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Patrick White wrote 12 novels and won a Nobel Prize

Mohamed Al-Rawi

 



Today is the birthday of the Australian writer Patrick White. He is a novelist and playwright who was born on this day, May 28, 1912. He published his first books in 1935 and wrote 27 books divided into 12 novels, 3 short story collections, and 8 plays. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, and it was said that... “His method is wonderful and psychologically influential in the art of narration, which has provided new content to literature.”


White was born in London while his parents were there on a visit. He returned to England after 12 years in Australia to study, then worked for a period on his father's sheep farm in Australia before returning to study modern languages at King's College, Cambridge, by the time he served in the Arms. Royal Air During World War II, he had already published some early works, traveled extensively and was involved in theatre. After 1945 he returned to Australia, but also lived intermittently in England and the United States.


White published a collection of novels, namely: "Happy Valley - The Living and the Dead - The Auntie's Story - The Human Tree - Voss - Passengers in the Carriage - The Coherent Motifs - The Slasher - The Eye of the Storm - A Handful of Leaves - The Twyburn Case - Several Memoirs in One Book." He also published a novel, Unknown. Completed in his own handwriting in 1981 and titled The Hanging Garden, the novel focuses on the friendship between a boy and a girl in 1981, Sydney during World War II.


White also wrote plays, including The Season in Sarsaparilla (1962; published in Four Plays, 1965), Night on Bald Mountain (1964), and Signal Driver (1982); short stories; Autobiographical Imperfections in the Glass (1981); Scenario; And a book of poems.


Patrick White


Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987.

White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and stream of consciousness techniques. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature,"for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature", as it says in the Swedish Academy's citation, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize. White was also the inaugural recipient of the Miles Franklin Award.


White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to Victor Martindale White and Ruth (née Withycombe), both Australians, in their apartment overlooking Hyde Park, London on 28 May 1912.  His family returned to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. As a child he lived in a flat with his sister, a nanny, and a maid while his parents lived in an adjoining flat. In 1916 they moved to a house in Elizabeth Bay that many years later became a nursing home, Lulworth House, the residents of which included Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, and White's partner Manoly Lascaris.

At the age of four White developed asthma, a condition that had taken the life of his maternal grandfather. White's health was fragile throughout his childhood, which precluded his participation in many childhood activities.

He loved the theatre, which he first visited at an early age (his mother took him to see The Merchant of Venice at the age of six). This love was expressed at home when he performed private rites in the garden and danced for his mother's friends.

At the age of five he attended kindergarten at Sandtoft in Woollahra, in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Followed by 2 years at Cranbrook School

At the age of ten White was sent to Tudor House School, a boarding school in Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, in an attempt to abate his asthma. It took him some time to adjust to the presence of other children. At boarding school, he started to write plays. Even at this early age, White wrote about palpably adult themes. In 1924 the boarding school ran into financial trouble, and the headmaster suggested that White be sent to a public school in England, a suggestion that his parents accepted.


Lulworth, White's childhood home in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney
White struggled to adjust to his new surroundings at Cheltenham College, England, describing it later as "a four-year prison sentence". He withdrew socially and had a limited circle of acquaintances. Occasionally, he would holiday with his parents at European locations, but their relationship remained distant. But he did spend time with his cousin Jack Withycombe during this period, and Jack's daughter Elizabeth Withycombe became a mentor to him while he was writing his first book of poems, Thirteen Poems between the years 1927–29.

While at school in London White made one close friend, Ronald Waterall, an older boy who shared similar interests. White's biographer, David Marr, wrote that "the two men would walk, arm-in-arm, to London shows; and stand around stage doors crumbing for a glimpse of their favourite stars, giving a practical demonstration of a chorus girl's high kick ... with appropriate vocal accompaniment". When Waterall left school White again withdrew. He asked his parents if he could leave school to become an actor. The parents compromised and allowed him to finish school early if he came home to Australia to try life on the land. They felt he should work on the land rather than become a writer, and hoped his work as a jackaroo would temper his artistic ambitions.

White spent two years working as a stockman at Bolaro, a 73-square-kilometre (28 sq mi) station near Adaminaby on the edge of the Snowy Mountains in southeastern Australia. Although he grew to respect the land, and his health improved, it was clear that he was not suited to it.
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Mohamed Al-Rawi is a professional journalist since 2011, a media graduate from Kuwait University, a technology expert, a media consultant and a member of the International Organization of Journalists - a member of the fact-checking team at Meta Company. He writes in the fields of entertainment, art, science and technology, and believes that the pen can change everything.

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