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'Brian Castro is one of the most innovative and challenging novelists writing in English today. By virtue of his childhood migration from Hong Kong to Australia, he is an Australian writer, but he writes from the margins of what might be termed mainstream Australian literature. In an Australian context, Castro has been linked with Patrick White because like White he is an intellectual, deeply ironic, modernist writer. His writing can also be comfortably situated within a wider circle of (largely European) modernist works by Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Gustav Flaubert, Vladimir Nabokov, W. G. Sebald, and the list goes on. Castro’s writing conducts richly intertextual conversations with these writers and their work.
'Castro’s writing is linguistically and structurally adventurous. He revels in the ability of good experimental writing to open up imaginative possibilities for the reader. He strives always to encourage his reader’s imagination to embrace heterogeneity and uncertainty. His extensive engagement with the great modernist writers of the 20th century, combined with his Australian-Chinese cross-cultural concerns make his work unique amongst Australian writers.
'Castro’s fiction is becoming increasingly recognized for its brilliance around the world. Readers and scholars, particularly from France, Germany and China, are discovering the delightful challenges and rewards his writing offers. In Australia, however, Castro’s writing has often been dismissed by academics and major publishing houses as being too cerebral or too literary. He has been labeled a writers’ writer because of the literariness of his concerns and the vast sweep of intertextual references that inform his narratives. Castro’s writing demands a committed, intelligent and passionate reader. He constructs narratives of absences, gaps, and multiple perspectives in the expectation that his reader will make the necessary imaginative connections and, in a sense, become the writer of his text. Castro has stated that the kind of novel he most enjoys reading is one he does not understand immediately, one that requires him to search out references and make discoveries. This is the kind of novel he writes. Perhaps, for this reason he has not attracted the large readership his work deserves.
'This study of Castro’s fiction has two major objectives: to open up multiple points of entry into Castro’s texts as a means of encouraging readers to make their own imaginative connections and to explore diverse ways of reading, as well as to initiate further published scholarly discussions and readings of Castro’s work.
'In this first critical study of Brian Castro’s work, Bernadette Brennan offers original and creative readings of Castro’s eight published novels. Brennan guides the reader through Castro’s elaborate semantics and at times dizzying language games to elucidate clearly Castro’s imaginative concerns and strategies. She opens up the many rhizomatic connections between Castro’s work and the multitude of texts and theorists that influence it and with whom it converses. And through all of this, she stays true to Castro’s imaginative project: to remain always open ended, always gesturing towards possibility rather than certainty and closure.
'Brian Castro’s Fiction is an important book for all literature and Australasian collections throughout the world.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Epigraph: '[W]riting itself is the desire for an emotional truth through a deceitful seduction of language'. -- Brian Castro (Barker 'Theory as Fireworks')
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Includes bibliographical references.
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Includes index.
Contents
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'Birds of Passsage' : The Gift of Authorship,
single work
criticism
Brennan identifies an oblique reference made in Birds of Passage to a poem by Su Tung Po, a poet-painter exiled to South China at the end of the eleventh century. She aligns this with a previous reference in Castro's book to comment from historian Geoffrey Blainey on the abuse directed towards the Chinese on the goldfields in nineteenth-century Australia, making the point that 'Castro offers us the opportunity to contemplate how ancient Chinese poetry might converse with contemporary Australian writing and culture' (p. 31).
- 'Pomeroy' : A Dialectic of Risk, single work criticism (p. 33-48)
- 'Double-Wolf' : Writing and Time, Now There's the Rub, single work criticism (p. 49-68)
- Centres of Absence in 'After China', single work criticism (p. 69-93)
- 'Drift' : Storytelling and/of Annihilation, single work criticism (p. 95-122)
- Writing of Death and Death of Writing in Brian Castro's Stepper, single work criticism (p. 123-146)
- Lines of Exposure : 'Shanghai Dancing', single work criticism (p. 147-173)
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Unpacking Castro's Library, or Detours and Return in 'The Garden Book',
single work
criticism
Brennan argues that while 'Castro's writing has always engaged obliquely with ethical concerns' there is a sense through the characters and dialogue of The Garden Book 'that the narrative, while remaining true to more abstract questions of writing, memory, desire and death, wants us to think deeply and urgently about the consequences of the politics of fear currently operating in Australia'.
- Blue Writers and the Invitation to Friendship, single work criticism (p. 191-193)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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[Review] The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 6 no. 1 2012; (p. 1-2)
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism ; The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction 2010 anthology short story extract -
The Year's Work in Fiction: 2009-2010
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , July vol. 55 no. 1 2010; (p. 119-139)
— Review of Fear Factor : Terror Incognito 2009 anthology short story extract ; A True History of the Hula Hoop 2009 single work novel ; The World Beneath 2009 single work novel ; The Paperbark Shoe 2009 single work novel ; Swimming : A Novel 2004 single work novel ; The Bath Fugues 2009 selected work novella ; The Lost Life 2009 single work novel ; Rainforest Narratives : The Work of Janette Turner Hospital 2009 single work criticism ; Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism ; Legacy 2009 single work novel ; The Nature of Ice 2009 single work novel ; Lovesong 2009 single work novel ; Wonders of a Godless World 2009 single work novel ; Smoke in the Room 2009 single work novel ; The Australian Long Story 2009 anthology short story prose novella autobiography ; Every Secret Thing 2008 selected work short story ; Arrhythmia : Stories of Desire 2009 selected work short story ; The China Garden 2009 single work novel ; Barley Patch 2009 single work novel ; Tom Hurstbourne, or, A Squatter's Life 2010 single work novel ; Truth 2009 single work novel ; The Window Seat and Other Stories 2009 selected work short story ; Headlong : A Novel 2009 single work novel ; The Legacy 2010 single work novel -
Castro's Adventure
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 319 2010; (p. 27)
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism -
Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language by Bernadette Brennan
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 9 2009;
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism -
Untitled
2009-2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Traffic , no. 11 2009-2010; (p. 186-188)
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism
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Untitled
2009-2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Traffic , no. 11 2009-2010; (p. 186-188)
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism -
Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language by Bernadette Brennan
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 9 2009;
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism -
Castro's Adventure
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 319 2010; (p. 27)
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism -
The Year's Work in Fiction: 2009-2010
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , July vol. 55 no. 1 2010; (p. 119-139)
— Review of Fear Factor : Terror Incognito 2009 anthology short story extract ; A True History of the Hula Hoop 2009 single work novel ; The World Beneath 2009 single work novel ; The Paperbark Shoe 2009 single work novel ; Swimming : A Novel 2004 single work novel ; The Bath Fugues 2009 selected work novella ; The Lost Life 2009 single work novel ; Rainforest Narratives : The Work of Janette Turner Hospital 2009 single work criticism ; Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism ; Legacy 2009 single work novel ; The Nature of Ice 2009 single work novel ; Lovesong 2009 single work novel ; Wonders of a Godless World 2009 single work novel ; Smoke in the Room 2009 single work novel ; The Australian Long Story 2009 anthology short story prose novella autobiography ; Every Secret Thing 2008 selected work short story ; Arrhythmia : Stories of Desire 2009 selected work short story ; The China Garden 2009 single work novel ; Barley Patch 2009 single work novel ; Tom Hurstbourne, or, A Squatter's Life 2010 single work novel ; Truth 2009 single work novel ; The Window Seat and Other Stories 2009 selected work short story ; Headlong : A Novel 2009 single work novel ; The Legacy 2010 single work novel -
[Review] The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 6 no. 1 2012; (p. 1-2)
— Review of Brian Castro's Fiction : The Seductive Play of Language 2008 multi chapter work criticism ; The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction 2010 anthology short story extract