Strangers In A Solitary Land: Contextualizing Eccentricity In Patrick White's Fiction

Patrick White (1912-1990), Australia's only Nobel Laureate, has long been the focus of critical attention. A multitude of books, articles and theses have been written on him by people of different nationalities. White, as a symbol in the vision of the Australian readers, has invoked as many praises as dispraises. White has been interpreted from the perspectives of theme, religion, form, language, symbol, post-colonialism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, semiotics and cultural studies. White's work is like a testing ground where all kinds of modern critical tools have been tried.The White criticism is full of completely contradictory and mutually exclusive interpretations. Some focus on the universality in his works, locating him in the European tradition, and attacking him as un-Australian. Some others emphasize White's idiosyncrasies, holding that what and how he writes is purely the result of his peculiarity. Still some accentuate his local relevance, and uphold him as a national myth-maker, who helps narrate the nation into being.The present research argues that White's concern is both universal and local. What is presented in White's novels is the localization of a universal problem. The theme of alienation pervades 20th century consciousness. Yet the sense of loss, alienation, and ambivalence is stronger in Australia for the white settlers. It is true that White's concern of the modern consciousness goes beyond the geographical and cultural boundaries of Australia; it is truer that the past criticism seems to overemphasize his universality to the neglect of his irreducible singularity and local relevance. In addition, those who pay much heed to White's local relevance tend to equate his writing with political pamphlet, and thus undermine the artistic achievement in his novels.White's work is like an immense mine of art, of which some parts are overexploited, some other parts, however, suffer conscious or unconscious oblivion or avoidance. In the babble of critical voices, a sound is muffled, and a kind of spirit predicament, obscured. That is eccentricity. Eccentric souls are animated in the warped universe created by White in his fiction. It is hard to open a book by White without finding an eccentric figure. In addition, the eccentrics tend to appear in groups. White problematizes and centralizes eccentricity, making it the locus of...