A rushed read, but well worth it. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is as tight a novel as you are likely to find anywhere. Not only do you get a thorough grounding of the state of race relations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the story of the eponymous Jimmie, but the sparse 178 pages handles Australia's approach to Federation pretty well too. A Google search might throw some light on these two cryptic sentences from the 'Publisher's Preface'.
It is very much a product of its time - it is a work whose story is told from the perspective of a black man but is written by a white man. Keneally in no way renounces the work, but acknowledges that if he were to tackle it in 2001, it would be more appropriately told through the eyes of one of the white characters.
Although Jimmie is portrayed very sympathetically - at least with as much sympathy as an axe murderer is ever going to get - it is clearly not just seen through his eyes. We definitely hear other voices and all the characters are well rounded in a literary sense. And why would Keneally even think of renouncing the book? Even though it was well received both critically and commercially, one wonders if it didn't ruffle some feathers - either in the Aboriginal community or in more conservative Australia. Though why that would be, I'm at a loss to say. There wasn't really anything new in this book - most people will not need to do searches on Google to find out about the plight of the indigenous population in Australia's modern history - but it is still worth a read to gain an insight on what appears to be the insatiable appetite of humans to pour scorn and hatred on those we percieve to be different from and beneath us.
Posted by Joe at January 13, 2004 03:38 PM