'He lacks almost all the qualities of the novelist': G.M. Glaskin and his Australian Contemporaries

Abstract

Gerry Glaskin was quite a guy, and quite a writer. He had a prodigious output across a range of genres. He wrote nine novels, a number of dramatic works, children's fiction, science fiction, romance and short stories. He was not a writer parsimonious with words. Even at school, Glaskin was known for his long essays. In his memoir 'One way to Wonderland' (1984) he writes: 'How often, when telling us the subject of an essay we must write, did Mr Constantine [the English teacher] insist that we should fill at least two pages of the ruled foolscap paper we used. "But you, Glaskin," he would inevitably add, "must confine yourself to no more than ten!"'. Glaskin's writing owed much to his life's experiences. Even in fictional form, the majority of his works are closely modelled on events that happened to him. And, as we shall see, his was not an inconsequential life.