Cirrus@Austlit

'The paper considers Ruth Park’s memoirs by reflecting on three autobiographical texts: a lengthy article in the Sydney Morning Herald (1946); her first memoir The Drums Go Bang (1956, co-authored with husband D’Arcy Niland); and her third and final volume of memoir, Fishing in the Styx (1993). Each offers a reflection on the same critical turning-point in Park’s career – her controversial winning of the Sydney Morning Herald Prize in 1946 for an unpublished novel, with The Harp in the South. This was, Park declared, the moment ‘The drums went bang with a terrific sound’ (Drums 188).

'Park’s accounts of this incident are examined in the context of her observation – made while questioning her capacity to accurately frame a narrative moment in her memoir Fishing in the Styx – that ‘there is a truth in there somewhere, but like all truth, no statement of it can be final’ (210). It is argued that whenever Park recalled her life and career she modified how she expressed the ‘truth in there’ regarding the extraordinary episode of the Herald Prize, an incident that resonated throughout the span of her life.' (Publication abstract)