In celebrating their fortieth anniversary in 2003, the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) listed the 40 favourite Australian books of its members. The most revered book was Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet. The silver medal went to Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children and the bronze to Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.
Lining up books like so many racehorses and trying to find the best in the field is of course ridiculous, and indeed tricky enough with horses. The merit of such lists lies in the ensuing discussion and the light shed on works that contemporary readers might otherwise neglect.
That said, the examination of this and other such lists has confirmed the general oversight of what might be considered, if not a great Australian novel, then certainly a great novel by a writer who was more or less Australian. The writer in question is Frederic Manning and the novel is The Middle Parts of Fortune. Ernest Hemingway was prepared to call it ‘the finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read’. It was this quote from the author of A Farewell to Arms (published in the same year) which forced the book off the shelf and into my hands. Hemingway went on to add, ‘I read it over once each year to remember how things really were so that I will never lie to myself or anyone else about them.’ Further acclamation flowed from E. M. Forster who called it ‘the best of our war novels’, and from T. E. Lawrence who wrote ‘no praise could be too sheer for this book’
The Middle Parts of Fortune is in the tradition of Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, and in spirit it resembles Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Manning’s novel, however, has its own distinct voice.
Frederic Manning left Australia at the age of 21, returning to visit his family only a few times, yet much of his novel’s originality and greatness can be attributed to his Australian sensibility. While the novel’s central character, Private Bourne, is conscious of the class system, especially in the military context, the book remains essentially classless. Unlike British works on the same theme, events are not recorded from the perspective of the officer class. At the same time, there is no clichéd soldierly contempt for officers, or saccharine glorification of the ranks. It is