fictional fascist Latin American writers. Before beginning my book, I decided to read Bolano’s in order to see if my ideas were too similar to his. Fortunately, Bolano had done different things in his book than I intended to do in mine, and relieved, I continued to mull over my book in a vague way.
Pale Fire is also a clear inspiration, and O'Neill has named Nabakov as his favourite writer (https://www.australianbookreview.com....) which in the novel he twists to have Nabakov take his inspiration from one of his authors, Peter 'Pin' Darkbloom.
And the index itself, assembled one recalls ostensibly by his troubled and now deceased wife, is also part of the novel, and repays close reading.
Buried amongst the other entries are:
shoddy research 4-7, 37-41, 94-101, 154-9, 183-94, 209-18
indigenous writers, lack of 1-176, 179-259 [see my comments above]
Plagarisms,
of Roberto Bolano 154-6, 158, 161
of Paul Fulcher, see Gumbles Yard
Indeed the very last entry of all, the last words in the whole book, provides the final, albeit rather well-telegraphed, revelation in the plot, which fits with the recurring theme of literary plagiarism in this memorable book and review.
January 6, 2019
Eye Books is a small, independent publisher, founded in 1996 with the aim of publishing books about the extraordinary things ordinary people have done: people who decide to stop talking about their dreams and actually go out and grab them, and Lightning Press their much newer fiction imprint.
Ryan O'Neill's Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers won the Australian PM's Award for Fiction and Lightning Press have now brought this wonderful book to a UK audience.
The premise - as the title suggests - is biographies of sixteen important Australian writers over the last 150 years. Presented ostensibly as non-fiction, the book is in fact satirical.
The first author featured is Rand Washington, the pulp science-fiction writer, overt racist and possible murderer (anyone standing in the way of his career usually meets an oddly convenient - for Rand Washington - end). He first hones his craft as a disciple of H.P. Lovecroft who gives him some helpful feedback: As well as advising the boy to buy a dictionary and thesaurus, Lovecraft warned him that filling his stories with extremist views on race could, as Lovecraft knew from personal experience, alienate editors.
Next we have Matilda Young, the "Whinging Matilda" whose poetry is constantly frustrated by the patriarchy, starting, in her childhood, with her step father. After confiscating her paper and ink, and then foiling her attempts to write with berry juice on her wallpaper, followed by tea-leaves and vinegar on the wooden slats of her mattress, he catches her sharpening a knife, proclaiming that she will resort to the only liquid left to her, blood. Laughing he dares her to cut herself, to be met with the retort: it's not my blood I'm going to use. And decades later, when she attains international, but not domestic, acclaim and wins the Nobel Prize, the only coverage in the Australian press is in a local paper: Sydney housewife wins writing competition.
Then we have Arthur Ruthra, founder of the breakaway Kangaroulipo after he falls out with the official Oulipan movement in Paris, who attempts increasingly bizarre experiments such as typing his 'Repression: A Novel Written Under Constraint' entirely with his nose. He eventually dies, of taking too much ecstasy, in a calculated snub to his rival George Perec, who obviously can't conceive how anyone can overdose on Es. Poor Arthur. The only constraint he couldn't overcome was his lack of talent, Perec writes to Italo Calvino.
If sixteen similar but separate sketches was all the book amounted to it would still be a very amusing read, albeit one might argue Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas had already done something similar. But there is pathos amongst the humour, and some ultimately important points to be made about the self-importance and chauvinism of the literary scene. The issue of sexism is addressed in a number of stories, but while racism is also tackled, none of the writers featured, apart from one literary critic featured on a couple of pages, are themselves indigenous, perhaps because O'Neill didn't want to parody this part of the culture (but see below re the index).
Many of the stories and characters are rooted in real-life figures - there is a reason most of the authors featured are dead. There is a lot that no doubt escaped me and would be more obvious to those with knowledge of the 20th Century Australian literary scene, but the real-life Ern Malley hoax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley) is given a further, wonderfully Borgesian, twist in O'Neill's book and one character Addison Tiller, is based on Steele Rudd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_...) and the Dad and Dave characters he created but came to despise in their popularised radio incarnations.
And as the novel progresses, the story builds as the lives of the sixteen authors, plus those of a host of other characters (publishers, proof readers, academics) cross into each other to make a complex story and one with plot twists and revelations. And perhaps the best story of all is saved for last, the brief biography of Sydney Steele, anecdotes about whom feature throughout the stories of the other 15, but whose literary output had the longevity of a Spinal Tap drummer.
The stories become so entangled that the reader is at times thankful for the helpful index provided at the end, contributed, we're told by O'Neill's troubled, and now recently deceased, wife.
And here we see another dimension as the intertextuality and playfulness extends to the book itself. The 'By the Same Author Page' includes O'Neill's real-life fiction "The Weight of a Human Heart: Stories", but also the entirely fictitious non-fiction works "Ordinary People Doing Everyday Things in Commonplace Settings: A History of the Australian Short Story" and "The Sacred Kangaroos: Fifty Overrated Australian Novels" as well as two biographies of the authors in this book.
The acknowledgements at the end are also part of the story, describing his altercation with Tim Winton after "Ordinary People ..." failed to win the Pennington Prize for non-fiction (a prize named after one of the fictitious authors in the book and from a shortlist comprising others). One wonders if the altercation was perhaps prompted by the blurbs quoted on the website of the Kanganoulipo movement (https://www.kanganoulipo.com/about-us/) for O'Neill's previous novel:
And in a real-life twist, having named the book in tribute to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Careers, the book went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize.
O'Neill has acknowledged the potential overlap with Nazi Literature in the America both in the novel, where the fictional O'Neill lists Bolano's book as a factual source, and in interviews by the real-life O'Neill (https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog...)
Pale Fire is also a clear inspiration, and O'Neill has named Nabakov as his favourite writer (https://www.australianbookreview.com....) which in the novel he twists to have Nabakov take his inspiration from one of his authors, Peter 'Pin' Darkbloom.
And the index itself, assembled one recalls ostensibly by his troubled and now deceased wife, is also part of the novel, and repays close reading. Buried amongst the other entries are:
shoddy research 4-7, 37-41, 94-101, 154-9, 183-94, 209-18
indigenous writers, lack of 1-176, 179-259 [see my comments above]
Plagarisms,
of Roberto Bolano 154-6, 158, 161
and indeed the very last entry of all, the last words in the whole book, provides the final, albeit rather well-telegraphed, revelation in the plot.
A truly memorable read - one that deserved the prize recognition it achieved in Australia and one I hope to see get similar recognition it the UK.
Ryan O'Neill's Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers won the Australian PM's Award for Fiction and Lightning Press have now brought this wonderful book to a UK audience.
The premise - as the title suggests - is biographies of sixteen important Australian writers over the last 150 years. Presented ostensibly as non-fiction, the book is in fact satirical.
The first author featured is Rand Washington, the pulp science-fiction writer, overt racist and possible murderer (anyone standing in the way of his career usually meets an oddly convenient - for Rand Washington - end). He first hones his craft as a disciple of H.P. Lovecroft who gives him some helpful feedback: As well as advising the boy to buy a dictionary and thesaurus, Lovecraft warned him that filling his stories with extremist views on race could, as Lovecraft knew from personal experience, alienate editors.
Next we have Matilda Young, the "Whinging Matilda" whose poetry is constantly frustrated by the patriarchy, starting, in her childhood, with her step father. After confiscating her paper and ink, and then foiling her attempts to write with berry juice on her wallpaper, followed by tea-leaves and vinegar on the wooden slats of her mattress, he catches her sharpening a knife, proclaiming that she will resort to the only liquid left to her, blood. Laughing he dares her to cut herself, to be met with the retort: it's not my blood I'm going to use. And decades later, when she attains international, but not domestic, acclaim and wins the Nobel Prize, the only coverage in the Australian press is in a local paper: Sydney housewife wins writing competition.
Then we have Arthur Ruthra, founder of the breakaway Kangaroulipo after he falls out with the official Oulipan movement in Paris, who attempts increasingly bizarre experiments such as typing his 'Repression: A Novel Written Under Constraint' entirely with his nose. He eventually dies, of taking too much ecstasy, in a calculated snub to his rival George Perec, who obviously can't conceive how anyone can overdose on Es. Poor Arthur. The only constraint he couldn't overcome was his lack of talent, Perec writes to Italo Calvino.
If sixteen similar but separate sketches was all the book amounted to it would still be a very amusing read, albeit one might argue Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas had already done something similar. But there is pathos amongst the humour, and some ultimately important points to be made about the self-importance and chauvinism of the literary scene. The issue of sexism is addressed in a number of stories, but while racism is also tackled, none of the writers featured, apart from one literary critic featured on a couple of pages, are themselves indigenous, perhaps because O'Neill didn't want to parody this part of the culture (but see below re the index).
Many of the stories and characters are rooted in real-life figures - there is a reason most of the authors featured are dead. There is a lot that no doubt escaped me and would be more obvious to those with knowledge of the 20th Century Australian literary scene, but the real-life Ern Malley hoax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley) is given a further, wonderfully Borgesian, twist in O'Neill's book and one character Addison Tiller, is based on Steele Rudd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_...) and the Dad and Dave characters he created but came to despise in their popularised radio incarnations.
And as the novel progresses, the story builds as the lives of the sixteen authors, plus those of a host of other characters (publishers, proof readers, academics) cross into each other to make a complex story and one with plot twists and revelations. And perhaps the best story of all is saved for last, the brief biography of Sydney Steele, anecdotes about whom feature throughout the stories of the other 15, but whose literary output had the longevity of a Spinal Tap drummer.
The stories become so entangled that the reader is at times thankful for the helpful index provided at the end, contributed, we're told by O'Neill's troubled, and now recently deceased, wife.
And here we see another dimension as the intertextuality and playfulness extends to the book itself. The 'By the Same Author Page' includes O'Neill's real-life fiction "The Weight of a Human Heart: Stories", but also the entirely fictitious non-fiction works "Ordinary People Doing Everyday Things in Commonplace Settings: A History of the Australian Short Story" and "The Sacred Kangaroos: Fifty Overrated Australian Novels" as well as two biographies of the authors in this book.
The acknowledgements at the end are also part of the story, describing his altercation with Tim Winton after "Ordinary People ..." failed to win the Pennington Prize for non-fiction (a prize named after one of the fictitious authors in the book and from a shortlist comprising others). One wonders if the altercation was perhaps prompted by the blurbs quoted on the website of the Kanganoulipo movement (https://www.kanganoulipo.com/about-us/) for O'Neill's previous novel:
His fiction has been described as “refreshing, funny, devastating” (Megan Mayhew Bergman) “acerbic, playful and serious” (Cate Kennedy) and “Stop harassing me, I will never give you a blurb, you desperate hack” (Tim Winton).
And in a real-life twist, having named the book in tribute to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Careers, the book went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize.
O'Neill has acknowledged the potential overlap with Nazi Literature in the America both in the novel, where the fictional O'Neill lists Bolano's book as a factual source, and in interviews by the real-life O'Neill (https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog...)
I heard about Roberto Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas which explored a similar form, of biographies of fictional fascist Latin American writers. Before beginning my book, I decided to read Bolano’s in order to see if my ideas were too similar to his. Fortunately, Bolano had done different things in his book than I intended to do in mine, and relieved, I continued to mull over my book in a vague way.
Pale Fire is also a clear inspiration, and O'Neill has named Nabakov as his favourite writer (https://www.australianbookreview.com....) which in the novel he twists to have Nabakov take his inspiration from one of his authors, Peter 'Pin' Darkbloom.
And the index itself, assembled one recalls ostensibly by his troubled and now deceased wife, is also part of the novel, and repays close reading. Buried amongst the other entries are:
shoddy research 4-7, 37-41, 94-101, 154-9, 183-94, 209-18
indigenous writers, lack of 1-176, 179-259 [see my comments above]
Plagarisms,
of Roberto Bolano 154-6, 158, 161
and indeed the very last entry of all, the last words in the whole book, provides the final, albeit rather well-telegraphed, revelation in the plot.
A truly memorable read - one that deserved the prize recognition it achieved in Australia and one I hope to see get similar recognition it the UK.
December 12, 2016
What a revelatory piece of history. I particularly appreciated the chapter on Sydney Steele.
May 26, 2017
Their Brilliant Careers is a work of absolute genius. Right from the author’s previous publications, through the dedication, contents age, text, acknowledgements and index it never lets up. This is a pastiche of a serious study of influential Australian writers. Ryan O’Neill has creates a seamless world where these fictional writers rub shoulders with one another and with real writers and historical figures. They interact across biographies; some characters are ever-present: the luckless Sydney Steele is a constant fixture; Vivian Darkbloom’s parties are attended by the great and the good; all the writers grew up on a diet of Addison Tiller’s bucolic short stories.
Now, I am no expert in Australian literature but I understand that some (all?) of the fictional writers are drawn from real life Australian writers. This may well explain how such a complex world has been able to hang together. But it also makes this a very sharp analysis of a pitifully poor literary tradition. Of the sixteen writers, there is at least one plagiarist, two frauds, two whose works have disappeared, and one who never existed. These top writers include one editor and one biographer; and at least a couple whose output seems to have been minimal in the extreme. Their works are unoriginal and derivative, titles punning on more illustrious works by European writers.
At the same time as we are given this bleak analysis of Australian literature, so too we find a bleak analysis of Australian social history. All the writers are very Anglo – one especially so – and women are mostly decorative. There are some fascists and a communist (who embraced fascism when Stalin signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler). It paints a picture of an unimaginative, safe and isolated society – one in which books were banned and genuine innovation spurned. It is a society with a few mediocre people running things for themselves, setting up petty little battles for territory, trying to win a larger share of the minuscule sales of literary magazines and journals, oblivious to a bigger, wider and more successful world beyond.
There are Easter Eggs aplenty, whether in the form of titles, anagrams, acrostics or homophones (Donkey Hotel anyone?). Genuinely funny, laugh out loud moments in the middle of a deadpan journalese narrative.
I had worried that Their Brilliant Careers might be a one-trick pony. That it might run out of steam quite quickly and be repetitive padding to fill out a novel length book (a feeling I got with Roberto Bolaño’s conceptually similar Nazi Literature in the Americas). I needn’t have worried; the concept got stronger, not weaker, for each additional biography. The characters became fuller and more three dimensional; details in earlier biographies only became truly meaningful when seen through the lens of a later biography. There is a story of sorts that emerges, and it is a pretty captivating one.
And given the title and subject matter, it seems appropriate that Their Brilliant Careers has been longlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Prize.
Now, I am no expert in Australian literature but I understand that some (all?) of the fictional writers are drawn from real life Australian writers. This may well explain how such a complex world has been able to hang together. But it also makes this a very sharp analysis of a pitifully poor literary tradition. Of the sixteen writers, there is at least one plagiarist, two frauds, two whose works have disappeared, and one who never existed. These top writers include one editor and one biographer; and at least a couple whose output seems to have been minimal in the extreme. Their works are unoriginal and derivative, titles punning on more illustrious works by European writers.
At the same time as we are given this bleak analysis of Australian literature, so too we find a bleak analysis of Australian social history. All the writers are very Anglo – one especially so – and women are mostly decorative. There are some fascists and a communist (who embraced fascism when Stalin signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler). It paints a picture of an unimaginative, safe and isolated society – one in which books were banned and genuine innovation spurned. It is a society with a few mediocre people running things for themselves, setting up petty little battles for territory, trying to win a larger share of the minuscule sales of literary magazines and journals, oblivious to a bigger, wider and more successful world beyond.
There are Easter Eggs aplenty, whether in the form of titles, anagrams, acrostics or homophones (Donkey Hotel anyone?). Genuinely funny, laugh out loud moments in the middle of a deadpan journalese narrative.
I had worried that Their Brilliant Careers might be a one-trick pony. That it might run out of steam quite quickly and be repetitive padding to fill out a novel length book (a feeling I got with Roberto Bolaño’s conceptually similar Nazi Literature in the Americas). I needn’t have worried; the concept got stronger, not weaker, for each additional biography. The characters became fuller and more three dimensional; details in earlier biographies only became truly meaningful when seen through the lens of a later biography. There is a story of sorts that emerges, and it is a pretty captivating one.
And given the title and subject matter, it seems appropriate that Their Brilliant Careers has been longlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Prize.
June 25, 2022
I picked this up on a whim on the strength of KJ Charles’ review because it sounded fun and like something really different – and wow, it is both of those things and more. “A novel constructed out of sixteen biographies of fictional Australian writers” probably doesn’t sound like a must-read, but this was a genuine delight. Each of the fictional biographies is hilarious, captivating and infuriating in its own right, but the fact that there is an overarching, cleverly interconnected plot here that involves the vast web of this fictional Australian literary scene, the author himself, and the index (LOL the index) is masterful and probably the niftiest bit of structuring I have seen in a long while. I loved the satirical aspects of it as well; you don’t need to be particularly familiar with literary history in general or the Australian branch in particular (I certainly am not) to enjoy the deadpan, incisive swipes at the publishing industry and literary wankery (specifically the male variety) everywhere. (I did take a few elucidating Wikipedia side treks into several bizarre or absolutely horrific chapters of Australian history, but it’s not required.) The only thing I regret is that I suspect my library ebook did not show the formatting to best effect, especially concerning the index, so I’ll definitely want a paper copy of this.
August 1, 2016
A mystery and a satire and a history and a whole lot of other things at once, I've never read another Australian book like it (though it has some hints of 'Pale fire', particularly with its indexing shenanigans). With cameo appearances by the Australian literati and literary twitterati, as well as plenty of lightly and heavily disguised Great Authors of History, this will probably become required reading for anyone who's ever had a book published in this country ('are you in Ryan O'Neill's book?' people will likely be whispering at the Melbourne Writers Fest opening night). It's also bloody hilarious. Smart and smart-arsed, with some scathing commentary not just (as you'd expect) on the dullness of Australian fiction but also on the overlooking of women writers, this is the kind of multi-faceted, ambitious stuff I wish more Australian publishers would embrace.
November 1, 2018
This is such a unique book that I'm not entirely sure how to review it! The author has written 16 short biographies of Australian authors and has given us their backstory and interesting insights.... and they are all entirely fictional! Most of the book is very tongue-in-cheek humour and there are so many Australian (mainly Sydney) references which probably added to my enjoyment of it. Although to others it means they would lose some of the meaning (like what it would be like to go from being an eastern suburb socialite to living in a Blacktown apartment), but there is enough other humour to interest readers from other countries.
As a side note, the audio narration is very good and recommended.
As a side note, the audio narration is very good and recommended.
April 20, 2018
Their Brilliant Careers, by Ryan O’Neill, is a collection of sixteen short biographies of Australian writers you will never have heard of. This is because they don’t exist. Taking all the tropes and conceits of the highbrow literati, the author has constructed a literary world that is entirely believable. Many of the supporting characters are real whilst others are renamed but recognisable. This is a razor sharp satire but presented with dry wit and laugh out loud humour.
Such is the apparent authenticity of the presentation it is left to the reader to determine (or investigate – yes, I did) what is actually true. Did this book win the prizes or make the shortlists detailed on the cover? Is the author bio on the back flap authentic? As the author is a character, and his late wife (to whom the book is dedicated) one of the ‘extraordinary’ writers included, all is up for question. Even the index contains nuggets that should not be missed, for reasons that will become clear in the reading.
Given the often incestuous relationships between writers, editors, publishers and critics there are many overlaps between the biographies. Manuscripts accepted for publication, and those that are rejected, are too often selected by criteria that has little to do with what is contained within the pages. Names matter, especially when a serious tome is submitted bearing a female moniker. Misogyny is just one of the many prejudices ridiculed here.
Another is the pretentiousness of those who believe themselves arbiters of quality, especially within the sphere of the avant garde. I enjoyed the idea of an 800 page opus that stands out due to its exclusion of the letter e, being seen as somehow worthy for that reason. As with several of the biographies, the cause of this author’s death provided a fitting punchline to his entry.
Literary magazines and their editors’ desire to find the next great writer are lampooned. There are numerous quotes from submissions, amongst them a poet whose nonsensical words are considered thus:
“Chapman’s nihilistic, ambiguous poems were unlike anything Berryman had come across […] opaque, allusive verse the work of a genius”
Another entry is for the daughter of an influential publisher who grows up considering herself a muse, insisting that every writer she meets include her in their books, or else. Another is for a writer who comes across the unpublished work of a nineteenth century author whose work appears to have inspired numerous classic novels. Plagiarism is explored, as is the art of biography itself. The meta aspects of these entries add to the humour.
Tempted though I am to highlight the wit behind Sydney Steele’s entry, my favourite is that of Helen Harkaway. When Helen was told that her debut had become a runaway bestseller she baulked at the idea of fame and eschewed the usual promotional publicity. Instead she chose to live incognito at her remote estate. She feared that anyone straying onto her land could be a fan or reporter. Unable to countenance an increase in such activity, she instructed her publisher to hold her subsequent manuscripts until after her death. The run-ins with the public that she did experience merely exacerbated her concerns. Weaving Helen’s paranoia into the book’s real world was a fabulous play on certain celebrated writer’s conceits.
Rivalries and jealousies are satirised. Writers’ friendships are milked until they sour when glittering careers wane. The invented authors may be pastiches but their biographies could almost be authentic. They play on commonly mocked elements yet remain amusing rather than cruel.
An inspired concept written with deadpan humour that is throughout engaging and entertaining. For anyone with an interest in the rarified world of publishing, this is a recommended read.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Lightning Books.
Such is the apparent authenticity of the presentation it is left to the reader to determine (or investigate – yes, I did) what is actually true. Did this book win the prizes or make the shortlists detailed on the cover? Is the author bio on the back flap authentic? As the author is a character, and his late wife (to whom the book is dedicated) one of the ‘extraordinary’ writers included, all is up for question. Even the index contains nuggets that should not be missed, for reasons that will become clear in the reading.
Given the often incestuous relationships between writers, editors, publishers and critics there are many overlaps between the biographies. Manuscripts accepted for publication, and those that are rejected, are too often selected by criteria that has little to do with what is contained within the pages. Names matter, especially when a serious tome is submitted bearing a female moniker. Misogyny is just one of the many prejudices ridiculed here.
Another is the pretentiousness of those who believe themselves arbiters of quality, especially within the sphere of the avant garde. I enjoyed the idea of an 800 page opus that stands out due to its exclusion of the letter e, being seen as somehow worthy for that reason. As with several of the biographies, the cause of this author’s death provided a fitting punchline to his entry.
Literary magazines and their editors’ desire to find the next great writer are lampooned. There are numerous quotes from submissions, amongst them a poet whose nonsensical words are considered thus:
“Chapman’s nihilistic, ambiguous poems were unlike anything Berryman had come across […] opaque, allusive verse the work of a genius”
Another entry is for the daughter of an influential publisher who grows up considering herself a muse, insisting that every writer she meets include her in their books, or else. Another is for a writer who comes across the unpublished work of a nineteenth century author whose work appears to have inspired numerous classic novels. Plagiarism is explored, as is the art of biography itself. The meta aspects of these entries add to the humour.
Tempted though I am to highlight the wit behind Sydney Steele’s entry, my favourite is that of Helen Harkaway. When Helen was told that her debut had become a runaway bestseller she baulked at the idea of fame and eschewed the usual promotional publicity. Instead she chose to live incognito at her remote estate. She feared that anyone straying onto her land could be a fan or reporter. Unable to countenance an increase in such activity, she instructed her publisher to hold her subsequent manuscripts until after her death. The run-ins with the public that she did experience merely exacerbated her concerns. Weaving Helen’s paranoia into the book’s real world was a fabulous play on certain celebrated writer’s conceits.
Rivalries and jealousies are satirised. Writers’ friendships are milked until they sour when glittering careers wane. The invented authors may be pastiches but their biographies could almost be authentic. They play on commonly mocked elements yet remain amusing rather than cruel.
An inspired concept written with deadpan humour that is throughout engaging and entertaining. For anyone with an interest in the rarified world of publishing, this is a recommended read.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Lightning Books.
March 23, 2021
"We Esquimaux have one hundred different words for snow", ejaculated Makittuq Arnaaluk, "but only one for murder!"
-- Dame Claudia Gunn, The Death of Vincent Prowse (1924)
This book delights me beyond belief. I'm not sure that Their Brilliant Careers will delight everyone similarly (although it is delightful) but if your specific interests include alternative history, obscure puzzles, and those unusual or forgotten crannies of Australian literary history... here lies joy.
O'Neill conjures up the biographies of sixteen (sadly) fictional Australian authors, all of whom inhabit a world that intertwines with our own. Here are the tales of literary modes on the ascent and the gradual decline, of our history of rival journals and political movements, oppression and freedom, and most importantly a wry view of the history of my country: the story of groups grabbing power and refusing to let go in our universal climb out of the red dirt.
The authors range from a hack crime fiction queen to an anti-establishment poet running a dirty bookstore while still a child, from the king of 19th century Aussie bush literature (despite never leaving Sydney) to an obsessive biographer stalking his subject across seven continents. My favourite might be the obscenely racist historian who disputes Indigenous Australians' claim to the land only to devolve to the point of arguing they never existed in the first place. We are privy to the origin stories of such classic Australian works as Music for Broken Instruments, Parade of the Harlequins, The Bloodshot Chameleon, A Child's Finnegan's Wake and that great poem The Jabberwock Saunters Along Taree Main Street.
The book is given much greater heft if you are familiar with our literary history, and the ways that many of these figures reflect real authors or movements. But O'Neill is a dynamite writer and parodist, and hopefully this will amuse even those who can't tell their Dymphna Cusack from their Katharine Susannah Pritchard.
Most joyfully, though, is the intertwined nature of the pieces. With the author bios told in a non-chronological order, the reader is given numerous subplots and mysteries threaded throughout the book. There are the rise and fall of various publishing houses, rivalries between literary magazines, a chronic blackmailer, an authoress who conned the great poets and thinkers of the 20th century with her talent, and an extended family who seem to have touched the lives of everyone involved in Australian literature. The tragic tale of Sydney Steele warrants particular mention, as does the uproariously dark mystery of the author himself, who cites in his acknowledgments the woman who so helpfully gave him an alibi just when he needed one! That mystery extends from the author information page to the many clever twists in the book's index, which tells you just how thorough O'Neill has been in turning this into an intricate collection of puzzles. (There was one small mystery I couldn't solve, to my frustration, but hopefully next time I read the book it will jump out at me.)
If you've ever wondered who else might have appeared in our country alongside Patrick White and Helen Garner, then have I got the book for you.
-- Dame Claudia Gunn, The Death of Vincent Prowse (1924)
This book delights me beyond belief. I'm not sure that Their Brilliant Careers will delight everyone similarly (although it is delightful) but if your specific interests include alternative history, obscure puzzles, and those unusual or forgotten crannies of Australian literary history... here lies joy.
O'Neill conjures up the biographies of sixteen (sadly) fictional Australian authors, all of whom inhabit a world that intertwines with our own. Here are the tales of literary modes on the ascent and the gradual decline, of our history of rival journals and political movements, oppression and freedom, and most importantly a wry view of the history of my country: the story of groups grabbing power and refusing to let go in our universal climb out of the red dirt.
The authors range from a hack crime fiction queen to an anti-establishment poet running a dirty bookstore while still a child, from the king of 19th century Aussie bush literature (despite never leaving Sydney) to an obsessive biographer stalking his subject across seven continents. My favourite might be the obscenely racist historian who disputes Indigenous Australians' claim to the land only to devolve to the point of arguing they never existed in the first place. We are privy to the origin stories of such classic Australian works as Music for Broken Instruments, Parade of the Harlequins, The Bloodshot Chameleon, A Child's Finnegan's Wake and that great poem The Jabberwock Saunters Along Taree Main Street.
The book is given much greater heft if you are familiar with our literary history, and the ways that many of these figures reflect real authors or movements. But O'Neill is a dynamite writer and parodist, and hopefully this will amuse even those who can't tell their Dymphna Cusack from their Katharine Susannah Pritchard.
Most joyfully, though, is the intertwined nature of the pieces. With the author bios told in a non-chronological order, the reader is given numerous subplots and mysteries threaded throughout the book. There are the rise and fall of various publishing houses, rivalries between literary magazines, a chronic blackmailer, an authoress who conned the great poets and thinkers of the 20th century with her talent, and an extended family who seem to have touched the lives of everyone involved in Australian literature. The tragic tale of Sydney Steele warrants particular mention, as does the uproariously dark mystery of the author himself, who cites in his acknowledgments the woman who so helpfully gave him an alibi just when he needed one! That mystery extends from the author information page to the many clever twists in the book's index, which tells you just how thorough O'Neill has been in turning this into an intricate collection of puzzles. (There was one small mystery I couldn't solve, to my frustration, but hopefully next time I read the book it will jump out at me.)
If you've ever wondered who else might have appeared in our country alongside Patrick White and Helen Garner, then have I got the book for you.
November 16, 2016
I LOVED this book. Original, deadpan, insightful and funny in the most unexpected places. I'd initially expected a collection of short stories (or even just a book-long gimmick) but was sucked into a completely unexpected novel, in which characters dip in and out, raising their heads long after we know where their stories are headed. A marvellous satirical take not just on Australian literature but history, politics and society.
March 6, 2018
I must admit when this was nominated for my online group read I was a little hesitant that it would not appeal. I expect that a lot of the literary references were beyond my knowledge of the subject but that in no way detracted from my overall enjoyment. A wonderful selection of stories about the writing life with many themes exploring racism, misogyny, plagiarism and plenty of comic moments to delight this reader.
December 18, 2016
This is an extraordinary collection of biographies that weave together the lives of a number of fictitious 19th and 20th century Australian writers. I found it fascinating and intriguing. The author has cleverly ordered the biographies so as to slowly peel back the layers of history and not reveal information before the pieces can be slotted into the bigger picture.
April 11, 2018
This is a unique and very clever book, which I enjoyed immensely. If gave it four stars instead of five, it was only because I generally prefer to have my fiction served up *as* fiction, so it took me longer than usual to get into it.
March 30, 2018
Funny, clever, original
August 11, 2018
Funny, engaging and very, very clever.
December 6, 2017
Finish date: 05 December 2017
Genre: fiction !!
Rating: A
Review: Short listed for Miles Franklin Award 2017...
I read this book in 24 hours. I was fascinated by the profiles of Australian authors I never heard of! The story of Matilda Young (poet)...touched a heartstring and Stephen Pennington's life long struggle to write A. Fernsby's biography was a page-turner. This is an excellent book...that engaged and entertained me. That is what good books do!
#MustRead
I really thought these writers were real! OMG
Thank you Carol....for setting me straight.
The joke is on me!
Genre: fiction !!
Rating: A
Review: Short listed for Miles Franklin Award 2017...
I read this book in 24 hours. I was fascinated by the profiles of Australian authors I never heard of! The story of Matilda Young (poet)...touched a heartstring and Stephen Pennington's life long struggle to write A. Fernsby's biography was a page-turner. This is an excellent book...that engaged and entertained me. That is what good books do!
#MustRead
I really thought these writers were real! OMG
Thank you Carol....for setting me straight.
The joke is on me!
May 14, 2017
Recently longlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Award, Their Brilliant Careers – The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers (Black Inc. 2016) is an absurd, complex, diabolical and entertaining novel by Ryan O’Neill. In this completely rewritten imagining of Australian literary culture, O’Neill has created a hybrid of real and fictional literary characters, from authors and editors to biographers and poets. He has given us sixteen fascinating biographies of ‘famous’ Australian writers, each incredibly detailed and meticulously researched. He has thrown these into the pot of historical literary stew with just enough actual characters and real events to produce a mind-bending mash-up that will whet the appetite of anyone interested in Australian literature.
This book is unique, and quite a special addition to the literary scene. I am simply in awe of O’Neill’s inventive mind, of his tight rein on an enormous amount of detail, and the astounding command of time and place that he has exhibited in drawing together so many disparate threads into a coherent and plausible (fake) history.
I’m sure that readers with much greater knowledge than I of this country’s writing chronology will recognise the fakes, the imposters, the nods to real life and the satire. I found myself constantly wanting to google the people, places, books and organisations mentioned, to confirm which were authentic and which were fictional. So seamless is this project, so effortlessly does O’Neill merge the pretend with the factual, the ridiculous with the true, that I came to the end of the book feeling that I now know so much more about Australian literary history – despite the fact that most of what I have learned is pure imagination. And the journey is so much fun! The whole book is playful, with plenty of humour and tongue-in-cheek parodies, alongside the serious business of the totality of the authors’ lives. Really, the mind boggles at the creativity and attention to detail required to produce this complicated biographical and professional matrix. Each author overlaps with other authors in small or large ways, mysteries surrounding some authors are solved with revelations in the stories of others, and the result is a rich, addictive and cheeky take on the Australian literary landscape.
At times irreverent, at times sycophantic, the book tells us as much about that culture through its fictional accounts as would a real-life historical non-fiction, because as O’Neill explores the complex relationships between authors, editors, publishers and readers, as he reveals the fictionalised accounts of lives lived and stories written, as he examines prejudices and fame and isolation and success and the quandaries and vagaries of the writers’ life, he tells us much about the human condition, our relentless ambition, our loyalties and betrayals, and about our need to be heard and our desire to connect.
Complete with author photographs, an intriguing dedication, a whole chapter devoted to one author and noted in the contents page but missing from the manuscript, and a jovial acknowledgements section, the book covers so many years and so many brilliant careers that it is difficult to choose a favourite, but I especially liked the biography of Stephen Pennington, himself a biographer who found through his work and through his most famous subject that life so often does imitate art, and that – in the end – we can never escape our destiny.
This book is unique, and quite a special addition to the literary scene. I am simply in awe of O’Neill’s inventive mind, of his tight rein on an enormous amount of detail, and the astounding command of time and place that he has exhibited in drawing together so many disparate threads into a coherent and plausible (fake) history.
I’m sure that readers with much greater knowledge than I of this country’s writing chronology will recognise the fakes, the imposters, the nods to real life and the satire. I found myself constantly wanting to google the people, places, books and organisations mentioned, to confirm which were authentic and which were fictional. So seamless is this project, so effortlessly does O’Neill merge the pretend with the factual, the ridiculous with the true, that I came to the end of the book feeling that I now know so much more about Australian literary history – despite the fact that most of what I have learned is pure imagination. And the journey is so much fun! The whole book is playful, with plenty of humour and tongue-in-cheek parodies, alongside the serious business of the totality of the authors’ lives. Really, the mind boggles at the creativity and attention to detail required to produce this complicated biographical and professional matrix. Each author overlaps with other authors in small or large ways, mysteries surrounding some authors are solved with revelations in the stories of others, and the result is a rich, addictive and cheeky take on the Australian literary landscape.
At times irreverent, at times sycophantic, the book tells us as much about that culture through its fictional accounts as would a real-life historical non-fiction, because as O’Neill explores the complex relationships between authors, editors, publishers and readers, as he reveals the fictionalised accounts of lives lived and stories written, as he examines prejudices and fame and isolation and success and the quandaries and vagaries of the writers’ life, he tells us much about the human condition, our relentless ambition, our loyalties and betrayals, and about our need to be heard and our desire to connect.
Complete with author photographs, an intriguing dedication, a whole chapter devoted to one author and noted in the contents page but missing from the manuscript, and a jovial acknowledgements section, the book covers so many years and so many brilliant careers that it is difficult to choose a favourite, but I especially liked the biography of Stephen Pennington, himself a biographer who found through his work and through his most famous subject that life so often does imitate art, and that – in the end – we can never escape our destiny.
August 25, 2016
If you enjoyed Gert Loveday's Writing is Easy (see my review) you'll probably enjoy Their Brilliant Careers.
The title is a satiric allusion to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career but the brilliant careers in question are, as the blurb says, invented. There are sixteen chapter length biographies of Australian authors who never existed, but who apparently bear uncanny resemblance to well-known figures from the Australian books and publishing landscape. Ambition and ego are common threads in all of them. Part of the fun is working out whose brilliant, or not so brilliant career is being parodied.
The question is, therefore, is it enjoyable reading if the reader doesn't know the 'well-known figures.' And is it a spoiler to identify the ones I do recognise?
I'm going to tread carefully and stick to a couple that I know are safely dead. The bio of the sci-fi author 'Rand Washington' made me think of prolific authors of pulp like Frank Clune and Ion Idress who were published by P R 'Inky' Stephensen, who was like the fictional Rand Washington, xenophobic and racist, and notorious for his political views which morphed from communism to the far-right. 'Addison Tiller', an upper-class English twit who wrote countless stories of bush life starting with 'Hacking out the Homestead' (featuring Pa and Pete) without ever venturing out of Sydney, is a parody of Steele Rudd's On Our Selection starring Dad and Dave. (See my unimpressed review).
To read the rest of my review (and access the links above) please visit anzlitlovers.com
The title is a satiric allusion to Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career but the brilliant careers in question are, as the blurb says, invented. There are sixteen chapter length biographies of Australian authors who never existed, but who apparently bear uncanny resemblance to well-known figures from the Australian books and publishing landscape. Ambition and ego are common threads in all of them. Part of the fun is working out whose brilliant, or not so brilliant career is being parodied.
The question is, therefore, is it enjoyable reading if the reader doesn't know the 'well-known figures.' And is it a spoiler to identify the ones I do recognise?
I'm going to tread carefully and stick to a couple that I know are safely dead. The bio of the sci-fi author 'Rand Washington' made me think of prolific authors of pulp like Frank Clune and Ion Idress who were published by P R 'Inky' Stephensen, who was like the fictional Rand Washington, xenophobic and racist, and notorious for his political views which morphed from communism to the far-right. 'Addison Tiller', an upper-class English twit who wrote countless stories of bush life starting with 'Hacking out the Homestead' (featuring Pa and Pete) without ever venturing out of Sydney, is a parody of Steele Rudd's On Our Selection starring Dad and Dave. (See my unimpressed review).
To read the rest of my review (and access the links above) please visit anzlitlovers.com
February 1, 2018
This is one of the best books I've ever read. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it really isn't. It purports to be a collection of mini-biographies of 16 prominent Australian authors, but it is in fact a novel, as all the authors are made up. It's full of jokes and humour and wry satire of the literary scene - but you don't have to know anything about literature to find it funny and engaging. I'm pretty certain that much of it went over my head, but that didn't matter. It reminded me of a cross between Nabokov's Pale Fire (Nabokov appears in the book as a character), in its meta-fiction format, and Joseph Heller's Catch-22, in its absurd humour. You have to read all the way to the end, including the index, to fully appreciate it. Highly original and inventive, it deserves to win even more prizes than it already has.
March 1, 2017
This lively and entertaining novel takes The Reader on an exhilarating trip through the history of Oz Lit via the 16 biographical sketches presented here. I'm sure I didn't pick up on all the clever barbs, but I got enough for me to feel I had a permanent smile plastered on my face (perhaps worrying fellow public transport users). Reader, you need to examine every aspect of this book, and for goodness' sake don't ignore the index! This whip-smart book is one of the finds of recent years.
January 2, 2017
This was, in a word, fantastic. A biting satirical take on Australian literature and history, so brilliantly executed that I started questioning my own knowledge.
I particularly enjoyed some of the themes on race and gender, a not so gentle admonishment of the literary elite.
What a way to kick off a new reading year.
I particularly enjoyed some of the themes on race and gender, a not so gentle admonishment of the literary elite.
What a way to kick off a new reading year.
April 14, 2017
This is a wickedly funny, smart satire about Australian literary history, characters and obsessions.
August 10, 2018
4.5 - Sydney Steele's bit and the index were my favourites
June 14, 2020
I flew through this book, whose short chapters (one for each writer) made for particularly easy reading. The chosen writers are all different and interesting enough that the book doesn't become repetitive, but O'Neill manages to make the book one coherent whole by linking the writers together to create a tangible literary world. I'm sure there are connections that I missed - this is definitely a book that would benefit from a reread - but there was nothing left unclear.
This book's humour stems not only from the basic facts of the lives of the authors, but also from the way O'Neill satirises the literary world. The metaliterary nature of this project raises particularly interesting questions about plagiarism - which is a recurring topic of discussion in O'Neill's mini-biographies - and truth. I love the extent to which O'Neill commits to the fiction of these biographies, not only in his remarkable world-building, but also in his presentation of the book. This is one book where you'll want to read the Foreword, Acknowledgements, and Index (trust me).
This one has been on my to-read shelf for too long. If it's currently on yours, I highly recommend you read it next.
You can read my full review here.
This book's humour stems not only from the basic facts of the lives of the authors, but also from the way O'Neill satirises the literary world. The metaliterary nature of this project raises particularly interesting questions about plagiarism - which is a recurring topic of discussion in O'Neill's mini-biographies - and truth. I love the extent to which O'Neill commits to the fiction of these biographies, not only in his remarkable world-building, but also in his presentation of the book. This is one book where you'll want to read the Foreword, Acknowledgements, and Index (trust me).
This one has been on my to-read shelf for too long. If it's currently on yours, I highly recommend you read it next.
You can read my full review here.
July 3, 2021
An original, quirky, satirical, humorous novel that reads as a farcical biography of sixteen Australian authors (all fictional). One author plagiarises Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, achieving fame in Australia. He was a customs officer and was able to destroy all available copies of a new release, keeping one copy which he then edited and published in his own name. In Australia he became famous! Matilda Young wins the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1950s and the only coverage in the Australian press is in one newspaper which states ‘Sydney housewife wins writing competition’. The author highlights chauvinism and self importance in the literary scene.
Well worth rereading. A very satisfying reading experience.
This book was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award in 2017.
Well worth rereading. A very satisfying reading experience.
This book was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award in 2017.
June 12, 2018
Absolutely hilarious, wonderful addition to the genre of fictional faux-nonfiction (if that's what you'd call it - Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a fantasy-historical example) which, as I'm an ex-historian who always reads footnotes, is my favourite genre ever. Readers worried that they're not getting the in-jokes should note the vast majority of the key players are fictional, and recur across the book - you should track them via the index so you don't miss their connections. And you absolutely must read the full acknowledgements and index at the end.
I alarmed the public by laughing on the morning train.
I alarmed the public by laughing on the morning train.
August 23, 2018
Technically brilliant, extremely funny, an absolute joy from cover to cover.
October 13, 2019
Meh. It's alright but a bit up its own arse. I don't think I know nearly enough about Australian literature to really get most of the satire. But it's interesting.
January 27, 2021
Really funny and super interesting. Knowing just enough about OZ lit meant that the connections were hilarious as well as ‘informative’. Great Aussie yarn at its best
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