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y separately published work icon Visitants single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1979... 1979 Visitants
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Set in 1959 in the Trobriand Islands off the east coast of Papua, Visitants depicts a colonial outpost a few years away from independence, in which the white characters occupy a position of uneasy authority over the indigenous Islanders. The novel exposes the failures of communication between the two cultures, heightened by the inclusion of the well-documented sightings of four human figures in a disc-shaped craft in the sky above Boianai in June 1959. The narrative documents the psychic disintegration of another visitant, the white Patrol Officer Alistair Cawdor, who loses his ability to relate to other human beings, dreaming instead of contact with the star-people in the Boianai flying saucer. The parallel story of the islanders traces an adroit political coup against the ageing Paramount Chief, carried out under the cover of a cargo cult uprising.' Anthony J. Hassall 'Foreword ' (October 2002): x., Visitants (2003).

Notes

  • Epigraph: 'Tispela buk mi laik salim long wantok bilong mi.' - T.A.G. Hungerford
  • Epigraph: 'be not afeard; the isle is full of noises... The Tempest.
  • Epigraph: 'Oh, my lords, I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture, When one news staright came huddling on another, Of death, and death. Still I danced forward; But it struck home, and here, and in an instant. .... They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings...' - John Ford, The Broken Heart.
  • Author's note: The incident described in the prologue is not fictitious, but was widely reported in the press in 1959. It is discussed by Jacques Vallee in his Anatomy of a Phenomenon (New York: Henry Regnery, 1965; London: Neville Spearman, 1966). As I was then out of any sort of contact witth the world beyond my own sub-district, I was in no position to connect that phenomenon with the one described to me at the time by the inhabitants of the island of Kitava, now with the disappearance, a few weeks earlier, of three men from the island of Tuma. Both incidents are incorporated in the novel without comment. Like William of Newburgh, recording a strange aerial apparition over Dunstable in 1189, "I design to be the simple narrator, not the prophetic interpreter; for what the Divinity wished to signify by this I do not know." ... R. S. (At end of novel).

Contents

* Contents derived from the Melbourne, Victoria,:Text Publishing , 2015 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Introduction, Drusilla Modjeska , single work criticism

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Secker and Warburg ,
      1979 .
      image of person or book cover 5962023101623049536.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 188p.
      ISBN: 0436497301
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Taplinger Publishing ,
      1981 .
      image of person or book cover 6139797513743602878.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 188p.
      Edition info: 1st American ed.
      ISBN: 0800880188
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Picador ,
      1981 .
      image of person or book cover 6512136118307301871.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 183p.
      ISBN: 0330263781 (Pbk)
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Randolph Stow : Visitants, Episodes from Other Novels, Poems, Stories, Interviews, and Essays Randolph Stow , Anthony J. Hassall (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990 Z54227 1990 selected work novel poetry extract short story prose interview criticism St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990 pg. 1-183
    • Port Melbourne, South Melbourne - Port Melbourne area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Minerva , 1991 .
      image of person or book cover 6793655382457034742.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 188p.
      Note/s:
      • Published August 1st 1991
      ISBN: 0749391871 (pbk.)
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2015 .
      image of person or book cover 2651568140530184606.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 288p.
      Note/s:
      • Publication date: 26 August 2015
      ISBN: 9781925240276
      Series: y separately published work icon Text Classics Text Publishing (publisher), Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2012- Z1851461 2012 series - publisher novel 'Great books by great Australian storytellers.' (Text website.)
Alternative title: Besokare
Language: Swedish
    • Boras,
      c
      Sweden,
      c
      Scandinavia, Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Forum ,
      1983 .
      image of person or book cover 913508770530468595.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 233p.
      ISBN: 9137083597

Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Sound recording.

Works about this Work

Ngaangk : Those Sunstruck Miles Catherine Noske , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly , August vol. 69 no. 1 2024; (p. 79-98)
'I cannot but start with the looming scale of the sun - the half-pictures or contained slice we see in most drawings. Even there, we are obedient to that generic voice, to well-worn wisdom : don't stare direct. The corner of yellow in a child's picture. It's excess and repetition in sunspots and flares on photographic film. The close detail of this Festival's logo, and the scope it implies. Scope and scopic : despite what we are told as children, we are finding ways to see the sun - as Stow did, again and again in his work, from the very beginning, his world viewed through sun-bright lids. Sun in all its power, ripe gold and life miraculous, sun a wild yellow vision. Divine heat and terror, the cognisance of that sun's cataclysm...(Act One 18)' (Introduction)
Autobiography of a Sickness Andrew Sutherland , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 68 no. 1 2023; (p. 128-139)
'A disclosure: before being asked to do this lecture, I had never read a word of Stow. When I was nineteen, I left Western Australia to study in Singapore. When I graduated, I stayed. If leaving was an intentional turning away from a cultural lineage, or canon, then staying was a decisive choice towards another. Reading, after all, is political—more political, perhaps, than writing itself. Later, when I did return, and began to write, it was the Queer Singaporean and Singapore-based writers and artists I had encountered who formed my creative ancestry and who I felt I might exist in conversation with, if I were to exist in this space at all. But any residence forms lineages, and in returning to live on this land—where I hold legal citizenship, enforced by the world's dependence on borders and the nation-state, and where I was born—authorial ancestries are free to entangle, be speculated over and perhaps even transformed.' (Introduction)
 
Telling Spaces: Reading Randolph Stow’s Expatriation Kate Noske , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;

'Randolph Stow’s expatriate novels, Visitants (1979), The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980) and The Suburbs of Hell (1984) are often read as emerging from specific experiences in Stow’s expatriate life, beyond Australia—the two former as his ‘fever’ novels, informed by his work and illness in the Trobriand Islands and subsequent recovery in England; and the latter carrying the experience of an event from Stow’s Australian past into the setting of Harwich, England, where he lived from the early 1980s until his death in 2010. I have discussed elsewhere the overt connection in The Suburbs of Hell to Australia (Noske, ‘Chatter’), but it is also possible to read in the earlier texts connections with Stow’s life in Australia, particularly in his representation of landscape. Reading The Girl Green as Elderflower in this context opens interesting possibilities in understanding the spaces constructed within. This article will argue that Stow’s writing in the novel presents a complex transnationalism, one which challenges extant critical responses to Stow’s expatriation. It reads Stow’s place-making as embracing a fluidity that allows him to actively respond to postcolonialism as a global phenomenon and in doing so, examine Australian spaces through the lens of expatriation.' (Publication abstract)

The Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture Andrew Lynch , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 64 no. 1 2019; (p. 142-150)
'It’s a great honour for me to be asked to give this memorial lecture for Randolph Stow. Thanks to the Westerly Centre and the Festival for inviting me. Stow’s writing has been a part of my life since my early twenties, when I was given the Penguin To the Islands (1962) as a birthday present. I didn’t know then that when Stow wrote it he was the same age as me reading it, or that it was his third published novel. After that, I read The Merry-go-Round in the Sea (1965) and Tourmaline (1963). Then in my early years here at the University of Western Australia (UWA) I first read two more: Visitants (1979) and The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980). Quite a few years later, after many re-readings, I think of Stow as a great artist, a poet amongst the English-language novelists of his time.' (Introduction)
Well Read Katharine England , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 19 September 2015; (p. 28)

— Review of To the Islands Randolph Stow , 1958 single work novel ; The Girl Green as Elderflower Randolph Stow , 1980 single work novel ; Visitants Randolph Stow , 1979 single work novel ; The Suburbs of Hell : A Novel Randolph Stow , 1984 single work novel ; Tourmaline Randolph Stow , 1963 single work novel
Stow's Flow Through Colour and Conflict Stephen Saunders , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 4 June 2006; (p. 14)

— Review of Visitants Randolph Stow , 1979 single work novel
[Review] Visitants Elizabeth Riddell , 1980 single work review
— Appears in: 24 Hours , January vol. 4 no. 12 1980; (p. 67)

— Review of Visitants Randolph Stow , 1979 single work novel
New Paperbacks Robin Lucas , 1991 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 14 December 1991; (p. 40)

— Review of Selected Stories Hal Porter , 1971 selected work short story ; Visitants Randolph Stow , 1979 single work novel ; Women and Horses Candida Baker , 1990 single work novel
[Review] The Girl Green as Elderflower [and] Visitants Bruce A. Clunies Ross , 1980 single work review
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 2 no. 1 1980; (p. 184-185)

— Review of The Girl Green as Elderflower Randolph Stow , 1980 single work novel ; Visitants Randolph Stow , 1979 single work novel
[Review] Visitants Francis King , 1979 single work review
— Appears in: The Spectator , 1 December 1979; (p. 29)

— Review of Visitants Randolph Stow , 1979 single work novel
Culture and Identity : Politics and Writing in Some Recent Post-Colonial Texts Gareth Griffiths , 1992 single work criticism
— Appears in: From Commonwealth to Post-Colonial 1992; (p. 436-443)
Messiahs and Millennia in Randolph Stow's Novels Robyn Wallace , 1981 single work criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 3 no. 2 1981; (p. 56-72)

'The novels I shall concentrate on in discussing messiahs and millennia in Stow's work are To the Islands, Tourmaline, Visitants, and The Girl Green as Elderflower. Tourmaline and Visitants are the two which most clearly relate to millenarian themes. Tourmaline records the growth, and collapse, of a millenarian cult centred on the messianic or would-be messianic figure of the diviner Michael Random. Visitants is a structurally more complex exploration of three millenarian visions and their communal and personal repercussions, although the connotations of the title are not restricted to cargo or flying saucer cults.' (Publication abstract)

Nationalism and Imperialism : Australia's Ambivalent Relationship to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands John McLaren , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Complicities : Connections and Divisions : Perspectives on Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region 2003; (p. 53-63)
Visitants : Randolph Stow (1935- ) Jane Gleeson-White , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Classics : Fifty Great Writers and Their Celebrated Works 2007; (p. 260-264)
The Mansren Myth in Randolph Stow's Visitants Derek Wright , 1986 single work criticism
— Appears in: The International Fiction Review , vol. 13 no. 2 1986; (p. 82-86)
Last amended 29 Sep 2020 14:07:13
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