Behind the Appearances: Spaces and Places in Gerald Murnane’s The Plains (1982)

Abstract

Gerald Murnane’s The Plains (1982) depicts a world in which the landscape governs both the characters’ and the readers’ perceptions. Analyzing the novel’s duplicities and peculiarities, as well as the author’s individual approach to fiction writing, the article identifies sources for the plains’ uniqueness. Murnane’s language, along with the writing process, is a bearer of the quality termed uncanniness which shapes the (un)reality of The Plains by employing contrasts and evoking the feeling of un/familiarity in the reader. Following the trope of in-betweenness, the article views the novel through the prism of liminality, treating its various components as sites of transformation. As the further analysis of both the spaces/places of the novel and the protagonist-narrator’s personal experience illustrates, the plains subvert this seemingly linear process of transformation and, opposing their occupants’ attempts to gain control, prove their own existence as the influential, yet elusive, force on the novel’s reality. In essence, the article aims to explore Murnane’s portrayal of this idiosyncratic landscape, probing the applicability of capturing or defining the plains, be it by the protagonist’s camera and senses or our theoretical tools.