image of person or book cover 7157033518635919822.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon A Lifetime on Clouds single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1976... 1976 A Lifetime on Clouds
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Adrian Sherd is a teenage boy in Melbourne of the 1950s—the last years before television and the family car changed suburbia forever.

'Earnest and isolated, tormented by his hormones and his religious devotion, Adrian dreams of elaborate orgies with American film stars, and of marrying his sweetheart and fathering eleven children by her. He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.

'A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy’s Complaint.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Arkon Paperbacks , 1978 .
      image of person or book cover 7157033518635919822.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 157p.
      ISBN: 0855610409
      Series: Arkon Paperbacks Angus and Robertson (publisher), 1972 series - publisher Arkon is a paperback reprint imprint of the Australian publisher Angus and Robertson. The series was launched in 1972 to be merchandised in connection with T. V. series and involved the cartoonist Patrick Cook.
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1986 .
      Extent: 156p.
      ISBN: 0140093400
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2013 .
      image of person or book cover 4783892470036174684.jpg
      Image courtesy of Text Publishing
      Extent: 176p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 23 October 2013
      • Introduction by Andy Griffiths
      ISBN: 9781922147455
      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.)

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Two Very Different Adolescent Lives Katharine England , single work review
— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel
Feature Letters Gerald Murnane , 2017 single work correspondence
— Appears in: SF Commentary , December no. 95 2017; (p. 152)
Troubled by Impossible Dreams : Fantasy and Desire in Gerald Murnane's A Lifetime on Clouds Lars Andersson , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 27 no. 2 2013; (p. 189-193)
'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)
[Untitled] Andrew Fuhrmann , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 4 November 2013; (p. 13)

— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel
Deadpan Treatment of Adolescent Auto-Erotic Journeys Andrew Fuhrmann , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 3 November 2013; (p. 13)

— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel
Structural Strictures: Some Recent Fiction Considered Carl Harrison-Ford , 1977 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 36 no. 2 1977; (p. 246-252)

— Review of The Glass Canoe David Ireland , 1976 single work novel ; The Misery of Beauty : The Loves of Frogman Louis Nowra , 1976 single work novel ; Die Anstalt Walter Adamson , 1974 single work novel ; A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel
Murnane on a Literary Track Michael Costigan , 1986 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian Magazine , 21-22 June 1986; (p. 15)

— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel ; Blood in the Rain Margaret Barbalet , 1986 single work novel
An Awkward Crossing from Dream Life to Real Life Anthony Fitzgerald , 1986 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 16 August 1986; (p. B4)

— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel
Two Very Different Adolescent Lives Katharine England , single work review
— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel
The Year's Best Reading Barry Oakley , 1977 single work review
— Appears in: The National Times , 5-10 December 1977; (p. 61)

— Review of A Lifetime on Clouds Gerald Murnane , 1976 single work novel ; Thoroughly Decent People : A Folktale Glen Tomasetti , 1976 single work novel ; The Visit Amy Witting , 1977 single work novel
Also discusses Andrew Field's biography of Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov : His Life in Part .
Gerald Murnane : Exploring the Real Country Paul Genoni , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 145-194)
Gerald Murnane's Travels into Regions Assumed to Be Known : The Child Constructs the World Robert Kenny , 1987 single work criticism
— Appears in: Murnane 1987; (p. 25-27)
An Interview with Gerald Murnane Ludmilla Forsyth (interviewer), 1987 single work interview
— Appears in: Murnane 1987; (p. 42-68)
Gerald Murnane's Tasmania : Island in a Dream Atlas Carmel Bird , 1987 single work criticism
— Appears in: Fine Line , September no. 2 1987; (p. 38-44)
Inner Australia : The Novels of Gerald Murnane John Tittensor , 1985 single work criticism
— Appears in: Colonisations : Rencontres Australie-Canada 1985; (p. 97-107)
Last amended 8 May 2018 09:38:19
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