Australian literature on the nose?

Is Australian literature suffering a slow and painful death? The study of Australian literature is certainly suffering a decline in popularity. Australian readers don’t feel the need to pick up local product over others. The idea of a national literature in Australia is fast becoming a very small idea indeed.

A glance at the latest Ladbrokes odds for the Nobel Prize in literature reveals a single Australian name - that of Gerald Murnane. The sparsity of Australian names is not surprising. Combined with a number of events in the Australian literary world in the past months, it is clear that the reputation of Australian literature in its home country is on the nose.

We’ve seen a couple of journalists submit a chapter from a Patrick White novel to various Australian publishers who all rejected it, apparently not recognising it as a hoax or appreciating the writing itself. The Institute of Public Affairs included Patrick White's Nobel award on their list of “Australia’s 13 biggest mistakes” as they believe it led to reckless and wasteful arts funding that reinforced political correctness at the cost of ability.

Within the space of a week, a car driver and a crocodile wrangler were granted state funerals while the death of an accomplished Australian writer was all but ignored.

The only high point has been the appearance of two Australian writers (Kate Grenville and M.J. Hyland) on the Booker Prize short list.

Aside from all this poor PR for Australian literature, perhaps a more salient development is the decline of the study of Australian literature in Australian universities, as a literature in its own right.

It has been known for some time that the study of Australian literature has lost popularity. There’s no future in studying it. At least, that's the message incoming students are given when enrolling in university English departments (or their equivalent).

In The Weekend Australian on September 30, 2006 - 1 October David Malouf expressed his concern that serious study of Australian literature is just not being taught:

Fifteen or 20 years ago, every university in Australia taught something called Australian literature. Now no university - there might be one left in the country - teaches Australian literature. That whole notion that there was a literature which you read has gone. A serious consideration of what Australian writing is has gone.

(The University of Sydney Department of English maintains Australian literature as an area of study and has a Chair of Australian Literature).

The story in publishing is much the same: a national literature is not a priority. As Malouf points out in his interview, readers are not as parochial as they once were, there is no automatic allegiance to local product. Of course, if it doesn’t sell, it’s not going to catch the eye of publishers.

There could be a number of reasons for Australians turning away from Australian literature: poor quality, poor publicity or lack of support from local publishers. The fact is, the readership is declining and serious study is almost non-existent.

One must ask then: is the idea of a national literature of any importance? Do we need it anymore?

There is an obvious change in the way in which we conceive of ourselves as a nation. The whole idea of "nation" has loosened. We operate on a global level in economic and political terms. The nature of the Internet has made national borders redundant in terms of the limits of communication. The domestic political scene of the last ten years has favoured the individual. The Howard Government has successfully changed the way in which we conceive of ourselves as a nation. That is, we are individuals first and a nation second.

As well as putting ourselves first, our idea of "Australia" is now built upon old ideas spun for new political purposes. These ideas are bedded in stories told during another time. These stories have been drained of their original power and now operate as hollow platitudes.

The lack of interest, both general and academic, in Australian literature is alarming for the simple reason that fiction is fast becoming one of the few areas where truths are told. Despite the reading public’s fascination with non-fiction, the stories told in fiction, especially in those texts considered part of a national literature, are part of the culture itself. Non-fiction can tell us only so much about ourself. Literature in its fictional form can take us beyond mere knowledge to a deeper understanding where imagination is allowed to run riot. It is also fast becoming the one place where writers can ask questions they are not allowed to ask elsewhere.

If an entire nation gradually wears down its stocks of literature, if it doesn’t read stories about itself, if it, god forbid, forgets how to tell stories, what are the implications?

Take for example the case of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. Although this book speaks in universal themes of love and forgiveness it has particular resonance for Germans in that it explicitly deals with the idea of guilt in post World War II Germany. It asks questions about how Germans themselves deal with the wartime actions of individuals within small communities. It also speaks to those outside looking in on a post-war Germany and not knowing how much to remember and how much to forget.

It doesn’t achieve all these things through dry statement of fact, it achieves these things through a simple story. If there is a continued or even accelerated disinterest in Australian literature in this country, who will tell our stories? Who will be there to read them? Will it even matter?

The implications of a general disinterest in the nation's literature is something that may not be seen for a while.  What happens in ten years time when we don't have a picture of ourself? Is it important to have a national literature? Or will reading fiction soon become a border-less pursuit that speaks to individuals and societies on a larger scale than nations?