'Australian Literature is, at least internationally, understudied, and far more so than Australian visual arts. A unique, dedicated academic programme within the English department has existed at the University of Sydney since 1962; nevertheless Australian Literature still feels the effect of the cultural cringe associated with colonial countries. Despite this, certain authors and texts inspire a relatively steady stream of scholarship. Randolph Stow is one of these. Stow’s compelling, complex, often metaphysical style allows him to use literature to explore religious and spiritual life and its intersections with community. Stow’s Tourmaline (1963) is part of the mid twentieth century post-apocalyptic movement most notably represented by Neville Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach. In Tourmaline Randolph Stow mitigates the fraught relationship between perception and experiences, specifically those relating to the interplay of human responses to spirituality, social structure and character, essential forces in community construction. Stow’s vibrant prose, layered plot, philosophical thematics, and a set of characters painfully human in their lack of holistic appeal absorb his reader. Tourmaline is concerned with a potential conflict between the active and inactive experiential religion dealing with the confusion of spiritual and religious leadership, disenchantment, pain, hope, salvation and myth. (Introduction)
