Storytellers, Dreamers, Rebels:: The Concept of Agency in Selected Novels by Peter Carey

Peter Carey has been discussed in academia since the 1980s. And since then these discussions revolve around postmodernism, postcolonial studies or, indeed, both at once. So, either Peter Carey has been writing the same old novel for nearly thirty years by now, or there are whole worlds in his writings that have yet to be uncovered. Since I claim the latter is the case, this thesis sets out to chart at least a few areas of these vast forgotten territories, to use a consciously colonial metaphor. The theoretical ‘vehicle’ with which the new areas are entered is agency. Which means that the thesis investigates how individual characters manage to become successful actors, or fail to do so. The thesis first provides an overview of Carey's writing (Chapter 2), then traces three typical 'Carey themes' through his entire oeuvre and shows how they are relevant for agency (Chapter 3), before discussing the concept of agency itself at some length in Chapter 4. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are close readings of My Life as a Fake, Illywhacker and Tristan Smith and investigate the novels' main characters' development in depth. The appendix contains research that would be relevant for a biographical approach to Carey's works. It explains the climate of Australian literature production in the 1970s in which Carey emerges as an author and that is relevant for his writing up to his latest works Amnesia and a Long Way from Home. It also relates a few biographical notes that are relevant for many of his works.:1. Introduction 4 2. Literary Overview of Carey’s Writing 18 3. Agency in Carey’s Writing: Three ‘Carey Themes’ 29 4. Agency 49 4.1. Important Terminology 49 4.2. Agency: A New Phenomenon? 53 4.3. The Ancient Sources of Agency 62 4.4. The Agency Game: The Sociological Concept of Agency 67 4.5. Agency, Nature, and Metaphysics 76 4.6. The Problem of Normativity 84 4.7. Getting the Moral Framework Back into the Picture 89 4.8. Getting Intrinsic Capacity Back into the Picture 95 4.9. The Whole Picture 100 5. My Life as a Fake 109 5.1. The Story 109 5.2. The Central Conflict: Apollo and Dionysus Caught in a ‘Deathlock’ 112 5.3. My Life as a Fake and the Struggle for Authenticity 125 5.4. Chubb and McCorkle Revisited: Authenticity and the Social Arena 132 5.5. Conclusion 138 6. Illywhacker 141 6.1. Lies and control 148 6.1.1. Book I 149 6.1.2. Book II 156 6.1.3. Book III 164 6.2. Compulsive Visions and Compelled Selves 171 6.2.1. The McGraths: Molly and Jack 185 6.2.2. The Young Compulsive Mistresses 190 6.3. Peter Carey’s Entrapped Dreamers 199 6.4. From the Aircraft Factory to the Museum: Baudrillard in Australia 204 6.4.1. The Three-Tiered Advance of Australia Fair 205 6.4.2. Agency in the Hyperreal Condition 214 6.4.3. Illywhacker and the Western World: Anti-Depressants 217 6.5. Final Remarks on Illywhacker 221 7. Tristan Smith 224 7.1. Tristan as Narrative Voice and as Character inside his Story 228 7.2. Tristan’s Bildung: A Study in two Mirror Phases 231 7.2.1. Initial Conceit 232 7.2.2. The Gaze of the Other 236 7.2.3. The First Mirror Stage 241 7.2.4. Interlude 246 7.2.5. The Voyage 249 7.2.6. The Second Mirror Stage 252 7.3. Tristan’s Subversiveness: “Bodies […] out of Control” 258 7.3.1. Postcolonial Approaches and External Reality 259 7.3.2. Cultural Simulation: Ghostdorps and Ghost Lights 264 7.3.3. Confronting Simulations: Tristan and Peggy 270 7.3.4. Not Escaping the Now: Felicity 275 7.3.5. Jacqui: From Self-Realisation to Escapism and Back to the Now 280 7.4. The Radical’s Conceit: Peter Carey’s Political Activists 287 8. Conclusion 292 9. Bibliography 303 10. Appendix 314 10.1. Publishing Carey: The Emergence of an Author 314 10.2. Peter Carey and the New Nationalism 320 10.3. Biographical Notes on Peter Carey’s Writing 33