THE PLAINS by Gerald Murnane | Book Review

A book review of Gerald Murnane’s “The Plains,” (Text Publishing Melbourne Australia, 2012, original published in 1982).
If you are planning on buying this book, consider buying from your local independent bookstore, however, If you are going to use Amazon, consider using my affiliate links to support me!
amzn.to/3kjC3Dh
0:00 Introduction
2:00 Murnane’s sentences
6:35 The search
12:14 Mysticism, the “topography of my mind,” and “true fiction,”
18:57 Landscape with Darkness and Mirage
This video drew more heavily than usual on a few different articles and monographs. Please refer to them for further reading:
Harris, William. “The Plains - Gerald Murnane,” Full Stop, July 6, 2017: www.full-stop.net/2017/07/06/...
Lerner, Ben. “A Strange Australian Masterpiece,” The New Yorker, March 29, 2017: www.newyorker.com/books/page-...
McInerney, Harriet L. “Apprehending Landscapes: The Uncanny and Gerald Murnane’s The Plains,” Antipodes 31.1 (2017): 133-144.
McNamee, Brendan. Grounded Visionary: The Mystic Fictions of Gerald Murnane. Peter Lang: New York, 2019.
Uhlmann, Anthony (ed.). Gerald Murnane: Another World in This One. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2020. (Most of these papers can also be viewed on The Writing and Society Research Centre KZbin channel: / @thewritingandsocietyr... ) See especially:
- Tristan Foster, “Scenes from Gerald Murnane’s Golf Club,” 9-11 (also at: www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
- Shannon Burns, “Truth, Fiction and True Fiction,” 29-3
- Emmett Stinson, “Retrospective Intention: The Implied Author and the Coherence of the Oeuvre in Border Districts and The Plains,” 45-61
- Gerald Murnane, “The Still-Breathing Author,” 163-177.
For Murnane’s spoken-word album, see: music.culturesack.com/album/w...
For Murnane’s archives, see: www.musicandliterature.org/fe...
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#theplains #geraldmurnane #murnane #bookreview #australianliterature

[@paloverde4978]

as an Australian postgrad with Murnane as the focal point of my research, I’m thrilled he has garnered an incredibly generous and receptive international audience - he’s, in my mind at least, our greatest living writer. great review man, thank you for this.

[@travelthroughstories]

Wow, I hope I didn't make too much of a fool of myself - I'm still quite new to the world(s) of Murnane and of Australian lit. Thank you for your kind and generous words! I can see why his works haven't really spread to an international audience, but that's entirely the fault of readers rather than of Murnane. His voice is so unique - I really hope more people read him.

[@architchaudhary1285]

Although they have vastly different approaches and philosophies, Murnane and McCarthy seem oddly connected in their metaphysics of language, image and meaning. Blood Meridian also has sections where McCarthy's language transforms seeming inconsequential landscapes to highly suggestive and mythical ones, and our Master of Ceremonies in The Judge reminds us of the disconnect between absolute reality and our perception of it, which is 'charged with meaning' that we have 'put there' ourselves.

[@BrandonsBookshelf]

You have me both very excited and very intimated to read this. I have never heard of this author somehow so that background was amazing and has me hooked!

[@travelthroughstories]

Thanks! I don't think you should be intimidated though, but just ready to not fully understand what the text means and just allow the text to wash over you. His sentences are gorgeous and easy to read!

[@mikefreveletti919]

I'll start with saying The Plains is my favorite book. I think this video is brilliant! Would love to hear your thoughts on some of his other works.

[@travelthroughstories]

Thank you very much! I definitely plan on reading more of his works soon.

[@Matthew-lf2un]

Amazing video Sean, you've done a great job of summarising the Plains and all of Murnane's work really. He creates second-hand nostalgia better than anyone I've ever read. His essay collection "Last Letter to a Reader" is worth looking into if you don't have it, he sets out to read all of his published books and write a short chapter on each but it basically just turns into a new Murnane novel. I would say that the Plains is the key to understanding the rest of his work, I think you might like Border Districts more the second time around (it's my favourite at the moment).

[@travelthroughstories]

Thank you very much, Matthew! I believe both his essay collections "Last Letter to a Reader" and "Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs" are being reprinted here in the US next week actually, so I'll definitely pick them up soon. Interesting that The Plains works as a kind of key - I'm definitely interested in going back and reading Border Districts now that I *kind of* know what to expect from Murnane.

[@josh440]

"[I read] to have stories travel through me" What a great quote Sean, and an even greater video. Your video comes at a great time for me personally, as I am currently working through his books (Border Districts, and Last Letter to a Reader I've read so far) and like you, have struggled a few times as his works are quite elusive. Even here in Australia, Murnane is also under-read. I find Murnane's strong interest in exploring the topography of his own mind endlessly fascinating. You've probably read it already, but the New York Times article on his Nobel candidacy is one of the most interesting pieces I've read on any author. I don't know of any author quite like him or his books

[@travelthroughstories]

Thanks, Josh! I also have trouble placing Murnane alongside other authors - he's so unique. I do think that there are some similarities between him and Jon Fosse in their particular kind of mystical realism, but they're vastly different in how they explore those themes. Murnane is in a category all his own. I haven't read the NYT piece - I'll seek it out now! Good to hear that there's another Murnane reader out there working through his bibliography though. I'm planning on reading Inland next.

[@sabinelipinska8614]

Great review, a pleasure to listen to. Would like to give it a try!

[@travelthroughstories]

Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed.

[@clarissadalloway9236]

A gorgeous review. You really pass on your passion. I'll read it asap! Will you consider a whole video on Jon Kalman Stefensson? I think I'll never thank you enough for making me discover him. What would you recommend after his trilogy?

[@travelthroughstories]

Thank you, Clarissa! I meant to reread Jón Kalman this past winter, but got caught up in new books. I'd have to reread them before making videos, but I very much want to as I think more people should read him. Your comments have made me *really* want to go back and reread his books though! Thanks for the encouragement. After the Heaven and Hell trilogy, I think I'd recommend his "Fish Have No Feet." It's a bit different in tone and more modern in setting, but he's able to do for the Reykjanes peninsula in that book what he did for the West Fjords in Heaven and Hell. His Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night is also brilliant... Again, more modern, but he captures this small town so effectively. I'd really just recommend all of his books - his prose is gorgeous in each of them!

[@clarissadalloway9236]

@@travelthroughstories Thank you so much for your recommendation on J.K. Stefensson! And thank you for your channel! It's so refreshing.

[@makebelievestunt]

Okay, you've got my attention . . . TBR, Murnane. Thanks!

[@travelthroughstories]

I'm glad to hear I've convinced someone to check him out! Thanks, Michael!

[@RSelcov]

Thank you. I want to check out his writing now. I'd never heard of him. My library (in NYS) doesn't have The Plains, but has copies of Broder Districts, and A Season on Earth,, and a couple of eBooks - A Million Windows, and Barley Patch. You said you've read Border Districts. Should I look at that one, or try something else?

[@travelthroughstories]

I think Border Districts is a pretty good place to start - a lot of readers that I've talked to rank it as their favorite. When I first read it, I just really didn't "get" what he was doing, but you may fare better. It's very indicative of his writing style though, so if you like it, you'll like his other books! The only other one you mention that I've read is Barley Patch and I wouldn't recommend starting with it as it seems, in some ways, to be retrospective of his previous books.

[@RSelcov]

@@travelthroughstories Thank you for the reply!

[@chrisbeveridge3066]

"Shaping from uneventful days in a flat landscape the substance of myth" Ain't that the truth 💯 Very cool will check him out this prose is meat and drink to me. You might enjoy Warriors by Gerald Manley

[@travelthroughstories]

Cheers, Chris! Hope you enjoy - his prose is gorgeous. I'll look into Warriors by Gerald Manley. Thanks for the recommendations!

[@authorleetee]

Enjoyed this greatly. Murnane's a fairly recent 'discovery' for me, but that pull to that 'what is it' in his fiction is like the pull that first drew me to Joseph McElroy, as different as they are in some ways. What's going on? I can't explain it; I can't resist it.

[@travelthroughstories]

Thank you, Lee! That's exactly what has drawn me, again and again, to Murnane. I gotta get to more McElroy soon as well - I wasn't really taken by his Cannonball, the first of his I read, but the more I hear people talking about him, the more I suspect that that was my fault rather than his.

[@authorleetee]

@@travelthroughstories ​ @Travel Through Stories I never made it through Cannonball, to be honest. Started with Lookout Cartridge, gave up on it in frustration, then couldn't forget about it. Been going through your videos the past week. Great stuff and hope your audience grows.

[@travelthroughstories]

@@authorleetee Cheers! I appreciate it a lot.

[@kieran_forster_artist]

He is definitely not well known here in Australia generally, maybe more so in Melbourne

[@ledsnipe]

My favourite writer. Each book I read just fills me and colours the world for me thereafter. Can't really describe it. My favourite I think (impossible to say for sure) is landscape with landscape. Have you read that?

[@travelthroughstories]

That's a great way of putting it! I haven't read Landscape with Landscape yet, though I did pick up a used copy recently. I'm between that one and Inland for my next Murnane.

[@ledsnipe]

@@travelthroughstories Inland is also excellent, you can't go wrong with either choice.

[@travelthroughstories]

@@ledsnipe Great to know - thank you!

[@SpringboardThought]

Dang, this sounds pretty great. I am far more interested in people examining and expressing subjectivity. And I’m a very visual thinker, so I imagine this would work very well for me.

[@travelthroughstories]

You might really like it then - Murnane is the most visual writer I've ever read. He always talks about how "he recalls an image...", rather than a "full" memory or something like that. The way he writes about memory is unlike anyone else I've read.

[@SpringboardThought]

@@travelthroughstories I also love stuff around memory too so seems like cat nip really

[@travelthroughstories]

@@SpringboardThought Murnane is up your alley then - in both The Plains and his other book that I read recently, Barley Patch, he has some fascinating takes on memory and some really unique ways of depicting it on the page.

[@SpringboardThought]

@@travelthroughstories thanks a lot! My library has two by him but not those. At least they have something; more than is usual lol

[@travelthroughstories]

@@SpringboardThought Wow, I'm actually surprised they have any! My university's library doesn't have anything by him or about him, though I have been able to find a few of his books at some local used book shops. I've heard Inland is particularly good as well, if that happened to be one of the ones they had.

[@tcmockiii]

Just read it today. Thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I do worry about the narrator's theory of language--seems too post-structural. I favor Wittgenstein, Cavell, ordinary language philosophy, and Toril Moi (her Revolution of the Ordinary is fantastic). Whether it is too post-structural is something I have neither the time nor perhaps knowledge to discern. Thanks for the video!

[@GomezAddams422]

This book sounds like a crash course in semiotics, poststructuralism and deconstruction theory written as prose.

[@travelthroughstories]

That's a pretty solid way of looking at it. What's interesting is that Murnane eschews the "postmodern" label, all literary theory, the subconscious, etc. claiming to have never read any of it, but, as you say, a lot of these ideas that he explores sound very familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of those theories.

[@abdullalhazred3365]

My Goodness, it has never crossed your mind that Gerald has been trolling the Literary establishment for decades?