7/6/2023 0 Comments Carpentaria alexis![]() ![]() Nature, too-the sea, the sky, the land, the weather, the bloody spinifex grass-is a major “character” in the work, as are local history and “the dreaming.” Everything comes together and makes brilliant sense. And, yes, to my mind, this is Nobel-level writing: most every sentence is an artistic expression of the first order! The characters live and breath as individual persons in this world (at least in the particular moment in which they exist), and yet they are buffeted by social and natural forces beyond their control. This is a brilliant one-off thing, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, or William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, where the tale can’t be separated from the telling. ![]() ![]() The writing, too, I would say, is an intimate part of the story-not in terms of "how the tale got written" (as with some modern stories that dwell on that) but rather how it is BEING TOLD, by Wright. The “plot” in Carpentaria is less the story than are the key characters and unpredictable happenings and personal interactions that make it up. Complicating the situation is an international mining operation that seeks to exploit the region’s resources. A fabulous tale, set in the small town of Desperance, on the Gulf of Carpentaria (northwest Queensland), which makes good use of Indigenous people’s perspectives and everyday conversations-in English-as they navigate life and events in and around the white/mixed settlement there. ![]()
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