Two books of yearning and desire
I have never read or seen any of Hal Porter's plays. Even on Amazon they seem difficult to find. Were it not for his 1977 autobiography "The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony" that had accidentally come my way, I wouldn't even be familiar with the name. Australia is a land far away, and its mid-20th century literature seems even more nebulous.
I can't say whether Porter's works were emblematic of Australian fiction of the time, nor whether his growing up, as he described it, was in any way typical to that of other young Aussie males in the period between the two World Wars (Porter was born in 1911, died in 1984). However, his personal narrative did question some preconceived notions of Australia that I used to have, casting a different light on its Commonwealth cultural baggage, racial injustices that scar the land to this day, and the myth of its rugged machismo. It was very refreshing to read a first-hand account that seemed to have no motive other than to truthfully witness to an era, its people and social mores, from describing odd dining rituals in a lower-middle class family to writing about various unmentionable things that hot-blooded young men feel compelled to do among themselves, in the Australian outback as much as anywhere else in the world. Autobiography though it was, it felt like a thorough, well-illustrated and no-holds-barred lesson in psychology and cultural history.
Emboldened by "The Watcher", I started reading another autobiography, namely Hillary Rodham Clinton's "Living History". These are two very different books to say the least, and not only in the most obvious sense - Porter being a prolific writer and wordsmith, and Clinton a lawyer with a successful political career - circumstances conducive to two dissimilar literary styles. It's deeper than that.
Porter's life was one of lustful experimentation and unpremeditated life-altering decisions, bohemian as it were (as a side note, I wonder whether this is/was also something of a cultural attitude). Clinton's, the way she writes about herself, has been quite the opposite, with a single focus on public prominence and success in the political arena. Her writing tends to be much more factual: true to its title, it is a history book, albeit personal. We learn who said what to whom on a particular date, what diner she and her colleagues went to after a specific event... Lying behind all these facts and details (sometimes a bit dull to read through) is the singular drive toward political success and the power it affords, plus the nobility of her objectives in the grand scheme of things. On her linear path to public office, plans do get changed, life does get in the way here and there, but not for long. She's a woman who knows what she wants, and sooner rather than later she's back on track. Written at the height of her pre-Obama career (the book was published in April 2004), one remains unsure whether this was an actual autobiography, or material to be handed out together with other campaign paraphernalia. Such are memoirs of prominent politicians everywhere, but their programmatic nature doesn't necessarily diminish their value.
Hal Porter's deep insights and reminiscences were a joy to read. Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs were perhaps not as rewarding in a literary sense, but did manage to drive the intended message home. Hers is an interesting story, even if photoshopped a bit. While very different in style, both narratives are very human and thus fulfilling. Isn't that precisely what we want from an autobiography - to learn that other people, famous and accomplished at that, had also had either indigent childhood, or messy young adult sexuality, or a series of major disappointments in life, or all of the above, and yet lived to tell about it?
To a large extent autobiographies are as much about their authors as they are about their readers. We all share the same human condition.
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