On the Plains

The Plains is a remarkable work of literature. I picked it up after someone told me it was a good treatment of liminality, and I went in entirely blind — part of me expected an American Western, or something about the Midwest. In fact it isn’t about the United States at all; it’s a properly Australian book. The premise is that an unnamed filmmaker visits the plains of Australia hoping to make a film about them. He brings notebooks and reams of other stationery and begins recording the region’s characteristics in detail, having already done his research and read as much of the historical literature as he could — but on arriving he discovers that the people of the plains can’t agree on what the plains even mean, and they disagree with one another’s characterizations and aren’t afraid to say so. The single most interesting thread is a dispute between two artistic factions over how best to depict the plains: one holds that they’re better represented not by the land itself but by the misty horizon hanging over it, the other by images of the wildlife, especially a certain hare — and long after both factions have died out, later generations still invoke them as they compete.

Unlike the usual depiction of rural people as bumpkins, the world Murnane paints is full of serious inquiry, philosophical thought, and an unrelenting search for meaning; the plains are home to a rural aristocracy that patronizes artists, writers, and filmmakers, and our narrator seeks the patronage of one of them, though he proves ultimately unworthy. Throughout the short novella he keeps returning to his notes, but the years pass and he never makes the film; instead the plains become a reflection of himself, and of everyone who lives on them. There’s no way to present this to an outside audience through figurative work — it’s a unique experience on which there’s no consensus at all.