[OOQ]| [OOQ]|

[OOQ]| [OOQ]| <"Such is Life." [OOQ]|

[OOQ]|

To those people who are [OOQ]| deeply interested in the development of Australian [OOQ]| letters this book ( [OOQ]| Specialty Press, <title> Melbourne) needs no [OOQ]| introduction. It was published 14 years ago as a [OOQ]| volume of the <title "PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> [OOQ]| Bulletin Library, and though it [OOQ]| never reached a wide public, it has firmly [OOQ]| established itself in those courts where literary [OOQ]| values are not measured in terms of circulation. [OOQ]| Weight of critical opinion, then, rather than the [OOQ]| importunity of the booksellers, has called forth [OOQ]| this present edition.

Unfortunately, the [OOQ]| people who care passionately for literature are, [OOQ]| in every country, small in number, yet any [OOQ]| achievement of value is in their keeping. Books [OOQ]| get published every year in great profusion, and [OOQ]| the patrons of the circulating libraries receive [OOQ]| such nourishment as they demand, but from this [OOQ]| confused outpour of the printing presses it is the [OOQ]| business of the critic, professional and [OOQ]| unprofessional, to select such works as are of [OOQ]| permanent worth and help to keep them alive. [OOQ]| Books, when all is said, are inorganic matter, and [OOQ]| have no life of their own apart from the people [OOQ]| who read and treasure them. The belief that if a [OOQ]| book has merit it will ultimately come into its [OOQ]| own, has no basis except a blind faith in the [OOQ]| vigilance of critics, or in some purely mechanical [OOQ]| theory of survival of the fittest. It is true that [OOQ]| important books have been recovered after a lapse [OOQ]| of many years, but many of equal worth have, in [OOQ]| all probability, perished utterly. In Australia [OOQ]| our literary achievement is so small that we must [OOQ]| guard every part of it jealously.

[OOQ]| "Such is Life" [OOQ]| has claims upon our regard apart from its intrinsic [OOQ]| literary quality, which is of a high order. It [OOQ]| registers for us a faithful picture of life in the [OOQ]| Riverina a generation ago, when our institutions, [OOQ]| our ideals, and our particular national character, [OOQ]| were in a fluid and mutable state. Looking back on [OOQ]| our short history one recognises this as an [OOQ]| important formative period. The first energy of [OOQ]| pioneering had spent itself, and among those who [OOQ]| had borne the burden and heat of the day [OOQ]| distinctions were becoming rigidly refined, some [OOQ]| holding property on a large scale, and others [OOQ]| moving about restlessly among the pursuits of a [OOQ]| nomadic and insecure life. There were dark [OOQ]| hostilities and petty assertions of power, the [OOQ]| minds of the successful being enlightened by no [OOQ]| conception of culture or national unity, and the [OOQ]| bitterness of the dispossessed being as yet [OOQ]| unleavened by any idea of association. Conflict in [OOQ]| the pastoral areas was general, but individual, [OOQ]| breaking out in desperate fights for grass and [OOQ]| water, especially in times of drought; and thus [OOQ]| the structure of social life was unstable. Out of [OOQ]| this ferment the ideas which shape our national [OOQ]| course today gradually emerged.

Luckily in [OOQ]| Joseph Furphy the period found a chronicler who [OOQ]| was particularly fitted to record its character. [OOQ]| Born at Yering, on the Upper Yarra, in 1843, he [OOQ]| followed successively the occupations of farmer, [OOQ]| gold hunter, bullock driver, and mechanic, [OOQ]| realising, as he said near the close of his days, [OOQ]| [OOQ]| Indeed, from the beginning he was too [OOQ]| engrossed in impersonal interests either to value [OOQ]| or actually achieve material success. Money-making [OOQ]| he regarded as irrelevant to the main purposes of [OOQ]| his life, and as an artificer he worked [OOQ]| contentedly for wages in the family foundry, [OOQ]| placing himself by choice in the class with which [OOQ]| he had most sympathy. To his proper work of [OOQ]| chronicler he brought a habit of accurate [OOQ]| observation, a masculine humor, and an interest in [OOQ]| general ideas as well as in human character. The [OOQ]| first interest was fortified by a wide if [OOQ]| disorderly culture, and the second by continued [OOQ]| association with the varied types of men that [OOQ]| might be found in the Riverina in those days, when [OOQ]| personal idiosyncrasies were as diverse as the [OOQ]| dialects brought from overseas. Joseph Furphy's [OOQ]| style was catholic enough to suit his [OOQ]| subject-matter. Slang, scientific terminology, and [OOQ]| racy simile were all at his hand, and his native vigor [OOQ]| fused them easily into a pliant instrument of [OOQ]| expression. He could turn from a description of a [OOQ]| bucking horse to a metaphysical argument without [OOQ]| changing step or getting out of his stride. And [OOQ]| when he chooses to be aggressive his dialectic has [OOQ]| the ring of Swift or Shaw, though he could hardly [OOQ]| have read the latter writer, and had little in [OOQ]| common with either, except his Irish blood.

[OOQ]|

"Such is [OOQ]| Life" is essentially Australian in outlook [OOQ]| and atmosphere. As yet our life and character has [OOQ]| been so little analysed that the phrase needs [OOQ]| fuller examination. [OOQ]| says a [OOQ]| recent critic, Professor Gregory, [OOQ]| This distinction [OOQ]| is enlightening, for recently in Europe it has [OOQ]| become the habit to refer to the new countries as [OOQ]| if they contained no important differences in [OOQ]| character or institutions, and in comparing [OOQ]| Australia with North America these differences can [OOQ]| be made evident to all but the most superficial [OOQ]| minds. Our innate idealism is combined with an [OOQ]| attitude of irony to the realities of contemporary [OOQ]| life which sometimes degenerates into mere [OOQ]| cynicism and a disregard of beauty. These [OOQ]| qualities, complementary in essence, can be found [OOQ]| in nearly every page of Australian writing that [OOQ]| has literary quality, whether in the stories of [OOQ]| Henry Lawson, the plays of Louis Esson, or the [OOQ]| poems of Bernard O'Dowd. They are emphasised in [OOQ]| the work of Joseph Furphy.

American [OOQ]| romanticism, on the other hand, at its finest in [OOQ]| Poe and Hawthorne, easily lapses into mere [OOQ]| banality. The glow which should rightfully belong [OOQ]| to high adventures is used to glorify the [OOQ]| operations of a Beef Trust or the machinations of [OOQ]| an oil king, and when Nature is brought in she is [OOQ]| made personal and sentimental. The feeling of [OOQ]| kinship with wild earth, genuine enough in [OOQ]| Thoreau, provides lesser writers with an excuse [OOQ]| for becoming dithyrambic about the Great White [OOQ]| Silence, or some lone pine to which the heroine [OOQ]| pours out her soul at twilight. The romantic [OOQ]| Westerner, alive and interesting in the best pages [OOQ]| of Bret Harte, degenerates quickly into a stage [OOQ]| hero, whose impeccable sentiments are only [OOQ]| relieved by his vivid clothes. Differences in [OOQ]| national character show most clearly in [OOQ]| literature, and it is necessary to recognise them [OOQ]| in order to arrive at standards of criticism and [OOQ]| guard against the perils of influence and [OOQ]| imitation. Between our idealism and North American [OOQ]| romanticism there is a gulf fixed which can only [OOQ]| be crossed at the risk of spreading the defects of [OOQ]| each quality, for literary vices are more [OOQ]| contagious than their accompanying virtues. There [OOQ]| will be no picturesque cowboys on our Western [OOQ]| stations, if our literary instinct holds true, and [OOQ]| the realities of life on a selection may only be [OOQ]| redeemed by crude farce, but at least the air will [OOQ]| remain clear and the vision unperverted. As an [OOQ]| example of the alien and exotic, the essentially [OOQ]| false note in our literature one has only to read [OOQ]| Marcus Clarke's story, [OOQ]| "Pretty Dick", which is said to have [OOQ]| drawn a sympathetic tear from Oliver Wendell [OOQ]| Holmes. Compare it with the story of Rory [OOQ]| O'Halloran's lost child (p. 187) and our author’s [OOQ]| right to be considered essentially Australian is [OOQ]| settled once and for all.

[OOQ]| says Joseph Furphy, [OOQ]| The latter part of the claim cannot [OOQ]| wholly be allowed, for artistic truth is not [OOQ]| simply a matter of good intentions, and [OOQ]| "Such is Life" [OOQ]| does not stand or fall by the authenticity of [OOQ]| Willoughby and Folkestone, the two Englishmen who [OOQ]| pass in stilted fashion through these pages. They [OOQ]| were too remote from Joseph Furphy's sympathies [OOQ]| for him to quicken them with life or portray them [OOQ]| except in conventional caricature. Nor does the [OOQ]| effort towards phonetic accuracy, so successfully [OOQ]| achieved, combined with the use of the word (adj) [OOQ]| in parentheses, add to the essential truth of [OOQ]| recorded conversations. The spoken word has a [OOQ]| different effect from the printed one, and the [OOQ]| flavor of a speech is conveyed better by idiom [OOQ]| than by phonetics. But if these things are [OOQ]| blemishes they are of comparatively small account. [OOQ]| The value of "Such is [OOQ]| Life" lies in the extraordinary richness of [OOQ]| its philosophy and characterisation, in the [OOQ]| vitality of its style, and in the whimsical humor [OOQ]| with which it is saturated.

As to the form [OOQ]| of the book, a word or two must be said. The [OOQ]| picturesque novel shows signs of coming into [OOQ]| fashion again, even in France, where the [OOQ]| vicissitudes of war have broken up the neat, [OOQ]| logical form of construction that was the ideal of [OOQ]| at least two generations of writers. [OOQ]| [OOQ]| "Such is Life" will not [OOQ]| seem so unorthodox in form, therefore, as it did [OOQ]| when it was first issued. Moreover, when the [OOQ]| conventional outward unities have been abandoned [OOQ]| it is found that a firmer control has to be kept [OOQ]| over the inner unities of style and atmosphere, [OOQ]| and it is the case with which these are preserved [OOQ]| that gives "Such is [OOQ]| Life" its effect of roundness and finish, [OOQ]| in spite of its discursiveness. The artlessness of [OOQ]| its author in setting out to discover the meaning [OOQ]| of life by elaborating a week's diary is more [OOQ]| apparent than real. The reader finds himself [OOQ]| intrigued by minor cross-currents of plot and [OOQ]| motive, which develop so that the limits which [OOQ]| were laid down in the beginning have finally to be [OOQ]| abandoned. And frequently diversions, which at [OOQ]| first sight seem irrelevant, prove to be an [OOQ]| integral part of the book's frame-work.

[OOQ]|

Although Joseph Furphy did not write for [OOQ]| publication until he was past 40, his literary [OOQ]| gift was far from infertile. Besides [OOQ]| [OOQ]| "Such is Life" <title> and his [OOQ]| collected volume of verses he left another long [OOQ]| novel, so far only published in serial form, and a [OOQ]| number of short stories and Shakespearean studies. [OOQ]| All these writings, though varying in quality, [OOQ]| have the mark of the potter's thumb, the flavor of [OOQ]| his fresh mind and individual style. He looked at [OOQ]| the world around him with penetrating, ironic eyes [OOQ]| that were peculiarly his own, and though his wide [OOQ]| reading seems sometimes to tempt him to the [OOQ]| borders of pedantry, his habit of observation and [OOQ]| his real genius kept him from adopting a bookish [OOQ]| point of view, whether in the matter of bush [OOQ]| characteristics of the merits of "Geoffrey [OOQ]| Hamlyn." It is not too much to claim of [OOQ]| <title "PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> [OOQ]| "Such is Life" that [OOQ]| it will become a classic for the next generation. [OOQ]| If sincerity remains a virtue, and the Australian [OOQ]| of the future has any interest in his spiritual [OOQ]| origins or pride in his literary pioneers, Joseph [OOQ]| Furphy's name will be well remembered.

[OOQ]|