Troubled by Impossible Dreams: Fantasy and Desire in Gerald Murnane's <em>A Lifetime on Clouds</em>

Abstract

WHAT IS THE PARTICULAR NATURE OF THE FRUSTRATION one feels upon reading ending of Gerald Murnane's second novel, A Lifetime on Clouds (1976)? While critics have at times considered this text one of author's lesser achievements, it remains eminently engaging, not to mention riotously funny, yet clearly lacking some of more formally experimental elements of his more frequently discussed works, such as The Plains ( 1982) and Landscape within Landscape (1985). In many ways, A Lifetime on Clouds functions as a more generically realistic version of some of key plot elements and thematic concerns of other, more difficult Murnane novels; to wit, it explores unreliability of narrative as a representation of reality; role of memory and fantasy in shaping of an individual's perception of world; and difficulty of orientating oneself in relation to external ideologies and explanations of experiences of life.However, against critical tendency to consider this novel a relatively straightforward exploration of a Catholic schoolboy in Melbourne in 1950s, I want to propose a reading of novel as not only a key text in Murnane canon, but also as a novel that evocatively typifies some of key contradictions in political and historical context from which it emerged. Here, I suggest that this novel, even more than Murnane's other works, functions as a symptom of a particular moment in history of Western world. While dominant formal component, use of irony and satire, seemingly offers a radical critique of Catholic orthodoxy, I will argue that ending of novel largely conforms to an ideology of hopelessness in late capitalist, postmodern society. In essence, novel traps protagonist and reader in a solipsistic world from which there is no escape. While seemingly critical, this entrapment risks becoming politically paralyzing, obliterating any hope of change or resistance to dominant ideologies. Furthermore, I will link conclusion of Murnane's novel to another modern conception of power in mid-seventies, arguing that a vision of internalized subjection to a totalizing authority is a product of that specific moment in history. While such views of power have been influential and very widely discussed, they may now be considered more specifically as illustrative of their historical and socio-political context, as well as judged in terms of their potential efficacy in mobilizing resistance to such power structures.The plot of Murnane's novel is predominantly centered on inner life of an adolescent, Catholic schoolboy in western suburbs of Melbourne in 1950s. Adrian Sherd is initially depicted as being entirely submerged in his own fantasies of orgies with Hollywood starlets; novel opens with an extended, bravura depiction of such an event. He was driving a station wagon towards a lovely beach in Florida-an immense arc of white sloping down to warm, waters of Gulf of Mexico. His name was Adrian Sherd. His friends in car with him were Jayne and Marilyn and Susan (Murnane 3). The tone of Adrian's masturbatory fantasy is immediately established through combination of predictably blue prose of romance (gradually developing into erotica) and a sense of ironic distance, evoked primarily through use of cliches: untrodden white sand and sapphire-blue waters. The scene becomes increasingly pornographic, as Adrian begins to physically handle his imaginary actress, and the two of them [Jayne and Susan] stood smiling provocatively while he grappled with Marilyn's naked body and finally subdued and copulated with her (5). The timing of Murnane's final verb-copulated-seems to rupture any involvement reader might (somewhat implausibly) have had with Adrian's fantasy. Subsequently, narrator is revealed as a sexually inexperienced teenage boy.Murnane situates plot in a newly constructed outer suburb of Melbourne, Accrington, where Adrian lives with his parents and siblings. …