Flanagan, Richard 1961–

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Flanagan, Richard 1961–

PERSONAL:

Born 1961, in Tasmania, Australia; married; children: three. Education: Oxford University, England, Masters of Letters.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Tasmania, Australia. Agent— Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England; Fax: +44 (0)20 7229 908.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and director.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Rhodes Scholar, Australian National Fiction Award, 1996, for Death of a River Guide; Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2002, for Gould's Book of Fish.

WRITINGS:

A Terrible Beauty: History of the Gordon River Country, Greenhouse (Richmond, Victoria, Australia), 1985.

(Editor, with Cassandra Pybus) The Rest of the World Is Watching, Sun (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1990.

(With John Friedrich) Codename Iago: The Story of John Friedrich, Heinemann Australia (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1991.

"Parish-Fed Bastards": A History of the Politics of the Unemployed in Britain, 1884-1939, Greenwood (New York, NY), 1991.

Death of a River Guide (novel), McPhee Gribble (Ringwood, Victoria, Australia), 1994, Grove (New York, NY), 2001.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping (play), Macmillan (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1997, reprinted, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(And director) The Sound of One Hand Clapping (screenplay; adapted from play), Palace Films, 1998.

Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2002.

The Unknown Terrorist, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to The Penguin Book of Death. Novels have been published in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Britain, Germany, Holland, and France.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tasmanian-born Richard Flanagan is the author of novels and nonfiction books, including "Parish-Fed Bastards": A History of the Politics of the Unemployed in Britain, 1884-1939. The title was taken from an abusive term used by police for an activist workers' movement in 1932. Flanagan seeks to disprove the belief that the unemployed were politically passive, as well as the assumption that they were victims unable to change their situation.

In the book Flanagan studies unemployment and the political activism of the unemployed from the Tudor period to the passage of the New Poor Law, up to the time of the Social Democratic Federation. He emphasizes that the National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) was the primary agency used for protest by the unemployed. Choice contributor J.H. Wiener wrote that "unfortunately, his efforts at scholarship are drowned in a sea of anticapitalist rhetoric." American Journal of Sociology contributor Richard Lewis called Flanagan's study "interesting" and "useful," but felt that he does not disprove the accepted idea that the unemployed were not a potential threat to public order or that their collective action could change their destiny. Lewis noted two ways in which he found the book particularly useful. "It helps to kill the once widely held but erroneous idea that the NUWM was simply a front for the Communist Party of Great Britain. Second, it has a valuable chapter on the role of state-supported voluntary social service for the unemployed."

Flanagan's first novel, Death of a River Guide, is narrated by Aljaz Cosini, a guide who at the beginning of the story is drowning, trapped in the rocks of Tasmania's Franklin River. Aljaz's father is Tasmanian and his mother Italian, and he is married to Couta Ho, an Australian-Chinese woman. The death of their daughter Jemma, at two months of age, marks the beginning of the events which lead up to Aljaz's death. Aljaz's flashbacks are of his own life and the lives of his ancestors. Vivian Smith wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that "stories of old convict Tasmania—of cannibalism and the rape and pillage of Aboriginal women—are woven into the text of Cosini's discovery of his own Aboriginal forebears. More recent events— the depredation of forests and rivers, the slow destruction of native fauna and flora by the mining and timber industries and the hydro-electric development schemes, the attempts to save the remaining wilderness—are presented, matter-of-factly, as they impinge on the family. It is a grim picture of what has happened to Tasmania. Flanagan's novel is above all an elegy for a lost world."

World Literature Today contributor John Scheckter commented that "without losing a shred of postmodern irony, the narrative allows Cosini's drowning to seem psychologically appropriate and emotionally fulfilling; thus, Death of a River Guide powerfully extends the tradition of Australian representations of character in the animate, transcendent landscape of the spirit." Liam Davison added in Australian Book Review that "tempering the sense of loss and regret is Flanagan's awareness of the comfort to be drawn from others and the almost religiously redemptive qualities to be gained from seeing one's self as part of some vast interconnected scheme. Aljaz Cosini operates largely as a representative character, a loner who feels he doesn't belong but whose genealogy branches out like an extensive river system to embrace Aboriginal stories, Celtic stories, stories from Italy, England, Yugoslavia, and China. He is none of us and all of us, and we are all part of each other." Davison also noted that Death of a River Guide is "an uplifting and immensely rewarding book." The novel earned the Australian National Fiction Award in 1996.

Flanagan's The Sound of One Hand Clapping was originally a play and was also adapted for film. The story begins in Tasmania in 1954, at a construction site where Eastern Europeans who had come seeking new lives are living an isolated existence and paid laborers' wages. One of these men is Bojan Buloh, a Slovenian whose experiences as a child in a war-torn land are also traced. While Bojan is away drinking, his wife, Maria, walks off in the snow to commit suicide. At the time, their daughter Sonja is three. Sonja flees to Sydney while in her teens to escape her father's abuse. At thirty-eight she returns to reconcile with her father and, with the support of families who had known her mother, bear the child she had planned to abort.

"The contrast with the self-confident storytelling of the earlier novel is disheartening," opined Stephen Henighan in the Times Literary Supplement. "The narrative unease betrays Flanagan's uncomfortable relationship to his subject; his familiarity with his assimilated material … seems to prevent him from assessing it with the tough-mindedness he brought to bear on the broader Tasmanian society in his first novel." Henighan noted that "in the final analysis, Flanagan denies his immigrant characters their hybrid experience. The novel's closing assertion that ‘only those who lived it can ever know’ a particular history cuts both ways, separating Sonja and her daughter from the Slovenian past while shutting the gates of Tasmanian society against the ‘wogs’ the novel set out to include." Booklist contributor Nancy Pearl, however, allowed that Flanagan's "strong writing and ability to express the points of view of both father and daughter enrich the reading experience." "There are some stunning set pieces," clarified Judith Kicinski in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that Flanagan "brilliantly illuminates the lives of those who are ‘forgotten by history, irrelevant to history, yet shaped entirely by it.’ His characters here transform tragedy as they discover their individual worth."

Variety contributor David Stratton reviewed the film version of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, which Flanagan directed. Stratton noted that the film is limited to Sonja's childhood and her return to Tasmania. Flanagan "sensitively creates a world where old traditions, good as well as bad, are reduced to memories, where such a basic asset as your own language is no longer useful, where the bitterness of the past must be forgotten if there's to be a future." Though noting that "there's little variation in the generally gloomy tone of the drama," Stratton stated: "Given pretty much a free hand to bring his vision to the screen as few novelists are, writer-director Flanagan has done a generally solid job."

Flanagan's 2002 novel, Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish, was called "gorgeously written" by Booklist contributor Brendan Dowling. The novel tells the story of William Buelow Gould and is based on a real-life, nineteenth-century petty thief and forger who was sentenced to Sarah Island off of Van Diemen's Land for twenty-five years and subsequently created twenty-six highly regarded paintings of fish. In the novel, Gould narrates his own story, from his difficult childhood and life of crime to his imprisonment in the far off land of Australia. Gould's Book of Fish received almost universal praise from the critics. "Flanagan may very well become Tasmania's man of letters," wrote Marc Kloszewski in the Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented: "Carefully crafted and allusive, this blazing portrait of Australia's colonial past will surely spread Flanagan's reputation among American readers."

In his next novel, The Unknown Terrorist, Flanagan tells the story of Gina Davies, known as "the Doll." A pole dancer in a bar, Gina's one-night stand with a suspected al Qaeda terrorist lands her face in the papers and on television as she is suspected of being Australia's first homegrown terrorist. Media stories about Gina appear everywhere. Full of hyperbole and outright lies, the stories lead to Gina being the most wanted person in Australia. "A true page-turner as well as a timely, pithy critique of celebrity culture and the politics of fear-mongering," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor of The Unknown Terrorist. Uzodinma Iweala, writing in the New York Times Book Review, commented: "Flanagan's writing is a brilliant reflection of Gina's world. Full of steamy sex, drugs and violence, with a touch of high-status voyeurism, packaged into short chapters perfect for readers with limited attention spans, The Unknown Terrorist mocks the thriller genre even as it fulfills its expectations."

In 2003, Flanagan, who helped create the Southern Hemisphere's biggest literary prize, the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize, severed ties to it because it is cosponsored by the New Zealand's Forestry Commission, which Flanagan says is responsible for destroying old-growth forests.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, November, 1992, Richard Lewis, review of "Parish-Fed Bastards": A History of the Politics of the Unemployed in Britain, 1884-1939, pp. 692-694.

Australian Book Review, December, 1994, Liam Davison, review of Death of a River Guide, pp. 7-8.

Book, May-June, 2002, Kevin Greenberg, review of Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish, p. 85; July-August, 2003, "Tree Hugger," p. 13.

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Nancy Pearl, review of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, p. 757; November 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Death of a River Guide, p. 615; March 15, 2002, Brendan Dowling, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 1211; March 1, 2007, Ian Chipman, review of The Unknown Terrorist, p. 62.

Bookseller, May 3, 2002, "Commonwealth Winner," p. 28.

Book World, June 10, 2007, David Masiel, "Notorious" (review of The Unknown Terrorist), p. 7.

Bulletin with Newsweek, November 20, 2001, Don Anderson, "Fin Print: Richard Flanagan Goes Angling in the Depths of Love and Conviction" (review of Gould's Book of Fish), p. 89; November 7, 2006, Don Anderson "Terrorist" (review of The Unknown Terrorist), p. 76.

Business First-Columbus, February 23, 2001, "Richard Flanagan and Shah Hasan," p. 21.

Choice, June, 1992, J.H. Wiener, review of " Parish-Fed Bastards," p. 1595.

Christian Science Monitor, March 28, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 15; November 21, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 12.

Economist, July 11, 1998, review of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, p. 17.

Entertainment Weekly, December 20, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 134; February 7, 2003, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 85.

Independent (London, England), May 6, 2007, John Tague, review of The Unknown Terrorist.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 122.

Library Journal, January, 2000, Judith Kicinski, review of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, p. 158; January 1, 2001, Marc Kloszewski, review of Death of a River Guide, p. 153; March 15, 2002, Marc Kloszewski, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 108; February 15, 2007, Christine Perkins, review of The Unknown Terrorist, p. 110.

Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 10; December 8, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 8.

National Post, June 2, 2007, Randy Boyagoda, "The War against Pole Dancers" (review of The Unknown Terrorist), p. 15.

New Statesman, June 3, 2002, John Dugdale, "Lost on the Island of Forgetting: John Dugdale on a Remarkable Novel That Has Already Been Acclaimed in America as ‘The First Great Book of the New Century’" (review of Gould's Book of Fish), p. 50.

New Yorker, May 20, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 113.

New York Review of Books, September 26, 2002, John Banville, "On the Fatal Shore" (review of Gould's Book of Fish), p. 77.

New York Times, March 26, 2002, Michiko Kakutani, "A Reborn Criminal Distills Beauty from a Prison's Abominable Depths" (review of Gould's Book of Fish), p. 1; April 22, 2003, Raymond Bonner, "Tasmanian Literary Prize Shunned by Its Originator," p. 3.

New York Times Book Review, April 14, 2002, James Campbell, "Learning His Scales: Richard Flanagan's Narrator Is a 19th-century Convict Who Paints Fish" (review of Gould's Book of Fish), p. 26; April 21, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 26; June 2, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 23; December 8, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 62; February 2, 2003, Scott Veale, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 24; July 22, 2007, Uzodinma Iweala, "Unusual Suspect" (review of The Unknown Terrorist), p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, January 3, 2000, review of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, p. 55; January 15, 2001, review of Death of a River Guide, p. 51; March 25, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 40; January 15, 2007, review of The Unknown Terrorist, p. 28.

Times Literary Supplement, October 3, 1997, Vivian Smith, "Down the Franklin," p. 21; March 13, 1998, Stephen Henighan, "European past, Tasmanian present," p. 22; June 7, 2002, Stephen Abell, "Trust the Conman" (review of Gould's Book of Fish), p. 21.

Tribune Books, April 28, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 4; December 8, 2002, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 3; January 19, 2003, review of Gould's Book of Fish, p. 6.

Variety, March 2, 1998, David Stratton, review of The Sound of One Hand Clapping (film), p. 93.

World Literature Today, spring, 1998, John Scheckter, "Asia and the Pacific," pp. 453-454.