AustLit

'Joseph Furphy's Such is Life (1903) opens simply and clearly enough with that memorable, sardonic initial declaration: 'Unemployed at last!’170 The complex reaction of the relief from work, while at the same time the prospect of poverty and hunger; the sense of liberation, while at the same time the hitter reflection that it is only through unemployment that working men and women can ever attain the state of leisure and relaxation available to the upper classes: all this is succinctly implied. There is a lot said but not said, a lot of social observation and
commentary on the economic situation.' (Introduction)