About a month back "The Australian" newspaper submitted a chapter of a Patrick White novel to a number of Australian publishers under the name Wraith Picket. It was roundly rejected by all of them - exactly what the paper hoped to achieve. This hoax was reported all over the place and I thought about commenting on it but got bored by the whole affair pretty quickly. And I didn't think I had anything to add. It had been done before in the UK with a chapter from a novel by V.S. Naipaul, and that exercise had been trawled over by everyone at the time.
Now, just as we thought the whole imbroglio seemed about to settle down, "The Australian" has lobbed another grenade into the mess. I'm not so interested in what the article has to say so much as the fact that they spend a lot of time quoting from one particular literary weblog. I think this is the first time I've seen a major paper in Australia do this.
Just thought you might be interested.
As an amusing addendum to all this, the number of readers in Sydney have set up a Patrick White Readers' Group with its own weblog. The aim is to get people reading the old curmudgeon again. And that can only be a good thing.
