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Clive Barry

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Australian writer

Clive Stephen Barry
Barry in 1958Barry in 1958
BornClive Stephen Barry
(1922-09-02)2 September 1922
Manly, Sydney, Australia
Died25 August 2003(2003-08-25) (aged 80)
Mosman, Sydney, Australia
OccupationNovelist, playwright
NationalityAustralian
GenreBlack Humour, Absurdism, Satire
Notable works
Notable awardsGuardian Fiction Prize
Signature

Clive Barry (2 September 1922 – 25 August 2003) was an Australian author, playwright, cartoonist and escaped prisoner of war. His offbeat, vividly stylised prose—characterised by deadpan wit, surreal violence and a macabre playfulness—gave him brief cult status in the 1960s.

He won the first ever Guardian Fiction Prize for Crumb Borne—a unique, spasmodically weird prisoner-of-war novella—likened to "swifter more sharply visual Beckett;" the literary equivalent of an expressionist cartoon laced with the strange, visceral humour of early Nabokov.

Wilfully elusive, Barry declined to even attend his own prize ceremony, remaining in Africa—the setting for his two other books: The Spear Grinner and Fly Jamskoni. He regarded his infatuation with the Mother Continent as "a suitable reward for a dissolute life."

Early life

Aged just seventeen—but with his birth date falsified to meet the minimum enlistment age of twenty—Barry joined the 2/13th Battalion to fight in World War II. He became one of The Rats of Tobruk, going missing in action during the famous siege, and subsequently being imprisoned by, whom he considered, the "emotional, and often brutal" Italians in campo 106. He escaped two years later, slipping past his demoralised captors to traverse an eight-foot square barbed wire apron under desultory gunfire, then traipsed for four hundred miles over the Alps, malnourished; surviving on grapes and, infrequently, milk donated by peasants. He was shot in the shoulder on the French border, fled to a nunnery to have the wound tended to, then finally crossed into Switzerland for bullet extraction and skiing.

Decades later, his escapology as a prisoner-of-war would re-emerge—warped absurdly—in the plot of Crumb Borne.

Selected Works

Novels

Radio Plays

Short Stories

  • Sable Fable (1951)
  • Hamburg Reunion (1951)
  • Smooge Stooge (1952)
  • Shady Lady (1952)
  • Chalice Malice (1952)
  • Scamper-Vamper (1952)
  • Boy Blond (1953)
  • The Busker and the Mademoiselle (1953)
  • Pastel Veils (1953)
  • Frugal (1956)
  • Hyena-Bait (1958)
  • Bark Ring (1959)
  • Rhino Ground (1959)
  • Long Dry (1959)
  • Fish Bomb (1960)
  • The Ten Inch Safari (1965)
  • Two or three thousand stars did absolutely nothing (1966)

See also

References

  1. Wilde, William H.; Hooton, Joy; Andrews, Barry (1994), "Barry, Clive", The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780195533811.001.0001/acref-9780195533811-e-313, ISBN 978-0-19-553381-1, retrieved 22 November 2024
  2. "Plays and Players". Sun. 27 February 1953. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  3. "Vol. 80 No. 4131 (15 Apr 1959)". Trove. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  4. "Books of the Year". Newspapers.com. 17 December 1965. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
  5. "Award for elusive author". Newspapers.com. 27 November 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  6. "Guardian Fiction Prize | Awards and Honors | LibraryThing". LibraryThing.com. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  7. "The 55 Best Dark Humor Books To Read". Ranker. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  8. Webb, W. L. (1965). "A Review of The Year's Fiction". Critical Survey. 2 (3): 182–185. ISSN 0011-1570.
  9. "Crumb Borne, Robert Nye review". Newspapers.com. 25 June 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  10. "Briefly". Newspapers.com. 28 November 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  11. "CHRISTMAS NUMBER Vol. 72 No. 3748 (12 Dec 1951)". Trove. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  12. "Enlistment standards | Australian War Memorial". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  13. "Private Clive Stephen Barry". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  14. "Australian Rats (A to K)" (PDF). The Rats of Tobruk Association. 16 August 2024. p. 25. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  15. Anonymous (19 August 2020). "BARRY CLIVE STEPHEN | Prisoner of War Memorial Ballarat". Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  16. "Vol. 7 No. 36 (8 September 1945)". Trove. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  17. "Clive Stephen Barry". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
  18. Archived 28 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine Manly Biographical
  19. "Crumb Borne, Nancy Cato review". Newspapers.com. 25 September 1965. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
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