Michael Wilding’s Texas Story

Abstract

ALTHOUGH MOST OF MICHAEL WILDING'S SHORT STORIES ARE SET IN AUSTRALIA, SOME take place in his native England, and a few are scattered among Europe, North Africa, and the US. Of the American stories one of the best is An for Political Dissidents in Texas. Neglected by critics, the story deserves be better known. A story, it combines narrative inventiveness with familiar Wilding themes. Wilding published the story originally in the UK, in Iron (1973), and in Australia, in Westerly (1974), and then collected it in The West Midland Underground ( 1975).He based his story on his experiences during a visit Austin in February 1969. At that time Wilding was returning Australia take up a permanent teaching position the University of Sydney where he had taught from 1963 through 1966, followed by two years the University of Birmingham. Wilding detoured through New York and on his way back Australia. The reason he came Austin was visit his friend John Sullivan, the former dean of Lincoln College, Oxford, who had joined the University of faculty in 1961 (Re: conferences, etc.). Sullivan's best known works include Ezra Pound and Sextus Propertius: A Study in Creative Translation (1966) and The Satyricon of Petronius: A Literary Study (1968). He also translated The Satyricon. (John P. Sullivan 1).Many strands went into the making of the story. Wilding's stay in New York is described in NY 1969, collected in This is for You (1994). It is something of a companion piece the one, though not in style or technique. NY 1969 is rendered in a flatter, more reportage style. The story offers a quick five-page window into the radical protest scene of American life in years of anti-Vietnam demonstrations, Black Power, takeovers of universities, Janis Joplin concerts, and drugs. A party scene conveys the flavor of that era: talked a black girl from Pittsburgh about the English class system and the sufferings of the English working class. And the dope went round in a hookah. Generally the whites talked the whites and the talked the blacks (102). The highlight of the visit New York was Wilding's introduction marijuana. His friends smoked nonstop and soon he did too, finding himself laughing hilariously about such mundanities as shoveling snow. Everything that was right-or wrong-with the Sixties is in the story. The link between NY 1969 and An Afternoon is apparent in the last paragraph: caught a flight and talked the girl in the seat beside me (This is for You 103). The big surprise in the second story is that was also a place of political dissidents. An for Political Dissidents in Texas is divided into nine numbered sections. Number 1 is a one-paragraph commentary on the process of writing, letting an undefined audience know that what we're reading will be shorter than the first draft (which we do not have) and that in this version, the one we're reading, there will be cuts, specifically those revelations that come through untransmuted, undisguised; rents through which one's unprotected personality can be glimpsed (153). So, presumably, some things will be hidden, kept disclosed from us.Number 2 introduces an audience inside the narrative, a you, a girl who has been talking the narrator, an unnamed Wilding surrogate, about unicorns. Wilding considers the story sort of a 'to' story addressed her, though, he adds, don't know if I ever had her address write her. Can't recall (Re: Conferences, etc.). A to story is be distinguished from an at story. The first is more benign than the second. Examples of at stories abound in Wilding's short stories. Many of them are directed Frank Moorhouse, fellow editor and writer with whom Wilding was close friends for a number of years. Wilding also wrote several stories for/at Vicki Viidikas, the gifted writer and poet with whom Wilding had a brief affair and a lifelong friendship. …