I am unsettled by Voss, perhaps White's greatest novel, although oddly not one of my personal favourites of his canon. It is White's "historical" novel, written in a more direct style, by which I mean third-person linear narrator, and a healthy Dickensian roster of supporting characters (fitting for a novel set in the 19th century). But White's goal is very much as per: illustrate the limitations of the standard Australian conception of their country, their culture, their aspirations, contrasting ways of existing, human foibles, and the idea of mythologising others and - in the case of Voss - oneself.

Voss is a confident, beautiful, richly symbolic novel, swerving from the great emptiness of Australia's glorious deserts to the parlours and pavements of 1840s Sydney. White has a lot of fun with historical detail (he used M. Barnard Eldershaw's delicious [b:A House Is Built|4703054|A House Is Built|M. Barnard Eldershaw|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1515447440l/4703054._SY75_.jpg|4767379] as research material - perhaps odd, to use fiction rather than non-fiction for such a purpose!) and it's quite refreshing, after his previous novel (my personal favourite) The Tree of Man to have a White book so peppered with dialogue.

An immense achievement, Voss is not a tale of plot, nor even - on most levels - of character. It is a tale of atmosphere, culture, humanity, and existence itself. Interesting, then, to see its comparatively poor average review score on Goodreads, compared to White's classics. Theory A: the author's deliberate decision to write in the historical mode has actually dated this book faster than his more regular, modernist prose, which was confronting to Australians in the 1950s but now reads as high-culture bog-standard to us. Theory B: most people these days only make it through Voss, so the other White books have higher scores because its acolytes and the literati who read them, while Voss lures and then abandons the great unwashed? Either is possible. This may seem like snobbery, and it is, but it's author-approved snobbery. In David Marr's ace biography of White, the latter is quoted on why he never accepted a university gig: "Those who will understand my books will do so intuitively; I don't want to waste time on the others."

Elitism aside, I find myself directing White newcomers to his more character-focussed, "accessible" novels: A Fringe of Leaves or especially Riders in the Chariot come to mind. I come to suspect Voss is his most lasting achievement because it sits neatly between the "easy" novels and the "difficult" ones (cf The Vivisector, The Aunt's Story). It confronts Australia's present, clashes with its past, and hurls leading questions toward its future. As Laura Trevelyan says, the future begins now. ( )

At times I thought, "Laura Trevelyan and the explorer, Voss, demonstrate aspects of Patrick White." They didn't strike me as independent characters, but as vehicles for White's ideas. Le Mesurier's journal performed a similar function.

The severe and intelligent Laura Trevelyan has recently arrived from England to live with her aunt and uncle, the Bonners, and their daughter Belle. Mr Bonner is a rich draper from a humble background, a kind and vulgar man who counts the cost of everything, despite his generosity. Mrs Bonner and her daughter Belle are affectionate, empty-headed women who cannot understand Laura, but recognise her superior qualities.

Bonner is financing an expedition led by the German explorer, Voss, who meets Laura when he arrives one Sunday while his backer is in church. Voss and Laura meet again at a celebratory dinner and have an intensely spiritual conversation in the garden. Voss has no time for humility; he believes in his own strength. To Laura, it seems that Voss is setting himself above God, which will lead to his destruction. She promises to pray for him, to save him. She and Voss have a mystical, spiritual connection. They appear to one another in dreams, and at times of crisis.

Voss heads off into the unknown with eight men: Palfreyman, the diffident ornithologist, who is trying to expiate his sins by devoting himself to caring for his companions; Judd, the ex-convict, a strong and capable man, humbled by illiteracy; Frank Le Mesurier, an intellectual who keeps a journal; Harry Robarts, an unintelligent, obliging, well-meaning giant of a man who needs a leader; Turner, an evil-minded drunk; Angus, a rich squatter; Dugald, an old aboriginal man; Jackie, a young aboriginal man. They are an ill-assorted group, its members imposed on Voss by well-meaning, ignorant businessmen in Sydney. The men take with them, as well as food and instruments, a herd of cattle, cattle dogs, a flock of sheep and a herd of goats. The animals are to provide food for a journey that may take years, but they make progress slow and complicated.

The book cycles between the expedition and the people back in Sydney. The harsh conditions of the expedition, the lack of water, the desperation of the men, contrast with the frivolity of social life in Sydney. It is a contrast between the wide-open mystery of the country and the pettiness of the city; the materialism of the city dwellers with the vision of Voss.

I'm glad I read Voss. I enjoyed it for its language, the idiosyncratic phrases that are perfect; the descriptions of the characters, particularly the recognisable people in Sydney, with their pettiness and hypocrisy, generosity and kindness, their well-meaning stupidity, their pomposity and obtuseness. I was less engaged by the religious symbolism, the sacrilegious arrogance of Voss, his spiritual communion with Laura. I question the validity of Jackie's action in the final chapters. ( )

Vibes of [Heart of Darkness] in this story of the exploration of the interior of Australia during colonial times. ( )

I found Voss by Patrick White to be a difficult read. While I was expecting a descriptive book about an expedition to cross the Australian continent east to west, I found myself reading a book whose focus was very much on two characters, that of German explorer, Voss, and Laura, the niece of his benefactor. We travel with Voss who seems to be on a journey of self-discovery, and explore the complex relationship between the two main characters. I didn’t like or understand either of the main characters, finding Voss to be stubborn, misanthropic and possessing a deep anger inside himself. Laura seemed to be self-centered, cold and remote. Yet we are asked to believe in a powerful, almost physic connection between the two.

Due to the dense, yet poetic language I found that many sentences had to be re-read numerous times in order to decipher. I was also somewhat off-put by the author’s unsympathetic treatment of the aborigines. I am sure that he used well recognized terms of the day to describe them, but he also did nothing to offset this colonial attitude with a more modern view. The book swerves between the hardships, dangers and eccentricities of the men on the expedition and the petty details of colonial society, and Laura’s perceptions of disaster.

Voss is most certainly brilliant, finely crafted and eloquent yet readers beware, it is also overly long, ponderous and requires a lot of reading patience. Unfortunately my best memory of Voss will be how happy I was to reach the end of this lengthy novel. ( )

File under: novels whose eponymous character is not the most interesting character in the book. Right alongside 'Anna Karenina,' 'Lila,' 'Moby Dick,' and the central book in this tradition, 'Frankenstein.'

Anyway, this Patrick White novel, you will be surprised to learn, is about the internal states of a small number of characters, the heroes among whom don't fit in, the villains among whom fit in very well. The heroes are mystics and idealists, gazing longingly through this (natural) world at the forms; the villains are fixated on this (human) world.

Other White books with the same idea focus on one character (Vivisector), three characters (Riders in the Chariot), or three-characters-in-one (Twyborn Affair). Voss has two, which makes it unique among those I remember reading, though I suspect Tree of Man has two, and I think that's true also of The Solid Mandala, which I 'read' at uni and don't remember at all.

Despite the predictability, and his astonishing limitations (he's like Cormac McCarthy, except whereas McCarthy is *all* externality, White is all internality; I doubt he ever wrote a scene with more than two people in it without feeling uncomfortable, or satirical) White finds a way to make his work work. "Voss" works because Voss, an explorer, has an obvious narrative to hold it together, so it feels less flabby than "Riders". It helps that the narrative is historically based (Leichardt, which I've probably spelt wrong), and so White can focus on what he does well, i.e., psychology, sentences and mysticism. ( )