‘Literary Adaptation and Market Value: Encounters with the Public in the Early Career of Roger McDonald.’

Abstract

Roger McDonald's first two novels offer an interesting case study of an emerging Australian writer in the later part of the twentieth century. Tensions arise in an era of global exchange and post-colonial legacy from the different demands of culture as responsibility and culture as entertainment. Local subsidisation presents as a variety of investments in a readership that is imagined as both a market and a public. The internationalisation of that readership is characterised by considerations that challenge critical understanding and creative imagination. 'For whom does one write?' is an increasingly complex question for Australian writers interested in readers and a reputation.