Book Review - Holden's Performance by Murray Bail

 Holden's Performance: a Novel by Murray Bail

New York: Picador USA, 1987        ISBN 0312420803

I've read a bit of Murray Bail - Eucalyptus of course, but also Homesickness and The Voyage. I enjoyed all three in some ways, but I'm not sure I enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed Holden's Performance,  written just before Eucalyptus, even though the latter has a tighter structure.

Holden's Performance is the life story (up to age 34 anyway), of Holden Shadbolt, from his childhood home in Adelaide, through soujourns in Manly and Canberra, as he absorbs the world of the forties, fifties and sixties Australia through his photographic memory, aided by constant updates from the news via his Uncle Vern, a proofreader for the Adelaide Advertiser. Bail's novels are always filled with wild characterization, and Holden's Performance is no different. Vern sticks to the facts and commissions statues for his backyard in the hills, the soldier Frank McBee takes over Holden's house, mother, and daughter as he rises from dealing scrap to selling cars to political notoriety, Senator Hoadley, bridge lover, gourmand and serial adulterer who falls from grace, Colonel Light, leader of the Prime Minister's security team and one who comes closest to Holden. Not to forget Alex Screech, owner of the Epic Cinema in Manly, the man who offers Holden his first job, and Harriet, his love-interest.

Via this cast of misfits we traverse the end of the war, when people could make fortune out of scrap if they were quick on their feet, the fifties and the beginning of car-culture, when trams were seen as passe, through to the sixties and the beginning of the counter-culture. Holden, huge and passive, takes it all in his stride, no matter how strange the events. His passivity in the face of outrageous events taking place all around him is hard to grasp. Even when he shoots at McBee or makes love to Harriet he doesn't really feel any excitement, merely acceptance.

This to me is typical of the novels of Bail's that I have read. The main character is swept along by events that are driven by the "minor" characters, all of whom seem to have more life than the protagonist: while I enjoyed this book, I never really warmed to Holden. Bail's strength is to write the absurd and make it seem believable. From McBee getting his one-legged friend to sign-write in the sky, to Hoadley bedding every public servant's wife in Canberra while running three departments, to Colonel Light living in a tent on Black Mountain, to Alex Screech turning a pile of Australia-shaped vomit into a tourist attraction, Holden's Performance as a rollicking ride of nonsense, but a ride I didn't want to climb off.

So the characterization and episodes have strength - what of the plot? Here is where Bail stumbles. Unlike Eucalyptus, Holden's Performance lacks a narrative arc. This is not necessarily a problem for any particular novel, but I think it is here: so many things happen to Holden - we see his life change in very definite ways about five times - but the novel just peters out; Holden becomes too big for Australia, but we as the reader leave him just as he is beginning his biggest adventure. I was left feeling unfulfilled, which is a shame, as there is much to recommend this book.

As for a theme, unlike some of Bail's other work, I struggled to find one - perhaps the Americanization of Australian culture is one, but if so it is lightly donned. I feel that again like some of his other work, Bail had lots of ideas and crammed them all into one book without thinking too much of how they fit together or what story they tell.

While I'm not sure that Holden's Performance is the best Murray Bail novel, it's the one that I've enjoyed the most.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell