Cirrus@Austlit

'Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock has captivated and perplexed generations. But the woman behind the novel is as much an enigma as the disappearance of the fictitious schoolgirls and their teacher.

'Joan Lindsay, wife of painter, art entrepreneur and National Gallery of Victoria director Daryl Lindsay, sacrificed her own artistic talent in deference to her husband, as was the order of the day. She painted landscapes with skill, but gave it up; wrote plays and novels of little merit; took routine journalism commissions for much-needed funds; and happily played hostess to guests including Dame Nellie Melba, Robert Helpman, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, as well as Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch and Robert Menzies, at the Lindsay country house on the Mornington Peninsula – all the while giving no indication of the literary brilliance that would emerge late in her life. There were clues, though, as Brenda Niall reveals in this fascinating biography. Joan’s unconventional attitude towards time – she allowed no clocks in the house and never wore a watch – and her deep reverence for the Australian landscape hint at the mystical centre of her masterpiece.

'Was Joan really the dutiful wife, or was she patiently waiting her chance? Was Picnic at Hanging Rock a burst of creativity in response to a life held in check? Or did something happen behind the carefully curated scenes that gave rise to her extraordinary novel? Joan Lindsay: The Hidden Life of the Woman who Wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock explores these questions and more in an engaging and surprising portrait of a fascinating Australian woman.'  (Publication summary)

'The present article offers a Deleuzian reading of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Joan Lindsay, 1967) that does not start by analysing binary oppositions, but rather construes the space and, more specifically, its synthesis in and through time as processes of “different/ciation” and “becoming”. The article probes into Deleuze’s idea of the first synthesis of time in the novel. Time can be read as a synthesis, a contraction of differences in repetition. This resonates with the “elemental rhythms” of nature the novel overtly identifies as constitutive of the natural space. These rhythms are in turn projected onto different fictional levels, so much so that the novel reads like an organic spread of the patterns of nature into the very structure of the narrative. Victorian identities and cultures attempt to resist the spread of this pattern, albeit to no avail. Finally, the spread of the said pattern reveals the possibility of a new virtual set of relational tools for the self to encounter the other via processes of different/ciation and becoming.' (Publication abstract)