True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey
In a 1995 Simpsons episode "Bart vs. Australia" the mischievous Bart Simpson gravely offends the Australians and is forced to travel Down Under with his family to formally apologize. As a State Department operative briefs the Simpsons by flipping through slides of Paul Hogan, Jacko (an Aussie spokesman for Energizer batteries), koalas and vegemite, he says, "As I'm sure you remember, in the late 1980s the U.S. experienced a short-lived infatuation with Australian culture. For some bizarre reason, the Aussies thought this would be a permanent thing. Of course it wasn't." In typical over-the-top Simpsons fashion, this G-man presents Australia as a country that can't think for itself--a land longing for American cultural acceptance today just as it sought British imperial approval a century ago.
Peter Carey's latest novel demolishes this line of thinking. In True History of the Kelly Gang, the famed outlaw Ned Kelly scrawls out his life story on scraps of paper and gives voice to an authentically Australian worldview. Carey's narrator-hero demonstrates that national identity springs not from the refined imaginations of those who fret over approval abroad, but from the everyday needs of the lower classes. As Walt Whitman or Mark Twain might attest, this principle could be applied to other former colonies as well.
Kelly was an Australian bushranger who became a folk hero in his 20s for defying the crown, supporting the common people, and outwitting the colonial police for nearly two years until he was caught in 1880 and executed in Melbourne. In Carey's novel inspired by this history, Kelly scribbles his own story in grammar-challenged but emotionally compelling prose.
