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This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Slipstream single work   novel  
  • Author:agent Roger McDonald http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/mcdonald-roger
Issue Details: First known date: 1982... 1982 Slipstream
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Notes

  • Epigraph: Doubtless for men that rude and savage were a civil form of dancing he devised, Wherewith unto their gods they sacrificed. Sir John Davies.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Faber ,
      1982 .
      image of person or book cover 3209457622430277235.png
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 318p.
      ISBN: 0571119638
    • Boston, Massachusetts,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Little, Brown ,
      1982 .
      image of person or book cover 350861972498680033.png
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Link: 19206965Access online Sighted: 06/05/2020
      Extent: 318p.
      Edition info: 1st American edition
      ISBN: 0316555533
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Fontana ,
      1983 .
      image of person or book cover 1392991816203673255.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 253p.
      ISBN: 0006167861 (pbk)
    • Chippendale, Inner Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 1992 .
      image of person or book cover 3715349995688487619.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 318p.
      ISBN: 0330273523 (pbk.)

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Braille.

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Postcolonial Heritage and Settler Well-Being : The Historical Fictions of Roger McDonald Christopher Lee , Amherst : Cambria Press , 2018 15395794 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'The Australian writer Roger McDonald is the author of ten novels, two novelisations from and for film scripts, two television scripts, one semi-fictionalised memoir, a collection of essays, and two volumes of poetry. His publication record spans half a century from the late 1960s up until the late teens with his tenth novel, A Sea Chase, published in 2017. His books have achieved a significant record in the Australian list of literary awards and he has gone close to breaking into the major international prizes that distinguish the transnational careers of other contemporary Australian writers such as Thomas Keneally, Peter Carey, David Malouf, and, more recently, Kate Grenville. McDonald’s work has been published in London and New York as well as in the key metropolitan markets of his native Australia, and it has been translated into Spanish, German, and Swedish. 1915, his first novel, was adapted into an Australian Broadcasting Commission television series, which was shown on Australian screens in the early 1980s and distributed internationally.

'McDonald writes about ordinary characters whose lives have often been overtaken by historical forces they do not understand and cannot control. These men and women are commonly defined by whom they know and what they do rather than through the display of extraordinary qualities of mind, sensibility, or virtue. McDonald often situates his characters’ within foundational Australian historical periods such as the convict period, frontier settlement, the development of the pastoral industry, the Great War, the Golden Age of Aviation, and the Second World War and its aftermath. This later post-war period saw the transformation of Anglo-Celtic Australia by waves of initially southern and eastern European migration, followed by Asian and indeed wider international migration. The emerging multicultural character of the country coincided with the decline of rural Australia and the pastoral industry as the preferred locations for representative Australian types and values. These events or periods are well entrenched within the public memory of a White Australia and that enables McDonald to explore his characters’ search for purpose and fulfillment within the mythological registers of his nation’s postcolonial history.

'This study focuses on the books (five novels and the fictionalised memoir) in which McDonald has decided to situate his characters’ search for purpose and well-being within the mythological registers of colonial history. It explores McDonald’s investments in story and his developments in idiom and literary form, as endeavors to engage a wider public in the problem of postcolonial settlement. The common narrative problem is the elusiveness of a condition of Being that is well settled in the web of social, cultural, and environmental connections that are necessary for dwelling. McDonald pursues the possibilities for a wider more satisfying sense of human connection but his representations of the common man under the conditions of postcolonial modernity never allow that to come easily.'

Source: Abstract.

The Beast in the Machine : Modernity, Aviation and the Legacies of Colonialism in Roger McDonald’s Slipstream Christopher Lee , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 41 no. 4 2017; (p. 435-449)

'The expectation that a novel about a celebrity aviator will romanticise flight and glorify the pilot is a product of the mythologisation of aviation, which this essay understands is a response to the threat of technology and the alienating conditions of modernity. Roger McDonald’s novel Slipstream refuses to reproduce this mythology, expressing a literary aspiration to use the form of the modern novel to explore the entanglement of the subject under the conditions of postcolonial modernity. My argument will develop through three parts. The first section will explore the mythologisation of aviation as a symptom of modernity. The second will examine the ways in which the novel uses its modernist form to call into question the celebrity of the aviator and the spectacle of flight. This part of my argument is indebted to the critique by German philosopher Martin Heidegger of the technological mode of Being. Finally, I take up the postcolonial implications of the Heideggerian critique in a country in which many of modernism’s standard antidotes to the problems of its century are compromised by the legacies of colonialism.' (Publication abstract)

American Dreams and the University of Queensland Press Deborah Jordan , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Across the Pacific : Australia-United States Intellectual Histories 2010; (p. 323-338)

'The University of Queensland Press was transformed from a merely scholarly into a creative independent Australian publisher partly through the agency of the American publisher Frank Thompson. In the explosive days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and with Australians' complex fascination with United States, Thompson embodied the democratic challenge to the old British dominated regime on campus and in publishing circles. This paper will explore pivotal books published by UQP notably Thomas Shapcott's Contemporary American and Australian Poetry in 1976; UQP's development of the American market with the distribution of UQP literary fiction and the establishment of an American office; and co-publishing with American publishers and editing Australian books for American readers in a different hemisphere. Thompson's own assessment of his successes and failures will be contextualised in terms of political developments and those issues long associated with Australian literature - environmental representation and expatriatism.' (Author's abstract)

A Reading of Roger McDonald Katharine England , 1994 single work review
— Appears in: Voices , Winter vol. 4 no. 2 1994; (p. 111-117)

— Review of Shearers' Motel Roger McDonald , 1992 single work prose autobiography ; Rough Wallaby Roger McDonald , 1989 single work novel ; Water Man Roger McDonald , 1993 single work novel ; 1915 : A Novel Roger McDonald , 1979 single work novel ; Slipstream Roger McDonald , 1982 single work novel
The Writer Who 'Found' Himself in the Bush Candida Baker , 1992 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Age , 11 November 1992; (p. 4)
Poets and Their Novels Jim Tulip , 1983 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 43 no. 1 1983; (p. 113-118)

— Review of Child's Play David Malouf , 1981 single work novella ; Just Relations Rodney Hall , 1982 single work novel ; Slipstream Roger McDonald , 1982 single work novel ; The Birthday Gift : A Novel Thomas Shapcott , 1982 single work novel ; The Terms Jennifer Maiden , 1982 single work novel ; Fly Away Peter David Malouf , 1982 single work novella
A High Flight of Fiction Mary Lord , 1982 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , December no. 90 1982; (p. 53-56)

— Review of A List of All People and Other Stories Peter Shrubb , 1982 selected work short story ; Just Relations Rodney Hall , 1982 single work novel ; Slipstream Roger McDonald , 1982 single work novel
A Reading of Roger McDonald Katharine England , 1994 single work review
— Appears in: Voices , Winter vol. 4 no. 2 1994; (p. 111-117)

— Review of Shearers' Motel Roger McDonald , 1992 single work prose autobiography ; Rough Wallaby Roger McDonald , 1989 single work novel ; Water Man Roger McDonald , 1993 single work novel ; 1915 : A Novel Roger McDonald , 1979 single work novel ; Slipstream Roger McDonald , 1982 single work novel
A Great Novel Slips Up Clement Semmler , 1982 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian Magazine , 29-30 May, 1982; (p. 12)

— Review of Slipstream Roger McDonald , 1982 single work novel
A Novel with Little Sense of Delight Geoffrey Dutton , 1982 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 25 May vol. 102 no. 5315 1982; (p. 71)

— Review of Slipstream Roger McDonald , 1982 single work novel
American Dreams and the University of Queensland Press Deborah Jordan , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Across the Pacific : Australia-United States Intellectual Histories 2010; (p. 323-338)

'The University of Queensland Press was transformed from a merely scholarly into a creative independent Australian publisher partly through the agency of the American publisher Frank Thompson. In the explosive days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and with Australians' complex fascination with United States, Thompson embodied the democratic challenge to the old British dominated regime on campus and in publishing circles. This paper will explore pivotal books published by UQP notably Thomas Shapcott's Contemporary American and Australian Poetry in 1976; UQP's development of the American market with the distribution of UQP literary fiction and the establishment of an American office; and co-publishing with American publishers and editing Australian books for American readers in a different hemisphere. Thompson's own assessment of his successes and failures will be contextualised in terms of political developments and those issues long associated with Australian literature - environmental representation and expatriatism.' (Author's abstract)

Roger McDonald's ... Biggles for Grown-Ups Alison Broinowski , 1982 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The National Times , 16-22 May 1982; (p. 30)
Roger McDonald Candida Baker (interviewer), 1987 single work biography interview
— Appears in: Yacker 2 : Australian Writers Talk About Their Work 1987; (p. 172-186)
The Empire Strikes Back: 1915 and the Australian Sense of the Past Barry Geoffrey Andrews , 1983 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Papers : Yugoslavia, Europe and Australia 1983; (p. 173-182)
The Writer Who 'Found' Himself in the Bush Candida Baker , 1992 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Age , 11 November 1992; (p. 4)
Last amended 6 May 2020 12:10:26
Subjects:
  • Urban,
  • c
    Australia,
    c
  • c
    United States of America (USA),
    c
    Americas,
  • Europe,
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
Settings:
  • 1910s
  • 1920s
  • 1930s
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