David Malouf Ransom

‘I read the Iliad every couple of years,’ David Malouf remarked in a 2010 interview (Kanowski 81). He considers the Iliad ‘the very first story we have,’ one which has ‘never been surpassed’ (Kanowski 80).
To those who identify Malouf as the preeminent practitioner of ‘a characteristic lyricism which blurs the boundaries between established literary genres’ (Nettelbeck, Provisional Maps i), his reverence for the West’s most famous war narrative may be surprising.

This paper draws on the critical approach implemented by the Partnership Studies Group (PSG, University of Udine), which applies Riane Eisler’s partnership model to literary texts and focuses on the values of caring, empathy and creativity, often stereotypically described as “feminine”, in David Malouf’s novel Ransom (2009). I will illustrate how in Ransom Malouf talks about men, violence and death while gracefully revealing a more sensitive, sensible and different approach to life, which adds a partnership dimension, tied to a Goddess figure, to Homer’s story of war, pride and grief, and goes beyond the epistemological violence of “dominator” systems. This more equitable mode of living is one of the fundamental tenets of Malouf’s work.

I read the Iliad every couple of years,' David Malouf remarked in a 2010 interview (Kanowski 81). He considers the Iliad 'the very first story we have,' one which has 'never been surpassed' (Kanowski 80). To those who identify Malouf as the preeminent practitioner of 'a characteristic lyricism which blurs the boundaries between established literary genres' (Nettelbeck, Provisional Maps i), his reverence for the West's most famous war narrative may be surprising. To other readers, who regard Homer's classic as the standard for all European literature which follows it, his fascination is understandable. While recent decades have seen a lowered appreciation, in literary criticism, of texts which deal with such fundamental human concerns as adventure and conflict, the forays into this territory by a gifted writer such as Malouf have prompted some serious reconsideration. Some reviewers, faced with Ransom, have been given occasion to revisit the epic genre and to explore its relationship to the modern novel (see for example Mendelsohn). Ransom is not the first time that Malouf has explored war. As a novelist and poet of insight and delicacy, with remarkable observational powers, he is almost bound to address war in his considerations of human lives and histories, even when 'war material. .. is not [his] primary concern' (Malouf, 'Australian Literature and War' 266). He continues to write texts which interrogate human nature in order to foster understanding, rather than to pontificate on life's meaning. Indeed, Malouf's contribution to the literary consideration of war is unique; no other author has turned their attention so thoughtfully to the question of war in so many settings, or provided such rich material.