THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH

by Thomas Keneally ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 1972

This continually surprising Australian writer utilizes a true incident -- a multiple axe-murder of a white family in Australia in 1900 by an aboriginal -- to find the spiritual fountainheads of human sociopolitical actions which are violent, bizarre and unthinkable. In this case, half-caste Jimmie Blacksmith, initiated into tribal manhood when he is symbolically swallowed by the Great Lizard, is ""educated"" by a missionary of prevailing Protestant theology where love is ""a special fire that comes down from God. . . extend[ing] itself. . . to your children and the boundaries of your land."" During Jimmie's attempts to absorb the motives and notions of the ruling whites, and after he has become disgusted with the ""vulnerability"" of his own people, he finds that white insistence on hard work, property and a white wife lead only to his being cheated and reviled. To a man despised, the idea of war comes early -- ""a sweet wide freedom -- to hate, discredit, debase as an equal."" And at the moments of the terrible murders there is a consecration: ""He felt large with royal fever, a rebirth. He was in the Lizard's gut once more."" In an agonizing flight with his half-brother and an elderly tribesman, Jimmie captures a hostage, a very ill schoolteacher, who between asthmatic gasps, articulates Jimmie's peculiar isolation and spiritual purgatory. He was ""the mighty terrorizer lost beyond repair between the Lord God of Hosts and the shrunken cosmology of his people."" A punishing, disturbing story which, like Keneally's other novels, attempts to sight beyond the blank visage of man's inhumanity ""the stains on the inner eye.

Pub Date: Aug. 4, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION