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Capricornia

por Xavier Herbert

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287791,234 (3.73)22
Winner of the Sesquicentennial Literary Prize, this novel offers an insight into Aboriginal issues and race relations.
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Mostrando 1-5 de 7 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
A great novel, although one that must be read in context if it is to be read at all.

Released in the 150th anniversary year of Australian settlement by white people, and timed for one of the first major Aboriginal "Days of Mourning" (itself strategically linked to the white holiday Australia Day), Capricornia is an angry book. Angry about what white people have done to the natives of the land, angry about the system that has ground down not just Aboriginal but Chinese, Jewish, uneducated, poor, free-thinkers. Angry about the everyday acts of corruption and greed so often concealed behind paper-thin disguises that others choose not to interrogate so as not to upset their own worldview.

Xavier Herbert could be a very angry man on these topics, and when his own voice comes through - either in the narration or in the characters who are most clearly his mouthpieces - we get a sense of why this book riled many of the more conservative white people of the day. (A few months after Capricornia was published, there were calls to lynch a black man accused of raping two white women; Herbert - now a celebrity, if an iconoclastic one - responded with an article entitled Lynch 'em in which he put forward a bold and sarcastic argument noting how the occasional attacks of black upon white were seen as obscene crimes, while the daily acts of molestation committed by white men upon black women were accepted, or at the worst, merely tolerated. )

The novel brings together the key traditions of Herbert's literary life, namely the Dickensian mode, so clear in his peripatetic (not quite picaresque) narrative and his delight in small moments of wit and character insight amongst a broader canvas, and the bush yarn tradition embodied by Henry Lawson. But it is not - as someone once said of another of my favourite authors - merely "much incident and little wit". Herbert is endlessly amusing. He is a fascinating, engaging writer, who resounds off every single page. The narrative voice interjects, or turns sarcastic, or turns sentimental. Words, phrases, dialects, zig and zag in a cacophonous clangour. (One contemporary reviewer, punning on the original name of the Ballarat area "Australia Felix" which Herbert mentions several times, called the book "Australia Prolix". And he wasn't entirely wrong.) Whether describing the plight of one person in a barren landscape over several weeks, or a tightknit sequence in which a few dozen characters occupy a courthouse for one single afternoon, Herbert's skill rises to the occasion.

And although the characters - in the manner of both Dickens and the more superficial of Lawson's stories - usually represent types, their inability to engage in objective thought is a core part of Herbert's thesis. His ideology of humanity is much more cynical than Dickens'. Whereas this makes lack of dimensionality a flaw in the Englishman's narratives, it is a strength here. While I say his characters lack objective thought, they do not lack interiority. Their actions are always in keeping with themselves and their circumstances and what they believe to be their great insight and intellect. And the character of Norman Shillingsworth, as much as he is the generic Nicholas Nickleby hero, is utterly lovable and holds the centre of the book together with his naivete, compassion, bouts of temper, and the great gulf we come to recognise between his personhood and the "half-caste" stereotype with which he is saddled.

But, as we often must say of books that are now coming to the end of their first century, there are a couple of flaws. And, by golly, they're substantial. First of all (I won't harp on about it) this is a book about men. Miles Franklin, the great female Australian author, noted this in her review when the book was first released, sarcastically thanking Herbert for writing a "textbook for practicing feminists." While Tocky and Heather and Fat Anna and Ma McLash have their places in the narrative, they are ultimately mothers/wives/whores/objects, but this is very much in keeping with the world Herbert inhabited, and the boundaries of his own mind. Although Herbert was always self-consciously aiming for the literary, he came from the "Boy's Own" tradition, and many of his short stories that pre-date Capricornia fall easily into this zone. I recommend interested readers track down Frances De Groen's exquisite biography of Herbert for a greater understanding of this, and so much more.

But while that is an inherent flaw in the narrative, as notable in 1938 as it is today, the second challenge is harder. That exactly what made Herbert "progressive" for his age makes him confronting now. Characters use words and phrases we find utterly appalling when it comes to discussing race. Well, this we can live with; after all, they are the words of the characters whom Herbert is usually destroying with his pin-prick satire, not his own thoughts. Full-blooded Indigenous characters are left as stereotypes. Well, this is true, but so are the white people with the possible exception of Oscar. The problem lies more in Herbert's underlying ideology, which was - in short - tied to a sense of alienation, even rejection from Britain, the mother country, and his idea, popular in the early 20th century, that black people were honest and true, perhaps more true than whites, but ultimately doomed by the mere facts of evolution and cultural growth. What made Herbert challenging to his countrymen was that he also thought white people were, to no small degree, feckless and horrible. He believed that mixed-race people seemed to be the solution, but in a worryingly racist way by our standards where he links "blood" to identity, and certainly feels that mixed-race people have a nobility that their "full-blooded" compatriots lacked. It's messy, but again I direct you to the biography and other contextual documents to understand that. Reading this as an historical document published during one of the first years for the Aboriginal rights movement, which would have its climaxes in the 1960s, 1980s and (we hope) the first half of the 21st century, is to delight in its sweep of the magnificent land, in Herbert's cruel attacks on a very cruel people, the moments of truth that are found in the discussion on race and humankind, and simply as a fantastic story.

I continue my journey to find the "Great Australian Novel" and I must ultimately conclude that, for all its incredible strengths, Capricornia is not it. It's closer than almost anything I've yet read, in that it captures a country at a moment while also betraying something baked-in to the premise of that country across time. But Herbert doesn't quite reach what I'm after. Instead, as the late poet Mudrooroo says in his 1990 introduction to the book, I'm going to call this the "Great Australian Yarn". It deserves that title, unequivocally. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Capricornia is the lengthy, epic tale spanning over generations in what we call 'the top end' (the Northern Territory) of Australia. I'm not even sure where to start. So many characters, so many intertwining storylines but all flowed well and made sense. It is the story of the trials and tribulations people who lived there, the white Australians, the Aboriginals, the half caste, the Chinese and all the rest. It is a very real look at the history of Australia, and how the North was very different to the South.

If you don't know Australia, I can try to sum up the differences for you. The climate and landscape are very different in the North compared to the South - instead of four seasons there are two, Wet and Dry. Both are extreme. The North is mainly desert, hardly habitable for cattle. And yet there are many who live there and try to 'make a go of it'. It's not an easy life.

The story begins when two of the Shillingsworth brothers move up North and join the Capricornian Government Service. Oscar becomes a gentleman but Mark is restless in his new role. He wants to be fixing engines, not observing them. It's not long before he takes up with Ned Krater, a trepang fisherman, who introduces him to all the temptations of Capricornia. Mark soon bears a son to an Aboriginal woman, a 'lubra' and it is this son, Norman, who struggles to find his place in Capricornia. Raised by his Uncle Oscar back down South as a white man, but regarded as a black once home in Capricornia Norman does not know where he fits in.

As well as Norman, we meet the O'Cannons, a white man with an Aboriginal wife and a tribe of kids, the Differs, a white man raising a half caste daughter, the McLashs, the mother who runs the local store and the son who drives the locomotive, and a colourful cast of other characters. And there is the underlying mystery - where is Mark Shillingsworth?

I thought Capricornia was a fantastic novel and felt a little shocked by the end (in hindsight I think I should have seen it coming!). It is an important piece of Australian history that we should remember, although I have to agree with the following line from the novel : How could anyone understand the ways of Capricornia unless he lived there? which is exactly how I felt when trying to explain this novel to my friends. ( )
1 vota crashmyparty | May 14, 2014 |
This novel seems influenced by The Grapes of Wrath; its comparable to Catch 22 with its huge cast and removed, bemused narrator while it seems to have influenced Tim Winton’s colloquial humour and affection for the bush rascal. Long patches of crude sermonising in the middle. It seems as if he ran out of puff. But he comes back compellingly. The other writer he reminds me of is Cormac McCarthy, because of the passion for the landscape that they share and the harshness.
1 vota nathanhobby | Oct 30, 2010 |
I enjoyed this book. It took a while to get into, the pace in the early part of the book leads to an almost documentary style as various characters are introduced, explained and then dismissed or killed off! Once we reach Norman's return to Capricornia after he has grown up down south, the pace slows and the story really starts to develop.

The author does a good job of bringing the horrific treatment of aboriginal and mixed race people to life through the experiences of the principal characters in this story.

At times I was a little unsure where the story was headed, but as 'motorbike' has noted below, the description of the Australian landacape conjures up a rich picture that helps to fill in where the story meanders a little. ( )
1 vota jhoddinott | Feb 1, 2010 |
I enjoyed: true, the plot sprawled - it was a saga - and the writing was sometimes inelegant. But the humour redeemed it. Even though Herbert was obviously angered by the treatment of Indigenous people, and frustrated by the central government of the day, the wry comments and slapstick moments leavened it. ( )
2 vota TedWitham | Dec 21, 2009 |
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Winner of the Sesquicentennial Literary Prize, this novel offers an insight into Aboriginal issues and race relations.

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