'In The Fiction of Tim Winton, Lyn McCredden explores the eleven novels and four short story collections of an author whose works span the literary and popular divide. Throughout this work, McCredden shows Winton to be a writer of fearless and intelligent fiction, tackling themes such as belonging, gender, and redemption, all while sustaining a strong mainstream following.
Winton’s work spans many genres, ranging from children’s literature to theatrical plays to a suite of highly influential literary novels. Among many other awards, Winton has won the Miles Franklin Award a record four times, with Shallows in 1984, Cloudstreet in 1992, Dirt Music in 2002, and Breath in 2009. Dirt Music was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in the same year, with his novel The Riders shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize. Along with a host of other literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1995 and both the New South Wales Premier’s and Queensland Premier’s Awards for The Turning, Winton is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular writers; his novel Cloudstreet has regularly been voted Australia’s Favourite Book by the ABC and the Australian Society of Authors. Cloudstreet has also achieved international success, and a theatrical adaption has toured the world to critical acclaim and adulation.' (Publication summary)
'The Fiction of Tim Winton provides a critical study of the work of one of Australia's most celebrated authors. The book is structured in chapters, eight in total, that seek to interrogate the current significance of Winton's work and its likely influence for the future. In the introduction, McCredden suggests that as an author Tim Winton remains difficult to define. His stories about family life, subjectivity, the individual bond to landscape, and the egalitarian society are critically revisited to examine the career of an author who places himself on the margins of the literary canon. Two chapters (chapters 6 and 8) in particular analyze the impact of the editing and the marketing of stories with specific figures to situate Winton as a global and national author. These two chapters, which may at first appear to merely provide marketing details, are essential and nicely conducted, since McCredden manages to keep her focus on the act of writing. She does not, in fact, simply insert charts and figures; she connects them to the essence of Winton's writing, and this is a tour de force. The theoretical reference to Roland Barthes's use of semiology is all the more significant in that there is a questioning of Winton's use of language and his authorial intent. While his public involvement on social, political, and cultural issues is mentioned, the book does not expand on the slight rapport that some readers may see between literature and politics.' (Introduction)
'For a generation of boys, the youth lit canon often centralised visceral physicality over true intimacy and vulnerability. But for today’s young queer readers grappling with questions of gender and desire, a new canon is emerging that captures more nuanced and diverse ways to come of age.' (Introduction)
'Creative writers and artists have important things to say to us not only as individuals but as a society. These writers and artists themselves are not best placed to explicate and discuss what these things are. There is a real need for knowledgeable, sophisticated, popularising literary criticism. A discipline wholly disconnected from the public discourses of the society it is part of and that helps to sustain it, is a short-sighted and vulnerable one.' (Introduction)
'Creative writers and artists have important things to say to us not only as individuals but as a society. These writers and artists themselves are not best placed to explicate and discuss what these things are. There is a real need for knowledgeable, sophisticated, popularising literary criticism. A discipline wholly disconnected from the public discourses of the society it is part of and that helps to sustain it, is a short-sighted and vulnerable one.' (Introduction)
'The Fiction of Tim Winton provides a critical study of the work of one of Australia's most celebrated authors. The book is structured in chapters, eight in total, that seek to interrogate the current significance of Winton's work and its likely influence for the future. In the introduction, McCredden suggests that as an author Tim Winton remains difficult to define. His stories about family life, subjectivity, the individual bond to landscape, and the egalitarian society are critically revisited to examine the career of an author who places himself on the margins of the literary canon. Two chapters (chapters 6 and 8) in particular analyze the impact of the editing and the marketing of stories with specific figures to situate Winton as a global and national author. These two chapters, which may at first appear to merely provide marketing details, are essential and nicely conducted, since McCredden manages to keep her focus on the act of writing. She does not, in fact, simply insert charts and figures; she connects them to the essence of Winton's writing, and this is a tour de force. The theoretical reference to Roland Barthes's use of semiology is all the more significant in that there is a questioning of Winton's use of language and his authorial intent. While his public involvement on social, political, and cultural issues is mentioned, the book does not expand on the slight rapport that some readers may see between literature and politics.' (Introduction)
'For a generation of boys, the youth lit canon often centralised visceral physicality over true intimacy and vulnerability. But for today’s young queer readers grappling with questions of gender and desire, a new canon is emerging that captures more nuanced and diverse ways to come of age.' (Introduction)
