Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw (1983)

A slightly bowdlerised version of this was first published in 1947 as Tomorrow and Tomorrow, but the full version was only published in 1983, with the original title restored to it. It is one of a very small band. It comes from a time when Great National Novels were discussed, and that idea was current in terms of its achievability. This is definitely a contender for the title of the Great Australian Novel. It has an outer self set in the 2300s in a kind of super-controlled, super-fertile Australia, like the Ord region of Western Australia has spread around the outer part of the entire continent. At a 'Centre' a young man, Ren, his father, Knarf, and various other members of the local community think about this supercontrol in different ways. Ren is a bit revolutionary and wants, with a friend, to "suggest" a more liberty-driven agenda for the whole country, achieved by means of popular vote. His father is also concerned about it, but his bent is Art. He writes a novel, ostensibly about the period 400 years ago when the world went through its last big convulsions before the change which brought about this more placid, inert but peaceful society. That happens to be the period of the 1930s and 1940s. This work of Knarf's is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow's inner self. It occupies the great majority of the space, with moments spent in the 2300s as Knarf reads it to an old friend and sparring partner, both of them commenting and thinking about it. The 1930s story is set around Harry Munster, a WWI veteran, and his family of wife, two older daughters and younger son. They survive a move to the city of Sydney from a farm Harry loved, endure the Depression, cope with failed love, struggle, want, disparate politics among friends and of the country. Then WWII arrives, and having lost a lot, gained a little, bewildered, they struggle on, and are subsumed into history in a variety of ways. Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw wrote this in 1940-1942, so there comes a point where the narrative must become prospective. Here it happens eerily, with a strange section reporting a kind of plague on board a US ship in the Pacific arena, which has picked up Japanese survivors of an attack. How frightening it must have been to be writing this mid-war, and trying to predict what might happen. The Barnard Eldershaw 'what if' takes us to Japanese surrender and realignment, to further realignment where Russia is recognised to be not an ally but the enemy, and to a revolt within Australia which is led by an anti-elitist element partnering up with socialist elements, all of whom are sick of war, know it not to be an answer, and know that Australia will be further bled dry by the renewed effort expected of it in the new war on Russia. Those elements win out with a tired people, and, incredibly, they destroy Sydney, causing a mass exodus and the beginnings of a completely revolutionised new system. That skeletonised plot is extraordinary enough, but what it doesn't take account of is the magnificence of Barnard's sweeping prose. This pulses in waves of astounding, visionary and yet supremely human strength. Exactly what Eldershaw's contribution was is not clear. Apparently she usually edited, strengthened where necessary, provided alternative plot options and so on. But they were living much further apart by the time this was written; I'm not sure if the to-and-fro of ideas was a little stymied and staled by distance - she is the one who was supposed to be the more tight and concentrated of the two, but she is also an elusive mystery, a little black hole in Australian literature. I'd like to know more. The fact that this book is currently out of print is an indicator I think of where Australia's at, in terms of its national literature. This is one of its great emanations, and Marjorie Barnard in particular needs celebrating as a top-notch wordsmith, and a great figure of her nation's artistic expression.