View source for Murray Bail

{{short description|Australian writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = Murray Bail
| image = Murray Bail on Etonnants Voyageurs.jpg
| imagesize =
| caption = Bail in 2013
| birth_name = 
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=yes|1941|09|22}}
| birth_place = [[Adelaide, South Australia]], Australia
| education     = 
| occupation  = Writer
| nationality = Australian
| genre =
| movement =
| notableworks = 
| spouse = {{marriage|[[Margaret Bail]]|1965|1988|reason=div}}<br />{{marriage|[[Helen Garner]]|1992|2000|reason=div}}
| children = 
| signature =
}}

'''Murray Bail''' (born 22 September 1941)<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article44958512 |title=Family Notices |newspaper=[[The Advertiser (Adelaide)]] |location=South Australia |date=24 September 1941 |access-date=6 September 2024 |page=12 |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref> is an [[Australia (continent)|Australian]] writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. In 1980 he shared the [[Age Book of the Year]] award for his novel ''[[Homesickness (novel)|Homesickness]]''.

He was born in [[Adelaide]], South Australia, a son of Cyril Lindsay Bail (1914–1966). He has lived most of his life in Australia except for sojourns in [[India]] (1968–70), [[England]] and Europe (1970–74). He lives in [[Sydney]].

He was trustee of the [[National Gallery of Australia]] from 1976 to 1981 and wrote a book on Australian artist [[Ian Fairweather]].

A portrait of Bail by the artist [[Fred Williams (artist)|Fred Williams]]<ref name= portrait>{{cite web|title= Murray Bail |publisher= National Portrait Gallery, Canberra |url= http://www.portrait.gov.au/static/coll_1345Murray+Bail.php |access-date= 2008-02-03 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070831190549/http://www.portrait.gov.au/static/coll_1345Murray+Bail.php <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = 2007-08-31}}</ref> is hung in the [[National Portrait Gallery (Australia)|National Portrait Gallery]] in [[Canberra]].  The portrait was done while both Williams and Bail were Council members of the National Gallery of Australia.<ref name= portrait/>

==Career==
He is most well known for ''[[Eucalyptus (novel)|Eucalyptus]]'', which won the [[Miles Franklin Award]] in 1999.  His other work includes the novels ''Homesickness'', which was a joint winner of [[The Age Book of the Year]] in 1980, and ''Holden's Performance'', another award-winner. Reviewers recently compared Bail's ''Notebooks 1970-2003'' with [[Proust]], [[André Gide|Gide]] and [[Paul Valéry|Valéry]]'s. ''The Pages'' [2008] was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. His latest novel, ''The Voyage'', was released in November 2012.

Laurie Clancy suggests that Bail is, with [[Peter Carey (novelist)|Peter Carey]] and [[Frank Moorhouse]], one of the chief innovators in Australian short story writing, and that he was part of its revival in the 1970s. He notes that Bail is particularly interested in the relationship between language and reality, and that this is evident in his early short stories. About the story ‘Portrait of Electricity’ from the collection ''Contemporary Portraits and Other Stories'' (1975), Clancy says that "the story displays the strange mixture of surrealist fantasy and broad satire of Australian mores that characterizes all of Bail's work".<ref>Laurie Clancy, ''A Reader's Guide to Australian Fiction'', pp. 321-322</ref>

After early success with short fiction, Bail turned to the novel as a form commensurate with his vision of life's complexity, which emerges in all its perplexing intricacy in ''Homesickness''. This first novel describes the unscripted, global travels of a group of Australian tourists to diverse museums, real and imaginary. His next book, ''Holden's Performance'', dealt more overtly with issues of national identity and the diverse forces that shape individual character. His later novels explored related issues in terms of a key binary: in ''Eucalyptus'', these are empirical knowledge and imagination, and in ''The Pages'' psychology and philosophy. Bail prides himself on being a novelist of ideas, who is determined to be audacious in his creations and to challenge reader expectations and complacency.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}

The standard study of his work is Michael Ackland's ''The Experimental Fiction of Murray Bail'' (2012).

==Personal life==
Bail is the second of four children. His father worked in the tramways and his mother was a homemaker. He attended [[Marryatville High School|Norwood Technical High School]].

Bail started working in advertising agencies in Adelaide and [[Melbourne]]. He and his first wife moved to [[India]] in 1968, where he worked in an advertising agency in [[Bombay]]. He contracted [[amoebic dysentery]] on his travels, and went to [[London]] for treatment at the [[Hospital for Tropical Diseases]]. There he decided the novel he had written in India was worthless, so he threw it in the garbage. He remained in London for five years, the first year being spent on the dole, before returning to Australia in 1975.<ref>Paul Sheehan, "Talking Turtle", ''Sydney Morning Herald'', 25 April 1998, Spectrum, 10s</ref>

Bail has been married and divorced twice. He was first married in 1965, and divorced in 1988. His second wife was fellow writer [[Helen Garner]], whom he married in 1992. They divorced in 1998.

==Awards==
*1980: [[The Age Book of the Year]], joint winner for ''Homesickness'' with [[David Ireland (author)|David Ireland]]'s ''Woman of the Future''
*1980: [[National Book Council Award]] for ''Homesickness''
*1988: [[Victorian Premier's Literary Award]] [[Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction]] for ''Holden's Performance''
*1998: [[ALS Gold Medal]] for ''Eucalyptus''
*1999: [[Miles Franklin Award]] for ''Eucalyptus''
*1999: [[Commonwealth Writers' Prize]] for ''Eucalyptus''

==Bibliography==
{{Incomplete list|date=October 2020}}

===Novels===
* ''[[Homesickness (novel)|Homesickness]]'' (1980)
* ''[[Holden's Performance]]'' (1987)
* ''[[Eucalyptus (novel)|Eucalyptus]]'' (1998)
* ''[[The Pages (novel)|The Pages]]'' (2008)
* ''The Voyage'' (2012)

=== Short fiction ===
;Collections
* ''Contemporary Portraits and Other Stories'' (1975), republished in 1986 as ''The Drover's Wife and Other Stories'';
* ''Camouflage'' (2000), the Australian first edition consists of two stories: "Camouflage" and "The Seduction of My Sister". The UK hardcover edition (2001) includes an extra story "The Drover's Wife". The US edition (2002) expands on the UK hardcover edition with the inclusion of eleven other stories (all previously published in Contemporary Portraits and Other Stories).
''The Drover's Wife'' was used by [[Sue Brooks]] for her 1984 short film.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.acmi.net.au/works/78319--the-drovers-wife/ |title=The Drover's Wife – Sue Brooks |publisher=ACMI |access-date=6 September 2024}}</ref>   
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===Non-fiction===
* ''Ian Fairweather'' (1981)
* ''Longhand: A Writer's Notebook'' (1989)
* {{cite journal <!--|author=Bail, Murray |author-mask=1--> |date=Summer 2000 |title=Voyage south : London to Fremantle : extracts from a diary, 1999 |journal=Granta |volume=70 |pages=305–329}}
* ''Notebooks 1970-2003'' (2005)
* ''He.'' (2021)

===Edited===
* ''The Faber Book of Contemporary Australian Short Stories'' (1988)

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20110219165449/http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/bailm/bailm.html Australian authors: Murray Bail] Accessed: 2007-11-16
*[http://www.complete-review.com/authors/bailmur.htm Murray Bail] at the ''[[complete review]]'' Accessed: 2007-09-19

{{Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book Winners}}
{{Miles Franklin Literary Award}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bail, Murray}}
[[Category:1941 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian short story writers]]
[[Category:21st-century Australian male writers]]
[[Category:21st-century Australian novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century Australian short story writers]]
[[Category:ALS Gold Medal winners]]
[[Category:Australian male novelists]]
[[Category:Australian male short story writers]]
[[Category:Granta people]]
[[Category:Miles Franklin Award winners]]
[[Category:Writers from Adelaide]]