(no subject)

I'm still reading True History of the Kelly Gang and enjoying it, although I have to say that it bogs down a bit in some places. Carey has done a great job of capturing Ned Kelly's voice, but the narrative is pretty repetitive: the Kelly gang steals some horses or robs a bank, they get into fistfights or gunfights, they get in trouble with the police, they hide out in the bush evading capture, and then they start all over again. It's entertaining to read about how Ned gets himself out of scrape after scrape, but after a while it begins to blend together. It's a good thing that I like Ned so much as a character, because otherwise I don't think I'd be getting much out of the book at all.

I find it interesting that Peter Carey chose to present his book as an academic reprinting of Kelly's own manuscript, complete with scholarly notes at the beginning of each section describing the type of paper it was written on, noting places where handwriting other than Ned's appears, and summarizing the events of the section. Makes me wish that I could read this book with my Postmodern Rewritings class and hear what Derval would have to say about it. I expect I'd appreciate it quite a bit more that way, but alas...