McLaren, John (1989) Regeneration through Violence: James McQueen's Hook's Mountain. (Unpublished)

Abstract

Unpublished article which focuses on literature which seeks to produce a culture based on partnership between humans and nature, and which looks at wilderness not as a resource to exploit but as a place where we can return to the sources in nature of our human cultures and conscious existence. Much of the wilderness literature arises from disgust with cities and the material culture they breed. Like the romantic poets, these writers seek in nature a renewal of a primal energy from which we have been separated by industrial capitalism, but rather than seeking this renewal through contemplation they seek an active partnership which will restore a unity of word and action they associate with the earliest societies of hunters and gatherers. In line with this subject matter, reviewed is the novel Hook’s Mountain, in which James McQueen describes the partnership of man and nature in a remote area of Tasmania where his hero, Lachlan Hook, has retreated to escape his memories of the war and his disillusion with society.

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