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'What Peter Carey once said in an interview with regard to his method in Oscar and Lucinda holds true for all of the author's novels under scrutiny in this study. From Bliss to My Life as a Fake - the reader finds in Carey's writings a version of the Australian experience that is decidedly different from the reconstrustionist account that traditional history books used to offer. Carey's fictional biography of his country bears two diametrically opposed signature traits. It conforms with Mark Twain's oft-quoted assessment of the Australian experience, used by Carey as an epigraph to Illywhacker: 'Australian history is almost always picturesque...It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies.' At the same time, there is a distinct feeling of authenticity, of dealing with empirically analysable data, evidence from the past that is presented to the reader through a seemingly objective narrating agency.' (p. 17)
Notes
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Epigraph: If white Australia had a ‘culture’ it was predominantly a Christian one – it had destroyed 40,000 years of aboriginal culture to establish itself. Now, it seemed the Christian culture was dying. This seemed an interesting site for an exploration…not so much saving history as inventing it, re-shaping it, creating ways of looking at it.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- "We Really Can Make Ourselves Up": An Interview with Peter Carey 1993 single work interview extract
- Illywhacker 1985 single work novel
- Oscar and Lucinda 1988 single work novel
- True History of the Kelly Gang 2000 single work novel
- Jack Maggs 1997 single work novel