Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait by Patrick White

Abstract

382 Western American Literature The novel is well worth the reading as proof that the native experience is not only redeemable, despite nearly 500 years of attack by Europeans, but is also potentially redemptive for its oppressors. Becoming Coyote demon­ strates that the exploitive spirit that gave rise to white civilization in America cannot long survive. It is too narrow, too opposed to the sacredness of life itself. JACK L. DAVIS, University of Idaho Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait. By Patrick White. (New York: Viking, 1982. 260 pages, photographs, $14.95.) 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient Patrick White, now seventy years old, has created an accomplished self-portrait that is both a reminis­ cence and a confession. As reminiscence, the three sections of Flaws in the Glass sketch the ragged yet continuous line between young “Paddy” White —•“this green, sickly boy, who saw and knew' too much” — and the older Patrick White who is “still embarking on voyages of exploration . . . which may lead to discovery.” In his first and longest section of the self-portrait, White candidly details his boyhood in Australia and England, his selfimposed exile in the 1930s in London and — briefly—the United States, his wartime service as RAF Intelligence officer in North Africa, his post-war life in Australia, and — of course — the vital conjunction of his life and art in the years since he discovered his vocation as writer. In this brilliant first section, which bears the book’s title, we learn that the internal and external tensions in his life (Australia/Europe; higher/ lower classes; parents/ serv­ ants; isolation/community; reason/instinct; the concrete; the transcendent), when combined with sexual ambivalence and a reserved personality, created a storm-tossed artistic temperament that best found expression in fictional forms which allowed White to introduce “to a disbelieving audience the cast of contradictory characters of which I am composed.” White’s second sec­ tion, “Journeys,” details his post-war travels in the Mediterranean; the third section, “Episodes and Epitaphs,” is a disparate collection of remarks on such issues as the Nobel Prize and such people as Queen Elizabeth and Sidney Nolan, the Australian painter. As confession, Flaws in the Glass also discloses an aspect of White’s self which must stand apart from and evaluate the Patrick White portrayed in its pages. This confessional self chastises White for his weakest literary efforts, defends his work from charges of misanthropy and misogyny, acknowledges his homosexuality, and criticizes both academic critics and the materialistic preoccupations of twentieth-century civilization. The irony prevalent in this voice is self-directed as' well as other-directed, thus precluding any facile standard by which to judge the people, incidents, and meditations described Reviews 383 by the author. His constant pursuit of “that razor-blade truth,” White con­ cludes, has made him a “slasher” who wonders “whether truth can be the worst destroyer of all.” Thus refusing to resemble a Narcissus preening himself “in the psychic mirror for being a success,” White emerges as the ultimate vivisector-artist, as a flawed human being whose vision of a flawed world can yet discover intuitions of divine reality in the very act of destroy­ ing comforting illusions about self and society. The consciously alchemical pattern of White’s self-portrait is objectified in the opening image of his second section in which White has a remarkable moment of illumination while gazing at Olympus only moments after experiencing “an unsinkable condom and the smell of shit” in the hotel lavatory. Flaws in the Glass will be criticized for its slack structure and its often ill-tempered tone, but we would do well to remember that the author’s title and subtitle, ironic voice, and unifying images and themes make this confes­ sion and reminiscence read, for the most part, like a Patrick White novel. In this sense, the self-portrait is the “nonfictional” counterpart of White’s novel The Vivisector. One of the reasons he wrote this self-portrait, White says, is because “nobody knows anybody, whether in the beginning or in the end.” We now know much more about White as the unknown man who has created the most substantial body of...