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picaresque novel

Early form of the novel, usually a first-person narrative, relating the episodic adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer (Spanish, pícaro). The hero drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in an effort to survive. The genre originated in Spain and had its prototype in Mateo Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599). It appeared in various European literatures until the mid-18th century, when the growth of the realistic novel led to its decline. Because of the opportunities for satire they present, picaresque elements enriched many later novels, such as Nikolay Gogol's Dead Souls (1842), Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull (1954).

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

novel

Fictional prose narrative of considerable length and some complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. The genre encompasses a wide range of types and styles, including picaresque, epistolary, gothic, romantic, realist, and historical novels. Though forerunners of the novel appeared in a number of places, including Classical Rome and 11th-century Japan, the European novel is usually said to have begun with Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. The novel was established as a literary form in England in the 18th century through the work of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding. The typical elements of a conventional novel are plot, character, setting, narrative method and point of view, scope, and myth or symbolism. These elements have been subject to experimentation since the earliest appearance of the novel. Compare antinovel. Seealso novella; short story.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

epistolary novel

Novel in the form of a series of letters written by one or more characters. It allows the author to present the characters' thoughts without interference, convey events with dramatic immediacy, and present events from several points of view. It was one of the first novelistic forms to be developed. It was foreshadowed by Aphra Behn's poem cycle Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1683). The outstanding early example is Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740); distinguished later works include Tobias Smollett's Humphry Clinker (1771) and Pierre Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782). The genre remained popular up to the 19th century. Its reliance on subjective points of view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Peter Carey (novelist)

Peter Philip Carey (born 7 May 1943) is an Australian novelist and short story writer. He is one of only two writers, the other being J. M. Coetzee, to have won the Booker Prize twice. In May 2008 he was also nominated for the Best of the Booker Prize He has also won the Miles Franklin Award three times.

He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World. And currently, he is the executive director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.

Early life and career

Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, in 1943. His parents ran a General Motors dealership, Carey Motors. He attended Bacchus Marsh State School from 1948 to 1953, then boarded at Geelong Grammar School between 1954 and 1960 before graduating. In 1961, Carey enrolled in a science degree program at Monash University in Melbourne, majoring in Chemistry and Zoology, but cut short his study due to a car accident and a lack of interest in his studies.

In 1962, he began to work in advertising. He worked at various Melbourne advertising agencies between 1962 and 1967, and worked on campaigns for Volkswagen and Lindeman's Winery, among many others. It was his advertising work that brought him into contact with the writers Barry Oakley and Morris Lurie, who introduced him to recent European and American fiction. Carey married his first wife, Leigh Weetman in 1964.

During this time, he read widely, particularly the works of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and William Faulkner, and began his own writing in 1964. By 1968, he had written a number of unpublished manuscripts, including novels entitled Contacts, The Futility Machine and Wog, as well as a short story collection. Several of these manuscripts were accepted by a publisher, but later rejected.

In the late 1960s, he travelled through Europe and parts of the Middle East, ending up in London in 1968, where he worked in advertising once again. Returning to Australia in 1970, he continued to work in advertising in Melbourne and Sydney.

Middle career

While working in advertising, Carey wrote and published a number of short stories, in magazines and newspapers such as Meanjin and Nation Review. Most of these were published in The Fat Man In History. In 1974, he divorced Leigh Weetman and moved to Balmain in Sydney to work for Grey's Advertising Agency.

In 1976, Carey moved to Queensland and joined an 'alternative community' named Starlight in Yandina, north of Brisbane. He would write for three weeks, then spend the fourth week working in Sydney. It was during this time that he wrote most of the stories collected in War Crimes, as well as Bliss, his first published novel.

Carey started his own advertising agency in 1980, the Sydney-based McSpedden Carey Advertising Consultants, in partnership with Bani McSpedden. In 1981, he moved to Bellingen in northern New South Wales. He married theatre director Alison Summers in 1985, and some time around 1990 sold his share of McSpedden Carey and moved to New York, during the writing of The Tax Inspector. This move drew criticism from a few, who disputed Carey's right to speak from an Australian perspective while living outside the country.

Move to New York

Carey moved to New York in 1990/1991 with his wife, Alison Summers, and his son, to teach creative writing at New York University (NYU). Carey and Summers have since divorced and Carey now lives with the British-born publisher Frances Coady.

In 1998, he provoked further controversy by declining an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II after winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Jack Maggs, many believing his response to be motivated by his Australian Republican beliefs, though he cited family and personal reasons at the time. Carey later said he had asked for the meeting to be postponed, and indeed the meeting was rescheduled by the Palace.

He has been awarded three honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Australian Academy of Humanities and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards

Carey has won numerous literary awards, including:

The Booker Prize	Illywhacker, shortlisted in 1985; Oscar and Lucinda, 1988; True History of the Kelly Gang, 2001; Theft: A Love Story, longlisted in 2006. Peter Carey and J M Coetzee are the only authors to have won the Booker Prize twice.
The Miles Franklin Award	Bliss, 1981; Oscar and Lucinda, 1989; Jack Maggs, 1998; True History of the Kelly Gang, shortlisted in 2001; Theft: A Love Story, shortlisted in 2007
The Age Book of the Year Award	Illywhacker, 1985; The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, 1994; Jack Maggs, 1997
The Commonwealth Writers Prize	Jack Maggs, 1998; True History of the Kelly Gang, 2001
New South Wales Premier's Literary Award	War Crimes, 1980; Bliss, 1982
NBC Banjo Award	Bliss, 1982; Illywhacker, 1985; Oscar and Lucinda, 1989
FAW Barbara Ramsden Award	Illywhacker, 1985
Vance Palmer Prize for fiction	Illywhacker, 1986
Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award	Oscar and Lucinda, 1988
South Australia Festival Award	Oscar and Lucinda, 1990
Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel	Illywhacker, 1986
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger	True History of the Kelly Gang, 2003

Bibliography

Novels

Bliss (1981)
Illywhacker (1985)
Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
The Tax Inspector (1991)
The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994)
Jack Maggs (1997)
True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)
My Life as a Fake (2003)
Theft: A Love Story (2006)
His Illegal Self (2008)

Children's books

The Big Bazoohley (1995)

Short story collections

The Fat Man in History (1974)
War Crimes (1979)
Exotic Pleasures (1990)
Collected Stories (1994) - collects all the works from The Fat Man in History and War Crimes, as well as three previously uncollected works.