A Lifetime On Clouds By Gerald Murnane

Catholics are very odd. I think that this books establishes that point. A Lifetime On Clouds I lack the two things necessary to make this a remarkable novel: a penis, and experience with the Catholic faith. As a result, whilst some of Adrian's imaginings and anecdotes are amusing, I failed to find them engaging. A Lifetime On Clouds God Adrian Sherd is annoying. This book is clearly an attempt at an Australian Portnoy's Complaint but the problem is that Sherd is completely deluded at all times. This is of course deliberate and possibly one of the most technically interesting feature of the book: it is a narrative about a character who is obsessed with fantasy narrativising to the point where it takes over their life, blending with the third-person deadpan in a peculiar and noteworthy instance of light metafiction. But Alexander Portnoy is by contrast not deluded at all, which is what makes him so much more endearing. Sherd is a sincere misogynist while Portnoy is perfectly aware that he has a neurotic relationship with women. Sherd is a sincere Catholic who becomes a priest while Portnoy is able to actually reflect on Judaism in America. Great ambiguous ending, no idea what this book is about to be honest. A Lifetime On Clouds Rather painful account of a delusional adolescent masturbator tormented by Catholic guilt. A Lifetime On Clouds This was not what I was expecting, having said that it was an enjoyable read, just one of the stranger books that I have read. A Lifetime On Clouds

Murnane draws out a great deal of comedy from the distance between what his hero does and what he dreams.—The Guardian

Adrian Sherd is a teenager in Melbourne of the 1950s—the last years before television and the family car changed suburbia forever.

Earnest and isolated, tormented by his hormones and his religious devotion, Adrian dreams of elaborate orgies with American film stars, and of marrying his sweetheart and fathering eleven children by her. He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.

A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest, and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy's Complaint. A Lifetime On Clouds

Read & Download A Lifetime On Clouds

I like 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Is it the sort of thing I want to base my life on, morally? No, it is not. But it is funny, and mercifully free of the self-adoration that fills Roth's later books.

But I'll never read Portnoy's again (that's a lie, I will), because I have this book. LoC is also about masturbation, here by a Catholic schoolboy from the Melbourne suburbs in the early 1950s. But instead of staying there and reaping the jokes, it turns into a meditation on world history as understood through masturbation--which is then revealed to be metonymic of fantasy in general. And while a merely good author would be willing to stay put there, with an indictment of fantasy and its effects on people's actual lives, Murnane implicates the reader: it's not just sex, or political power, that are open to fantasy. So too is religion. So too is marriage. So too are every aspect of our daily lives. So too, of course, is literature.

The conclusion is gloriously ambiguous, and thought-provoking: is it still fantasy, or has the fantasy finally had its effect on Adrian Sherd's life? If it has, should we be relieved, or disturbed? And what about us?

This all sounds heavy. Luckily, this is funny and easy to read. The difficulty comes in the ideas, not the expression (for better or worse).

All that said, if you don't want to read a lot about jerking off, this isn't the book for you. A Lifetime On Clouds Masturbation: The Difficult One. Some find it difficult to talk about. Others find it difficult to do.
Not in this books case. 15 year old Adrian Sherd had no issue with either talking about, thinking about or practising this ancient art.

Adrian made many visits (at night) to America where he had many a romp with the starlets of the times, Jayne and Marilyn and Susan. He wondered how other regular sinners dealt with having to confess to so many visits to America. He worried about what the Saints knew. Was there news flashes in heaven that announced he had “…abused himself at 10.55 this evening”? Did his granddad see him and if he broke the habit would he have to hide from his granddad once in heaven.

He borrowed books from the library to see what female parts were really like. Famous statues were no help at all and this was of great disappointment. He was that caught up with the entire subject he was convinced that the protestant reformation was started by a priest who could endure celibacy no more. He gave serious thought about Irish lads doing it tough because there was nowhere to hide in the open fields of their treeless land.

But things changed as he met a girl on a tram and this changed his life as he sinned less and less and gave serious thought to his marriage to her, how they would live and how he would be the ideal Catholic husband that would work hard to protect her and Australia from communists and Protestants. He had deep meaningful discussions about Adam and Eve and how as a couple it would aid their sexual needs and wants and that would make them the ideal Catholic couple.

Gerald Murnane has written a very good book indeed that covered not only the very funny side of this issue but was an exposure of the fear drummed into young boys of the Catholic faith in an age gone by. Poor Gerald Murnane. If this was his youth at 15 years of age the poor fella must have been this quivering mess. Maybe writing this book was therapeutic. A gold star to whomever knows where I plagiarised the first line of this review from and another gold star to whomever brought this brilliant author to my attention. Recommended to Catholic men who recall the fear and guilt. A Lifetime On Clouds A hilarious riproar through the mind of a Catholic adolescent in Australia in the 1950's. Adrian Sherd indulges in fantasies to keep himself away from the mortal sin of masturbation. These involve a map of America and a clockwork train set to deliver a location and Sherd's mind does all the rest. This becomes overwhelmed by a long fantasy about his marriage in his head to a local girl he meets on the train to and from school which is in turn succeeded by a fantasy on his subsequent priesthood culminating in his being instrumental in the choice of the next Pope. It becomes perhaps The Confessions of an Catholic Australian teenage Wanker'.

You have to bear in mind this is Murnane writing and his views on fiction. This is in no way a reality or biographical, merely a chance to explore what might be in an alternative universe - as if to look from the other side of the screen. And also, being Murnane, it is a chance to examine elements of Catholic dogma, in particular ideas on desire, and the nature of Catholic marriage. Everything in Sherd's life seems fantasy-like as a giant part of all adolescence is. It brings to the forefront how strong patriarchy was within the Catholic Church in the 50's

Getting away from the hilarity of Sherd's fantasy life, Murnane manages to realise how strong the Catholic church's grip on people was such that the priesthood became almost like an Inquisition and the Church itself within Australian life as a Theocracy. A Lifetime On Clouds An adolescent Australian Catholic boy spends the bulk of his time dreaming. He fantasizes elaborate orgy scenarios with beautiful American film actresses, imagines himself married to a girl named Denise he meets on public transport, and finally dreams of becoming a priest himself. All of this fantasizing is vividly detailed and extremely entertaining, not to mention wonderfully written. Murnane was already a favorite writer of mine before I picked up A Lifetime on Clouds, and reading this has only further solidified his greatness in my mind. This is early work, not as great as his later more mature works, certainly, but still very much worth reading. Recommended! A Lifetime On Clouds This remarkable book is probably the most accessible of Murnane’s novels.

It is the story of a Catholic adolescent growing up in one of the new suburbs of Melbourne in the 1950s and of his struggles with masturbation. There are many very funny passages in this book and some wonderfully amusing ideas.

The central character (Adrian) creates entire and rich worlds for himself throughout the book – for most of the first part that world is an imagined USA. This USA is a series of breath-taking landscapes populated by an endless supply of achingly attractive and infinitely available actresses. Although Adrian has never seen any of the films which these actresses star in (his mother only allows him to see films that are rated for general exhibition and so mostly these end up being the sorts of films produced by Disney) photos of these actresses, called Jayne or Marilyn, do appear in the entertainment sections of the local newspaper.

The newspaper also has photographs of young Melbourne women who, despite the chill of early spring, can’t seem to resist putting on their two-piece bathing costumes and splashing in the still cold waters of Port Phillip Bay at Mordialloc or Mentone. And although these young women may lean forward towards the camera and although the camera may be so close that you can see the water bead on their breasts, Adrian never fantasies about having sex with any of these particular young women. The embarrassment of the possibility, remote as it may be, that one day he might see one of these young women walking down a street or sitting opposite them on a train is enough to cool his ardour.

But in the USA, where there are so few Catholic families and where as a consequence the morals of the young actresses are always easy – Adrian returns night after night to the beaches of California, the planes of the Mid-West or the mountains of the Rockies, as determined by where his model train-set stops, for a series of sexual adventures that sometimes involves dozens of partially clad, or even naked, buxom starlets.

The one dark cloud on the horizon is that being Catholic he is regularly required to confess his sins to a priest who wants to be assured that Adrian is truly repentant. Of course, confessing his sins is only the first of his monthly trials – next is to somehow make it through to Sunday so as to be able to take communion with a soul that had not been tarnished with any further occasions of sin. Sometimes Thursday to Sunday can seem like months.

Adrian finally is able to control his passions by falling in love with a virtuous Catholic girl he notices at church one morning and for whom he creates an intricately detailed life as his future wife and the mother of his extended family. The thought of her joining him on his adventures to the USA is enough to stop his journeys altogether – something he was certain he alone would never be able to do.

But even an imagined life with her as his partner and their eleven children is not in the end enough and he finally decides to become a priest. Central to his calling is his desire to help other young men in their battle against the temptations inherent in the sin of masturbation.

This book could have been subtitled ‘the part played by masturbation in the history of the world’. And although on the surface the central character is pleased he ends up controlling masturbation – in reality it is clear that at no time has masturbation loosened its grip on him (so to speak). His ability to not masturbate is at the cost of much mental effort.

This is a wonderful book, a book that presents a series of fantasy lives of the central character in both his attempt at an escape from temptation and as his attempt at escape from the blandness of life. Murnane captures the naivety of an adolescent boy beautifully and the pages in which Adrian is imagining having to explain to his young wife the secrets of marriage on their wedding night are among my favourite in the entire book.

He also makes interesting points about the relationship between the social, class and public transport system of Melbourne in the 1950s. Basically, if the suburb is serviced by trams the suburb is ‘leafy’ and middle-class, if it is serviced by trains it is a new suburb and basically working class – if it is inner-city it is a slum. The only changes today being that the inner-city slums are now among Melbourne’s most expensive real estate and the new suburbs that have grown on the extreme edges of the city now don’t even have trains.

There is a wonderful section where he imagines meeting his wife again in heaven – when they both have perfect, heavenly bodies and are no longer troubled by lust. He is explaining this in an imaginary conversation with her as his wife - a fantasy within a fantasy:

“’When I look at your firm young breasts I probably admire them for the part they played in God’s plan for us by catching my eye some nights as you slipped into your nightgown and prompting me to ask you to yield to me in bed. Or else I simply praise them for the wonderful job they did each time you brought another child into the world—swelling to a prodigious size before the great day and then pouring out gallons of nourishing milk through the conspicuous nipples during the weeks when your infant pressed its hungry mouth against them.’”

Despite having accepted the Church’s teachings on the role of sex in marriage – he still struggles to accept that there will ever be a time, even in heaven, when he will be able to look at the body of a naked woman with such a functional vision as that quoted above.

After a lifetime on clouds there is little doubt that Adrian will never find a way to sleep peacefully at night untroubled by impossible dreams.
A Lifetime On Clouds