by Karen Lamb
Sometimes she ran to the limelight. Astley was adamantly anti- censorship even though she found quite a lot of the emerging fiction of her contemporaries in bad taste. She had just given a lecture, ‘The Author as a Critic of Society’, in which she referred to ‘the excremental vision of The Vivisector’ and to the ‘trend towards sickness’ in the work of Patrick White, Hal Porter and Tom Keneally.31 Having heard that A&R were fighting a censorship case against the banning of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, she went public in her support of her publisher, unhesitatingly writing herself into the public drama. Patrick White gossiped that she had been ‘trying to work everything to appear as a witness’.32
Porter was keeping her up to date on A&R’s dealings with him (he was cross, privately, at least to Astley, about the appalling number of spelling and other mistakes in the Kramer collection). He still did a good line in flattery (‘dazzling Thea’). It was not all innocent goodwill: Porter was conscious of Astley’s favour to him – setting his texts in her courses – and knew how to ask for a favour as well. As the 1971 academic year drew to a close, he wondered whether she might use her student groups to conduct a ‘Gallup Poll’ of their favourite Porter stories. ‘Sorry to bother you, honey, with my whimsical notions,’ he said, but he asked anyway.33 Astley would have noticed how little in these letters was about her work. She had had a completed novel at A&R for weeks, and had heard nothing.
Like many other Australian writers, Astley was genuinely anxious about developments at A&R. The appointment of Richard Walsh as publishing manager in 1972 had brought various long-standing in-house hostilities to a head there, and these were to affect the next period of Astley’s writing career. It would be the end of the only style of Australian publishing she knew, but she also remembered their failings: their sale of The Slow Natives as a paperback to Sun Books, without much apparent success in sales, which had made her want to recover her rights to that title. However, Beatrice Davis eventually wrote that The Acolyte was ‘very stylish’ and ‘the best thing Thea has done’ with only a quibble about the ‘comic ending’.34
But the two male readers had not recommended the manuscript for publication. They said the male narrator was not always convincing, that the tone was ‘negative, sardonic and self-destructive’. The conclusion was that it was ‘not an important work of literature’; and one reader in particular could see no reason why it would sell.35
Astley knew nothing of this but would have guessed that London, as of old, had been invoked as the arbiter of decision-making about Australian titles. It is possible Davis had told Astley about her own battle to remain at A&R, for Astley wrote a rather cryptic letter to her with the overtly droll comment that she had written the book ‘with an eye to an Aussie market rather, as I’ve never been what one might call a big seller in UK’.36 Astley’s sixth novel, ‘Thurlow’s Answer’, had been rejected, with no Davis to save it. ‘Death should be distinguished from dying, with which it is often confused,’ Astley had written on the manuscript.37
In Australian publishing there was an increasing emphasis on commercially viable decisions; it seemed to Astley a concocted and expedient form of reasoning – a version of ‘literary books can’t make money’ thinking – but there were harsh realities overtaking Angus & Robertson. A&R was short on resources and the publishing side of the business was in substantial debt. In-house tensions over editorial control were mounting. Davis was at the centre of this, but by August of 1972 the publication of The Acolyte was already secure and Astley could rest and wait.
There would never be a time when Astley was happy with the attention, or type of attention, paid to her work. If this mattered more now, it was because – as she said to anyone who asked – The Acolyte was her personal favourite. The satire allowed Astley to disguise reality with fiction; in her roman à clef she had vented her rage at ‘followers’ of all kinds, which could be read as a critique of ‘followers’ of the literary critical establishment. She had left cryptic codes within the novel – about sight/blindness, genius/follower – a running analogy for the whole literary critical exercise: ‘Ultimately of course their names are wrapped round meat.’38
Versions of this were repeated in interviews Astley would give later in life – ‘I suppose the critics are the flies on the meat, aren’t they?’39 Or later still, with a touch of mordant fatalism, ‘Books die within six months, don’t they? Unless you’ve written War and Peace.’40 In The Acolyte, for the first time, the narrator’s verbal mannerisms resembled their creator’s. Passive, cynical, self-aggrandising and melodramatic in his role, Paul Vespers is difficult to like, no better than the blind monster-musical genius Holberg. Perhaps this was one answer to Eileen’s complaint about Astley’s ‘unlikeable’ characters: make them all equally unlikeable.
Astley’s relationship with a number of people, especially her publishers, was now ‘locked in irons’. She knew she had to a take a more assertive approach to the publication of her novels. However, the reputation as a novelist she would one day enjoy among Australia’s publishers owes a great deal to the dying days of her relationship with Angus & Robertson. When publishing manager John Abernethy died suddenly, Richard Walsh took over the position. He recalled inheriting ‘a nest of vipers’, an atmosphere of resentment between Abernethy and the editors who answered to him (Beatrice Davis and Douglas Stewart). Walsh agreed with Abernethy’s unpopular view that A&R’s comparative failure to encourage new writers was largely due to the conservatism of Davis and Stewart. He felt that younger writers couldn’t relate easily to Davis, that a style of ‘literary peerage’ had developed.41 Needless to say this reflected on favoured writers, Astley among them. Ironically, it had been Davis who, back in the 1940s and 1950s, had modernised the company’s list.
There was some truth in Walsh’s criticism. Davis had an editorial manner that suggested hauteur and her assumption of authority could make her intimidating, especially to younger writers. According to Walsh, new in-house literary opinion sent Douglas Stewart into a rage, which caused him to leave. Davis chose to follow him: she was not sacked, as was commonly believed at the time. Observers asked why Davis, who had been at A&R for over thirty-five years, would have left in an apparent fit of pique. Davis also told people, including Astley, that she had been fired. Walsh was at pains to point out, when asked, that he had offered Davis a consultancy role that she had refused, using in subsequent discussions, the rueful phrase ‘we had to let her go’. 42
For Beatrice to be suddenly gone from A&R (Beatrice to Astley was A&R) seemed utterly implausible. There was certainly widespread indignation among the old loyal A&R authors at the way the publisher seemed prepared to lose its two long-serving and esteemed editors. Several of Davis’s favourite writers, including Astley and Hal Porter, left A&R in protest and loyalty.
Astley still depended on Davis for editorial support, even though she could be discouraging. Astley had been researching the Kanakas, and Davis had warned that ‘the South Seas is, for some unknown reason, repulsive to the G[eneral]. P[ublic]’.43 But Davis continued to support her favourite author. She was the chairman of the Miles Franklin judging panel in 1972, and gave the $1,250 award to Astley for The Acolyte. It was Astley’s third Miles Franklin Award. By 1974 Davis had moved to Thomas Nelson publishers.
Astley was angry with A&R for other reasons. Her award-winning novel The Acolyte had been poorly distributed; Astley was appalled to find that a large number of copies were still stacked in the warehouse. Here was her most recent book, the winner of her third Miles Franklin Award, and she still had no confidence in being published with commercial respect. This mattered – would always matter – to her. Her attitude was still a little more forthright than that of other Australian writers of literary fiction. Early in 1973 she had initiated an exchange of letters, some legal:
Dear Richard [Walsh] and Michael Johnston,
I’m unsure how to address this as my last letter addressed to Mr
Johnston was answered by Mr Walsh … I have decided to solve it by writing to you both.
Actually I had given up hope of an answer when, with mind-boggling anachronism, the publicity section sent me with their compliments a copy of the Sun Herald review of The Acolyte which was published (the review) last August or early September. Tell them they can stop sending that particular review now. I have five copies. It would be funny, wouldn’t it – it IS funny! – but it’s sad …44
Astley was now intent on selling overseas rights, particularly in the US, and several American publishers expressed some interest, including Viking. However, they did not act on this for more than a decade (with Beachmasters in 1985). Astley was faced with a situation where all her previous titles were in the care of a publisher whom she had left and with a publishing manager who was not personally committed to her writing. Walsh seemed to like her company but she knew he felt that she over-wrote.45 As editor of the magazine Nation Review, he had attempted already to edit one of her stories – a far more rigorous edit than Davis would have given her.
It was easy for Astley to make Walsh a focus of the resentment about A&R’s treatment of her writing that had been building for years. She requested a reversion of rights on various earlier titles, particularly anxious – somewhat unfairly, considering how recently it had been published – to regain control of The Acolyte. A&R refused, giving Astley the rights to the previous A Boat Load of Home Folk instead. There was some suggestion that The Slow Natives might go into the new Paperback Classics series. Astley commented that this would be acceptable only if the paperback binding glue, so weak that the ‘books don’t stick together’, could be stronger – an unusually understated criticism of what was by common consent slipshod binding.46
Tension continued to develop between Astley and her former publishers. She was now convinced that A&R were deliberately acting against her interests, and stayed on the lookout for misdemeanours. She suspected that other publishers (Penguin, for instance) had been or would be interested in The Acolyte but were being put off by Walsh. Astley asked Anne Godden, the publisher at Thomas Nelson, to enquire about Penguin’s supposed approaches, leading Godden’s colleague Bob Sessions to comment to her that he had ‘the distinct feeling that we are being played off against one another!’47 He was right.
Astley was determined to look out for her own interests and by 1980 she had finally reclaimed the rights to The Acolyte. From here on she would remain vigilant about the performance of her publishers, dealing with three in the next ten years alone. In 1980 it came to light that only a few years after their falling out, back in 1977, Walsh had sold a large quantity of authors’ manuscripts to the Mitchell Library for a lump sum. Astley had not been told about this, had received no financial recompense and, outraged all over again, spoke out against A&R and its director. Walsh could not be as certain of the legal situation as he appeared because he had requested some confirmation of such undertakings from Davis about the storage of Astley’s manuscripts, which Astley probably knew about.48 It therefore came as no surprise that Walsh didn’t want paperback rights to the 1979 story collection Hunting the Wild Pineapple due to ‘our present strained relations with Thea’. And so the relationship between an award-winning Australian novelist and Australia’s oldest literary publisher came to an end after more than twenty years.49
13
Living is serial
Birth, marriage, death, re-birth. They’re the only endings, traditional culminations for living – for books, even – and what bogus back-watering punctuation they are! Living is serial, an unending accretion of alternatives.
Hunting the Wild Pineapple by Thea Astley, 19791
Astley was embarking on another stage of life. Jack was now only about half-a-dozen years from retirement and Ed was a young man. Nevertheless, she continued to fuss over her only son. When she burst into the department corridor at Macquarie talking about cars that might ‘warm a young man’s testicles’, colleagues were straining to discern the poetic reference.
Astley’s particular form of motherly worship had taken the form of searching obsessively for Ed’s all-important first car. The plan was to buy it herself, but Ed would be the main driver. It had to be large, in case he had an accident, and she searched all over Sydney for something suitable. She settled upon a Swedish car, a Saab with heated seats that the ad said offered ‘protection for the urogenital system’.2 Previous Astley vehicles had been the humble VW Beetle and a Toyota Corolla, both a far cry from the very expensive $5,000 she paid for this new European car. The choice was pure Astley: if Ed was to have the best it might as well be amusing and exotic.
However taut – even strangling – the strings of motherhood seemed to others, possibly including Jack, this apparent over-protectiveness was not the whole picture. Astley was utterly committed to making sure Ed did not have to live with the social censure about sexuality that she had endured as a young woman, forgetting that as a young man from a later generation this would not be his lot. In this respect, despite appearances, she gave him unusual licence. Astley delighted in removing life obstacles for Ed and she tried very hard not to overwhelm him with her own expectations. To those who knew Thea well this ‘free zone’ seemed more an extension of her own anxieties. One friend commented: ‘She was determined to make his life as uncomplicated as she could – perhaps to make her own life smooth? – but she didn’t let him develop.’3
While other parents fretted about their children undertaking university degrees that would lead to prosperous professional lives, Thea and Jack were happy with Ed’s decision to study guitar at the Conservatorium. Ed had taken up piano at ten with his mother’s encouragement, learning from a teacher Jack knew from the Conservatorium, but Ed switched to guitar two years later. His parents both felt that study for a more stable career might be necessary one day but music, life, mattered more now. Ed, whom everyone suspected wasn’t especially interested in what his mother might want anyway, nor at this stage the books she wrote, seemed more like Jack than his mother: even-tempered and savvy about the world. He did not seem to need extreme measures of protection.
Local parents speculated about possible ‘Thea–Ed’ scenarios. They said they couldn’t see Ed staying at home much beyond school (he didn’t) and wondered how Thea would cope with his absence. Others tut-tutted about the teenage sexual antics they suspected took place at home when Thea and Jack were not there. Not Astley. She made a point of leaving the house, ‘so that [the kids] can have their time,’ she said as ‘eyes widened’.4 If this was parental neurosis, it was an unusual expression of it. But then Astley had once been that young woman in small towns that ‘lay idle under the hot sun waiting to devour reputations’ and so now seemed like as good a time as any to turn brazen.5
In allowing Ed such freedom Astley might also have been trying – albeit in an odd and even desperate way – to lengthen Ed’s time at the family home. If this was her intention it failed; Ed embarked on a spirited series of relationships in the well-off eastern suburbs on the other side of Sydney, often with older partners. His activities provided Astley with a whole new set of tales about him; the Smiths next door grew used to multiple versions of ‘he’s seeing this girl and I don’t like her’. Ed was coming home with expensive gifts; Thea worried about why. Jack, with typical bluntness, answered her: ‘Because he’s good at it, Thea!’6 Not so funny was that Ed preferred calling on the phone to visiting. He was gone.
‘Time’ really was ‘the great heel’, as Astley had once scribbled in her writing notebook. Lives were brief: ‘you live, you work, you die’, as she was fond of saying. In this mood she received a letter of thanks from her old All Hallows’ teacher Sister Mary Claver. Along with other past pupils, Astley had written a retirement tribute to the sister for The Sydney Morning Herald. It was long and congratulatory, written from the perspective of a colleague rather than a former student, and full of news about the old days at the school.
It took Astley back to the days of the Warwick evacuation during her final school year – almost the same age as Ed was now – and their ‘open-air’ classrooms ‘under the pepperinas’.7 Life had a way of accreting in layers.
When Ed was in his senior years at school and could be left on his own, Jack and Thea travelled regularly to the first holiday house they had bought at Ball Bay, thirty-five kilometres north of Mackay. It was a simple beach house – it cost less than $1,000 – and its simplicity made it look a little like the Epping home. It was not remote or north enough for Astley. They decided to keep an eye out for another property near Cairns, something more than a beach shack, with a view to living there permanently later. Astley was now thirty years away from her direct experience of teaching in small towns in Queensland. Yet everything about her writing was subject to a force of exaggeration, a subconscious antagonism, which found its locus in the tropical far north of her home state.
Astley purchased the next house (Jum Rum) in the little village of Kuranda, twenty-five kilometres northwest of Cairns, just off the road to the Barron Falls. This house was an interesting mix of stained glass and timber, all covered in vines and tropical vegetation – almost looking home-made, or even trendy. Balmain in the jungle it might have been, but it was not a lifestyle choice as much as an act of the imagination.
