Frank Moorhouse
Encyclopedia
Frank Moorhouse is an acclaimed Australian writer with a growing international reputation. He has won major Australian national prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing.

His work has been published in the UK, France and US and also translated into German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Serbian, and Swedish. His novels have been likened to those of Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 and praised for their humour and intellectual insight. He has recently concluded his League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

 fiction trilogy – the ‘Edith novels’ which trace the strange, convoluted life of a young woman who enters the world of diplomacy in the 1920s through to her involvement in the newly formed International Atomic Energy Agency after World War II.

Biography

Moorhouse was born in Nowra
Nowra, New South Wales
Nowra is a city in the South Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. Located SSW and approximately by road south of the state capital of Sydney, it has an estimated population together with its twin-town of Bomaderry of 34,479. It is also the seat and commercial centre of the City of Shoalhaven...

, New South Wales, Australia, to a father of British ethnicity and a mother who was a third-generation Australian of British convict descent. His father was an inventor of agricultural machinery and together with his wife established a factory in Nowra to manufacture machinery for the dairying industry. Moorhouse was a constant reader from an early age and decided to be a writer after reading Alice in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...

 while bed-ridden for months from a serious accident at the age 12 -- ‘After experiencing the magic of this book I wanted to be the magician who made the magic.’

Moorehouse's infant and primary schooling was at Nowra Central and his secondary schooling at Wollongong Secondary Junior Technical (WSJT) High School to the Intermediate Certificate, and Nowra High, to Leaving Certificate. His military service includes army school cadets for two years at WSJT including signals specialist course and cadet officer course. He completed his compulsory national military service of three months basic training and three years part-time in the Reserve Army (infantry) in the University of Sydney Regiment and in the Riverina Regiment, Wagga Wagga (1957–1960). He studied units of undergraduate political science, Australian history, English, and journalism – law, history and practice, at the University of Queensland
University of Queensland
The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in state of Queensland, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest university in Queensland and the fifth oldest in the nation...

 as an external student while working as a cadet newspaper journalist in Sydney and as journalist in Wagga Wagga, without taking a degree.

Moorhouse married his high school girl friend, Wendy Halloway (1959) but they separated four years later and had no children. Since then he has led a sometimes turbulent bisexual life shaped by his own androgyny some of which is chronicled in his book Martini: a Memoir (Random House 2001). Moorhouse currently lives alone in Potts Point, Sydney. Early in his career he committed himself to a philosophy of personal candour stating that there was no question a person could ask of him to which he would not try to give an honest answer. In his public commentary he has questioned the notion of separation of public and private life and the concept of privacy.

Throughout his life he frequently goes alone on eight-day, map-and-compass, off-trail treks into wilderness areas. He is also a gourmand. He once said that he was a member of a think tank called Wining and Dining.

During the researching and writing of his League of Nations novels – the ‘Edith Trilogy’ (1989–2011) he lived in Geneva, various parts of France, Washington DC, Cambridge, and Canberra.

His parents are dead and he has two older brothers, Owen and Arthur.

Career

After leaving school, Moorhouse began as a copy boy and then trained as a cadet journalist on the Brian Penton’s legendary Sydney Daily Telegraph (1955–1957). He then worked as a reporter and editor on country newspapers during the years 1958-1962 (Wagga Wagga Advertiser as a reporter, Riverina Express as reporter, and Lockhart Review as editor.

He returned to Sydney to become an administrator and tutor in media studies for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and later became editor of the WEA magazine The Highway (1963–1965). He worked as a trade union organiser for the Australian Journalists’ Association and as part-time editor of The Australian Worker newspaper of the AWU – a union covering shearers, drovers, and other rural workers – the oldest trade union newspaper in Australia (1964). In 1966 he was briefly editor of the country newspaper The Boorowa News.

At eighteen, he published his first short story, The Young Girl and the American Sailor, in Southerly
Southerly (journal)
Southerly is an Australian literary magazine, established in the 1930s. It is currently published in hardcopy and online three times a year, and carries fiction and poetry by established and new authors as well as reviews and critical essays...

 magazine and this was followed by publication of early stories in Meanjin, Overland, Quadrant, Westerly and other Australian literary magazines.

Frank Moorhouse became a full-time fiction writer during the seventies also writing essays, short stories, journalism, and film, radio, and tv scripts. In his early career he developed a narrative structure which he has described as the 'discontinuous narrative'.

Moorhouse has also written and lectured on the way communication and the control of communication has been developing and the relationship of creative professionals to the economy and to the political system. He has been active in the defence of freedom of expression and in analysis of the issues affecting it and in the 1970s was arrested and prosecuted on a couple of occasions while campaigning against censorship. He has been a chairman and a director and one of the founding group of the Australia Copyright Agency (CAL)
Copyright Agency Ltd
Copyright Agency Ltd is an Australian company incorporated under the Corporations Code for the purpose of providing institutions, especially educational institutions the use of copyright material, in print or electronic form....

 which was set-up by the publishers and authors to coordinate the use of copyright and which is now distributes millions of dollars annually to Australian writers. He has been a president of the Australian Society of Authors
Australian Society of Authors
The Australian Society of Authors is the peak body representing Australia's literary creators and is the major advocate for the rights and remuneration of authors in Australia...

 and member of the Australian Press Council
Australian Press Council
The Australian Press Council is the self-regulatory body of the Australian print media. It was established in 1976 and is a private organisation. Its aims are to help preserve the traditional freedom of the press within Australia and to ensure that the free press acts responsibly and ethically...

. He was also an organiser for the Australian Journalists’ Association.

Moorhouse was appointed a member of the SYDNEY PEN eminent writers’ panel in 2005.

He has participated in Australian and overseas conferences in arts, communication and related areas and has taught, been a guest lecturer and writer-in-residence at Australian and overseas universities.

Awards

  • The writer in a time of terror appearing in Griffith Review
    Griffith Review
    The Griffith Review is a quarterly publication featuring essays, reportage, memoir, fiction, poetry and artwork from established and emerging writers and artists. Each edition of the Review is developed around a contemporary theme enabling the issues to be aired and discussed and to put the debate...

     Edition 14: The Trouble With Paradise (2007) won the Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate in the Victorian Premier's Literary Award
    Victorian Premier's Literary Award
    The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Governmentwith the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry....

     and the award for Social Equity Journalism in The Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism
  • Dark Palace
    Dark Palace
    Dark Palace is a 2000 Miles Franklin literary award winning novel by the Australian author Frank Moorhouse. It forms the second part of the author's Palais de Nations series, following Grand Days in 1993.-Reviews:*"API Review of Books"...

     (2000) won the Miles Franklin Award
    Miles Franklin Award
    The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...

    .
  • Grand Days (1994) won the Adelaide Festival National Prize for Fiction
  • Forty-Seventeen (1988) which won The Age Book of the Year Award
    The Age Book of the Year
    The Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...

     and the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal.
  • The Electrical Experience (1975) won the National Award for Fiction.

Short stories (or 'discontinuous narratives')

  • The Everlasting Secret Family (1980)
  • Tales of Mystery and Romance (1977)
  • The Electrical Experience (1974)
  • The Americans, Baby (1972)
  • Futility and Other Animals (1969)

Novels and novellas

  • Boysie (a novella, no publication date yet) [under contract to Random House] - an erotic excursion
  • Cold Light (2011) [Random House] -- companion novel to Grand Days and Dark Palace
  • Dark Palace
    Dark Palace
    Dark Palace is a 2000 Miles Franklin literary award winning novel by the Australian author Frank Moorhouse. It forms the second part of the author's Palais de Nations series, following Grand Days in 1993.-Reviews:*"API Review of Books"...

     (2000)
  • Grand Days (1993)
  • Forty-Seventeen (1988)
  • Conference-ville (a novella, 1976)

Humour and memoir

  • Martini: A Memoir
    Martini: A Memoir
    Martini: A Memoir is a book by the Australian writer Frank Moorhouse. Part autobiography, part history of the martini, the book's minimal plot involves deep conversations about the cocktail between the author and his martini-obsessed friend, V.I...

     (2005)
  • Inspector-General of Misconception: Despatches from the Office (2002)
  • Loose Living (1995)
  • Late Shows (1990)
  • Room Service (1985)

Anthologies edited

  • Best Australian Stories (2004 and 2005)
  • Days of Wine and Rage (1980)
  • The State of the Art
  • Fictions 88
  • Coast to Coast (1973)

Short films

  • The American Poet's Visit (1969)
  • The Girl from the Family of Man (1970)
  • The Machine Gun (1971).

Feature films

  • The American Poet's Visit (1969)
  • The Girl from the Family of Man (1970)
  • The Machine Gun (1971)
  • Between Wars
    Between Wars
    Between Wars is an Australian 1974 drama/war film released on 15 November 1974. It was directed by Michael Thornhill and written by Frank Moorhouse.-Awards:...

     (1974)
  • The Girl Who Met Simone de Beauvoir in Paris (1980)
  • The Coca-Cola Kid
    The Coca-Cola Kid
    The Coca Cola Kid is a romantic comedy Australian film, released in 1985. It was directed by Dušan Makavejev and starred Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi. The film is based on short stories in The Americans, Baby, and The Electrical Experience by Frank Moorhouse, who wrote the screenplay...

     (1985)
  • The Ever-Lasting Secret Family (1988)

Opinions of his work

'In Australian writing, Moorhouse stands apart...'
Le Monde, Paris [Date is being located]

'I doubt whether Frank Moorhouse, whose reputation in Australia has been built on his witty reporting of life among city-dwelling professionals and conference-goers, would expect to find himself likened to Henry James. Yet James's complicated explorations of American innocents (supposed) and their European corrupters (assumed) is strongly brought to mind in Moorhouse's duo of novels about the interwar activities of the League of Nations, of which Dark Palace is the concluding part.'
Peter Porter the Guardian (UK), 9 April 2002

'The chair incident is a minor but emblematic moment in Grand Days, the first volume in the League-based Palais des Nations series produced by Australian writer, Frank Moorhouse. It would be a striking novel set in any period, well-written and peopled with engaging characters, but Moorhouse's choice of time frame makes Grand Days especially poignant; the hopes and idealism expressed in Geneva in the 1920s are shadowed by the reader's knowledge that the League of Nations is destined to be a noble failure.

'There is, in short, much of Henry James in this novel-the emphasis on the complexities of social interaction, on the overlooked details of life, on the clash of manners and cultures. Moorhouse, naturally, is more modern than James - one of Edith Berry Campbell's great friends is transsexual - but also more arch, giving Grand Days a humour and drollery absent from most of the master's work'

'Like James, too, Moorhouse isn't overly concerned with surface plot. When Edith, early in the novel, accepts the gift of a revolver from an odd American named Col. Strongbow, the reader expects the gun to reappear at some point; it never does, though, for few of the charged, apparently significant incidents in Grand Days have external consequences.’
Chris Goodrich, Los Angeles Times, 5 June 1994

' "Let us drink to the discipline of indiscipline which must guide us all in every action." The hero announces near the start of Frank Moorhouse's wry, elliptical, funny and sad novel which like a casual outfit from a couture house, is constructed with the art that conceals art—a veritable model of dishevelled elegance.

'...In between these affirmations of rigorous flexibilities a novel crammed with ideas, constructed in brief chapters crafted as finely as if they were individual short stories, threaded together with verbal echoes and emotional resonances...'

'...an utterly distinctive voice—discursive, sexy, furiously sceptical, literate, desperately romantic, rude.'

'...Comparisons with Milan Kundera are not out of place, although Mr Moorhouse's female characters are far more credible...his effect is unexpected, exhilarating, disorienting, sometimes hilarious...He makes you laugh, and think.'

Angela Carter, New York Times (Forty-Seventeen), full page 3 review. [Date is being located]

'Unlike many male writers Moorhouse is at ease writing about the way people understand and express themselves sexually...this is a stunning collection...Most of all; it's a terrific read...'
Delys Bird, Australian Book Review (Forty-Seventeen) [Date is being located]

'Monstrous, pathetic and hilarious...he creates admirable female characters...'
Elizabeth Ward Washington Post (Forty-Seventeen) [Date is being located]

'with the skill of his writing and the shrewdness of his observations about human behaviour, but by his ability to fictionalize records which might otherwise be too painful to read. Making what he writes about acceptable in this way he extends enormously the range of human behaviour we are able to contemplate with equanimity, humour and compassion.'
Gay Raines, Australian Studies. (Forty-Seventeen) [Date is being located]

'...an irreducibly rich, sustained and complex work of the imagination...showing the quiet mark of genius...Throughout, the gems of the book stem from delight. Delight in words, in sensations, in work, in love.'
Natasha Walter, The Independent, London 11 September 1993

'..chief among the many pleasures of this wonderful novel is the satisfaction of feeling that while you are, at every turn, reminded of why you liked reading in the past, you are never for a moment not reading about the present...you won't have performed better as a reader since you read Middlemarch.'
Howard Jacobson, Sunday Times, 12 September 1993.

'...combines meticulous research with imaginative bravura to transform what he calls "a trunk in the attic of history" into an exuberant novel...it says a lot for Frank Moorhouse's capacity as a story-teller that Grand Days doesn't feel as long as it actually is (over 500 pages).'
Lucasta Miller, London Sunday Telegraph, 26 September 1993.

'Frank Moorhouse has opted for the blend of historical and fictional characters which turns the novel into an epic docudrama.'
Nicola Walker, Times Literary Supplement, 24 September 1993

'This is a big, luminous, affectionate and beautifully managed novel. It shows Frank Moorhouse passing from days of wine and rage to his own grand days.'
Brian Matthews, London Sunday Independent, 26 September 1993

Grand Days is easily the most original novel I've read this year both in subject matter...and in style...'
Margaret Forster, London Telegraph Books of The Year, 12 December 1993.

'...worth not reading, but re-reading.'
Natasha Walter, Independent, Writers look back on Highlights of 1993, 4 December 1993.

'...Grand Days is a celebration of the novel as a form, for its inclusiveness and its contingent truths, as well as the requirements that we surrender to its telling...Contemporary fiction must relearn how to propose and leap into embodying its proposal. This novel does both beautifully, challenging us to listen with complete, rapt attention to Edith as she storms into life through these many pages. Whether we accept her word or warm to her self-appraisal is unimportant because we have been implicated in her singularity...It is a rich and enriching novel, out of its time but vital to it, whose writing is an act of inspiration..’
Guy Mannes-Abbott, The Guardian, 28 December 1993.

'...Moorhouse has enormous gifts—he is our funniest writer and our finest connoisseur of the comedy of manners.'
Peter Goldsworthy, The Adelaide Review. [Date is being located]

External links

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