The Tree of Man

"The Tree of Man" is the fourth published novel by the Australian novelist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner, Patrick White. It is a domestic drama chronicling the lives of the Parker family and their changing fortunes over many decades. It is steeped in Australian folklore and cultural myth, and is recognised as the author's attempt to infuse the idiosyncratic way of life in the remote Australian bush with some sense of the cultural traditions and ideologies that the epic history of Western civilisation has bequeathed to Australian society in general. [Gleeson-White, Jane. In conversation with Ramona Koval. "The Book Show". Sydney: ABC Radio National, 1 November 2007.] "When we came to live [in Castle Hill, Sydney] ," White wrote, in an attempt to explain the novel, "I felt the life was, on the surface, so dreary, ugly, monotonous, there must be a poetry hidden in it to give it a purpose, and so I set out to discover that secret core, and "The Tree of Man" emerged." [White, Patrick. Letter to Peggy Garland, 30 May 1957. "Patrick White: Letters". Ed. David Marr. Sydney: Random House, 1994. 118.] . The title comes from A. E. Houseman's poetry cycle "A Shropshire Lad", lines of which are quoted in the text.

External links

* [http://arts.abc.net.au/white/excerpts/treeofman_excerpt.html Excerpts from the novel] at the ABC's "Why Bother With Patrick White?" archive.
* [http://arts.abc.net.au/white/titles/novels/treeofman.html Synopsis and interpretation by Alan Lawson] at the ABC's "Why Bother With Patrick White?" archive.

References