Patrick White

470 J.M. RElliETANZ to which we are accustomed. It is not altogether impossible to argue that the existing typescripts and proof of 'The Spectre' show a similar pattern, but Dalziel has both a sharp intelligence and the benefit of a thorough immersion in all the relevant material; her view carries authority here as elsewhere. This edition ends by providing much more pleasure and instruction than it promised. The stories themselves areenhanced by the wealth ofinformation Dalziel brings to bear on them, and by the affectionate care that she has expended in presenting them to us in the most satisfying form. If only it were possible to WTite thus of all critical editions; and if only this editor could be persuaded to work on a more significant piece of writing. Patrick White J.M. REIBETANZ David Marr. Patrick White: A Life Alfred A. Knopf 1992. 727. $37.50 David Marr, journalist and critic, writes Patrick White: A Life with more of a journalist'5 eye for factual detail and named sources than a critic's eye for the writer's vision. The biography is an elegant account of the man's life -life as event, that is. Marr's research is meticulous. He has been able, over six years' work, to amass the countless particulars that must claim their place as part of the story. He has examined and collected over 2,500 letters, and has consulted many of the individuals who knew White: Manoly Lascaris, White's companion of forty-nine years; PeggyGarlandand BettyWithycombe, White'scousins; othermembers ofthe large White family; and countless friends of White's as well. The list of acknowledgments is long and the mass of documented particulars is impressive. Yet while Marr has consulted, confirmed, and collected his sources, he has not dared to mine them, to delve beneath their surfaces - their prepared accounts of how things were. He has not dared, to use White's own metaphor, to vivisect his subject, either the man or his work. One can sympathize with his position, for White was still alive and writing, over Marrs six-year tenure as biographer; and indeed White read the completed Ufe in July 1990, just before he died, correcting errors of detail with the author. Of course White had no veto on the text, and Marr leaves us with the thought: 'He did not ask me to cut or change a line: But this is a rather perplexing note of conclusion. Is it intended to validate the account of White's life or to call it into question? One senses a naive assumption here about the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but thetruthi White has vetted all the details and therefore the job is done. One senses also the younger man'5 awe of the writer's genius, of the searing blue eyes mentioned so often in the text, and the massive rock of the fiction itself, so daunting in its proportions and power. White clearly wanted, in some sense, to oversee the biography: 'Towards the end I asked White why he had allowed anyone to write his life after saying so often and PATRICK WHITE 471 so vehemently that biographers should wait until he was dead. He replied that he was sick of the books academics had written about him and hoped a biographer might show him as a "real" person. "And I though it might be just as well to be around when that person is writing about this person.'" This statement raises many questions, but most basically whether the presence of the living subject and his intimates does not emasculate the biographer who respects and cares for his subject and indeed owes him all his authority. One wonders if six years was in the end so much time to conunit to a writer as complex as White. As the 'master's' heir, perhaps White needed an Edel, , someone to devote a life in order to achieve the life. Perhaps Marr missed his chance; once White had vetted the details of the text and then died, Marr might then have settleddown to the second part of his work, the writing of the 'real' biography - of the inner man...