The Man in the Silo and other stories by EO Schlunke (1955)

What a fine surprise. I had a set of possible expectations of this where one of the major likelihoods was that it would be aged and uninspiring. It has proved me wrong, resoundingly. This large set of short stories is typified by a rueful quality, a sourly wise sense of humour. And what they also sport is a low-key poetics; almost noirish. Schlunke had been well known for a while in Australia by the time this was published, mainly for his stories published in the Bulletin magazine, and also a couple of serialized novels which never made it into book form. He was the chronicler of the countryside, not in its salt-of-the-earth guise, but instead with a full wily realisation of the scheisterism and conservative malfeasance of the zone. Knowing some parts of country Australia as I do, he captures beautifully these aspects; in fact, the only one he doesn't quite go for the jugular in is that of the difference between what holier-than-thou farmers professed in their churches on Sunday, and what they got up to every other day of the week! These sins are obviously not only the province of the country, but, given the wholesale absence of truthful record in current times of any darknesses in Australia's literature of country life (it's a neverending story of romance and "the best people in the world") this book is ever the more crucial and valuable. And it is 1950s, ultra-white, breadth-blind country Australia with which it deals - humorously! What a blessed thing! These stories of villainous salesmen, creepy real estate agents, uptight moralist farmers and lazy exceptions to the rule, the conned and misled, suspicious incomers of a doubtful marque, bemused Italian prisoners of war lost in this lack of perspective, as well as an occasional adventure into the otherworldly and chilling, have a four-to-the-floor bite which exhilarates. The noirishness is matched by an almost Chekhovian fated sourness. If ever a book's perspective was needed in a national literature, to redress a too-rosy picturing, this is it, in Australia's here and now.