'Few writers have received as much attention and have been so little understood as Patrick White, the only Australian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Critics have found his novels demanding and puzzling, and have been divided over the nature of his achievement. This essay points to the failure of critics to recognise the extent of the influence of Flaubert as well as that of the English modernists on White, and discusses the kind of attentiveness that his writing demands of the reader.' (Publication abstract)