I only heard of Gerald Murnane recently for the first time, by reading a long New York Times Magazine profile of him. I don’t know how I ended up there, as it was written in 2018, but I’m really quite glad I did: to be frank his literature doesn’t sound very interesting to me, but he’s a top shelf eccentric and everyone knows how picky I am about eccentrics. Only the best for me! Anyway, Murnane is sort of a hermit, so he mostly just sits around the town where he lives in remote Australia, tending bar and organizing his files and playing golf. But what Gerald Murnane does do isn’t nearly as interesting as what Gerald Murnane doesn’t do:
“I become confused, or even distressed, whenever I find myself among streets or roads that are not arranged in a rectangular grid. … I have watched few films during my lifetime and hardly any in recent years. … I cannot recall having gone voluntarily into any art gallery or museum or building said to be of historic interest. I have never worn sunglasses. I have never learned to swim. I have never voluntarily immersed myself in any sea or stream. … I have never touched any button or switch or working part of any computer or fax machine or mobile telephone. I have never learned to operate any sort of camera. … In 1979 I taught myself to type using the index finger of my right hand alone. Since then, I have composed all my fiction and other writing using the finger just mentioned and one or another of my three manual typewriters.”
What he doesn’t mention, but the profile writer does, is that Murnane has also never flown on an airplane and has “barely” traveled outside the province of Victoria in Australia. My hero!
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