Round Two, Match Two: The Man Who Loved Children vs The Secret River

VS

So, here’s the thing.

The Man Who Loved Children is a masterpiece. Brutal, deeply claustrophobic at times, uncompromising and brilliant. Sam and Henny Pollit are indelible creations; an unhappy marriage more acutely observed than any outside Edward Albee. And yet, through the horror, the blackest of humour somehow survives. Comedy and tragedy intertwined like furious spouses. Not a bad trick.

The Secret River is also a masterpiece. By reclaiming and repurposing a genre as tired and mistreated as historical fiction, Grenville finds a way to transform a familiar story into something shocking. Faced with the moral quandaries and compromises of William Thornhill, any reader with compassion or reason will find their understanding of Australianness radically and deeply challenged.

So, here’s the thing.

Comparisons are bullshit. Crunchies are better than Violet Crumbles. Cherry Ripes are better than Crunchies. Friday Night Lights is better than Cherry Ripes. Leaving aside the objective rightness of these three statements, note the escalating ludicrousness of the comparison. What are our criteria? Best honeycomb treat? Best chocolate bar? Best depiction of small town American life? In any contest, in any tournament, if the parameters for judgement aren’t crystal clear then the deck is stacked and the comparison meaningless.

Take literary excellence as a category. It’s a pretty fraught, contested territory to begin with. Don’t get me started on whether readability should be a marker of literary success (it should) or whether something being enjoyable should render it non-literary (it shouldn’t). The only question, the only fair question, is does this work of art do what it sets out to do? And does it blow you away in the process?

The facts are these. Both these books are masterpieces. Both these books succeed on their own terms. Both are ultimately tragedies. Both explore fascinating ideas about the nature of complicity, of inevitability, of belonging. Speaking personally, both have haunted me and both have challenged my understanding of the world. I love both of these books. Also, in case it matters, both are by authors who have a wider body of work that makes it clear that their greatness is not a fluke. (Read Letty Fox, Her Luck or The Idea of Perfection, Dark Places or Dark Places of the Heart. Just read Grenville and Stead. They are extraordinary.)

There’s no justice here. These books shouldn’t be meeting early in round two. The whole tournament should have been spent with them pacing around each other, glaring, gesticulating wildly. The Stead muttering fragments of Pollit-speak, and the Grenville standing, watching silently, waiting for its moment to strike. But here we are.

So where does that leave us?

In 1967, Stead was declared ineligible for the Britannica Australia Award on the grounds that she had ‘ceased to be Australian’. The Man Who Loved Children is set in Washington because its American publishers felt that would improve its prospects. It tanked on publication: not convincingly American enough for American audiences, not Australian enough for Australians. It experienced a revival fifteen years after publication thanks to some fervent advocacy from poet Randall Jarrell, before waxing and waning in its fortunes for decades. The recent 70th anniversary edition from MUP represents the first time in years that it has been actively pushed by a local publisher rather than UK and US editions being shipped into the country in anaemic numbers. Despite this chequered history, it feels like the Pollits have finally arrived. The champions of the book – from Franzen to Jane Smiley and beyond – are vocal and strident in their love of it. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005. On any list of classic Australian novels it sits proudly, its place in the canon assured. It only took about 70 years.

The Secret River looks set for greater fortunes and due recognition in its author’s lifetime. And yet the teacup-sized storm that erupted around Grenville’s approach to the historical record and the novel being passed over for the Miles Franklin Award (with a reported aside from one of the judges suggesting that ‘just because a book is popular doesn’t mean it’s literary’) might indicate that culturally, we’re not out of the woods yet.

Canonisation is for the dead. Tournaments are for the living. I’m giving this to Grenville.

A brief disclaimer: I worked at Text Publishing during the period that The Secret River was published, and was directly involved in the promotion of the book. That said, anyone who has seen a sausage being made will tell you that hunger for the sausage isn’t an inevitable by-product.

WINNER: THE SECRET RIVER

Jess: As we hurtle toward the pointy end of the competition, it’s definitely getting harder and harder for our judges to choose a victor when the novels fighting it out now are obviously great enough to have already bested a talented opponent in the opening round. Here we see Michael Williams declaring, Big Love style, ‘I love both of these books’. Presumably we can work out a roster where The Man Who Loves Children gets Williams Monday to Wednesday, The Secret River has him Thursday to Saturday, and Sunday is, as the literary gods decreed, a day of reading rest.

Ben: It’s a terrible thing when a man loves two books. It can tear him apart, make him feel guilty and ashamed simply because of the perfectly natural urges that a man feels when he wishes to sow his oats amongst the pages of more than one book at a time. When will our society move past its bourgeois morality and allow polyliterature?

Anyway Williams says ‘comparisons are bullshit’, which hardly seems in the spirit of the competition, but this was certainly a titanic battle – Stead’s brutality versus Grenville’s shock. And I think what tipped Grenville over the edge may have been Stead’s crucial tactical error in setting her book in ‘Washington’, wherever that is – I assume it’s a fantasyland akin to Narnia or the ‘Emerald City’ depicted by David Williamson. I think Stead dropped the ball here – she should have grounded her book a bit more in a setting like Warragul or Cunnamulla, and then she may well have been better equipped to slam-dunk right over Grenville’s head. Thoughts?

Jess: Agreed. A bit of ‘Orstrayan proyde’ would have probably pushed Stead’s tome over the line, but it’s too late for her to metaphorically slip an Australian flag onto her novel to wear as a cape, get it pissed on Bundy rum, and drag it into a shady looking tattoo parlour to have the Southern Cross inked onto its chest. The damage is done! It’s a win for Grenville, and a choice moment for the rest of us to appreciate just how brutal this tournament can be.

Ben: Ah, the lessons of literature are harsh indeed; perhaps Stead will learn her lesson for next year, and the next edition of The Man Who Loved Children will feature a laconic talking marsupial sidekick for Sam Pollit. But as you say, The Secret River marches on – further confirmation that history is so hot right now, and Grenville’s historically shocking meanderings are going to be tough to beat.