asteroidproject: Today is the centenary of Patrick White’s birth, May 28th 1912. “I

asteroidproject:

Today is the centenary of Patrick White’s birth, May 28th 1912.

“In 1964, submerged by the suburbs reaching farther into the country, we left Castle Hill, and moved into the centre of the city. Looking back, I must also have had an unconscious desire to bring my life full circle by returning to the scenes of my childhood, as well as the conscious wish to extend my range by writing about more sophisticated Australians, as I have done in The Vivisector and The Eye of the Storm. On the edge of Centennial Park, an idyllic landscape surrounded by a metropolis, I have had the best of both worlds. I have tried to celebrate the park, which means so much to so many of us, in The Eye of the Storm and in some of the shorter novels of The Cockatoos. Here I hope to continue living, and while I still have the strength, to people the Australian emptiness in the only way I am able.”

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993