David Manning Foster is an Australian novelist and scientist. He has written a range of satires on the theme of the decline of Western civilization and produced short stories, poetry, essays, and several radio plays.
David Manning Foster was born in the Blue Mountains[1] in New South Wales, Australia, to George and Hazel (née Manning) Foster, vaudeville and radio performers who had separated before his birth. He spent his early years in Katoomba, raised by his mother and maternal grandparents.[2][3] In 1950, Foster spent six months in Katoomba Hospital recovering from poliomyelitis, a disease that left him with a slight limp. His mother married a bank officer, and Foster attended high schools in Sydney (Fort Street High School), Armidale (Armidale High School), and Orange (Orange High School) as the family moved from city to country towns.[4] At Orange High, Foster began playing drums professionally in a jazz dance band.
He began to write his first novellas, later published in North South West (1973). Back in Sydney in 1972, he worked as a research officer in the Department of Medicine at the University of Sydney before abandoning science for a career as a novelist. Since then, he has supported himself and his family through various jobs as a pool attendant, musician, postman, truck driver, martial arts instructor, and trawler fisherman.[7] After the publication of North, South, West by Macmillan, Foster was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship.
Foster's first collection of novellas was well-received, and his first novel, The Pure Land (1974), won the inaugural The Age Book of the Year prize. The story is intensely autobiographical, as it traces the experiences of the young scientist Danny Harris in America and Australia. At the novel's end, Danny has abandoned science and appears to be inventing the novel in which he is a character. His grandfather, Albert Manwaring, has left his life as a photographer in Katoomba to seek success and, finally, spiritual purity in America; Danny, born in America, reverses the journey to find a pure land in Australia. The novel depicts the materialism of America and the colonial history of Australia. Another collection of stories followed this novel, Escape to Reality (1977), which pursued Foster's interest in male irresponsibility and the paradoxes of science and art. With a fellow scientist at the Australian National University, called 'D.K. Lyall' (Des Kirk), Foster published The Empathy Experiment (1977), a strange exploration of paranoia in the context of scientific experiments in empathy.[citation needed]
A 1978 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship enabled Foster to travel to Scotland to research Moonlite (1981), his acclaimed satire on colonialism, which places the experiences of Scottish islanders during the clearances of the nineteenth century in paradoxical comparison with the colonising of Australia at the same time. Plumbum (1983) uses Foster's experience in jazz bands to satirise the contemporary Western adulation of rock musicians, contrasting this enthusiasm with the various religions of Bangkok and India. The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross (1985) is a burlesque historical satire on the paradoxes of religious belief, following the picaresque adventures of Christians as they search for the philosopher's stone. Dog Rock: A Postal Pastoral (1985) offers a more benign comedy as Foster examines the trivia of an Australian country town like Bundanoon. A second Dog Rock novel, The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover (1988), continues this nostalgic view of a disappearing rural life with particular reference to the misuse of animals. In 2012, Foster published a third Dog Rock novel, Man of Letters. Testosterone (1987), inspired by a residence in Venice in 1984, uses the convention of the separated twins to satirise the cultural differences between Britain and Australia, with a third possibility represented by Italy. Among its many allusions and parodies, the novel invokes the traditions of Carnival and Carlo Goldoni's play, The Venetian Twins.[citation needed]
After the Australian Bicentennial celebrations of 1988, Foster published his satire of the state of contemporary Australia in Mates of Mars (1991). The novel follows martial arts enthusiasts travelling from Sydney to the Northern Territory and encountering spiritualism that challenges their beliefs and attitudes. The characters represent a multicultural Australia and demonstrate the novel's premise that 'Australians are not just members of the internal proletariat of...Western Christian Civilisation (a civilisation now decrepit that can never take Colonials seriously) but also, in certain key aspects, chiefly, but not exclusively, economic barbarian members of the external proletariat of the Sinic Mahayana Buddhist Civilisation, in its Westernised Japanese, Korean, and Colonial Chinese branch, on the southernmost march of that civilisation.[8]
Foster used the support of an Australian government Creative Fellowship awarded in 1991 (a 'Keating' award) to research his monumental The Glade Within the Grove (1996). Narrated by the postman of Dog Rock, D’Arcy D’Oliveres, this novel examines the destruction of the native forests of Australia and the decline of Christianity in the context of pre-Christian religious beliefs. Set mainly in the 'revolutionary' year of 1968, the novel speculates about a group of hippies who set up a commune in the south-eastern forests of Australia. The novel's accompanying poem,The Ballad of Erinungerah, claims to be the work of a child of the commune and describes the visit of the goddess Brigid and her demand that the men castrate themselves. The novel celebrates the forests in lyrical descriptions, satirises the stupidity of the communards, and translates snatches of classic texts into Australian vernacular. It is celebratory, satirical, and elegiac. Later, Foster published under his own name an essay, 'On Castration, in Heat magazine that incorporated part of the novel and argued that male sexuality is a destructive force that needs to be controlled.[9] This obsession is evident in all of Foster's work after Mates of Mars. His novel In the New Country offers a comic and despairing view of the decline of rural life in Australia, comparing it to the corresponding decline of spirituality in the Old Country of Ireland. The Land Where Stories End is a fairytale about a woodcutter in Ireland who goes on an impossible quest for spiritual purity.[citation needed]
In 2009, Foster published Sons of the Rumour, his most ambitious and original novel. Modelled on the One Thousand and One Nights structure, it changes the storyteller's role from Shahrazad to a group of men travelling through the 7th-century city of Merv. Richard Burton's Arabian Nights are transformed into Iranian days. Foster creates a comic structure for the stories with his rather Australian bickering couple, the Shah and Shahrazad. Still, the stories are imaginative adventures, sometimes puzzling, sometimes grotesque, and often wondrous. For example, 'The Mine in the Moon' imagines a world without women, where boys grow up without maternal comfort; 'The Tears of the Fish' describes an orgy and castration ritual; and 'The Gilt Felt Yurt' measures the loss of freedom in the creation of civilisation and settlement. In the stories, the Shah undergoes an education in spiritualism and sexual understanding. A final section of the novel moves to the present day, where a modern man undergoes a visionary experience in Ireland. Reviewing the story for the Australian Book Review, James Ley concluded, 'There is simply no one remotely like him in contemporary Australian fiction. He is so far ahead of everyone else that it is not funny. Except that it is weird—very, very funny.[10]
Personal life
In 1964, Foster married his Orange High School girlfriend, Robin Bowers, with whom he had three children: Samantha (b. 1968), Natalie (b. 1969), and Seth (b. 1973).[11]
In 1974, he left his wife and family to live with Gerda Busch, the singer in the Canberra jazz band where he played drums. They moved to the country town of Bundanoon, where they married and had three children: Antigone (b. 1975), Levi (b. 1976), and Zoe Foster Blake (b. 1980).[11] Foster worked as a postman at Bundanoon for many years, and his Dog Rock novels provide a comic version of the town.
The Land Where Stories End (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2002)
Sons of the Rumour (Picador, 2009)
Man of Letters (Dog Rock #3; Puncher & Wattmann, 2012)
The Contemptuary (Puncher & Wattmann, 2018)
Short Stories and Novellas
North South West: Three Novellas (Macmillan, 1973)
Escape to Reality (Macmillan, 1977) - short story collection
Hitting the Wall: Two Novellas (Penguin, 1989)
Poetry
The Fleeing Atalanta (Maximus, 1975)
The Ballad of Erinungarah (Vintage, 1997)
Sunset at Santorini (Puncher & Wattman, 2012)
Non-fiction
Studs and Nogs: Essays 1987–98 (Vintage, 1999)
A Year of Slow Food with Gerda Foster (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2002)
The Niquab and the Mumkin (Puncher & Wattman, 2014)
Related Research Articles
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951), filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.
Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.
The Postman is a post-apocalyptic dystopia science fiction novel by David Brin. It is about a man wandering the desolate Oregon countryside who finds a United States Postal Service uniform, which he puts on and then claims he is a mail carrier and federal inspector for the "Restored United States of America". His mail service and claims about the return of a central government gives hope to the people, who are threatened by a murderous, neo-feudalist militia.
Megalong Valley is part of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. It is located west of Katoomba. On its eastern side, the valley is separated from the Jamison Valley by Narrow Neck Plateau. The Shipley Plateau overlooks part of the valley.
Peter David Goldsworthy is an Australian writer and medical practitioner. He has won major awards for his short stories, poetry, novels, and opera libretti. He is known for his novels Honk If You Are Jesus, and Three Dog Night. His 1989 novel Maestro is being made into an upcoming film.
Bernard Cohen is an Australian writer, the author of five novels, a book of short stories and a children's picture book.
Stephen Dando-Collins is an Australian historical author and novelist, with books on antiquity, American, Australian, British, and French history, and the two world wars. He also writes children's novels, the first of which, Chance in a Million,, was filmed by PolyGram as Paws, starring Billy Connolly. In 2012, he started the Caesar the War Dog series of children's novels, based on the true stories of modern-day military dogs serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere, with the fifth in the series published in 2016.
Margo Lanagan is an Australian writer of short stories and young adult fiction.
Jessica Margaret Anderson was an Australian novelist and short story writer. Born in Gayndah, Anderson lived the bulk of her life in Sydney apart from a few years in London. She began her career writing short stories for newspapers and drama scripts for radio, especially adaptations of well-known novels. Embarking on her career as a novelist relatively late in life - her first novel was published when she was 47 - her early novels attracted little attention. She rose to prominence upon the publication of her fourth novel, Tirra Lirra by the River, published in 1978. Although she remains best known for this work, several of her novels have garnered high acclaim, most notably The Impersonators (1980) and Stories from the Warm Zone and Sydney Stories (1987), both of which have won awards. She won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, and has been published in Britain and the United States. Jessica Anderson died at Elizabeth Bay, New South Wales in 2010, following a stroke. She was the mother of Australian screenwriter Laura Jones, her only child.
The Pure Land is a novel written by David Foster. The novel was published in 1974, and was Foster's first. It was the winner of the first The Age Book of the Year award.
The Glade within the Grove is a 1996 novel by Australian author David Foster.
Peter Robert Corris was an Australian academic, historian, journalist and a novelist of historical and crime fiction. As crime fiction writer, he was described as "the Godfather of contemporary Australian crime-writing", particularly for his Cliff Hardy novels.
Varuna, The National Writers’ House is Australia's national residential writers' house located in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. The former home of writers Eleanor and Eric Dark, it was gifted to the Australian public through The Eleanor Dark Foundation. Due to this act of philanthropy, Varuna has become an eminent residential program for writers.
Moonlite is a 1910 bushranger film about Captain Moonlite, played by John Gavin, who also directed. It was also known as Captain Moonlite and is considered a lost film.
Martin Kevin Vaughan was an Australian stage, television and film actor and musician. He is best known for appearing in the film Phar Lap as trainer Harry Telford and the lead role in the award-winning 26-part 1976 television miniseries Power Without Glory.
Bruce Pascoe is an Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children's literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Pascoe identifies as Aboriginal. Since August 2020, he has been Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne.
Zoë Foster Blake is an Australian author, skin care founder and entrepreneur.
John Clanchy is an Australian novelist and short story writer.
Something to Do with Paying Attention is a novella excerpted from The Pale King and touted as David Foster Wallace's final work of fiction by The New Yorker. It was published by McNally Editions and distributed by Simon & Schuster on April 5, 2022.
↑ Foster, David. 'Like Spinoza the Philosopher' Toads: Australian Writers: Other Work, Other Lives. Ed. Andrew Sant. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1992. pp.72-84.
↑ 'On Castration' Heat 4 (1997) pp. 7-19. Reprinted as 'Castration' in Studs and Nogs Random House, Sydney, 1999, pp.117-129.
↑ "Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 9 March 2011. Retrieved 14 January 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) James Ley. 'A town called Merv' Australian Book Review November 2009 p.16
1 2 Lever, Susan. 'David Foster'. Australian Writers: 1950–1975. Dictionary of Literary Biography. vol. 289. pp.79-80.
Helen Daniel. 'The Alchemy of the Lie: David Foster', in her Liars: Australian New Novelists Penguin, Melbourne, 1988 pp.77–104.
Ken Gelder. 'The "Self-contradictory" Fiction of David Foster' in Aspects of Australian Fiction, edited by Alan Brissenden, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 1990 pp.149–159.
Stephen Harris. 'David Foster's Moonlite: Re-viewing History as Satirical Fable—Towards a Post-Colonial Past' Westerly 42.1 (1997) pp.71–88.
Susan Lever. David Foster: the Satirist of Australia Cambria Press, Youngstown, 2008.
Marilla North.'Postman's Knock: Is David Foster a Clever Dick—or What?' Meanjin 56.3/4 (1997) pp.686–696.
Andrew Riemer. 'Bare Breeched Brethren: the Novels of David Foster' Southerly 47.2 (1987) pp.126–144.
Narelle Shaw. 'The Postman's Grand Narrative: Postmodernism and David Foster's The Glade Within the Grove' Journal of Commonwealth Literature 34.1 (1999) pp.45–64.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
