Cirrus@Austlit

'While critics have at times considered Gerald Murnane's second novel A Lifetime on Clouds one of his lesser achievements, it remains eminently engaging. Here, Andersson propose a reading of the novel as not only a key text in the Murnane canon, but also as a novel that evocatively typifies some of the key contradictions in the political and historical context from which it emerged. He suggests that this novel functions as a symptom of a particular moment in the history of the Western world. Also, he will link the conclusion of Murnane's novel to another modern conception of power in the mid-seventies. ' (Publication abstract)