The result is an effective introduction to Moorhouse’s body of work as a whole,and a biography that draws on the work to help understand the life without reducing it to biographical evidence. While the book provides a lively account of the research Moorhouse undertook for the brilliantGrand Days trilogy,there remains scope for more literary-biographical work on these books,and on Moorhouse’s career and reception as a writer.
There are hazards aplenty for the author of a biography of a living person,especially one with as complicated a sexual history as Moorhouse. It was while Lumby was writing the conclusion to this biography that Moorhouse died in June last year,and so her account is marked both by the poignancy of this recent grief and loss and the delicacy of navigating the ethical waters of telling other people’s stories.
This task is especially fraught and important given that Moorhouse could be seen to have overstepped such boundaries himself in his account of his first marriage in his workMartini:A Memoir,as Lumby details.
In an afterword to the biography Lumby outlines some of these difficulties,and her approach to the ethical quandaries she faced in the process of writing the book. To her credit,she decides to err on the side of “caution when it comes to revealing intimate relationships documented in the archive which are not public knowledge”. Such caution means that the reader looking for prurient details about Moorhouse’s sex life,especially his relationships with men,will be disappointed.
One of most affecting stories in the book is that of how clandestine Moorhouse felt he had to be about his queer sexual and gendered identity,especially earlier in his life when gay sex remained criminalised,even as he was writing about queer sex as overtly as any other writer of his generation.
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Lumby’s decision to rely more on interviews than on letters (of which there are plenty in the archive) also has the effect of this biography feeling a little distant from its subject. The reader learns so much that is fascinating about Moorhouse’s life,and that has not been focused on in other accounts – notably,his relationship with the bush and his extensive advocacy on behalf of other writers – but is not left with a sense of intimacy with him. Specifically,the question of how he treated others,especially in personal relationships,is left unclear.
The account of Moorhouse’s career does,however,provide glancing but illuminating insight into the conditions of Australian literary life across the past five decades. In 2001 Moorhouse was told that he had won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award forDark Palace,only to be informed later the same day that the decision had been retracted and the award was instead to go to Peter Carey’sTrue History of the Kelly Gang.
Carey’s response,in this masthead,was telling as to the limits of writerly solidarity in the period:“This is really trivial. We all get disappointed. Frank was disappointed in a cruel way. It’s the world. It’s what happens.”
In the moving conclusion to this biography,Lumby invites in the voices of the many friends and colleagues who wrote to her after Moorhouse’s death. Among them is the poet Robert Adamson,who also passed away later that year. “I think the most amazing thing about Frank’s writing is how readable it is,” Adamson said. “You want to keep reading it. A lot of good writers – you read a few pages and you think,that’s good but I’ll have a break. With Frank,I want to finish the whole book.”
The same is true of Lumby’s biography,which does not contain a single boring moment. Lumby’s writing is,like that of her subject,sharp,bright and engaging. While much more remains to be said about Moorhouse and his life and work,this biography is a very good start indeed.
Julieanne Lamond lectures in English at Australian National University. Her most recent book,Lohrey,is published by The Miegunyah Press.
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