Ghostly Observers

What do I recall of reading Remembrance of Things Past? Many years later, I remember characters, scenes, moods, but I cannot quote a single sentence. I recall that, in Combray, and later in the salon of the Duchesse de Guermantes, a non-Proustian observer silently stood, a “ghostly fictional character” insinuated into Proust’s fiction by my own reading mind, existing only for me.

In Barley Patch, Gerald Murnane uniquely explores memory and fiction: the images that endure during and after reading, the existence of fictional characters when they are not being described. His work itself is a fiction, yet it constantly points beyond itself, questioning the conditions of memory, perception, and imagination. I suspect Barley Patch is impossible to fully comprehend without a grounding in his earlier work, and perhaps not even then. I do not use the word ‘uniquely’ lightly. I have read nothing quite like it: possibly it is brilliant.

It required a certain persistence to acquire Barley Patch, but the effort seems fitting. I was drawn to it partly by a reader’s reflection that there is “a kind of music, or at least a very recognisable rhythm, in the writing of Gerald Murnane,” and that echoes of Proust could be found within. His meticulous scrutiny of memory, of what it is to remember, and what we mean when we ‘remember’ fiction, forced me to reconsider whether I had ever remembered fiction in this way before reading him.

The writing is precise to the point of pedantry. Though occasionally irksome, Murnane’s precision has the benefit of slowing the reading, forcing attention into smaller and smaller apertures. It is the kind of book that you place on your lap from time to time, stare into the middle distance, and ponder. The most accurate description I have encountered of Murnane’s writing is that “one feels as though the grit in one’s reading eye has been thoroughly cleaned out with… something.” It is a description that remains with me: obscure and fascinating, as Barley Patch itself remains.