"We Esquimaux have one hundred different words for snow", ejaculated Makittuq Arnaaluk, "but only one for murder!"
-- Dame Claudia Gunn, The Death of Vincent Prowse (1924)

This book delights me beyond belief. I'm not sure that Their Brilliant Careers will delight everyone similarly (although it is delightful) but if your specific interests include alternative history, obscure puzzles, and those unusual or forgotten crannies of Australian literary history... here lies joy.

O'Neill conjures up the biographies of sixteen (sadly) fictional Australian authors, all of whom inhabit a world that intertwines with our own. Here are the tales of literary modes on the ascent and the gradual decline, of our history of rival journals and political movements, oppression and freedom, and most importantly a wry view of the history of my country: the story of groups grabbing power and refusing to let go in our universal climb out of the red dirt.

The authors range from a hack crime fiction queen to an anti-establishment poet running a dirty bookstore while still a child, from the king of 19th century Aussie bush literature (despite never leaving Sydney) to an obsessive biographer stalking his subject across seven continents. My favourite might be the obscenely racist historian who disputes Indigenous Australians' claim to the land only to devolve to the point of arguing they never existed in the first place. We are privy to the origin stories of such classic Australian works as Music for Broken Instruments, Parade of the Harlequins, The Bloodshot Chameleon, A Child's Finnegan's Wake and that great poem The Jabberwock Saunters Along Taree Main Street.

The book is given much greater heft if you are familiar with our literary history, and the ways that many of these figures reflect real authors or movements. But O'Neill is a dynamite writer and parodist, and hopefully this will amuse even those who can't tell their Dymphna Cusack from their Katharine Susannah Pritchard.

Most joyfully, though, is the intertwined nature of the pieces. With the author bios told in a non-chronological order, the reader is given numerous subplots and mysteries threaded throughout the book. There are the rise and fall of various publishing houses, rivalries between literary magazines, a chronic blackmailer, an authoress who conned the great poets and thinkers of the 20th century with her talent, and an extended family who seem to have touched the lives of everyone involved in Australian literature. The tragic tale of Sydney Steele warrants particular mention, as does the uproariously dark mystery of the author himself, who cites in his acknowledgments the woman who so helpfully gave him an alibi just when he needed one! That mystery extends from the author information page to the many clever twists in the book's index, which tells you just how thorough O'Neill has been in turning this into an intricate collection of puzzles. (There was one small mystery I couldn't solve, to my frustration, but hopefully next time I read the book it will jump out at me.)

If you've ever wondered who else might have appeared in our country alongside Patrick White and Helen Garner, then have I got the book for you. ( )

A satire of Australian literature. This is very clever and funny. Charles Kinbote would be proud. I'm sure there are plenty of references and jokes missed by me, unfamiliar as I am with Australian literature, but that still left plenty to get.

If you enjoyed Gert Loveday’s Writing is Easy (see my review) you’ll probably enjoy Their Brilliant Careers.

The title is a satiric allusion to Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career but the brilliant careers in question are, as the blurb says, invented. There are sixteen chapter length biographies of Australian authors who never existed, but who apparently bear uncanny resemblance to well-known figures from the Australian books and publishing landscape. Ambition and ego are common threads in all of them. Part of the fun is working out whose brilliant, or not so brilliant career is being parodied.

The question is, therefore, is it enjoyable reading if the reader doesn’t know the ‘well-known figures.’ And is it a spoiler to identify the ones I do recognise?

I’m going to tread carefully and stick to a couple that I know are safely dead. The bio of the sci-fi author ‘Rand Washington’ made me think of prolific authors of pulp like Frank Clune and Ion Idress who were published by P R ‘Inky’ Stephensen, who was like the fictional Rand Washington, xenophobic and racist, and notorious for his political views which morphed from communism to the far-right. ‘Addison Tiller’, an upper-class English twit who wrote countless stories of bush life starting with ‘Hacking out the Homestead’ (featuring Pa and Pete) without ever venturing out of Sydney, is, I think, a parody of Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection starring Dad and Dave. (See my unimpressed review).

Fakery is also a common theme in other bios too.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/08/27/their-brilliant-careers-the-fantastic-lives-... ( )