still felt a certain
cultural unworthiness
Arts didn’t belong
Adapted from the book, Searching for Schindler by Thomas Keneally (2007 by The Serpentine Publishing Co., Pty., Ltd.) and the passage:
In a room I shared with my brother, a medical student, I had written my first book during the summer school holidays of 1962–63. It was a time when Australians still felt a certain post-colonial sense of cultural unworthiness and yearning. The arts didn’t seem to belong much to us. I knew no writers. If there were any, why would they hang around Homebush? Unknown to me, a number of heroic writers, including Dal Stivens and Morris West, were at the time establishing the Australian Society of Authors, but that was a poorly reported event.
Searching for Schindler is the book behind the book, Schindler’s List.
Thomas Keneally’s use of language and ‘being from Australia’ in an ‘Oh are from Australia?’ world anecdotes are worth the read.
No Haiku For You 