Novel
Such Is Life
Tom Collins · 1903
Opening lines
Unemployed at last!
Text quoted from gutenberg.net.au
Synopsis
Tom Collins, a minor government official who travels the outback, offers extracts from his diary, taken about a month apart between the end of 1883 and the beginning of 1884. In the south of New South Wales and the north of Victoria, he chats at length with bullock drivers, swagmen, fence riders and squatters, digresses as a philosopher and quotes Shakespeare. The stories interweave through campfire conversations and secondhand tales, and the reader pieces together hidden plots that the narrator does not see.
Context
The manuscript, finished in March 1897, was sent that same year to the Bulletin; Furphy presented it to J. F. Archibald in a famously quoted phrase: democratic in temper, offensively Australian in bias. A. G. Stephens recognised its worth and had him cut two long parts, which became two other books, published only after his death. The volume appeared in Sydney in 1903 in the Bulletin's series; praised by the critics, it sold only about a third of its print run. The title takes up the last words attributed to Ned Kelly.
Who it is for
A long novel, more than one hundred and sixty thousand words of learned English mixed with bush speech, with many digressions; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Long neglected, then regarded as a classic; it has been nicknamed the Australian Moby-Dick.
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