In 1957, Voss by Patrick White won the first Miles Franklin Award. Now, 50 years after its publication, Chris Middendorp in "The Age" praises its virtues and hopes that it won't be forgotten.
White's most remarkable novel, Voss, was first published in 1957. It's now 50 years later, and where's the celebration? What's missing is some appropriate commemoration for the book that was once considered one of our greatest stories. A novel that the author Thomas Keneally described as one of the finest works of the modernist era and of the past century has been barely referred to all year.Is this a unique Australian characteristic? The Spaniards revere Cervantes. The French worship Proust. The English lionise Dickens. Who do we idolise? It's the old story: there's no end to our adulation of sport stars, but authors seem pretty low on our awareness level. I guess White's Nobel Prize for Literature can't compete with the Don's prodigious cricket scores.
