Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs

April 25, 2022
Australian novelist Murnane (A Million Windows) explores memory, reading, and the craft of writing in this meditative collection of essays. In “The Breathing Author,” he describes how “one of my greatest pleasures as a writer of prose fiction has been to discover continually the endlessly varying shapes that a sentence may take.” That attention to style, as well as substance, shines throughout these pages. In “On the Road to Bendigo: Kerouac’s Australian Life,” he recounts the transformative experience of reading On the Road, calling it “a blow to the head that wipes out all memory of the recent past,” while in “Why I Write What I Write,” he explains that “After I’ve written each sentence I read it aloud. I listen to the sound of the sentence, and I don’t begin to write the next sentence unless I’m absolutely satisfied.” The most moving essay, “Stream System” starts with a depiction of two bodies of water on a map and winds through a Proustian journey into childhood and the later death of Murname’s younger brother. Fans of the author’s novels will likely get the most out of the entries that recount his inspirations and writing habits. But even readers new to his work will be entranced by these sharp thoughts.