McLaren, John (1986) Discontinuous autobiography : some work of Alan Marshall and Bruce Beaver. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

Abstract

Contains a review of autobiographical works of two Australian authors: Alan Marshall and Bruce Beaver. Alan Marshall’s I Can Jump Puddles is a fictionalised autobiography about childhood and the way the narrator's mind is shaped by the circumstances of the physical handicap in the country town in which he lived. It is an artist's autobiography, in that it is not just a reminiscence of childhood, but an account of how the author became the man, and therefore the writer. Bruce Beaver, a poet and novelist, in his autobiographical work provides a sequence of episodes each focussed on one figure or event which played a part in constructing the person he became. The book has three sections. The first section, "Beginnings", is a series of poems and stories in which Beaver relates incidents in his life from his earliest memories through to his attempts at suicide and his mental breakdown and consequent treatment. The second section is a single poem, entitled "The Poems" that retells the story of his youth, but concentrating on his environment rather than on experiencing self. The final section, "Bucolics", recalls episodes from adolescence when he went to work on an uncle's farm. Each section in effect is an attempt to answer the question of how he became what he is.

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