AustLit

'Peter Carey’s short story American dreams (Carey 1994 [1974]) presents a recalibration of consciousness as a small Australian town gradually becomes Americanized. The text foregrounds epistemological concerns by demonstrating a clear tendency toward delayed understanding. For this reason, I argue that the story is an instance of modernist fiction: a label not previously applied to Carey’s stories. In contrast with popular modernist techniques such as free indirect discourse and stream of consciousness, the techniques presented in the text appear to be covert, which may at least partially explain why the story has managed to avoid being labelled modernist by literary critics until now. Using analytical tools grounded in systemic functional grammar and appraisal categories, I demonstrate how linguistic analysis can lay bare the covert modernist techniques at work in the story, indicating that such an approach can be a useful complement to non-linguistic literary criticism.' (Publication abstract)

' In a particularly revealing interview from 1977, fiction writer Peter Carey was asked how a reader should approach his stories, namely Conversations with Unicorns. Carey replied: Well, I’d hope that the reader would approach them in a relaxed sort of way, hoping to be amused, or diverted. When he’d finished the story I’d hope he’d have found something new to think about. If I’d really done what I wanted to do he’d keep on thinking about the story for weeks, from time to time. If I was successful beyond my wildest dreams I would have given him (or her) something that would alter his (or her) perception of the world. (Ikin 1977, 38). It is remarkable just how accurately Carey’s comment seems to reflect the compelling nature of his short stories. Rubik (2005) has investigated the haunting effect of Carey’s stories in terms of cognitive schemata and Coste (2003) has argued that the inherent ambiguity of Conversations with Unicorns resists generic classification. A number of critical works mention the story (Ahearne 1980, Hassall 1994, Krstovic 2010, Pons 2001, Snodgrass 2010, Turner 1988) but none deal with it in any significant amount of detail, and until now, there has been no attempt to conduct a stylistic reading of this fascinating and under-studied story. Approaching the text from a systemic functional perspective, I investigate the powerful aesthetic quality of the story in terms of prominent linguistic patterning occurring across various linguistic systems.'

Source: Abstract.

'Peter Carey’s ‘The last days of a famous mime’ is a short story that presents interpretative challenges. It hangs together as a text, but this coherence is minimal and has an important rhetorical effect that draws attention to the story’s literary meaning. This effect becomes the departure point for a linguistic analysis of the text, which aims to guide an interpretation of the story by focusing on the ways in which textual meanings are construed. Drawing on the systemic functional model of language, the text is analysed from the angles of cohesive harmony and theme. The analysis highlights a low degree of coherence as a central meaning, both at the level of discourse and within the fictional world. This finding leads to the interpretation of the text as a statement on the importance of social and emotional validation.'

Source: Abstract.