Water single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2014... 2014 Water
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In Dirt Music, remembering the time before a car crash took the lives of his brother Darkie, Darkie's wife Sal, and their two children, Bird and Bullet, Luther Fox recalls Bird's question : 'Lu, how come water lets you through it?' Bird is the one who saw God, and 'if anyone saw God it would likely be her. Bird's the nearest thing to an angelic being.' Bird's question suggests the function of water in Winton's novels. Water is everywhere in his writing, as people sail on it, dive into it, live on the edge of it. Clearly the sea and the river are vital aspects of the writer's own experience. But water is more than an omnipresent feature of his writing and his life, the oceanscape of his stories. It is something that 'lets you through'. It lets you through because it is the passage to a different state of being, sometimes in dream, sometimes in physical extremity, but always offers itself as the medium of transformation. When it lets you through - whether to escape to a different life, as a rite of passage to adulthood, to see the world in a new way or to discover the holiness of the earth or the wonder of the world, whether it is the baptismal water of redemption to an opening to a world of silence - and it is all these things- you become different.' (Author's introduction 16)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Tim Winton : Critical Essays Lyn McCredden (editor), Nathanael O'Reilly (editor), Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2014 7701225 2014 anthology criticism

    'In Tim Winton: Critical Essays, the editors have brought together an international lineup of scholars—new voices and established—to consider the work of Australia’s most celebrated and loved contemporary novelist.

    'From Shallows to Eyrie, this book extends beyond Winton’s singular novels and short stories, into thematics identified across his body of work, thinking through his place and reception in Australian and world literature.

    'Exploring themes in Winton’s fictional works such as childhood, masculinity, fatherhood, beauty, love, death, water and landscape, the contributors explore, question and debate their contexts in order to understand more fully what is appealing, or unconsciously submerged, or worthy of celebration or interrogation.

    'Tim Winton is both a popular and literary success, and this volume has been conceived for a critical audience of professionals and students, as well as for the readers who have made Tim Winton a household name.' (Publication summary)

    Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2014
    pg. 16-48
Last amended 25 Sep 2014 10:23:27
16-48 Watersmall AustLit logo
Subjects:
  • Breath Tim Winton , 2008 single work novel
  • The Turning Tim Winton , 2004 selected work short story
  • Dirt Music Tim Winton , 2001 single work novel
  • Blueback Tim Winton , 1997 single work children's fiction
  • Land's Edge Tim Winton , 1993 single work autobiography
  • Cloudstreet Tim Winton , 1991 single work novel
  • Shallows Tim Winton , 1984 single work novel
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