I heard a public radio interview with Peter Carey the other day about his
latest novel, The unusual life of Tristan Smith (1995, Knopf).
This is a post-modern novel about two "countries" and their relationship to one
another. Efica is a small place and marginal. Voorstand is large and central.
Both have a circus, but in Efica the circus is a "circus" with animals and
folks. In Voorstand, the "Sircus" has very high-paid participants but the
risks are very high. The Sircus is populated with cartoon characters and laser
lights -- very absurd. The book is about the relationship between the two,
stated explicitly on the first page.
This is definitely a world-systems novel. Carey came up with the idea for the
novel while attending a conference on Australian lit in Florida (he is an
Australian living in NY). After two days he got bored with the conference
(provicial, like Efica) and went to Disney World. There he envisioned the
characters suddenly as being real people; it was an imagined US of the future
(Voorstand).
I would like to discuss this novel with others who have read it or are
interested in it. I can see The unusual life of Tristan Smith as a good
reading for undergrads, a futuristic postmodern, postcolonial fiction on the
world-system.
Candice.Bradley@Lawrence.edu
Appleton, WI