''Clean Straw for Nothing'' (1969) is a

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1 ...

-winning novel by Australian author George Johnston. This novel is a sequel to ''

My Brother Jack ''My Brother Jack'' is a classic 1964 Australian novel by writer George Johnston. It is part of a trilogy centering on the character of David Meredith. The other books in the trilogy are '' Clean Straw for Nothing'' and '' A Cartload of Clay'' ...

'', and is the second in the Meredith trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by Johnston.

Story outline

In real life, Johnson abandoned a conventional career in Australia in journalism, and moved to a Greek island which was a magnet at the time for artists and writers. The novel similarly tells the story of a journalist (David Meredith) who relocates to a Greek island, but fails to find the answers he seeks. Meredith's relationship with his second wife, Cressida, closely parallels Johnston's second marriage to Charmian Clift. On the eve of ''Clean Straw for Nothings publication, Clift overdosed on barbiturates in Sydney. In a posthumously-published essay, ''My Husband George'', Clift wrote: "I do believe that novelists must be free to write what they like, in any way they liked to write it (and after all who but myself had urged and nagged him into it?), but the stuff of which ''Clean Straw for Nothing'' is made is largely experience in which I, too, have shared and ... have felt differently because I am a different person..."

Critical reception

Ian Hicks, writing in ''The Canberra Times'' at time of the original publication of the novel, indicates that it is a worthy successor to ''

'': "To say that it repeats the success of ''Jack'' is to be guilty of extreme understatement; it is a magnetic book that grasps the reader's attention and holds it firmly, with no apology...As of now we have two fine novels setting before us the dilemma of the Australian search for something beyond and intrinsically better than a crushing rush for materialistic gain. What can have happened, we are being asked, to the soul of a country once so much identified by its demand for social advance and by its belief in the virtue that was mateship.""Continuing the quest for an Australian identity" by Ian Hicks, ''The Canberra Times'', 23 August 1969, p23
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Notes

The novel takes it title from the old London pub lines: "Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for tuppence. Clean straw for nothing." Kay Keavney interviewed the author for ''The Australian Women's Weekly'' at the time of its publication."From George, with sadness" by Kay Keavney, ''The Australian Women's Weekly'', 27 August 1969, p. 13

References

1969 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works William Collins, Sons books {{1960s-novel-stub Australian autobiographical novels

Story outline

Critical reception

See also

Notes

References