Michael Giffin

Patrick White and God Michael Giffin

The novels of Australia's Nobel Laureate Patrick White (1912-1990) are a persistent commentary on Nietzsche's proclamation of God's death. White knew the proclamation was not about God's existence but about classical views of God. It presented him with the impossible task of using language to describe what language cannot describe. Because the announcement is often interpreted in antithetical ways: secular or religious, humanistic or fatalistic, White's readers can gain a better understanding of what he was trying to achieve by understanding the pattern of tropes he used to explore the light and dark aspects of western consciousness and the civilization it has produced. Where did the pattern come from? Was it metaphysical or metapsychological? These questions are complex as the pattern came from many sources, simultaneously and synergistically. This book tackles these questions by describing that pattern.