Cyclone Country: The Language of Place and Disaster in Australian Literature

211 Pages·2020·3.48 MB·

by  Chrystopher J. Spicer

Cyclone
Country

Cyclone Country
The Language of Place and Disaster
in Australian Literature
Chrystopher J. Spicer
Foreword by Stephen Torre
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
Also by Chrystopher J. Spicer
and from McFarland
The Flying Adventures of Jessie Keith “Chubbie” Miller:
The Southern Hemisphere’s First International Aviatrix (2017)
Clark Gable, in Pictures: Candid Images of the Actor’s Life
(2012; paperback 2020)
Clark Gable: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography (2002)
Also by Chrystopher J. Spicer and
Martha Crawford Cantarini
Fall Girl: My Life as a Western Stunt Double (2010)
Frontispiece: Map of Queensland (freeworldmaps.net).
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Spicer, Chrystopher J., author. | Torre, Stephen, 1952– writer of foreword.
Title: Cyclone country : the language of place and disaster in Australian
literature / Chrystopher J. Spicer ; foreword by Stephen Torre.
Description: Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc.,
Publishers, 2020 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
♾
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034198 | ISBN 9781476681566 (paperback : acid free paper)
ISBN 9781476640501 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Australian literature—Queensland—History and criticism. |
Cyclones in literature. | Disasters in literature. | Place (Philosophy) in literature.
Classification: LCC PR9605.5.C97 S65 2020 | DDC 820.9/994—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034198
British Library cataloguing data are available
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-8156-6
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-4050-1
© 2020 Chrystopher J. Spicer. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover: Satellite image of Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi approaching
Queensland, Australia on 2 February 2011 (NASA photograph)
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
For Marcella,
who survived her cyclone
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank some people for their help
and encouragement during the writing of this book.
First, I would like to thank my wife, Marcella, whose
constant belief that I could accomplish this project,
while she was learning to live with her own personal
trauma, encouraged me to persevere with this project
at times when the tide of my own belief would ebb. I
could not have come this far without her faith in me
and her determination to journey with me on this
path.
I would also like to thank my supervisors for my
original doctoral research, Professors Stephen Torre,
Richard Landsdown, and Sean Ulm for their valu-
able support, constructive criticism and suggestions
during our work together. They, too, had faith from
the beginning in this project, although our situations
by the end of the project had changed far more than
we could possibly have foreseen.
The manuscript for this book would not have
taken its final clearly formatted, correctly punctuated,
reference-checked and organized shape without the
efforts of my friend, colleague and reader, Jennifer
Francis, who has my undying thanks for her fearless
expeditions into the jungle of my prose and her con-
sequent suggestions for clarification. Finally, for their
friendship and moral support during my work on this
project, I would like to thank Associate Professor Hil-
ary Whitehouse and Dr. Jennifer Gabriel.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Foreword by Stephen Torre 1
Introduction 5
One. The Cyclone Written into the Language of Place 9
Two. The Naming of the Disaster 44
Three. “Big wind, he waiting there”: Vance Palmer’s Cyclones
of Apocalypse and Their Power of Revelation 64
Four. “Touching the edges of cyclones”: Thea Astley’s Cyclones
of Revelation 84
Five. Threading the Eye of the Cyclone: Elizabeth Hunter’s
Epiphany in Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm 98
Six. Earth Breathing: Susan Hawthorne’s Cyclone Within 117
Seven. The Apocalypse and Epiphany of Cyclone in the Land
of Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria 135
Eight. The Word Becomes the Cyclone: Revelations of the
Literary Storm 155
Appendix A: Fiction and Poetry Written and/or Set in
Queensland Featuring Cyclones 173
Appendix B: Selected International Novels and Poetry Works
Featuring Cyclonic Storms 176
Bibliography 179
Index 193
vii
A story has no beginning or end.
—Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)
Foreword
by Stephen Torre
In Book Five of The Odyssey, Poseidon summons up the four winds in a
maelstrom intended to frustrate the homeward journey of Odysseus:
Odysseus’ knees shook and his spirit failed…. For two nights and two days he was
driven by the heavy seas. Time and again he thought he was doomed. But in the
morning of the third day, which Dawn with her beautiful tresses opened in all her
beauty, the wind dropped, a breathless calm set in, and Odysseus, keeping a sharp
l ook-out, caught a glimpse of land close by as he was lifted by a mighty wave. He felt
all the relief that a man’s children feel when their father, who has been in bed wasting
away with a long, painful illness, in the grip of some malignant power, passes the crisis
by the gods’ will and they know that he will live. Odysseus’ happiness was like that
when he caught that welcome glimpse of earth and trees. He swam quickly on in his
eagerness to set foot on solid ground [The Odyssey, trans E.V. Rieu, Penguin, 2009, pp.
70–73].
This pattern, from order, to disorder, to the return of order, is a common
storm trope in classical literature. Not only does the storm disorient and
r e-orient the physical world; it also has a cathartic effect on the individu-
al’s psyche—Homer likens it to the recovery from a “malignant illness.” In
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the catastrophic storm in Book One is integral to the
creation of the world, and then its destruction, so that then “a new race of
miraculous birth, unlike the people before it” might be bred (Metamorpho-
ses, Book One, Trans David Raeburn, Penguin, 2004, p. 17). In Book 11, Ovid
projects the psychological and emotional turmoil of the lovers Ceyx and
Alcyone onto a tempestuous storm. This use of storms (or more generally
the weather) as a literary trope in the objectification of both environmental
and psychological trauma and recovery, is pervasive, examples being found
in Horace, Lucretius, and Virgil, and of course in p ost-classical literature,
as in, for example, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where the storm d is-orients
society as a prelude to its r e-orientation.
Despite centuries of scientific and meteorological analysis of storms,
1