AustLit

'Toward the end of Frank Moorhouse's 1977 collection Tales of Mystery and Romance, there is a scene where the narrator-protagonist argues with his would-be lover and rival, Milton, over apparently esoteric matters. The dispute hinges on the possibility of mystical experience, which, according to Milton, is out of reach for the protagonist because he is immature and overly dependent on an unreflective skepticism. Milton is accusatory: "You never experience anything, do you" (122). Milton tells the protagonist that he is "way back on the path of personal development" (127). The protagonist muses, in contrast, that Zen is a cop-out because experience is an unresolved problem that cannot be addressed by "reconstructing the mind" (126). As the pair argue, the protagonist becomes distracted by sexual jealousy, seeing a photograph of Milton and a young man as evidence of the kind of intimacy that he had himself sought with his friend. The scene ends with a displacement of these conflicts as the protagonist confronts some Hare Krishnas in the street, having with them the argument he could not resolve with Milton. Rather than leading to any sort of resolution, this displacement exacerbates the tense ambiguity of the book's central relationship.' (Introduction)