Australia’s ‘sophisticated literary gent’ understood our identity
Patricia Maunder And Amy Ripley
DAVID GEORGE JOSEPH MALOUF: 1934 – 2026
Highly respected both as a man and as a writer, David Malouf was best known for novels such as: johnno And Conversations at Curlow CreekBut above all he was a poet. In addition to numerous collections of poetry, he wrote prose that was less concerned with plot than with “a poetic expression of things that do not belong to consciousness but are on the edge of it. I am looking for another kind of knowledge that we have, which sees the true pattern of the world,” he said.
A polite, erudite and cosmopolitan man who was both very sociable and fiercely private, Malouf was described by critic Peter Craven as “a master, a consummate writer and at the same time (which is not the same thing) a thoroughly sophisticated man of letters”. He died on Wednesday night at the age of 92.
Malouf was born in Brisbane on 20 March 1934. His father, George, was a Catholic of Lebanese origin, while his mother, Welcome (née Mendoza), was a London Jew of Iberian descent. David grew up in comfortable circumstances as his father’s grocery delivery business flourished, along with his sister Jill, to whom he remained close.
Their mother consented to her children being raised as Catholics, but otherwise followed Edwardian English ways. Although he harbored dreams of being a typical Australian boy, young David nevertheless studied piano and violin, and had read his mother’s books, especially Shakespeare, Dickens and Dumas, before he reached adolescence. The latter was in the translation stage, but he went on to learn French as well as Latin at Brisbane Grammar, and later became fluent in German and Italian during his extensive European travels.
In 1951, Malouf began studying law at the University of Queensland as a scholarship student. “In those days, if you were smart, you were expected to do law or medicine,” he later recalled. “I quickly realized it wasn’t for me and switched to English.”
After graduating with first-class honors, he became what he described as a “desperate” clerk for BHP and taught at both his alma maters, including a single term at Brisbane Grammar, whose headmaster apparently dismissed him for lack of talent.
By 1959, Malouf “couldn’t see anything that suited me among the various limited possibilities” in his homeland and set out for England. There he taught English literature, including at the bohemian Holland Park School in West London, known as “socialist Eton”, where the pre-Roxy Musician Bryan Ferry later taught pottery. Malouf traveled frequently throughout Europe and developed his passion for art, architecture, theatre, opera and music.
Despite his deep enjoyment of Old World culture, he soon realized that his roots as an Australian were not there. Writing to a Brisbane friend shortly after moving, he concluded: “We are truly different people, neither British nor European, and that the 2000 years of European culture we might like to feel behind us is not really our own.”
Malouf, who would live in England for a decade, grasped what would become important in his writing: Australian identity and sense of place. These are especially evident in his 1985 memoirs. 12 Edmonstone Street (named after his childhood home), a collection of Boyer lectures and essays published on his 80th birthday in 1998, A First Place.
Malouf began using pen seriously as a poet. In 1962 his poems were included in a collection of contemporary Australian poetry. Four PoetsThen in 1970 came the first of nine bearing his name alone: The Bicycle and Other Poems.
His first novel johnnoIt was published five years later. Decades later, Malouf said, “I wrote poetry for a long time before I wrote prose that I thought was publishable.” “I think you learn the working habits as a poet that I use when I make the fiction, which is why I think their structures are so poetic.”
The most autobiographical of Malouf’s novels. johnno He was inspired by his friendship with John Milliner, a mercurial personality who died in 1962. The vivid depiction of his childhood Brisbane drew on his strong sense of place, but what Craven later described as a “God-given book” also established the central themes of male identity and soul-searching that run through much of Malouf’s fiction.
johnnomagazine, subtle homoeroticism became more apparent to readers. Anger magazine writer publicly emerged from what was described as his “glass closet.” Malouf has long been openly but secretly gay.
After a decade at the University of Sydney, first as a senior lecturer and then as a lecturer, Malouf resigned in 1977 to pursue writing full-time (he returned 20 years later to receive an honorary doctorate). For many years, he retired to the house he bought near Florence, Italy.
“I wanted to go somewhere where I could sit quietly and explore what else I needed to write,” he said. “I didn’t want to be part of a literary scene that I was already very much a part of, and I didn’t want people looking over my shoulder and telling me what I could and couldn’t do.”
Malouf escaped the distractions of Sydney at his Tuscan retreat and later at his Gold Coast high-rise apartment next to the beaches he frequented as a child. He continued to write novels, always with pen and typewriter, such as: Fly Away Peter And Big WorldOpera libretti featuring an adaptation by Patrick White vossshort stories, essays, reviews, poetry and a play.
He has received numerous awards, including the Miles Franklin Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Age Book of the Year and Commonwealth Writers Award. 1993 novel Remembering Babylon it won the first-ever IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (then the richest in the world) and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize.
In 2000, Malouf was awarded the Neustadt International Prize, an American award given to writers such as Gabriel García Márquez that recognizes the complete works of an author, and received the 2016 Australia Council Award for lifetime achievement in literature. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1987, declared a National Living Treasure 10 years later, and in 2014 the first laureate of the Australian Book Review.
In 2010, he appeared on a series of Australia Post stamps honoring national writers alongside Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally, Tim Winton, Bryce Courtenay and Coleen McCullough.
Such honors were partly in recognition of his active support of Australia’s literary community and the wider cultural scene. He was a board member of the Australia Council Literature Board and Opera Australia, and was a prominent figure in a campaign opposing the removal of researchers and books from the Mitchell Reading Room of the State Library of NSW. He made regular visits to literature classes for disadvantaged and homeless students organized by Mission Australia and the Australian Catholic University’s Clemente Programme.
“He is one of the most generous people in personality and mind, very warm and encouraging,” said poet Vivian Smith, who has been Malouf’s friend since his days teaching at the University of Sydney. Smith was one of Malouf’s large social circle, which also included Jeffrey Smart and Bill Henson. This and the work of other artist friends graced his home in Chippendale, which was often filled with guests and housemates (who could stay for a month or a decade), good food and music.
Malouf was widely admired, even within the sometimes toxic literary scene; the only public attack was by Germaine Greer. Remembering Babylon “a supremacist fantasy”.
But while Malouf was often described as both generous and enterprising, he was also seen as mysterious. His friend David Marr, who admitted to once falling in love “three or four times”, said he guarded “the privacy of his private life extraordinarily carefully and well”.
His sister Jill, an antique dealer, predeceased him in 2020.
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