AustLit
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Contents
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Remembering Laurie Clancy,
single work
autobiography
'1990—the exchange agreement between La Trobe University and Barcelona University had just been signed. I, as Co-ordinator on the Barcelona side, was on my first visit to La Trobe. At the time I knew only four people John Barnes and Lucy Frost from English, Robert Archer and Lilit Thwaites from Spanish. As part of my visit, a drinks party was held for me by the English Department and people from other areas of the University also attended. I was somewhat bemused at the attention I was getting as part of this strange but exciting set up in Barcelona where Australian Studies was being taught. I was constantly asked not only at La Trobe but anywhere I went in Australia: ‘Australian Studies in Barcelona. Why?’ The answer was always one that surprised. Prof. Doireann MacDermott had introduced what was then called Commonwealth Studies onto the Syllabus in Barcelona in the late sixties and early seventies. Indeed, Barcelona University was the first University outside the United Kingdom to have such studies on offer to its undergraduates.' (Author's introduction)
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This Was a Man,
single work
autobiography
'In the early 1960s I was driving only the second car I’d ever owned—an original FX Holden. Laurie, whom I met at Melbourne University at about that time, greatly admired this beaten up and slowly disintegrating vehicle. When I announced my intention to change to a motor bike Laurie offered me £100 for the FX but I thought he should take more account of its parlous condition and eventually we settled for £60. This represented £12.00 per working cylinder. Laurie became a familiar figure round the place in this hiccupping car—I don’t think he ever did get that errant cylinder firing—and he drove it on and on for what seems like, from memory, years, but maybe was only months. Eventually, when to its growing unreliability were added harassments like registration, an insatiable taste for oil, and other annoyances, he drove it to some North Melbourne back street, removed all identifying traces, and simply walked away from it. Maybe it’s still there!' (Author's introduction)
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The When, Where, Why and How of The Melbourne Partisan Magazine,
single work
autobiography
'My association as co-publisher and co-editor of The Melbourne Partisan began after Laurie Clancy in the Melbourne University paper, Farrago, attempted to lay waste the censorship policies of the Menzies and Bolte governments. He wrote reviews under the nom de plume Horace A. Bridgfunt to discuss the many books then banned in Australia.' (Author's introduction)
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A Memory from the Agent,
single work
autobiography
'I began acting as Laurie’s literary agent in the late 70s when I sold his second book, a collection of wonderfully satirical short stories under the collective title The Wife Specialist which Hyland House published in 1979.' (Author's introduction)
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Clancy Departs Dog Eat Bone World : Richard Freadman Remembers Laurie Clancy,
single work
autobiography
'One of my first sightings of Laurie was in a framed photo in the old Eagle Bar at La Trobe University. Entitled ‘The Coach,’ the photo featured a young and rather fit-looking Captain Coach addressing his players at the quarter or three-quarter time break. The players, it has to be said, look completely uninterested in proceedings; but according to the picture’s caption Laurie is pulling out all the rhetorical stops. The caption reads:
Senior Lecturer in English Laurie Clancy urges on the football team in mid-1969 with accounts of existentialism and the thinking of Kierkegarrd.'
(Author's introduction)
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Playing a Straight Bat : Laurie Clancy as Critic,
single work
autobiography
'Laurie Clancy was already a lecturer at La Trobe University when I arrived there in 1970. In those heady days when universities were expanding rapidly, and there was a widely shared belief among both staff and students that the humanities mattered, teaching in an English department could be an exciting experience. The La Trobe English staff was young and enthusiastic, ready to try out new ideas about teaching and assessment, and staff meetings could be lively—and even acrimonious—as everyone had their say. What I quickly learned was that Laurie was a colleague who was easy to work with: he was a voice of reason at staff meetings; eschewed the factionalism that seemed to bedevil English departments in Australia during those years; and could always be relied upon to take a practical approach to things. Unfailingly sociable and never less than co-operative, with a strong sense of esprit de corps, he was a stalwart in the department, generous with his time in his dealings with both staff and students. As a teacher he was readily accessible to students, willing to spend time with them, mindful of their welfare, and full of encouragement for those who showed promise. My memory is that he was never less than busy, but never asked for relief or special favours to get more time for himself. He did not shirk the various administrative chores that came his way, handling them with a minimum of fuss, and sat on committees when it was required of him. Conscientious though he was about his university responsibilities, he did not spend more time on campus than he needed to, because he lived a double life, somehow managing to reconcile being a full-time academic with being a creative writer and journalist. Within a few years of his going to La Trobe he was probably the best-known member of the English department, with a solid reputation as a fiction writer and as a reviewer as well as an academic. ' (Author's introduction)
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The Last Romantic : Laurie Clancy’s Nabokov,
single work
criticism
'Laurie Clancy’s literary critical books appear for the most part traditional for his context. There is from 1981 a short study of Christina Stead in the Essays in Australian Literature series, and in the same year a book on Xavier Herbert in the widely-read American Twayne’s series. Another act of professional generosity to readers and his country was Laurie’s full and closely considered Reader’s Guide to Australian Fiction of 1992.' (Author's introduction)
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Resisting Judgement in Christina Stead : Critical Writing of the 1980s,
single work
criticism
'Jonathan Franzen writing in 2010 in The New York Times deplored the neglect of Christina Stead, and especially of her masterpiece, The Man Who Loved Children. He quoted a 1980 study of the 100 most-cited literary writers of the twentieth century, based on scholarly citations, which made no mention of Stead. He continued: ‘This would be less puzzling if Stead and her best novel didn’t positively cry out for academic criticism of every stripe. Especially confounding is that The Man Who Loved Children has failed to become a core text in every women’s studies program in the country’ (12). Franzen’s complaint is of course an old story, and what is true of this novel is true of her work as a whole. Her first two books, published originally in England, appeared with considerable acclaim there and in Australia. After thirty years of mixed reviews, she at last won accolades and prizes, but has not managed to hold a sure place in the Western canon, or with the common reader. Among writers, however, she has a vocal following, Franzen being the latest in a distiguished list. ' (Author's introduction)
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Laurie Clancy as Novelist of the Secular City,
single work
criticism
'Laurie Clancy is very much a writer of the modern secular city. Although he was brought up in a Catholic household, he had left the Church well before he left school. The world he describes in his fiction is a post-modern world, where there is no God to offer comfort or authority to offer meaning. Clancy approaches this world from a realist perspective, but his realism breaks down as his characters find their efforts to make sense or to find fulfilment break down into fragmentary episodes of frustration or futility. Indeed he published many of these individual scenes as separate short stories. Even in the novels the narratives tend to collapse into series of fragments, rather than follow any kind of progression towards unity. These fragments record the frustrated attempts of his characters to create a unity in their experience, or to bend the outer world to their desires. Their constant failures produce an absurdity that ranges from the farcical to the tragic. ' (Author's introduction)
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‘Everything Is Visible’ : Considering Laurie Clancy’s Perfect Love,
single work
criticism
'By the time Laurie Clancy’s second novel Perfect Love was published in 1983, Clancy had established himself as an academic, critic, short story writer and novelist. Westerly had published his first short story ‘The Wife Specialist’ in 1971. A debut novel The Collapsible Man followed in 1975, to some critical acclaim. It was to share the National Book Council Award of that year. A collection of short stories under the title of his first published short story appeared in 1978. He was already working on his Reader’s Guide to Australian Fiction, though it took a decade to complete, being published in 1992. ' (Author's introduction)
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The Short Stories Of Laurie Clancy,
single work
criticism
'At his death, on 16 July 2010, Laurie Clancy left a folder of 100 stories, maybe to see what posterity would make of them. This contained unpublished material, besides pieces that had appeared in newspapers, magazines and journals. There were also copies of the 57 stories that had been published in his three collections of short fiction. These were The Wife Specialist (1979) (its title from the first story by Clancy to be published—in Westerly in 1971), City and Country (1989) and Loyalties (2007). Now there is a fourth gathering, Jovial Harbinger of Doom: Selected Stories by Laurie Clancy. These have been ‘selected and edited’ by his friend and former La Trobe University colleague, Richard Freadman. ' (Author's introduction)(error - no result found)
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Clancy the Teacher,
single work
'Throughout his career as a writer and a critic, Laurie Clancy was also a teacher. He put as much thought and energy into this as he did into his other responsibilities, and is remembered fondly by his students from La Trobe University, where he lectured in English and Australian Literature, and RMIT, where he taught creative writing in the TAFE Division. These memoirs give a glimpse of him in the classroom, and acknowledge the lasting effects of his work. —John McLaren.' (Introduction)
