THE MEREDITH TRILOGY | GEORGE JOHNSTON

My Brother Jack 1964

I first read this book when I was 16, it was a set book for our final year at school. George Johnston’s writing spoke to me as no book has before or since, obviously it was ‘my time’ to read and fall in love with the writing and the story. I will try to explain how and why this book is my number one favourite of all time.

It’s set in the era of World War 1 until the 1950s before my time but the characters are all people similar to those I grew up with. My mother, father, grandfather and uncles were all in various armies during World War 2 and later, and this is the era when the book is mostly set.

There have been many criticisms of the title as the book has little to do with Jack. Yes they grew up together and their early years in the dry, flat sandbelt suburbs of Melbourne form the basis for their relationship. Jack is a rough and tumble, try anything once larrikin, a genuine Aussie battler. His younger brother David, or Davy as Jack calls him is the opposite, introverted, timid with a keen eye for a story. Ultimately as he gains success he abandons what he once held dear as passé.

Somewhat autobiographical in context the narrator takes us on the hero’s journey with David from his first job as a contributor to the Melbourne paper The Argus to his illustrious career as a war correspondent. In the intervening years he marries unsuccessfully and comes to realise the value of old fashioned family ties over slick modernity for its own sake. He realises he’s lost his soul to the God of success and endeavours to find a firmer footing in life at the end of the war.

I can read and re-read some of the chapters in this book. It speaks to me in a familiar language and has been my friend for many years.

Clean Straw for Nothing 1971

I put off reading this book when it first came out. I was scared that David Meredith would be different; that the narrative wouldn’t speak to me. I was wrong.

He continues on his semi-autobiographical way while also creating single characters out of a few who come into his life. It focusses on his second marriage to the beautiful Cressida and his children and his inability to settle down after the war. He tries Sydney and London but ultimately ends up in Hydra in Greece where he writes a number of average books until he comes up with My Brother Jack which won the Miles Franklin in 1964.

This is ultimately a love story. Love of Cressida, love of writing, love of life although he makes quite a hash of his life in many ways. But fleeing to Greece and with an entourage of illustrious visitors including Leonard Cohen and Peter Finch (disguised as another character) this was the idyllic answer to his unsettled years of journalism in the big cities.  Who wouldn’t want to live on a Greek island, swim in the Aegean, each luscious seafood and drink wine, and oh yes, write for a living? But wherever we are we’re there too. We cannot escape ourselves and have to come to terms with who we are and who the people we love are and where everything fits in.

For David Meredith life has a habit of finding him when he would rather live quietly and simply. But money worries, too much alcohol, sexual dalliances and a diagnosis of tuberculosis all take their toll. His fading health towards the end of the book is poignant and creates great feelings of sorrow for him.

The book dashes backwards and forwards in time and this can take a bit of getting used to. Did this happen before or after that? But in the end it all comes together and the glorious writing and long sentences and descriptions of people, places and events all point to a fitting conclusion.

A Cartload of Clay

George Johnston died before finishing this book. It doesn’t matter as it’s a fitting end to the trilogy. He returns to Australia with Cressida and family and settles on the north shore of Sydney. His health is failing, his wife has died (suicide is never mentioned) and his days are filled with trying to walk up the street but eventually he simply sits on the seat at the bus stop, breathless and spent.

This should be sad but it’s not. It’s written with the same lovely writing, long sentences and quirky deviations to explore an off-topic scenario and I love that he was still working on it when he died.