David Malouf and the Secret of Literature

ABSTRACT In three of the nine novels that David Malouf has produced to date, problems of literature are figured in important ways at the level of narrative. Practices of literary culture and scenes of reading, writing and representation feature particularly prominently in Child's Play (1982), Johnno (1975), and The Great World (1990). This article examines the configurations of the literary in these three novels. It argues that even as the literary may be evoked, referred to, and analysed in the three narratives thematically, it still retains its event-like character, its secret way of exceeding the various contexts of its production, reception, and circulation. The novels can then be read as explorations of the aesthetic, ethical, and political implications of the way the literary does not make itself completely available to understanding and analysis.