Morris West

Background

West was born in St Kilda, Victoria and attended the Christian Brothers College, St Kilda. At the age of fourteen, he entered the Christian Brothers seminary "as a kind of refuge" from a difficult childhood. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1937 and worked as a teacher in New South Wales and Tasmania. He spent 12 years in a residence of the Christian Brothers order, taking annual vows, but left in 1941 without taking final vows. That same year, he married and enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force. He was seconded from the RAAF to work for Billy Hughes, former Australian prime minister, for a time. After becoming well known for producing radio serials, he left Australia in 1955 to write and lived in Austria, Italy, England and the United States, finally returning to Australia in 1980. During this time he had a stint as the Vatican correspondent for the Daily Mail. His son, C. Chris O'Hanlon, said that he spent his first 12 birthdays in 12 different countries.

Writing

A major theme of much of West's work was a question: when so many organisations use extreme violence towards evil ends, when and under what circumstances is it morally acceptable for their opponents to respond with violence? He stated on different occasions that his novels all deal with the same aspect of life, that is, the dilemma when sooner or later you have a situation such that nobody can tell you what to do.

West wrote with little revision. His first longhand version was usually not very different from the final printed version. Despite winning many prizes and being awarded honorary doctorates, his commercial success and his skills as a story teller, he never won the acceptance of Australia's literary clique. In the 1998 Oxford Literary History of Australia it was stated that: "Despite his international popularity, West has been surprisingly neglected by Australian literary critics." The previous edition, edited by Dame Leonie Kramer, did not mention him at all.

West was awarded the 1959 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Devil's Advocate. In the early 1960s, he helped found the Australian Society of Authors. He presented the 1986 Playford Lecture.

In 1993, West announced that he had written his last book and a formal valedictory dinner was held in his honour. However, he found he could not retire as he had planned and wrote a further three novels and two non-fiction books.

The Last Confession

West died while working at his desk on the final chapters of his novel The Last Confession, about the trials and imprisonment of Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600. Bruno was a person with whom West had long sympathised and even identified. In 1969 he had published a blank-verse play, The Heretic, on the same subject. This was staged in London in 1970. Of all his writings, he said this play had "the most of me in it". In 1998 he converted it into a libretto for an opera, which was set to music by Colin Brumby but it has not been staged. In early 1999 he also contemplated a film script based on the play. He wrote The Last Confession in the form of the diary that Bruno might have written knowing that execution was approaching. The diary was intended to cover the period 21 December 1599 to 17 February 1600, however it covers just 14 days; the entry West was writing when he died was dated 4 January 1600 and he had written only about half as much as he had intended. Nevertheless, the last paragraph he ever wrote was poignant: I can write no more today … who knows to what nightmares I might wake. West had had several severe heart attacks and undergone double-bypass surgery. Murray Waldren writes: "This is a book written by a man aware death is imminent about a man aware execution is near". West's family decided to publish it in 2000, in an incomplete form and without any editing, leaving readers free to imagine how the story might have ended. It has a foreword by Thomas Keneally, an editor's note by his publisher Angelo Loukakis and an epilogue co-written by his assistant Beryl Barraclough and his widow Joy West.

Personal life

Morris West was born on 26 April 1916, in St Kilda. He and his first wife, Elizabeth Harvey, had two children: Elizabeth, who became a nun, and Julian, who was a wine-maker before his death in 2005. Julian and his wife Helen Grimaux, had a daughter named Juliana Harriett West.[4]

West and Elizabeth Harvey divorced, and West then married Joyce "Joy" Lawford. Since his first wife, Elizabeth, was still alive when he married Joy, he struggled for a church annulment of his first marriage. He was out of communion with the Roman Catholic Church for many years because of this marital situation, and he had significant issues with the church's teachings. However, he never considered himself as anything other than a committed Catholic.[5] Joy West said that he was a believer who attended Mass every Sunday.

West and Joy had four children together. One son, C. Chris O'Hanlon, born in 1954, changed his name at the age of 26 as a gesture of independence. After starting four books in an attempt to realise what he believed were his father's expectations, and having to give back the advances he received from publishers when he could not finish them, he realised that he was not destined to be a writer. O'Hanlon, who suffers from a severe bipolar disorder, founded Spike Wireless, an internet design house.

Another of West's sons, Mike, is a musician who fronted the UK independent popular music band the Man from Delmonte during the late 1980s and early 1990s and has released several solo albums of New Orleans country music, especially being well known with the international touring act Truckstop Honeymoon.

West's grandson Anthony (Ant) West is also a musician, who fronts the UK music band Futures

Morris West died at the age of 83 on 9 October 1999 in Clareville, New South Wales.

Honours

West was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours of 1985. He was upgraded to Officer of the Order in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1997.