Riders in the Chariot is the most compassionate and the most beautiful of all Patrick White's works; colours fly everywhere; Vintage Classics.
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- Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White
- Riders in the Chariot
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- Patrick White
This is a frightfully beautiful and powerful book. It is the fourth of P. The title of the novel is taken from one of A. Houseman's poems that deals with the fleetingness and at the same time the resilience of human life. Here it is the life of an Australian farming couple in the early 20th century.
The story begins with the homesteading of the young couple, and at first one has the feeling of being faced with another pioneering venture in the wilds Willa Cather's "My Antonia" might come to mind. But after a while one senses a very different trajectory. Stan and Amy Parker are a loving, hard working, robust, and reliable couple--and yet, the more we get to know them, the more we sense the unavoidable loneliness and lack of understanding that surrounds and separates them from each other, from the reality around them, and from a longed-for sense of what their life might actually be about.
This loneliness also seems to be the fate of their children the prim and prissy Thelma and the good-for-nothing Ray and all of the other characters that transcend the shallowness of middle class Australia, usually the poor, the disadvantaged, and often the mentally retarded. Stan, the true hero of the novel, is the character most directly in search of that meaning, that answer to the mystery of life and reality.
His search is one of simplicity, stillness, and humility, a groping, not an intellectual endeavor. Neither marriage, nor family life, nor moderate farming success, nor old age seem to get him closer to this ever elusive goal. One of my favorite passages late in the novel arises from his sudden desire to go to Sunday church service, accompanied by his wife and grown-up daughter, who are shamed into it. The description of how these three so very different human beings use this church service to search for any sort of grace, belief, deeper meaning, resolution, or at least a momentary fulfillment of sorts is both deeply moving and tragicomic.
In the end, none of the searchers--and there are several others of very different caliber and determination--is given the secret code by which to read the meanings of their fates, families, friends, or neighbors. And yet, this is not a gloomy, existentialist novel because the intensely felt lack of ultimate understanding is at the same time experienced as the recognition of such a meaning's necessary existence, just as some desires are so intense that they foreshadow, vouchsafe their fulfillment. It might be worthwhile noting, that White, whose own excursions into established religions proved futile for him, describes in Stan Parker at least part of the religious quest that he himself pursued all his life without assuming any assurance of success.
Took a chance on this novel when, over the course of a week, I came across repeated comments here and there regarding its excellence, beauty, and brilliant invention. Started reading, got bored quickly, stuck it out until the babies started arriving in part two, and let it go.
There was one emotional highlight in part one, when a cow died. But then it quickly returned to the reading equivalent of watching paint dry. The characters all seem very pale, and they don't remind me of any human experience or emotion I've come across after several decades in this world. They are complete ciphers. The supporting cast melt into one shady mess very quickly.
Some of them seem mildly interesting until you figure out they are firmly cast and don't expand their narrow repertoire over repeated appearances. Some word choices and combinations are truly awesome. However, to make up for that, some annoying, distracting mannerisms in the construction of sentences and emphatic repetitions almost immediately after something has been stated or described, take the breath out of the reader's attention.
Some of passages I somewhat enjoyed reminded me a little of Shirley Hazzard's writing, but she was far superior even on a bad day. This one goes into the free neighborhood library. Maybe some else will love it. One person found this helpful. Patrick White is one of those rare writers - Well, the only other one that comes to mind is Halldor Laxness - who is able to create great literature out of the seemingly mundane.
How he accomplishes this feat is not a simple matter to explain in a review, but it has, in part, to do with what White describes here as the "mysticism of objects, of which some people are initiates. I would be quite correct, just as correct as I would be in reviewing Laxness' book, Independent People, as a story about sheep. But I would be leaving out, well, thunderbolts like this: Dreams broke from windows.
And cats lifted the lid off all politeness. But, more importantly, I would be omitting what perhaps can't be included, the deep sense of wonder imbued in the sinews of the work. It makes all modern novels with blurbs such as "ends by exposing the dark forces at play within the heart of man" and such like ring hollow and trite. All forces of the heart, dark and light, are at play throughout the book, from first page to last, but the reader has to let these forces slowly seep into his or her own heart and mind.
Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White
In any case, when speaking of scale, physical length is less important than breadth of implication. White concentrates on a small group of people living on the outskirts of Sydney after WW2, but makes them seem emblematic of the entire continent. There is also a wide range of origin and social class; the characters include the last survivor of a once-rich aristocratic family, a German Jewish professor fleeing the Holocaust, a poor washerwoman who emigrated from England as a child, and a half-aboriginal painter. Since each character is given almost pages of back-story, the novel is by no means confined in place or period either; the section set in Germany between the wars can hold its own with the best Holocaust writing anywhere, with particular insights into Jewish social, intellectual, and spiritual life.
But the most important aspect of the book's scale is the feeling held by each of the four major characters that the universe is an immensely greater place than anything they may see around them. White has the great gift of loving his characters. Each of the four is something of an outcast. Miss Hare, the faded aristocrat, is clearly mad; Himmelfarb, the professor, now chooses to work in a menial job, without possessions or other signs of status; Mrs.
Godbold, the washerwoman, lives with her many daughters in a tumble-down shack; Alf Dubbo, the half-caste painter, works by day as a janitor and is given to fits of drunkenness. And yet White writes so convincingly through the eyes of each that we do more than feel sympathy for them; we begin to see the others around them as impoverished of spirit, living only partial lives. White is brilliant in creating a gallery of semi-comic secondary characters -- some bad, some well-meaning, some merely lacking in imagination -- to set off the qualities of his principal quartet, but even these have dimension and are far from caricatures.
One of the curious aspects of the book is that the four characters hardly ever meet, although they recognize an immediate kinship when they do. For all four are religious visionaries. Their visions may occur only once or twice in their lives, but the image is the same for each: I can think of few books that are so successful at portraying the mystical dimension while being so firmly rooted in the mundane. This is clearly a religious book, but not at all a sectarian one.
It is White's strength that he endows his visionaries with everyday failings, and gives each a very different religious background.
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Miss Hare's religion, if she has one, is a pantheism rooted in the plants and animals on her moldering estate. Himmelfarb has returned to Judaism only after years of secular life, and considers himself morally unworthy. Godbold is a staunch evangelical, but her religion shows more in her practical kindnesses to others than in any doctrinal fundamentalism. And Alf Dubbo, though raised by a preacher and especially inspired by religious subjects, is dissolute and virtually autistic in his day to day life. A fourth quality that I might have mentioned is Style. White's writing, as I say, is easy to read, but very varied and always appropriate to the tone of the moment.
While he can neatly skewer the social pretensions of the Rosetrees the employers of Himmelfarb and Alf , he can also shift to the kind of description that portrays everyday things as symbolic of eternal conflicts or reflections of the infinite. Such mastery of style is essential because, as loners, his characters cannot interact much together in terms of everyday plot, and in narrative terms the concluding section of the book is less compelling than the long set-up.
But where the characters do meet is in their common vision, their unspoken sense of rightness, and it is precisely in White's evocative language that this sounds, resonates, and resounds. Stunning, magnificent, and surging with the beauty of life! White concentrates on a small g The Visionaries What makes a great novel? White concentrates on a small group of people living on the outskirts of Sydney after WW2, but makes them seem emblematic of the entire continent.
There is also a wide range of origin and social class; the characters include the last survivor of a once-rich aristocratic family, a German Jewish professor fleeing the Holocaust, a poor washerwoman who emigrated from England as a child, and a half-aboriginal painter. Since each character is given almost pages of back-story, the novel is by no means confined in place or period either; the section set in Germany between the wars can hold its own with the best Holocaust writing anywhere, with particular insights into Jewish social, intellectual, and spiritual life.
But the most important aspect of the book's scale is the feeling held by each of the four major characters that the universe is an immensely greater place than anything they may see around them. White has the great gift of loving his characters. Each of the four is something of an outcast. Miss Hare, the faded aristocrat, is clearly mad; Himmelfarb, the professor, now chooses to work in a menial job, without possessions or other signs of status; Mrs.
Godbold, the washerwoman, lives with her many daughters in a tumbledown shack; Alf Dubbo, the half-caste painter, works by day as a janitor and is given to fits of drunkenness. And yet White writes so convincingly through the eyes of each that we do more than feel sympathy for them; we begin to see the others around them as impoverished of spirit, living only partial lives. White is brilliant in creating a gallery of semi-comic secondary characters—some bad, some well-meaning, some merely lacking in imagination—to set off the qualities of his principal quartet, but even these have dimension and are far from caricatures.
One of the curious aspects of the book is that the four characters hardly ever meet, although they recognize an immediate kinship when they do. For all four are religious visionaries. Their visions may occur only once or twice in their lives, but the image is the same for each: I can think of few books that are so successful at portraying the mystical dimension while being so firmly rooted in the mundane.
This is clearly a religious book, but not at all a sectarian one. It is White's strength that he endows his visionaries with everyday failings, and gives each a very different religious background. Miss Hare's religion, if she has one, is a pantheism rooted in the plants and animals on her moldering estate.
Himmelfarb has returned to Judaism only after years of secular life, and considers himself morally unworthy. Godbold is a staunch evangelical, but her religion shows more in her practical kindnesses to others than in any doctrinal fundamentalism. And Alf Dubbo, though raised by a preacher and especially inspired by religious subjects, is dissolute and virtually autistic in his day to day life.
A fourth quality that I might have mentioned is Style. White's writing, as I say, is easy to read, but very varied and always appropriate to the tone of the moment. While he can neatly skewer the social pretensions of the Rosetrees the employers of Himmelfarb and Alf , he can also shift to the kind of description that portrays everyday things as symbolic of eternal conflicts or reflections of the infinite.
His descriptions of Alf Dubbo's paintings, for example, are equaled by no author I can think of except perhaps Chaim Potok in My Name Is Asher Lev , in their ability to convey a truly incandescent artistic vision. Such mastery of style is essential because, as loners, his characters cannot interact much together in terms of everyday plot, and in narrative terms the concluding section of the book is less compelling than the long set-up. But where the characters do meet is in their common vision, their unspoken sense of rightness, and it is precisely in White's evocative language that this sounds, resonates, resounds.
Riders in the Chariot
View all 22 comments. And the local bus system is sadly lacking Sep 11, Roger Brunyate Love to hear that about the Luddites, Fergus! Sep 06, Eddie Watkins rated it really liked it Shelves: The more I read the more Patrick White seemed like an inspired eccentric rather than a Nobel Laureate.
I prefer inspired eccentrics to Nobel Laureates, but then Patrick White proves that one can be both. This is a book about the burdens and dangers of being a visionary; the Chariot of the title coming from Ezekiel and representing a palpable vision of a higher order of reality.
The four main characters have all had their own particular visions of the Chariot, the four roughly representing four di The more I read the more Patrick White seemed like an inspired eccentric rather than a Nobel Laureate. The four main characters have all had their own particular visions of the Chariot, the four roughly representing four different pathways to the divine.
One is an eccentric old maid nature mystic living alone in a crumbling estate, another is a German Jew whose parents arranged for his escape from the evil that soon killed them and who connects with the divine through Cabala, one is a half-aborigine outcast who gets there through oil painting, while the last is an old washerwoman who abides in the higher orders through humility. His naturally ornery nature is rarely obscured by objectivity, throbbing with spleen that only reaches the comic at its outer limits, the bulk of it being a smoking disgust only slightly tempered by his gentility.
His eccentricity also flowers in the structure of the book. The present tense gets oddly short shrift, and characters who aren't provided with back stories have no chance against White's stinging portrayal of them. While reading I kept imagining large paintings that, say, have an irresistibly attention-grabbing, obsessively detailed section in the bottom left, while the center of the canvas is rendered in loose non-specific strokes; this juxtaposition causing eye cramps and brain discomfort as you move back and forth between them.
This effect left me uncertain how to proceed at times, as I went from prose that demanded undivided attention to prose that almost begged to be skimmed. Mahler's symphonies also came to mind for similar reasons. The overall plot itself is a well-handled religious allegory roughly mirroring the life of Christ that only rarely becomes heavy-handed. It is also a portrayal of the old notion that there are at any one time on Earth a very limited number of wise souls who are responsible for the salvation of the world by propogating that wisdom, but wedded to this arefied idea is the notion of the artist as filling this role also.
This book will appeal to outsiders, to people who feel generally at odds with the times and their environment, but who are substantial and significant in and of themselves; or just to someone who seethes with hate at what they say but who still harbors some vision of goodness. Oddly, I lost this book just before I finished it, and just as everything in the book was falling apart - main characters dying, the mansion crumbling, paintings being thoughtlessly sold off - and just as I was wondering if there would be a Resurrection in keeping with the overall Christ-allegory.
Losing the book dashed my hopes for any positive outcome in the novel, and besides being pissed I got a bit depressed. But the next day after fruitlessly checking the library lost and found and the various help desks, I went to the chair where I had been sitting the day before, and there was the book!
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And even though the low-keyed joy that the "resurrection" of my copy brought me wasn't exactly paralleled in the book itself, the coincidence somehow injected an optimism into my reading experience. View all 9 comments. Apr 16, BlackOxford rated it it was amazing Shelves: Don't die without reading. In order to tempt readers into Riders in the Chariot, I can think of no better strategy than simply sampling White's prose: Perhaps somebody will tell me.
And show me at the same time how to distinguish with cer Don't die without reading. And show me at the same time how to distinguish with certainty between good and evil. View all 4 comments. Apr 20, Tony rated it really liked it Shelves: Think, first, David Mitchell's interconnectivity, how we link: Miss Hare is an only child, born to some money, in Australia. She is, let's just say, a disappointment. Not pretty; not pretty at all.
And something wrong with her, too. She likes the woods, and the creatures there. She prefers it there. There it is where she meets Himmelfarb, the Jew, who has survived Auschwitz, and made it down under. He is no safer th Think, first, David Mitchell's interconnectivity, how we link: He is no safer there. An aborigine painter, of sorts, is drawn to him, fulfilling the agony of painting Christ. Ruth Joyner, a washerwoman and abused wife, stout, will heal them all while she can. This is a large canvas: Who brings the light? Who brings the sun? The Chariot of the title is a constant presence.
For each of the players, as they try to find meaning. Rarely, in Literature, is a painting so prominent. And yet, the Riders in the book title are absent from the painting. I could jabber for a long time about what that means, about the colors of heaven, the driving forces of history, the reader filling a void; but it'd just be me, well, jabbering. Instead, let me tell you that near the end of the book there is a crucifixion. It's written over the top, obvious. And no poorer for it. View all 5 comments. Jun 12, Jonfaith rated it it was amazing Shelves: Her instinct suggested, rather, that she was being dispersed, but that in so experiencing, she was entering the final ecstasy.
Walking and walking through the unresistant thorns and twigs. Ploughing through the soft opalescent remnants of night. Never actually arriving, but that was to be expected, since she had become all-pervasive: She was all but identified. Riders in the Chariot wrestles throughout its sprawling page c Her instinct suggested, rather, that she was being dispersed, but that in so experiencing, she was entering the final ecstasy.
Riders in the Chariot wrestles throughout its sprawling page course with this notion of Ascension. The core quartet of characters struggle and persevere. Their motivations and responses are hardly ideal. The craven and the petty are a common currency here. Colonial traditions wither, crack and collapse. A modern mediocrity arrives at the end of the war, along with streams of refugees and migrants. Names are nativised, genealogies whitened, decisions to emigrate are regretted and allowed to petrify in the bleak sun of the Outback.
It does force one to contemplate the nature of the Elect. I found a number of analogies with Faulkner here. Whereas the original sin of Faulkner's South was slavery, a misdeed which poisoned the history, the land and the souls of Southerners, Patrick White isn't that specific, but finds the hollow idols of postwar Australia to be sufficiently damning.
Patrick White
Many of the accursed are slain in atonement. Those that survivie maintain faith but little hope. View all 6 comments. The world is a great sum of the infinitesimally small human beings and the majority of the little souls remain unnoticed and unobserved. But in the eye of the beholder the world often turns into a thing quite different from what it may seem.
Now it was evening, and a strange one. Those objects which had appeared most solid befo The world is a great sum of the infinitesimally small human beings and the majority of the little souls remain unnoticed and unobserved. Those objects which had appeared most solid before: The well-planned establishment which he had known as Friedensdorf was enclosed in a blood-red blur, or aura, at the centre of which he lay, like a chrysalis swathed in some mysterious supernatural cocoon. Other forms, presumably, though not distinguishably human, moved on transcendental errands within the same shape, no longer that intense crimson, but expanding to a loose orange.
And the faces of the riders. I cannot begin to see the expression of the faces. Oct 16, Szplug rated it really liked it. Patrick White is an Australian writer who should be better known, and more widely read.
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Riders in the Chariot is probably my favorite novel of his, a moving and beautifully written testimony to the yearning for redemption so inherent even in these, the days of the ascension of science and rationalism. The novel takes place in White's fictional Australian city of Sarsaparilla, a locale wherein the rising tide of recent immigrants intermingle with an ofttimes suspicious and bigoted populace.
Four r Patrick White is an Australian writer who should be better known, and more widely read. Four residents of the city—an eccentric heiress, a tormented Jewish refugee from post-Nazi Europe, a big-hearted and long-suffering working class washerwoman, and an alcohol-ravaged but artistically gifted aboriginal—are united by the baleful ghosts of their past, and a shared vision of the Chariot , the redemption offered through faith by a forgiving God. Surrounded by actors motivated by pettiness, malice, ignorance and fear, the four individuals—haunted by glimpses of the Chariot and pursuing their archetypal personal salvation—come together in the final act in a lovingly-rendered testimony to human grace.
White deftly illuminates how very many of our fears and doubts are engendered by guilt—survivor's guilt, the guilt of being different, the guilt of disobedience, guilt from violence and from succumbing to the endless temptations proffered to both flesh and spirit. Yet guilt itself can be the prime motivator for the very acts of deliverance and succor that will assuage, if not our stains, then the dreadful burden of another's sin. Guided by wisdom and faith, sprinkled with lacerating barbs, populated by lost and damaged souls even amongst the wicked, White's novel renders a unique homage to the transformative power of art and the spirit.
The best review I've ever come across for this book is Eddie Watkins' , a poignant and thoughtful reflection that makes me want to proceed directly into rereading Chariots to discover anew its unique charms. Mar 23, Justin Evans rated it it was amazing Shelves: When the two tools aren't working, I can't stomach more than about 15 pages at a time.