I had imagined Kafka wakes up one morning and finds himself transported to the Australian outback in this novel by Kenneth Cook. How wouWake In Fright
I had imagined Kafka wakes up one morning and finds himself transported to the Australian outback in this novel by Kenneth Cook. How would Kafka handle the change from his gloomy overcast world to the heat and blazing sunlight of this outback isolation Hell? "Sweat, dust and beer... there's nothing else out here mate!"
It is not Hell at all to the characters who inhabit this place, it is heaven. The space, the light, the freedom to be yourself. No one judges anyone.
One of the main key elements of this story is the wonderful contrast of the wild, rough, exuberant, hard drinking characters who live in this environment, and who to a man, not forgetting a young woman, express an unconscious boundless generosity which is natural in the outback. This beautiful contrast is the most powerful element in the book for me. These seemingly contrary traits bewilder the reserved young Englishman who finds himself in desperate straits out there in this strange hell of a landscape. John Grant is bonded for several years to be the school teacher in Tiboonda, which consists of a hotel where he boards, a one room schoolhouse where he is the teacher, and a railway siding with no shade for a station platform. John Grant's nightmare begins when he tries to get back to Sydney for the six weeks Christmas school holidays. No spoilers here. I hope this has prompted you to want to read this book, a novella, at 143 pages. And to see the film, if for the landscape alone.
The book was pretty faithfully adapted to the film version in the early 'seventies and bombed at the box-office at that time, when Australia was trying to reflect a more sophisticated National image in a time of great social change. I remember seeing it at the cinema and loved it. I didn't read the book until many years later.
There is an interesting story to the film, which is now considered a classic, I think a masterpiece. After its initial release, the film disappeared and was forgotten. For years a hunt was on to track down a print of the film. From memory I think the cans of the film were stored in England for some years, then sent to the U.S. where they languished in storage until a single print of the film was discovered, not in good condition, and was marked to be disposed of. The print was brought back to the Australian National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra. There has been a magnificent restoration job. I couldn't believe the sharpness and clarity of the restored film. It would have been an unthinkable loss to Australian film history and our cultural heritage if this film had been lost....more