A sad decline ...

... David Marr on Patrick White.

Apparently, interest in White's fiction has waned. Too bad, he is a beautiful writer. I reviewed Marr's biography and his collection White's letters. Of the former, I wrote that it was a model of its kind, exhaustive without becoming exhausting, bringing into vivid focus every character and detail. His readings of White's works are noticeably insightful and he makes clear how White's experiences were made use of in his fiction without reducing the latter to querulous autobiography. White read the book shortly before his death in 1990. He did not request a single cut or change, but confessed he could read much of it only through tears."