The Worker's Unknown (Pub) Industrial Monster - as Imagined by David Ireland

Abstract

The title of this note on mythology articulated in literature refers particularly to Ireland's novel, 'The Unknown Industrial Prisoner' (1971), which won the 1972 Miles Franklin award. Its sequel, 'The Glass Canoe', did the same in 1976, both works telling of a male-oriented, (Australian urban) working class world, where women make only incidental appearances and ordinary existence is characterized by hopelessness in the face of unfathomable and impersonalised industrial or technocratic forces. Against these the individual's physical strength, muted humour, occasional sense of wonder and muddled search for something better are as nothing.