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Wake in Fright is the harrowing story of a young schoolteacher, John Grant, who leaves his isolated outback school to go on holidays to Sydney (and civilization). Things start to go horribly wrong, however, when stays overnight in a rough outback mining town called Bundanyabba. After a drink fuelled night, in which he loses all his momey, Grant finds himself both broke and stuck in the town with means of escape. He subsequently descends into a cycle of hangovers, fumbling sexual encounters, and increasing self-loathing as he becomes more and more immersed in the grotesque and surreal nightmare that is 'the Yabba.'
Adaptations
-
form
y
Wake in Fright
Outback
( dir. Ted Kotcheff
)
1971
Australia
United States of America (USA)
:
Group W Films
NLT Productions
,
1971
Z912048
1971
single work
film/TV
horror
(taught in 7 units)
John Grant, a young Englishman, teaches in Tiboonda, a tiny railway junction on the far western plains of New South Wales. He sets off to spend his summer vacation in Sydney but doesn't make it beyond Bundanyabba, a nearby mining town known as 'the Yabba'. Stranded in town after losing all his money in a two-up game, he finds himself engulfed by the Yabba's claustrophobic, nightmarish, beer-fuelled stupor, an atmosphere compounded of repressed sexuality, squalid violence, and the sinister mateship of the locals. After being sexually assaulted by the town's alcoholic doctor, he attempts to hitchhike out of the town but is brought back by a truckie. In anger, he tries to shoot the doctor but ends up only shooting himself. After discharging himself from the hospital, Grant takes the train back to Tiboonda, resigned to another year of teaching.
-
form
y
Wake In Fright
( dir. Kriv Stenders
)
Australia
:
Lingo Pictures
Endemol Australia
Network Ten
,
2017
10031059
2017
series - publisher
film/TV
-
Wake in Fright
2019
single work
drama
'G’day. Welcome to the Yabba. Just passing through?
'It’s the best little town in the world. Things a bit grim? Chin up.
'John Grant is well-read, but an outback misadventure strands him—cashless and jobless—in a harsh and remote Aussie outpost, Bundanyabba.
'So, he makes new ‘mates’: they’re quick with a drink, but with every scull a dark violence lurches forward. Are these blokes fair dinkum, or is there something more sinister at the heart of this little Aussie town?
'On our Beckett Theatre stage, the entire world of Wake in Fright is conjured by the always-evocative Zahra Newman (The Book of Mormon) accompanied by a sonic assault from art-electronica band, friendships. Under the direction of Declan Greene, Kenneth Cook’s iconic work of Australian Gothic horror is felt in the flesh. Bring sunscreen, buy a beer and wear your ear plugs.
'Once we pierce the Yabba’s ocker veneer, you better be ready for the explosive brutality pent up inside.'
Source: Malthouse Theatre.
Notes
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Drawing on his earlier career as a journalist in the north-west New South Wales town of Broken Hill, Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright was his second novel, the first having been withdrawn because of a threat of legal action. The novel was first published in 1961 when Kenneth Cook was thirty-two. In his introduction to the the 2001 Text Publishing edition, Peter Temple writes: 'It was a publishing success, appearing in England and America, translated into several languages, and a prescribed text in schools. It might be forty years since the novel appeared yet it retains its freshness, its narrative still compels, and its bleak vision still disquiets.'
-
May you dream of the Devil and wake in fright. An old curse.
Contents
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A Novel of Menace,
single work
criticism
(p. ix-xviii)This work appears as an introduction to various editions of Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright.
-
A Novel of Menace,
single work
criticism
This work appears as an introduction to various editions of Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright.
-
A Novel of Menace,
single work
criticism
(p. ix-xviii)This work appears as an introduction to various editions of Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Moving Beyond a Strange Spectatorship : Stories of Nonhuman Road Trauma in Australia
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Swamphen : A Journal of Cultural Ecology , no. 9 2023; 'What can nonhuman road trauma, more commonly referred to as ‘roadkill’, teach us about ecological crises and human culpability? Incidents of nonhuman road trauma could be described as strange encounters, revealing the shared trauma of the nonhumans and humans involved while simultaneously highlighting the supposed inevitability of such events. I argue that the choice to check the rearview mirror – to exhibit attentiveness and care in self-reflection – is an act of radical correspondence with the more-than-human. Such correspondence functions as a kind of non-spoken letter to both nonhumans and other human drivers; a letter calling for acts of care and attentiveness that acknowledge the nonhuman experience, mourn losses, and possibly instigate radical change when it comes to how nonhuman road trauma is thought about now and hopefully avoided in future. In her work on the ‘Anthropocene noir’, Deborah Bird Rose speaks of ‘the Anthropocene parallel’ in which humans are spectators of the suffering of nonhumans, and also spectators of a suffering that is our own. Written as both an essay and a personal log of my own experiences with nonhuman road trauma, this work draws on Rose’s idea in an attempt to reconcile the concept of what I term a ‘strange spectatorship’, in which humans observe, are implicated in, and turn away from the phenomenon of nonhuman road trauma and what such trauma reveals about human-nonhuman relations, particularly for settler-colonial Australians. Reflecting on anecdotal experiences as well as the representation of roadkill in Australian literature, I explore the strangeness perceived in how settler-colonial Australians are both actors and spectators in nonhuman road trauma. I grapple with the idea of such trauma as a means of better understanding the settler-colonial impact on Australian natural environments, and the consequences for both humans and nonhumans if we do not better address the ethical and ecological consequences of our modern road infrastructure.' (Publication abstract) -
'You Will Have a Drink with Me' : The Story of 'Wake in Fright' and Its Afterlives
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 78 no. 1 2019; (p. 146-150)'Wake in Fright was published in 1961, more than 50 years ago. Australia, many assume, has come a long way since then. Yet Kenneth Cook’s masterpiece, the novel by which he is still best known and that has hardly ever been out of print, is timeless. The forces that plunge hapless schoolteacher John Grant into a spiral of alcoholic despair—lack of money, desperation, the heat and the alien nature of the landscape—remain menacingly relevant.' (Introduction)
-
Postcolonial Gothic : Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Pacific
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Oxford History of the Novel in English : The Novel in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific Since 1950 2017; (p. 205-220)'Postcolonial Gothic, like revisionist historical fiction, might be seen as another symptom of the reassessment of discourses of colonial history since the 1960s, though Gothic interrogations of national cultural myths have a darker more anxious quality, tending to focus on 'ghost stories' that haunt narratives of origin...' (Introduction)
-
There Was Nothing, There Was Nowhere to Go : Writing Australian Rural Noir
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 37 2016; 'When I embarked on my doctorate in creative writing, I wanted to write about the decline of an alternative community in the 1980s, similar to the one in which I had grown up. A noir novel seemed the perfect vehicle for the dark themes I planned to explore, and promised to be very different from the private eye series I usually wrote. Typically, noir is located in urban environments and many studies of noir fiction and film maintain that an urban setting is integral to the genre, speaking as it does to the anxiety and alienation of modern life, feelings of anonymity and of being the outsider, and the corruption and criminality of the city. Much contemporary noir fiction still takes place in metropolitan areas; however, there is, increasingly, a sub-genre situated in rural locations, as illustrated by the rise of ‘Country’ or ‘Hillbilly Noir’ in the USA. Australian crime fiction has long made use of the bush and outback as a location – usually as a site of conquest where the hero ultimately triumphs over the antagonist; however, noir narratives are different, invariably ending in destruction and defeat. This article will investigate Australian Rural Noir through a comparative textual analysis of Kenneth Cooke’s Wake in Fright, Chris Womersley’s The Low Road and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites. It will consider the ways in which Australian rural noir uses landscape to subvert the pastoral paradigm and will examine the tensions between the exterior landscape and the interior life of the protagonists, reflecting on the particularly Australian cultural anxieties implicit in these texts. I also discuss my own research-led practice, the challenges involved in being an insider researcher and, finally, consider whether this nexus between the critical and creative helps or hinders the creative writing process.' (Publication abstract) -
Outback Nightmare Returns to the Screen
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 8 September 2016; (p. 27)
-
Untitled
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Lifted Brow , no. 14 2012; (p. 25)
— Review of Wake in Fright 1961 single work novel -
Our Grim Outback
1961
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 27 May 1961; (p. 16)
— Review of Wake in Fright 1961 single work novel -
Outback of the Mind
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 29-30 September 2001; (p. 10)
— Review of Wake in Fright 1961 single work novel -
A Welcome Quartet
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 236 2001; (p. 35-36)
— Review of Wake in Fright 1961 single work novel ; The Baby-Farmer 1990 single work novel ; All That False Instruction : A Novel of Lesbian Love 1975 single work novel ; Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
y
Jing xing / Yi lin bian ji bu
Nanjing
:
Jiangsu ren min chu ban she
,
1986
Z1250644
1986
anthology
novel
short story
essay
-
Literature in the Arid Zone
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Littoral Zone : Australian Contexts and Their Writers 2007; (p. 70-92) This chapter surveys and assesses from an ecocentric perspective some representative literary portrayals of the Australian deserts. Generally, it contrasts works that portray the desert as an alien, hostile, and undifferentiated void with works that recognise and value the biological particularities of specific desert places. It explores the literature of three dominant cultural orientations to the deserts: pastoralism, mining, and traversal. It concludes with a consideration of several multi-voiced and/or multi-genred bioregionally informed works that suggests fruitful directions for more ecocentric literary approaches. (abstract taken from The Littoral Zone) -
Rednecks, 'Roos and Racism : Kangaroo Shooting and the Australian Way
1990
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Social Analysis , April no. 27 1990; (p. 30-49) -
y
Helen McAlley's Commentary on Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook
Greensborough
:
Helen McAlley
,
1990-1999
Z1582765
1990-1999
single work
criticism
-
Home Truths
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Monthly , July no. 47 2009; (p. 36-49) The Best Australian Essays 2009 2009; (p. 51-71)Watching the film Wake in Fright nearly 40 years after its release - 1971 - brought back one good memory for me of life in the bush. Canvas water bags. Nothing like the taste of water from those bags: sweet and earthy. One hangs on the back of a door in the shambles of a mining shack occupied by Doc Tydon, the movie's supposed villain. Not that anyone in the movie drinks water. Heaven forbid. Instead they neck beer and, in the case of Doc Tydon, glug down whiskey in the legendary quantities typical of men on a weekend bender in the Outback. Typical, I should also emphasise, of men the world over who work in isolated areas under punishing conditions, although the pursuit of the Holy Grail of alcoholic oblivion in the Outback is undertaken with an inexorable determination, not so much blunting pain as getting their due. Cracking a few cold ones with your mates - legacy, birthright, entitlement.
- Australian Outback, Central Australia,
- New South Wales,
