Remember Babylon Analysis
On the face of it Remembering Babylon strives to integrate the antipodean poles felt to be constitutive of a renewed, dual, dialectical sense of identity proper to Australians. However, this metaphorical strain does not prevent Malouf from considering himself a (creative) scribe of culture in Australia, who sees it as his own vocation to ‘mythologize’ the country’s history and national experience in such a way that he might find, or forge, ‘real spiritual links between us and the landscape, us and the cities, us and the lives we live here’.6
Amanda Nettelbeck commented that ‘In Malouf’s novels, there is no verifiable ‘history’ of the world, but rather a complexity of private histories (or narratives) which each ‘write’ a unique world.’7 REFERENCE
In fact in 1978 Malouf said
And think of the good fortune of Australian history! As a new world country it had made enormous steps towards the cration of an open and in some ways (compared with elsewhere) just society - and has experienced, for example, nothing like the American Civil War. And yet, Australians seems absolutely riddled with guilt. 8
According to Trevor Byrne nineteen years later Malouf remain uninterested in the political dimension of history; he was by no means indifferent to attrocities, but preferred to dwell on the minutia of an individual’s daily life
And you know when we talk, for example, of forty thousand years of Aboriginal history in Australia; almost none of this is recorded but a great deal happened. And it seems to me that fiction is always interested in all those parts of life, of ordinary lives, and there are many, many of those. That never gets into the history books. They’re not involved with large events at all. They’re involved with the ordinary, mundane things of living from day to day.9
Amanda Nettelbeck commented that ‘In Malouf’s novels, there is no verifiable ‘history’ of the world, but rather a complexity of private histories (or narratives) which each ‘write’ a unique world.’7 REFERENCE
In fact in 1978 Malouf said
And think of the good fortune of Australian history! As a new world country it had made enormous steps towards the cration of an open and in some ways (compared with elsewhere) just society - and has experienced, for example, nothing like the American Civil War. And yet, Australians seems absolutely riddled with guilt. 8
According to Trevor Byrne nineteen years later Malouf remain uninterested in the political dimension of history; he was by no means indifferent to attrocities, but preferred to dwell on the minutia of an individual’s daily life
And you know when we talk, for example, of forty thousand years of Aboriginal history in Australia; almost none of this is recorded but a great deal happened. And it seems to me that fiction is always interested in all those parts of life, of ordinary lives, and there are many, many of those. That never gets into the history books. They’re not involved with large events at all. They’re involved with the ordinary, mundane things of living from day to day.9