The interview that you didn't know by Julio Ramón Ribeyro with… Julio Ramón Ribeyro!

 

The interview that you didn't know by Julio Ramón Ribeyro with… Julio Ramón Ribeyro!

To remember Julio Ramón Ribeyro on the day of his birth, we publish this interrogation of himself by the author of “The Word of the Mute” as an introduction to his biography for a book that brought together texts from those attending the literary conference “Colloquio Literatura y Society”, which took place in Cusco, from July 1 to 6, 1993.

 

Interrogation of Julio Ramón Ribeyro:

 

—His full name.

—Julio Ramón Ribeyro Zúñiga.

 

-Place and date of birth.

—Lima, 1929.

 

-Home.

-I have two. One on the Barranco boardwalk and another in Monceau Park, in Paris. I live six months in each place.

 

-Civil status.

—Married, with a 25-year-old son.

 

-Occupation.

-Don't have.

 

-Profession.

—I don't have any profession.

 

—What do you do then?

—I write from time to time.

 

—What does he live on?

—From my savings and my copyrights.

 

—What does he write?

—I have published a hundred stories collected in four volumes under the title of The Word of the Mute. Three novels, ten plays and some essay books.

 

—What are they about?

—I can't tell you just like that. You should read them.

 

-I do not have time for that. What did you do while

He lived in Europe?

—I worked for ten years at the France-Presse agency as a journalist and twenty years as a diplomat in the Peruvian delegation to UNESCO.

 

—Have you ever been imprisoned?

-Never. Except once in Paris for twenty-four hours, because my residence permit had expired.

 

—Does he have any political activities?

-None. I am not registered in any party.

 

—But he will have some sympathies.

—As a young man with socialism. But currently with nothing. I'm a skeptic. I limit myself to observing.

 

—Do you know who Karl Marx is?

—At one time I tried to read it, but it bored me.

 

—What was he doing in East Berlin in 1958?

—I went to listen to the symphony orchestra's The Ninth, by Beethoven. I am a fan of classical music.

 

—Does he practice any sport or game?

—Football when I was young. He was a centre forward on my class team. Now only swimming, cycling and chess.

 

—I see him very skinny. Will he not have AIDS?

—I would know. It happens that they removed almost my entire stomach due to cancer and that's why I eat very little.

 

-One last question. What are you coming to do in Cusco?

—I have been invited to a writers' meeting.

 

-Good. Consulting his file I see that he has hidden many things from me. Who has won the national awards for novels, theater and literature twice. That he was decorated with the Order of the Sun. That he was made a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language. That his books are translated into English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, etc. But I also see that in 1954 he traveled to Warsaw to a communist-inspired youth congress. That in 1964 you signed a statement supporting the guerrillas. That in 1959 he was a professor at the University of Huamanga.

 That you are a friend of Mario Vargas Llosa and Alfonso Barrantes.

  Consequently, you goes to prison. Pass inside.

With affection,

Ruben

Tealdo, journalist to remember

 

Alfonso Tealdo, journalist to remember

Personal information

Birth

August 15, 1914

Lima , Peru

Death

July 31, 1990 (age 75)

Lima , Peru

Grave

El Ángel Cemetery

Nationality

Peruvian

Family

Parents

Catalina Simi and Humberto Tealdo

Spouse

Lourdes by Rivero Bustamante

Children

Ana Rosa, Alfonso and Gabina

Education

Educated in

Pontifical Catholic University of Peru 

Professional information

Occupation

Journalist and interviewer

Biography

He was the son of Humberto Tealdo and Catalina Simi. He studied at the old Anglo-Peruano School, now Colegio San Andrés de Lima, from which he graduated, obtaining the Bentinck Prize in 1932. Since his school years, he demonstrated his skills by writing in the magazine Leader , his first article was related to Muhammad .

 

Although he was interested in science (he represented his school in inter-school competitions), with the influence of his teachers Raúl Porras Barrenechea and Jorge Guillermo Leguía, he prepared to continue his studies in Literature at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos . But, because it was closed, he pursued higher education at the PUCP , from which he graduated with the satisfaction of having found excellent teachers.

 

He worked in the old newspaper La Prensa , in Lima, then in a tourism magazine and won the National Journalism Award. She had no problems in the time of Odría , in which she had an easy time, until she maintained a hidden adhesion to the Tarmean ruler.

 

He was married to Lourdes de Rivero Bustamante and had three children: Ana Rosa, Alfonso and Gabina.

 

After working on the radio, in 1958, he moved on to television, where he was an incisive interviewer on programs such as Ante el Público , Round Table , Pulso

 and the memorable Tealdo Questions . It was the episode starring Eudocio Ravines and Genaro Carnero Checa that caused the greatest stir at its time. Carnero had the luxury of slamming Ravines when he called the members of a party that he himself founded "cowards."

 

He also directed news programs, such as El panamericano , and entertainment programs, such as Perú 74 .

 

Twenty-seven years after his departure, a profile of the first and most notable interviewer on Peruvian television. Erudite, controversial and irascible, Tealdo does not deserve to be forgotten.

 

By: Juan Gargurevich

 

Alfonso Tealdo was for half a century the undisputed king of the interview in Creole journalism. I interviewed him once, back in 1985, in his small Panamericana Televisión office, on Arequipa Avenue; We chatted briefly and then went out for coffee in nearby Berisso. During the short hour that we talked about the history of Pulso, his and others' great panel show, Tealdo drank two espressos and smoked a dozen cigarettes.

 

Thin, big head and broad forehead, very white, thick glasses, he gave the impression of being a bundle of nerves, or maybe I found him at the wrong time. He was a little reluctant to speak, as if impatient for the conversation (at some point I was afraid he would run away), but he wanted to continue talking... about himself, of course, his main character.

 

Tealdo was born in Lima in 1914 and studied at the Anglo Peruano school. In high school he was already writing and directing the collegiate magazine Leader, where he published an article about Muhammad, which marked his debut in journalism.

 

He could not then enter the University of San Marcos to study Literature because it was closed and, like many of his time, he headed towards the Catholic University, the only private one at that time and which maintained and defended its stability above political vicissitudes.

 

When Tealdo studied Literature in the old Plaza Francia premises, in 1935, an APRA militant killed the director of El Comercio and his wife; an event that moves the country and accentuates the persecution against APRA and its leader, Haya de la Torre.

 

In 1937 Tealdo began to publish some articles in El Comercio. He then wrote essays and did interviews for Tourism magazine. In 1944 he would win his first award, none other than the National Journalism Award.

 

He would not stray further from the profession, even in his time as a diplomat. During the government of Luis Bustamante y Rivero (1945-1948) he was appointed cultural attaché in Mexico and then returned to Lima to found the famous Gala magazine.

 

In Gala, relations with the high world would be provided by Jorge Holguín de Lavalle and publicity would be provided by Doris Gibson. They finally launched it into circulation in May 1948 at the inconceivable price of twelve soles when newspapers cost 15 cents and magazines one sol. It was a journalistic and social event but a commercial failure.

 

He “imposed the interview-attack in which he tried by all means to relentlessly put his interviewees in trouble.”

 

Tealdo then decided to move into the information and political area with the weekly ¡Ya!, which circulated since February 1949. Its first cover featured the photo of the Brazilian fakir Urbano. This, by coincidence, chose the same day of the launch to leave the urn where he had allegedly broken the world record for fasting.

 

Now! He would be independent, but a few weeks later Tealdo proclaimed his support for the candidacy of José Quesada Larrea, who competed with Manuel Prado in the elections of 39 and was ambassador to Argentina for the Bustamante government. The elections were scheduled for July 2 of the following year.

 

Soon Tealdo abandoned ¡Ya! Soon after, the advertising campaign for Pan, his new magazine, began: “Pan: it will be like bread, it will be on everyone's table. In that of the poor and in that of the rich.”

 

Pan got off to an auspicious start due to an ingenious advertising campaign. On the day of departure, July 8, 1949, a Faucett company plane flew over Lima dropping vouchers for prizes (suits, fountain pens, etc.) and copies of the magazine.

Pan was not spared from persecution. The police notified Tealdo that he had to close it, and he accused La Prensa: “Ravines has not triumphed. My closure means his defeat. His definitive defeat (…) I will see him selling sugared cotton in the streets.”

 

The following years were one of intense bohemianism, some advertising, collaboration in newspapers that accepted his essays and interviews, and some small-scale editorial adventures such as Dedeté, whose motto was: “A weekly against all kinds of parasites,” or partnership to edit the humorous Loquibambia, a highly successful radio program with scripts by Freddy, a talented Argentine.

 

In 1958 Tealdo ventured into radio writing La Voz y la Pluma for Radio Nacional, a text that was read by the well-known announcer Guillermo Lecca. Then he will transfer his program to Radio Central and later to Radio Panamericana, both stations owned by the Delgado family. It will be the Delgados who launch it on television with probably unexpected success.

 

In 1960, Ante el Público began on Channel 13. The program began under the direction of Jorge Luis Recavarren, but shortly after Tealdo would replace him.

 

For him, however, more adventures awaited him in the written press. The next was as editor. In 1961, and with the sponsorship of Pedro Beltrán and La Prensa, he launched the evening newspaper El Diario, a good tabloid that had a fleeting history.

 

Everything indicated that the 1962 elections would be very close; Fernando Belaunde Terry, from Acción Popular, and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, historical leader of APRA, faced each other.

 

It was the first time that television had the opportunity to cover a major electoral event. As will be remembered, the commercial era of the new medium only began with Channel 4, in 1958. Four years later, in 1962, the program Las Cartas sobre la mesa appeared, hosted by the editor of La Prensa, Luis Rey de Castro.

 

“The media that reported on his disappearance remembered him as the best interviewer in the history of Peruvian journalism”

 

The following years were of full collaboration with television, together with the Delgado Parkers. Tealdo directed the El Panamericano news program until 1965, the year in which he was replaced by Julio Estremadoyro. Carlos Paz Cafferata would later call him up for the Peru-67 Saturday program. This changed its name every year. There he took charge of the interview sequence called “Tealdo Asks.”

 

It was Tealdo's moment of glory on television, say colleagues who worked with him or remember his programs. According to them, he imposed the interview-attack in which he tried by all means to relentlessly put his interviewees in trouble. To do this, Tealdo investigated the topics in depth and since he considered that he already knew the answers, he constantly interrupted his 'victims' and did not allow them to develop complete concepts.

Great interview to Orson Wells

 

The program was suspended around 1973. Only the Ferrando Springboard to Fame sequence remained and Tealdo had to wait until the new 24 Hours news program was founded. There they offered him a space for interviews.

 

In March 1976, the military government decided to renew the directors of the newspapers in the process of expropriation and called Tealdo to direct El Comercio, a position he held until June 1978. He no longer collaborated with the military government and returned to television for a last stage characterized by the accentuation of bohemianism that finally caused him a terminal illness. He died on June 31, 1988. The media that reported on his disappearance remembered him as the best interviewer in the history of Peruvian journalism.

With affection,

Ruben

Julio Ramón Ribeyro interviewed by journalist Fernando Ampuero

 

 

Julio Ramón Ribeyro interviewed by journalist Fernando Ampuero

Source, Newspaper La Cronica Viva Lima Peru

Historical journalism. We rescued an interview that Julio Ramón Ribeyro offered to journalist Fernando Ampuero, in 1986, in which the prominent Peruvian writer revealed details of his friendship and his passion for Julio Cortázar's Peruvian food. A conversation that sleeps in the newspaper archives and we publish it for you to enjoy: -You have been living in Europe for many years. What changes does exile generate in a writer? -Well, in principle, I must clarify: I am not an exile. I am simply a person who traveled to Europe and stayed there living for various reasons, but without having any impediment to return to my country. -Can we call it self-exile? -OK. What changes does living outside produce in a writer? First of all, it offers a broadening of perception, because of the contact that he feels with other cultures. And then, a direct deal with what we have dreamed and read. -Was that what prompted you to travel? -It is difficult to define my original intention. What I can talk about, it seems to me, is the results: I got rid of a certain provincialism. -Did you look for people? Did you establish any kind of contact with writers you admired? -I never felt the need to look for well-known or famous writers. In Paris, in my early years, there were many writers. There were Carpentier, Miguel Ángel Asturias and García Márquez, although the latter was almost unknown at that time. The only one I had contact and friendship with was Julio Cortázar. He was a very cordial and simple man; very kind, especially, with young writers. Cortázar did not talk much about literature. When he met with his friends, he talked about other things: tango, good food (he loved good food and he always went to my house to eat ceviche). He was a formidable, imaginative and brilliant guy. On one occasion, when we were talking about a writer that he considered old-fashioned, he told me that when he opened his books all his letters flew out, like a cloud of moths. -How were your beginnings in Europe? What kind of jobs did you get? -I had to work several jobs, but I would not want to glorify that time. -Was it a hard time for you? -Quite hard, as is life there for most students. I had sporadic jobs. When my scholarship ran out, and while I was waiting to get another one, I started to work. The money they sent me from home took a while to arrive. It was a matter of survival. I remember that I worked, among other things, as a hotel doorman. Fortunately it was a small hotel: it had six or seven rooms. -But day or night? -He was a permanent goalkeeper, day and night. And I also had to take care of cleaning and collecting rent, I did everything. In any case, it was not such a difficult job, because the tenants (there were three Peruvians and a French writer, now very well known) were very understanding of me. They made their room and that allowed me to have free afternoons to dedicate myself to writing. A hard job, on the other hand, was the one I had at a railway station. There he was a loader of packages, with a wheelbarrow and everything; It moved loads from trains to trucks or from trucks to trains. Very hard work, authentic worker's work. The crew of workers included some people, now honorable and respectable, you know? There were the poet Leopoldo Chariarse and the painters Eduardo Gutiérrez and Sigfrido Laske. Anyway, I couldn't endure this work for long: it required enormous physical effort. But there I had for the first time the experience of what physical work is, a work that transmutes you into a robot, to such a point that when you finish the day you don't feel like reading or thinking; It just means having a beer and going to sleep. -How do you understand the impact of your work? I am not referring to specialized criticism, but to what occurs among ordinary people, those readers who always come to greet you? What do you think you like or are most interested in about your stories and novels? -I have always been intrigued by that kind of fervor that I notice in a young audience and, even more so, in a popular audience. I wonder what they find in what I write. I suppose they see, in a way, an image in which they recognize themselves. But why are they recognized if they are stories in which the situations are commonly depressing and the outcomes tragic? They identify themselves? Do you feel a bit like my characters? Could be. Although I also warn that others are not so attracted to my topics themselves, but rather a certain humor. That pleases me. Many find comedy where I precisely wanted to put it... - “Sad quarrels in the old country house”? -For example. -It is an excellent story, with a notable sense of humor. -And there are other stories with humor, which critics have rarely pointed out. -July, with the violence that the country is experiencing (terrorism, crime and a much more acute economic crisis than sharper than that of the fifties), what situations do you imagine your characters would be involved in if you lived in Lima now?

-I would obviously have to modify my character gallery. To begin with, the character of the drug trafficker, small or large, would appear in one or more stories; then, the thugs, the kidnapping gangs and, of course, the people linked to terrorism. They are real, serious situations. Certainly in my work there is violence; Contained violence and explicit violence can be detected, but it does not reflect what is happening today in Peru. In one of my stories a small criminal appears, a pickpocket. What does this guy mean to an organized gang? He is another world.

 

-One last question, Julio. Do you think that the artist, specifically the writer, must be a person uncomfortable with power?

-That depends on the power. If it is a despotic government, the writer will be attacking it and the power will feel that it is uncomfortable. That's why there are so many exiled, deported and imprisoned writers. This is not the case of democratic governments. The writer can then support power, even support it by omission, if he does not speak out, or proceed as a healthy critic or a plain critic. What I do consider inconvenient is that he becomes a sycophant of power. Because flattery is negative for both the one who flatters and the one who is flattered. In any case, the legitimacy of power does not derive from whether writers adhere or not to a certain government, but from the adhesion of the people.

 

Research: Walter Sosa Vivanco

With affection,

Ruben

 

The interview of the young poet César Vallejo with Don Manuel González Prada

 

The interview of the young poet César Vallejo with Don Manuel González Prada

Source:Newspaper La Cronica Viva, Lima Peru

On the 81st anniversary of the death of Universal Vate César Vallejo, we remember him with this gem of historical journalism. Source: La Crónica Viva Newspaper, Lima Peru In the March 9, 1918 edition of the newspaper La Reforma de Trujillo, this wonderful interview by the then young poet César Vallejo with the

teacher Manuel González Prada was published. An extraordinary meeting between two of the greatest exponents of our letters. Another of the treasures found in libraries: The reading room of the Library, as always, very busy. His abstractive peace. One or another hand fumbles impatiently. The slow steps of some conservative, searching the shelves. Oil paintings by illustrious Peruvians on the walls are hurt by the light from the old windows. We passed. In the management room. From a fine welcoming attitude and sitting lightly on the sofa, as if listening to the spiritual moment, the teacher drops words that I never dreamed of hearing. The vigorous sentimental dynamism of him that subjugates and drags, the fresh expression of eternal spring of his venerable continent has something of the winged and smooth marble in which the pagan Hellas used to embody the divine gesture, the superhuman energy of the gods of her. I don't know why before this man, an extraordinary reverberation, a breath of centuries, an idea of synthesis, an emotion of unity congeals between my fibers. It would seem that on his shoulders they fly the legendary flight of an entire race; and that in his snowy apostolic head the maximum spiritual power of a hemisphere of the globe emerges in beams of white, unquenchable light. I look at him startled; My heart beats faster, and my greatest mental energies fly towards all horizons, in a thousand quick flashes, as if some directing whip suddenly whipped a million invisible arms for a miraculous work, beyond the cell... It is that González Prada, by a hypnotic virtue that in a normal state is only peculiar to genius, imposes itself, takes over us, takes possession of our spirit and ends up making us suggestive. On this visit, as in previous ones, Prada talks about art. He is not prodigal in words. His conceptual postures are always sober. But they flare with emotion and optimism and no solemnity.

 How does one detoxify in front of that immense thinking mountain! "But the doctors say no," I reply. They say that such symbolist literature is nonsense. -The doctors... Always the doctors!-. He smiles piously. Not even in his sentences does he spend pontifical solemnity. The line, in its noble silhouette, always vibrates in a fervor thirsty for truth. He does not have the pause of senescence; He feels life in full meridian, in eagerness, in restlessness that is renewal. It is not the peaceful wing that abandons itself horizontally that passes through it, but the wing in the accelerated rhythm of a flight that ascends eternally. That's why it's not solemn. Because he does not look like an old man. It is a perennial and rare equatorial flower of fertile rebellion. I ask him about our national poetry. "There is the influence of French decadentism in it," he tells me. And then, savoring a pronounced tinge of complacency, he adds: -And from Maeterlinck. There is a broad repose of conviction at the end of each of his phrases, which after being uttered seem to consolidate, to distill their substantial value into blood, strongly encasing his ideal melody in our very veins. Then I pray fervently to Renan's great commentator: -As Valdelomar told me the other day, Peru will never know how to repay the enormous gratitude that he owes it. The complexion of his face brightens into a smile that flutters silently from distant forgotten peaks. -And today's youth - he continued, as if enthusiastically hammering warm applause with his lips - is the daughter of his excellent work of freedom. "Yes, well," he answers, "we have to go against obstacles, against academics." He sparkles a hero diamond in his seeing eyes. And I remember that steel bible called Free Pages. And I think I am wrapped in the incense of a modern altarpiece without effigies. -In literature, he continues, defects in technique, inconsistencies in manner, are not important. -And the grammatical errors -I ask him-, obviously. And the audacity of expression? Smile at my naivety; and creating a gesture of patriarchal tolerance, he answers me: -Those errors are ignored. And I really like audacity. I lower my forehead. In the grave distinction of his bearing the opaque spline clarity of the room melts and withers. At his feet crawls a tongue of humble sun that appears a delicate flame of opal moons that arrived fugitively and gasping from very far away. Hearing the philosopher's last words I think of so many hostile hands, already distant. And I think that tomorrow there will be dawn. With a slight smile that curves into a subtle question, that probes and studies, González Prada.

Reserch: Walter Sosa Vivanco

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

James Matthew Barrie

 

James Matthew Barrie

 

James Matthew Barrie

 

Born into a family of low-income artisans, he had an unhappy childhood. The death of a brother, when he was barely six years old, profoundly altered family life and disrupted the mental health of his mother, who became an unbalanced, authoritarian and inflexible person, whose influence and memory weighed on James Barrie during the rest of his life. After becoming a famous writer, he himself would confess many times that his deepest wish would have been to recover the happy years of his early childhood, and that his most famous character, Peter Pan, was a personification of such longings. .

 

After studying at the University of Edinburgh and working for two years as a journalist, he moved to London, attracted by the brilliance of its cultural circles. In 1888 he successfully published The Idylls of Auld Licht, a series of evocations of peasant life in his hometown. Shortly afterwards, in 1889, A Window in Thrums nostalgically evoked that world again. In 1891 he had achieved fame thanks to his novels The Little Minister (1891), Margaret Ogilvy (1896), Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1900), delicate fusions of sentimentalism and ironic realism situated in the tradition of Dickens. but inspired by the texts of George Meredith, R. L. Stevenson and the great Russian authors.

 

To the theater, however, Barrie gave his most authentic works from 1900 (The Admirable Crichton, Street of the Great World). With him one of the most constant tones of the English spirit appeared manifested in delicate nuances: nostalgic melancholy in the form of "humour", perhaps the only original sentiment of J. M. Barrie's theater, otherwise quite eclectic (it came from both W. S. Gilbert and Oscar Wilde as George Bernard Shaw, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Russians).

 

In 1894, Barrie entered into an unhappy and early failed marriage to the actress Mary Ansell. Shortly after, in 1897, he began an intense love relationship with Sylvia Llewellyn Davies, a sentimental and affectionate woman with whose children he formed a true family. It was to those children that he began to tell various stories starring a character of his invention that symbolized the eternal childhood in which he himself would have liked to live: Peter Pan.

 

Some of those stories were published in 1902 in a volume titled The Little White Bird. Shortly after, in 1904, the comedy Peter Pan, the boy who never wanted to grow up, was released. Later, Barrie would publish Peter Pan in Kensington Park (1906) and Peter and Wendy (1911).

 

The success of his character and his adventures was instantaneous. Peter Pan and his adventure companions (little Wendy, John, Michael, the dog Nana, the fairy Tinker Bell, and the terrible Captain Hook) were adopted as heroes by many generations of children. everyone, familiar with his adventures through all kinds of translations and adaptations, some of them as celebrated as Herbert Brenon's film versions or Walt Disney's, in cartoons.

 

The character of Peter Pan provided Barrie with extraordinary celebrity; but his personal life was very often accompanied by misfortunes and misfortunes. In 1910 his marriage ended in divorce, and just four months later his partner Sylvia Davies, who had meanwhile been widowed, died; In addition, two of his lover's children, whom Barrie watched over as if he were a father, also died.

 

After the divorce, the vague legend was formed around the writer that presented him as an aged and sweetly disillusioned Peter Pan, with something of a wise man and a gnome, always with the taciturn pipe, carried by reality to a modest and gray peace. J. M. Barrie enjoyed a peaceful old age abundant in friendships and honors; but his dream world was transformed, until Dear Brutus (1917) and Mary Rose (1920), into another spectral and sad one, populated by impotent and painful ghosts, inhabitants of an arid, soulless and cruel reality.

 

How to cite this article:

Fernández, Tomás and Tamaro, Elena. «Biography of James Matthew Barrie». In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia [Internet]. Barcelona, Spain, 2004. Available at https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/b/barrie.htm [access date: March 23, 2024].

With affection,

Ruben

 

Morris West

 

Morris West

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Morris Langlo West AO (26 April 1916 – 9 October 1999) was an Australian novelist and playwright, best known for his novels The Devil's Advocate (1959), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) and The Clowns of God (1981). His books were published in 27 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. Each new book he wrote after he became an established writer sold more than one million copies.[1]

 

West's works were often focused on international politics and the role of the Roman Catholic Church in international affairs. In The Shoes of the Fisherman he described the election and career of a Slav as Pope, 15 years before the historic election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II. The sequel, The Clowns of God, described a successor Pope who resigned the papacy to live in seclusion, 32 years before the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.

 

Early life

West was born in St Kilda, Victoria, the son of a commercial salesman. Due to the large size of his family, he was sent to live with his grandparents. He attended the Christian Brothers College, St Kilda where he was awarded the prize of Dux by Archbishop Daniel Mannix in 1929.

 

At the age of 14, West entered the Congregation of Christian Brothers community at St Patricks in Strathfield, Sydney, "as a kind of refuge" from a difficult childhood.[2]

 

In 1934 he began teaching at St Thomas's Primary School, Lewisham, living in that community until 1936. He taught at schools in Tasmania and New South Wales between 1937 and 1939, while also studying at the University of Tasmania.

 

He left the Christian Brothers order in 1940. He worked as a salesman and a teacher.

 

War service

In April 1941, West enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force. He was commissioned as a lieutenant and worked as a cipher officer, being eventually posted to Gladesville, New South Wales, in 1944. He was seconded from the RAAF to work for Billy Hughes, former Australian prime minister, for a time.

 

His first published novel, Moon in My Pocket, came out in 1945 using the pseudonym "Julian Morris". He wrote it while in the air force. It was published by the Australasian Publishing Company, a branch of Harrap's Publishing Company in London, and sold more than 10,000 copies.[3][4]

 

Radio producer

West worked as publicity manager at Melbourne radio station 3DB. He moved into radio drama, setting up his own radio production company ARP, which operated from 1945 to 1954. For the next 10 years he focused on writing, directing and producing radio plays and serials.

 

His radio plays included The Mask of Marius Melville (1945), The Curtain Rises (1946),[5] The Affairs of Harlequin (1951), The Prince of Peace (c. 1951), When a Girl Marries (1952),[6] The Enchanted Island (1952), Trumpets in the Dawn (c. 1953–54) and Genesis in Juddsville (c. 1955–56).

 

The workload of his job and a crisis in his marital relations led to West having a nervous breakdown. He ultimately sold his company to focus on writing full-time.[7]

 

Novelist

Early works

West's first novel published under his own name was Gallows on the Sand (1955), written in seven days.

 He followed it with Kundu (1956), a New Guinea adventure written in three weeks.

[7] He also wrote a play, The Illusionists (1955).

 

West moved to Europe with his family. His third novel was The Big Story (1957), which was later filmed as The Crooked Road (1965).

 

A trip to Naples led to meeting Father Bo

rrelli who worked with the street boys of Naples. This resulted in the non-fiction book Children of the Sun (1957) which was West's first international success.[7][8] According to a later profile on the author:

 

With this work, West not only found his way as a writer but discovered the theme that would underpin almost all of his subsequent books — the nature and misuse of power. Of the 18 novels he was to write post-1957, 15 are on this subject. This discovery was particularly felicitous for West because, it suited his talents admirably. An interesting comparison may be made with David Williamson, another writer from whom profound thinking and significant insights are not to be expected. What they have in common is a keen eye for the real world around them. By fleshing out the partially familiar, they make perceptive sense of it, demonstrating in the process that the general uneasiness and suspicion ordinary people feel about many aspects of contemporary life are well-founded. West was to show that he could identify these concerns with considerable acuity.[9]

 

He wrote The Second Victory (1958) (also known as Backlash and later filmed) and under the pseudonym "Michael East" wrote McCreary Moves In (1958) aka The Concubine.

 

Best-selling novelist

West's first best-selling novel was The Devil's Advocate (1959) 

which he spent two years writing.[10] He sold the film rights for $250,000 and it was adapted into a play and later a film.[7] West later said the novel earned him several million dollars.[8]

 

He wrote another "Michael East" novel, The Naked Country (1960), which was filmed in the 1980s. Daughter of Silence (1961) was also adapted into a play.

 

During this time he was the Vatican correspondent for the Daily Mail from 1956 to 1963.[11] His son, C. Chris O'Hanlon, said that he spent his first 12 birthdays in 12 different countries.[12]

 

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) was a huge success, selling over six million copies and made into a movie.[13]

 

He followed it with The Ambassador (1965), The Tower of Babel (1968), Summer of the Red Wolf (1971)[14] and The Salamander (1973).

 He wrote a non-fiction book, Scandal in the Assembly: 

A Bill of Complaints and a Proposal for Reform of the Matrimonial Laws and Tribunals of the Roman Catholic Church (1970, with Robert Francis).

 

He wrote a play The Heretic, based on Giordano Bruno, which was performed on the London stage in 1973. Further novels included Harlequin (1974), The Navigator (1976),[15] Proteus (1979) and The Clowns of God (1981).[16] In 1978 he was living in England, New York and Italy and said "I'm an Australian by origin, by identity, in manners. I have never felt any destruction or diminution of my identity by having a European education, or by acquiring a fluency in three languages and living abroad."[17] His advance of Clowns of God was £100,000.[18] By 1981 his books had sold over 25 million copies.[19]

 

West wrote the play The World is Made of Glass in 1982 for the Adelaide Festival. He turned this into a novel which was published the following year.[7]

 

Return to Australia

In 1982 West returned home to Australia. His later novels include Cassidy (1986) (which became a mini series), Masterclass (1988), Lazarus (1990), The Ringmaster (1991), and The Lovers (1993).[20]

 

In 1993, West announced that he had written his last book and a formal valedictory dinner was held in his honour. However, he found he could not retire as he had planned and wrote a further three novels and two non-fiction books: Vanishing Point (1996) and Eminence (1998), plus an anthology entitled Images and Inscriptions (1997) and his memoir A View from the Ridge: The Testimony of a Twentieth-century Pilgrim (1996).[21][22]

 

He was working on the novel The Last Confession when he died; it was posthumously published in 2000.

 

Writing

A major theme of much of West's work was a question: when so many organisations use extreme violence towards evil ends, when and under what circumstances is it morally acceptable for their opponents to respond with violence? He stated on different occasions that his novels all deal with the same aspect of life, that is, the dilemma when sooner or later you have a situation such that nobody can tell you what to do.[23]

 

West wrote with little revision. His first longhand version was usually not very different from the final printed version.[22] Despite winning many prizes and being awarded honorary doctorates,[24] his commercial success and his skills as a story teller, he never won the acceptance of Australia's literary clique. In the 1998 Oxford Literary History of Australia it was stated that: "Despite his international popularity, West has been surprisingly neglected by Australian literary critics." The previous edition, edited by Dame Leonie Kramer, did not mention him at all.[1]

 

West was awarded the 1959 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Devil's Advocate. In the early 1960s, he helped found the Australian Society of Authors.[1] He presented the 1986 Playford Lecture.[23]

 

Personal life

West was born on 26 April 1916, in St Kilda. He and his first wife, Elizabeth Harvey, had two children: Elizabeth, who became a nun, and Julian who was a wine-maker before his death in 2005. Julian and his wife Helen Grimaux, had a daughter named Juliana Harriett West.

 

West and Elizabeth Harvey divorced, and West then married Joyce "Joy" Lawford. Since his first wife, Elizabeth, was still alive when he married Joy, he struggled for a church annulment of his first marriage. He was out of communion with the Roman Catholic Church for many years because of this marital situation, and he had significant issues with the church's teachings. However, he never considered himself as anything other than a committed Catholic. Joy West said that he was a believer who attended Mass every Sunday.[22]

 

West and Joy had four children together. One son, C. Chris O'Hanlon, born in 1954, changed his name at the age of 26 as a gesture of independence. After starting four books in an attempt to realise what he believed were his father's expectations, and having to give back the advances he received from publishers when he could not finish them, he realised that he was not destined to be a writer. O'Hanlon, who suffers from a severe bipolar disorder, founded Spike Wireless, an internet design house.[12]

 

Another of West's sons, Mike, is a musician who fronted the UK independent popular music band Man from Delmonte during the late 1980s and early 1990s and has released several solo albums of New Orleans country music, especially being well known with the international touring act Truckstop Honeymoon.

 

West's grandson Anthony (Ant) West is also a musician, who fronted the UK music band Futures and currently is in the UK group Oh Wonder.

 

West died at the age of 83 on 9 October 1999 in Clareville, New South Wales.

 

Honours

West was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours of 1985.[25] He was upgraded to Officer of the Order in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1997.[26]

 

Bibliography

Fiction

Moon in My Pocket (1945, using the pseudonym "Julian Morris")

Gallows on the Sand (1956)

Kundu (1956)

The Big Story (1957; aka The Crooked Road)

The Second Victory (1958; aka Backlash)

McCreary Moves In (1958, using the pseudonym "Michael East"; aka The Concubine)

The Devil's Advocate (1959)

The Naked Country (1960, using the pseudonym "Michael East")

Daughter of Silence (1961)

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963)

The Ambassador (1965)

The Tower of Babel (1968)

Summer of the Red Wolf (1971)

The Salamander (1973)

Harlequin (1974; aka The Duel of Death)

The Navigator (1976)

Proteus (1979)

The Clowns of God (1981)

The World Is Made of Glass (1983)

Cassidy (1986)

Masterclass (1988)

Lazarus (1990)

The Ringmaster (1991)

The Lovers (1993)

Vanishing Point (1996)

Eminence (1998)

The Last Confession (2000, posthumously published)

Radio serials

The Mask of Marius Melville (1945)[27]

The Prince of Peace (c1951)[28]

Trumpets in the Dawn (c1953–54)[28]

Genesis in Juddsville (c1955–56)[29]

Radio dramas

episode of Deadline

Plays

The Illusionists (1955)

The Devil's Advocate (1961)

Daughter of Silence (1962)

The Heretic (1969)

The World is Made of Glass (1982)

Non-fiction

Children of the Sun: The Slum Dwellers of Naples (1957) (US title: Children of the Shadows: The True Story of the Street Urchins of Naples)

Scandal in the Assembly: A Bill of Complaints and a Proposal for Reform of the Matrimonial Laws and Tribunals of the Roman Catholic Church (1970, with Robert Francis)

West, Morris (1996). A View from the Ridge: The Testimony of a Twentieth-century Pilgrim. Sydney: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-7322-5757-3.

West, Morris (1997). Images & Inscriptions. Selected and arranged by Beryl Barraclough. Sydney: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-7322-5827-8.

Film adaptations

The Crooked Road (based on The Big Story) (1965) starring Robert Ryan

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) starring Anthony Quinn

The Devil's Advocate (1977) starring John Mills, Daniel Massey, Paola Pitagora and Stéphane Audran

The Salamander (1981)

The Naked Country (1984)

The Second Victory (1986)

Cassidy (1989)

With affection

Ruben