'Randolph Stow was one of the great Australian writers of his generation. His novel To the Islands – written in his early twenties after living on a remote Aboriginal mission – won the Miles Franklin Award for 1958. In later life, after publishing seven remarkable novels and several collections of poetry, Stow’s literary output slowed. This biography examines the productive period as well as his long periods of publishing silence.
'In Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow, Suzanne Falkiner unravels the reasons behind Randolph Stow’s quiet retreat from Australia and the wider literary world. Meticulously researched, insightful and at times deeply moving, Falkiner’s biography pieces together an intriguing story from Stow’s personal letters, diaries, and interviews with the people who knew him best. And many of her tales – from Stow’s beginnings in idyllic rural Australia, to his critical turning point in Papua New Guinea, and his final years in Essex, England – provide us with keys to unlock the meaning of Stow’s rich and introspective works.' (Publication summary)
'Many decades after he had left Western Australia and settled in Suffolk, Randolph Stow would continue to be asked if he considered himself an Australian writer. In interviews, Stow would attempt to distance himself from ideas of roots, denying the label "Australian^ for his preferred "Anglo-Australian" ("A Conversation" 71). Similarly, Stow frames his interest in Western Australia as purely related to childhood, the town of Geraldton being the place where he just happened to grow up ("Mostly Private Letters" 354). Since Stow's death in 2010 interest in locating him on a cultural map of Australia has continued. With the re-release of his major fiction works through the Text Publishing Classics series in 2015 and the publication of Suzanne Falkiner's 2016 biography Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow, Stow is enjoying a resurgence, one that continues to try to locate him as an Australian or Western Australian writer. Yet as in his lifetime, Stow's poetry remains relatively critically neglected despite the most comprehensive selection of his poetry appearing in 2013 accompanied by an extensive introductory essay by John Kinsella. The Kinsella essay demonstrates how consideration of Australianness in Stow's poetry and prose almost always relates to consideration of landscape. Part of the confusion around assigning Stow a definitive designation as a Western Australian place writer must be that Stow does not write about place in any one way...' (Introduction)
'Most biographers like to think that what they have written would have been acceptable to the person they are writing about. Suzanne Falkiner has no such illusions about this work. In a postscript to her 890-page biography of Randolph Stow she remarks: ‘No doubt Stow would not have approved of this book, and more especially because it contains a large amount of “chatter about Harriet”’ (721). The phrase, ‘chatter about Harriet’ (originally from a review of a Shelley biography that gave considerable attention to Harriet, the first wife), had been used by Stow in a 1976 interview, when he had been asked whether he thought that ‘knowing something of the life and personality of an artist’ could help readers to understand his work. In reply he agreed on the need ‘to know a great deal – well, a certain amount, anyway – about an author’s life, and not only what he chooses to have known’. By way of illustration, he pointed to Conrad’s attempted suicide, which had only recently become known, as ‘obviously something that one needs to know’. At the same time, he hoped ‘this sort of thing could be kept to a minimum’, as ‘too much chatter about Harriet . . . distracts attention from the work’.' (Introduction)
'Bernadette Brennan).With the publication of Suzanne Falkiner's Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow, readers have the opportunity to learn a great deal about one of the greatest Australian writers of the 20th century. Coming in at just under 900 pages, including more than 100 pages of endnotes, Falkiner's biography is a massive scholarly work. After years of exhaustive archival research, international travel and extensive interviews, Falkiner crafts a credible and moving portrait of a brilliant, sensitive, complex man. This biography is a significant contribution to Australian literary studies...' (Bernadette Brennan).
'Many decades after he had left Western Australia and settled in Suffolk, Randolph Stow would continue to be asked if he considered himself an Australian writer. In interviews, Stow would attempt to distance himself from ideas of roots, denying the label "Australian^ for his preferred "Anglo-Australian" ("A Conversation" 71). Similarly, Stow frames his interest in Western Australia as purely related to childhood, the town of Geraldton being the place where he just happened to grow up ("Mostly Private Letters" 354). Since Stow's death in 2010 interest in locating him on a cultural map of Australia has continued. With the re-release of his major fiction works through the Text Publishing Classics series in 2015 and the publication of Suzanne Falkiner's 2016 biography Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow, Stow is enjoying a resurgence, one that continues to try to locate him as an Australian or Western Australian writer. Yet as in his lifetime, Stow's poetry remains relatively critically neglected despite the most comprehensive selection of his poetry appearing in 2013 accompanied by an extensive introductory essay by John Kinsella. The Kinsella essay demonstrates how consideration of Australianness in Stow's poetry and prose almost always relates to consideration of landscape. Part of the confusion around assigning Stow a definitive designation as a Western Australian place writer must be that Stow does not write about place in any one way...' (Introduction)
