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'Final work by internationally acclaimed Australian author Gerald Murnane, reflecting on his career as a writer, and the fifteen books which have led critics to praise him as ‘a genius on the level of Beckett’.
'A book which will appeal equally to Murnane’s legion of fans, and to those new to his work, attracted by his reputation as a truly original Australian writer.
'In the first days of spring in his eighty-second year, Gerald Murnane began a project which would round off his career as a writer – he would read all of his books in turn and prepare a report on each. His original intention was to lodge the reports in two of his legendary archives, the Chronological Archive, which documents his life as a whole, and the Literary Archive, which is devoted to everything he has written. But as the reports grew, they themselves took on the form of a book, Last Letter to a Reader. The essays on each of his works travel through the capacious territory Murnane refers to as his mind: they dwell on the circumstances which gave rise to the writing, images, associations, reflections on the theory of fiction, and memories of a deeply personal kind. The final essay is on Last Letter to a Reader itself: it considers the elation and exhilaration which accompany the act of writing, and offers a moving ending to what must surely be his last work as death approaches. ‘Help me, dear one, to endure patiently my going back to my own sort of heaven.’
Source : publication summary
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Review of Last Letter to a Reader : Essays, by Gerald Murnane
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 2 May vol. 38 no. 1 2023;
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay 'This summer, like others before it, I embarked on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. It is an odd way to spend time, with satisfactions hard to explain. Is it not the ultimate waste of time? Yet the pointlessness of this activity – its lack of utility – is one of its pleasures. There is, of course, pleasure to be had in slow engagement with the puzzle’s image (I prefer some artwork or other), in paying attention to the picture’s finer calibrations of colour and form and in the slow, sometimes quickening pace of joining up pieces. The pleasure of connection is sweetened by the knowledge that in its solution the puzzle serves no purpose, and that it will be disassembled and put away. There is pleasure, there is flow, there is a type of reward, but is there meaning? What is the use? Does meaning issue from the search for that especially elusive piece of the puzzle, or through the alertness one cultivates for what Gerald Murnane calls, in another context, ‘the detail that winks’?' (Introduction) -
Reader, Mark My Meaning
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2022;
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay'As the title of Gerald Murnane’s final work makes clear, this book is not one that should be opened by a reader new to his work, one who might be looking for an introduction. Such a reader would be better served by going to any of the earlier works. The reader addressed instead seems to be one who has read Murnane before, as he says, with ‘good will’. To put this more clearly: this is a work that involves Murnane looking back, as a reader, and with his various conceptions of readers who have already engaged with or informed his work, on what has been written, rather than a book that introduces his works to a new reader.'(Introduction)
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Murnane Examines His Life and Work
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 November 2021; (p. 16)
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay -
The Necromancy of Solipsism : Gerald Murnane’s Shameless Aesthetic Privacies
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 438 2021; (p. 41)
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay'No contemporary Australian writer has higher claims to immortality than Gerald Murnane and none exhibits narrower tonal range. It’s a long time since we encountered the boy with his marbles and his liturgical colours in some Bendigo of the mind’s dreaming in Tamarisk Row (1974). There was the girl who was the embodiment of dreaming in A Lifetime on Clouds (1976). After The Plains (1982) came the high, classic Murnane with his endless talk of landscapes and women and grasslands, like a private language of longing and sorrow and contemplation.' (Introduction)
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Final Sentence
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , December no. 184 2021; (p. 76-79)
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay
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Last Letter to a Reader by Gerald Murnane Review – An Elegiac but Cantankerous Swan Song
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 16 November 2021;
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay'The Australian literary great bows out with a collection of essays that ruminate on his experience of reading all his books in order.'
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Final Sentence
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , December no. 184 2021; (p. 76-79)
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay -
The Necromancy of Solipsism : Gerald Murnane’s Shameless Aesthetic Privacies
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 438 2021; (p. 41)
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay'No contemporary Australian writer has higher claims to immortality than Gerald Murnane and none exhibits narrower tonal range. It’s a long time since we encountered the boy with his marbles and his liturgical colours in some Bendigo of the mind’s dreaming in Tamarisk Row (1974). There was the girl who was the embodiment of dreaming in A Lifetime on Clouds (1976). After The Plains (1982) came the high, classic Murnane with his endless talk of landscapes and women and grasslands, like a private language of longing and sorrow and contemplation.' (Introduction)
-
Murnane Examines His Life and Work
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 November 2021; (p. 16)
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay -
Reader, Mark My Meaning
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2022;
— Review of Last Letter to a Reader 2021 selected work criticism essay'As the title of Gerald Murnane’s final work makes clear, this book is not one that should be opened by a reader new to his work, one who might be looking for an introduction. Such a reader would be better served by going to any of the earlier works. The reader addressed instead seems to be one who has read Murnane before, as he says, with ‘good will’. To put this more clearly: this is a work that involves Murnane looking back, as a reader, and with his various conceptions of readers who have already engaged with or informed his work, on what has been written, rather than a book that introduces his works to a new reader.'(Introduction)
