Fabulating Beauty: Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey

Peter Carey is one of Australia’s finest creative writers, much admired by both literary critics and a worldwide reading public. While academia has been quick to see his fictions as exemplars of postcolonial and postmodern writing strategies, his general readership has been captivated by his deadpan sense of humour, his quirky characters, the outlandish settings and the grotesqueries of his intricate plots. After three decades of prolific writing and multiple award-winning, Carey stands out in the world of Australian letters as designated heir to Patrick White. Fabulating Beauty pays tribute to Carey’s literary achievement. It brings together the voices of many of the most renowned Carey critics in twenty essays(sixteen commissioned especially for this volume), an interview with the author, as well as the most extensive bibliography of Carey criticism to date. The studies represent a wide range of current perspectives on the writer’s fictions. Contributors focus on issues as diverse as the writer’s biography; his use of architectural metaphors; his interrogation of narrative structures such as myths and cultural master-plots; intertextual strategies; concepts of sacredness and references to the Christian tradition; and his strategies of rewriting history. Amidst predictions of the imminent death of ‘postist’ theory, the essays all attest to the ongoing relevance of the critical parameters framed by postmodernism and postcolonialism. Table of Contents Paul Framing Peter Carey Acknowledgements Introduction Part The Writer and his Work Andreas The “contrarian streak”: An Interview with Peter Carey Karen Bringing Australia Peter Carey, the Booker, and the Repatriation of Australian Culture Part Aspects and Overviews Andreas Towards an Alphabet of Australian Peter Carey’s Mythistorical Novels Christer Cross Allusions to Christian Tradition in Peter Carey’s Fictions Peter Kinds of Captivity in Peter Carey’s Fiction Theodore F. The Difficulties of Translating Peter Carey’s Postmodern Fiction into Popular Film Nicholas “A Dazzled Eye”: “Kristu-Du” and the Architecture of Tyranny Part Perspectives on Individual Fictions Cornelia Peter Carey’s Short Trapped in a Narrative Labyrinth Nicholas Bliss and Peter Carey in Australia Brian Deceptive The Art of Building in Peter Carey’s Illywhacker Lyn Sacred Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda Ansgar NÜ “The Empire had not been built by choirboys”: The Revisionist Representation of Australian Colonial History in Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda Bill Simulation, Resistance and The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Pam Regarding The Big Bazoohley Annegret Peter Carey’s Jack An Aussie Story? Barbara The Writing-Back Paradigm Peter Carey, Jack Maggs, and Charles Dickens, Great Expectations Bruce Unsettling Carey and Capital in Jack Maggs Carolyn “Lies and Silences”: Cultural Masterplots and Existential Authenticity in Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang Susan K. Dead White Male True History of the Kelly Gang, and Ned Kelly in Australian Fictions Anthony J. A Wildly Distorted Account? Peter Carey’s 30 Days in Sydney Robert Monstrosity, Fakery and Authorship in My Life as a Fake Bibliography Notes on the Contributors Index