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Clive Barry

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Clive Stephen Barry
Barry in 1958
Barry in 1958
BornClive Stephen Barry
(1922-09-02)2 September 1922
Manly, Sydney, Australia
Died25 August 2003(2003-08-25) (aged 80)
Mosman, Sydney, Australia
OccupationNovelist, Playwright
NationalityAustralian
GenreBlack Humour, Absurdism, Satire
Notable works
Notable awardsGuardian Fiction Prize

Clive Barry (2 September 1922 – 25 August 2003) was an Australian author, playwright, cartoonist and escaped prisoner of war.[1][2][3] His offbeat, vividly stylised prose—characterised by deadpan wit, surreal violence and a macabre playfulness—gave him brief cult status in the 1960s.[4][5]

He won the first ever Guardian Fiction Prize for Crumb Borne[6][7]—a unique, spasmodically weird prisoner-of-war novella—likened to "swifter more sharply visual Beckett;" the literary equivalent of an expressionist cartoon laced with the strange, visceral humour of early Nabokov.[8][9]

Wilfully elusive, Barry declined to even attend his own prize ceremony, remaining in Africa—the setting for his two other books: The Spear Grinner and Fly Jamskoni. He regarded his infatuation with the Mother Continent as "a suitable reward for a dissolute life."[10]

Early Life

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Aged just seventeen[11]—but with his birth date falsified to meet the minimum enlistment age of twenty[12]—Barry joined the 2/13th Battalion to fight in World War II.[13] He became one of The Rats of Tobruk,[14] going missing in action during the famous siege, and subsequently being imprisoned by, whom he considered, the "emotional, and often brutal" Italians in campo 106.[15] He escaped two years later, slipping past his [by now] demoralised captors to traverse an eight-foot square barbed wire apron under desultory gunfire, then traipsed for four hundred miles over the Alps, malnourished; surviving on grapes and, infrequently, milk donated by peasants. He was shot in the shoulder on the French border, fled to a nunnery to have the wound tended to, then finally crossed into Switzerland for bullet extraction and skiing.[16][17][18]

Decades later, his escapology as a prisoner-of-war would re-emerge—warped absurdly—in the plot of Crumb Borne.[19]

Selected Works

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  • Tailormade (1953, radio play)
  • Key Fee (1953, radio play)
  • The Spear Grinner (1963, novella)
  • Crumb Borne (1965, novella)
  • Fly Jamskoni (1969, novella)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Wilde, William H.; Hooton, Joy; Andrews, Barry (1994), "Barry, Clive", The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780195533811.001.0001/acref-9780195533811-e-313, ISBN 978-0-19-553381-1, retrieved 22 November 2024
  2. ^ "Plays and Players". Sun. 27 February 1953. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  3. ^ "Vol. 80 No. 4131 (15 Apr 1959)". Trove. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  4. ^ "Books of the Year". Newspapers.com. 17 December 1965. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
  5. ^ "Award for elusive author". Newspapers.com. 27 November 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  6. ^ "Guardian Fiction Prize | Awards and Honors | LibraryThing". LibraryThing.com. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  7. ^ "The 55 Best Dark Humor Books To Read". Ranker. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  8. ^ Webb, W. L. (1965). "A Review of The Year's Fiction". Critical Survey. 2 (3): 182–185. ISSN 0011-1570.
  9. ^ "Crumb Borne, Robert Nye review". Newspapers.com. 25 June 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  10. ^ "Briefly". Newspapers.com. 28 November 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  11. ^ "CHRISTMAS NUMBER Vol. 72 No. 3748 (12 Dec 1951)". Trove. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  12. ^ "Enlistment standards | Australian War Memorial". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  13. ^ "Private Clive Stephen Barry". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  14. ^ "Australian Rats (A to K)" (PDF). The Rats of Tobruk Association. 16 August 2024. p. 25. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  15. ^ Anonymous (19 August 2020). "BARRY CLIVE STEPHEN | Prisoner of War Memorial Ballarat". Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  16. ^ "Vol. 7 No. 36 (8 September 1945)". Trove. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  17. ^ "Clive Stephen Barry". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  18. ^ [1] Archived 28 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine Manly Biographical
  19. ^ "Crumb Borne, Nancy Cato review". Newspapers.com. 25 September 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
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