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True
History of the Kelly Gang by
Peter Carey. University
of Queensland Press, 2000. |
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Peter
Carey won this year's prestigious Commonwealth Writers
Prize with his internationally acclaimed novel, True
History of the Kelly Gang, described by the chairman
of the judging panel as 'the ultimate Australian story'.
This was Carey's second Commonwealth Prize, the first
being for Jack Maggs, which also won the author
his third Miles Franklin Award. To 30 Oct. 2001, Carey
has won every major literary award in Australia, as well
as the Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda. In August
this year it was announced that True History had also
made the so-called 'longlist' of twenty-four works for
this year's Booker Prize will be announced in October.
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Published
in October 2000, Carey's seventh novel quickly became
one of the hits of the international publishing season,
attracting admiring reviews in the literary press and
significant sales across the English-speaking world. Carey
was profiled in general publications from Entertainment
Weekly to the Village Voice and Fortune,
and in the many interviews he gave Carey seemed particularly
proud of True History. The background information
needed by American and British provided Carey with an
opportunity to muse at some length on Kelly's place in
Australian imagination and identity-formation. 'Kelly's
far more to us than a Jesse James', Carey told a reporter
for Maclean's, 'He's more like our Thomas Jefferson'.
He also revealed that he celebrated Kelly in his downfall,
identifying this, somewhat surprisingly for Americans
obsessed with winning and winners, as an Australian trait.
'We like the defeats', Carey told the American press.
'We like the follies, the failures, the losses. These
are the things that tell us who we really are.'
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In
True History of the Kelly Gang Carey has written
the document Kelly biographers dream of, a lengthy first-person
life-history narrative. Published as thirteen 'parcels'
of text, each prefaced with the cataloguing information
an archival librarian would attach to such manuscripts,
the memoir is supposedly written for Kelly's infant daughter
so she might 'finally comprehend the injustice we poor
Irish suffered'. According to this conceit, Kelly has
learned that his lover Mary has, with money he sends her
from one of his robberies, escaped to San Francisco, where
she gives birth to their daughter. If he dies, Kelly wants
his daughter to know his story, the whole of which is
framed by a prologue and last two chapters which recount
Kelly's capture and hanging.
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