I had a little buying spree after the death of Frank Moorhouse earlier this year, and found copies of Forty-seventeen (1988) and this one, The Electrical Experience: a Discontinuous Narrative from 1974. It's wrongly entered at Wikipedia as a short story, but at 188 pages it's not. It's a modernist novella. and I reckon that makes it his first novel and a remarkable debut...

The book is prefaced by two Tables of Contents, one listing the more-or-less chronological and coherent narratives about T. George McDowell (TGM) and the mystery of a man who thinks that business is all that matters, and the other listing fragments which purport to be authoritative miscellanea that support George's preoccupations, plus some B&W photos from the early 20th century. It's a clever structure which he termed a discontinuous narrative which was innovative for its time.

Born just after Federation, TGM is a businessman who makes soft drinks on the NSW south coast. He's a man of strong opinions, though he keeps many of them to himself. He is anti-government and anti-union, and he broke a local strike by hassling the weakest individuals until they gave in under pressure. He thinks that reason, progress and stability are defence against a changing world that he doesn't like, represented by his wayward third daughter Terri. (He was, of course, hoping for a son.) He has a pragmatic marriage and a stalwart wife, and he's obsessed by electrification, refrigeration and the wireless. He likes the positive American approach in the Readers' Digest.

While on the one hand the narratives reveal TGM's enthusiasm for Rotary, hard work, and Getting Things Done, they also reveal the hollowness of his philosophy.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/20/the-electrical-experience-by-frank-moorhouse... ( )

Fiction. Somewhat disjointed narrative about a manufacturer of aerated waters on New South Wales' south coast. ( )