Double agent: David Ireland and his work

Author Helen Daniel discusses how she came to read Ireland and eventually meet him. In short she believes him to be a subversive novelist and discusses this throughout her treatise on Ireland's work. Interestingly when she met him for the first time she said she was “....armed, ready for a subversive figure, devious or chameleon....” She in fact found him to be a rather unassuming individual. What she noticed, when he answered her questions, was that he was prone to question his own answers to her. With that he gave the impression of being interested in how people dealt with constant change. To me this was an interesting observation by Daniel, the fact that Ireland himself was an observer of the people around him. All of his novels for me have been written in that context as I always felt that Irelands works were about the individuals he had met and that he had written about them in a way that challenged the reader to recognise themselves and others in his writing.

Daniel then goes on to state that Ireland is one of a recent group of Australian authors who present their novels and short stories as “deliberate fabrications”. Included in this group along with Ireland are names such as Frank Moorehouse, Peter Mather, Murray Bail, Peter Carey, David Foster and Michael Wilding. These writers present their deliberate fabrications against our reality.
Ireland in a ‘Statement” to the Australian Literary Studies in vol. 8 October 1977 wrote about being influenced by the writings of Laurence Sterne and Machado de Assis. Writing of de Assis he said he felt affinity towards his “......humorous and humane pessimism, the completely disenchanted author, the economy of means, the classic point of view, the tragedy and self-betrayal the monumental indifference of the environment to the individuals welfare.....”. This statement by Ireland resonates with me as a reader of all the books discussed in this review of his work.

Each novel is reviewed with considerable depth from Ireland's first The Chantic Bird through to City of Women. Helen Daniel even discussed his play Image in the Clay and his three short stories published such as The Bronze Overcoat (1980) from the Bulletin, The Wild Colonial Boy from The national Times (1981) and Injections from The Bulletin (1981). I had no knowledge of these short stories and will now pursue them. Daniel also discusses four unpublished works called death by a Thousand Cuts, The Slow Eggs, The Survivors and The New Aristocrats. Is there a publisher with courage out there? I doubt it.
Daniel has included excellent notes and a Select Bibliography that is a very good resource for the completist such as myself. Very much a must have for anyone that has an interest in the fiction of David Ireland. https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6852430?shelf=david-ireland