Bound For Too Much Glory

QUITE APART from its literary merit, That Deadman Dance is a remarkable book for a number of reasons, the first being that it is likely to remain the last winner of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award ($75,000) for quite some years to come. The second is the sheer number of awards it took in other states. Western Australia ($75,000), New South Wales ($75,000) and Victoria ($75,000), all bestowed their highest and richest honours for fiction on Kim Scott’s tale of white settlement and black eviction in, around and off Albany. In addition, it also bagged the Miles Franklin ($50,000), the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Vance Palmer ($30,000), the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and a swag minor laurels.Tot them all up and Scott has done very nicely for himself.

None of this is to impugn Scott’s book. Taste is a subjective thing, and while some might recoil at yet another tale of black meets white on the frontier and everyone goes home dead or guilty, there is no doubt the man can write. If you have not read the book, here is a little excerpt to get an idea of his skill at turning a sentence and working an image, in this case the bristling, serrated strangeness of native flora to European eyes:

They found a path, rocky and scattered with fine pebbles that at one point wound through dense, low vegetation but mostly led them through what, Chaine said, seemed a gnarled and spiky forest. Leaves were like needles, or small saws. Candlestick-shaped flowers blossomed, or were dry and wooden. Tiny flowers clung to trees by thin tendrils, and wound their way through the shrubbery, along clefts in rock. Bark hung in long strips. Flowering spears thrust upward from the centre of shimmering fountains of green which, on closer inspection, bristled with spikes.

It is a lovely piece of writing, at least by one Bunyip’s reckoning, and if some of Deadman’s characters and dialogue seem sometimes to have been ordered from the literary subsidiary of Central Casting, well put that down to taste and tolerance on the part of the awards’ judges.

But here’s the thing. These literary awards, they are supposed to help, encourage and support Australia’s struggling writers. Can it be said they achieve that purpose when one book corners so much of the spoils?

More to the point, Scott is a West Australian, where it is perfectly understandable that an appreciative Premier would wish to reward a local talent who has produced a local story. What of the other states? In bestowing their taxpayers’ largesse on a writer from elsewhere, what does their prize money do to encourage and support local writers?

Queensland’s Campbell Newman has answered this question by the simple expedient of doing away with his state’s awards altogether. But perhaps, if tempted to follow suite, the other premiers might want to consider keeping their prizes closer to home. Across Australia there might have been six authors encouraged to produce better work and pay their electricity bills while doing so.

It is just a thought and no slight to Kim Scott. But those prizes do represent a considerable piece of change and the competitions’ judges, luvvies almost every one, generally adhere to to the creed that allows for each according to his needs. Scott’s have been well met. Some other scribblers might enjoy a little piece too.

UPDATE: Mark Fletcher expands on a theme -- and makes some sort of history at the same time. Is his article the very first sensible thing to be published at New Matilda? Perhaps he deserves an award!