Carey, Peter
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Wikipedia-Article "Peter Carey"
Peter Philip Carey (born May 7, 1943) is an Australian novelist. Born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, and after living in Melbourne, London and Sydney he is now based in New York. He wrote advertising copy in the early days of his literary career. He also collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World. Currently he is director of the Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.
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Biography
Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, in 1943. His parents ran a General Motors dealership, Carey Motors. He attended Bacchus Marsh State School from 1948 to 1953, then boarded at Geelong Grammar School between 1954 and 1960 before graduating. In 1961, Carey enrolled in a Science degree at Monash University in Melbourne, majoring in Chemistry and Zoology, but cut short his study due to a car accident and a lack of interest in his studies.
In 1962 he began to work in advertising. He worked at various Melbourne advertising agencies between 1962 and 1967, and worked on campaigns for Volkswagen and Lindeman’s Winery, among many others. It was his advertising work that brought him into contact with the writers Barry Oakley and Morris Lurie, who introduced him to recent European and American fiction. Carey married his first wife, Leigh Weetman in 1964.
During this time, he read widely, particularly the works of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and William Faulkner, and began his own writing in 1964. By 1968 he had written a number of unpublished manuscripts, including novels entitled Contacts, The Futility Machine and Wog, as well as a short story collection. Several of these manuscripts were accepted by a publisher, but later rejected.
In the late 1960s, he traveled through Europe and parts of the Middle East, ending up in London in 1968, where he worked in advertising once again. Returning to Australia in 1970, he continued to work in advertising in Melbourne and Sydney.
While working in advertising, Carey wrote and published a number of short stories, in magazines and newspapers such as Meanjin and Nation Review. Most of these were published in The Fat Man In History. In 1974, he divorced Leigh Weetman and moved to Balmain in Sydney to work for Grey’s Advertising Agency.
In 1977, Carey moved to Queensland to join an 'alternative community' in Yandina, north of Brisbane. He would write for three weeks, then spend the fourth week working in Sydney. It was during this time that he wrote most of the stories collected in War Crimes, as well as Bliss, his first published novel.
Carey started his own advertising agency in 1980, the Sydney-based McSpedden Carey Advertising Consultants, in partnership with Bani McSpedden. In 1981, he moved to Bellingen in northern New South Wales. He married theatre director Alison Summers in 1985, and some time around 1990 sold his share of McSpedden Carey and moved to New York, during the writing of The Tax Inspector. This move drew criticism from many, who disputed Carey’s right to speak from an Australian perspective while living outside the country.
In 1998 he provoked further controversy by declining an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II after winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Jack Maggs, many believing his response to be motivated by his Australian Republican beliefs, though he cited family and personal reasons at the time. Carey later said he had asked for the meeting to be postponed, but the meeting was cancelled by the Palace instead.
Awards
Carey has won numerous literary awards, including:
| The Booker Prize | Illywhacker, shortlisted in 1985; Oscar and Lucinda, 1988; True History of the Kelly Gang, 2001 |
| The Miles Franklin Award | Bliss, 1981; Oscar and Lucinda, 1989; Jack Maggs, 1998; True History of the Kelly Gang, shortlisted in 2001 |
| The Age Book of the Year Award | Illywhacker, 1985; The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, 1994; Jack Maggs, 1997 |
| The Commonwealth Writers Prize | Jack Maggs, 1998; True History of the Kelly Gang, 2001 |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Award | War Crimes, 1980; Bliss, 1982 |
| NBC Banjo Award | Bliss, 1982; Illywhacker, 1985; Oscar and Lucinda, 1989 |
| FAW Barbara Ramsden Award | Illywhacker, 1985 |
| Vance Palmer Prize for fiction | Illywhacker, 1986 |
| Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award | Oscar and Lucinda, 1988 |
| South Australia Festival Award | Oscar and Lucinda, 1990 |
| Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel | Illywhacker, 1986 |
Bibliography
Novels
- Bliss (1981)
- Illywhacker (1985)
- Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
- The Tax Inspector (1991)
- The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994)
- Jack Maggs (1997)
- True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)
- My Life as a Fake (2003)
Children's books
Short story collections
- The Fat Man in History (1974)
- War Crimes (1979)
- Exotic Pleasures (1990)
- Collected Stories (1994) - collects all the works from The Fat Man in History and War Crimes, as well as three previously uncollected works.
Short stories
- Peeling
- American Dreams
- Do You Love Me?
- Crabs
- Room No. 5 (Escribo)
- Report on the Shadow Industry
Non fiction
- A Letter to Our Son (1994)
- 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account (2001)
- Letter From New York (2001)
- Wrong About Japan (2004)
External links
- Guide to the papers of Peter Carey - held by the National Library of Australia
- Peter Carey Website maintained by Rebecca J. Vaughan, hosted by Flinders University
- The Literary Encyclopedia: Carey, Peter
- Peter Carey at www.contemporarywriters.com
- Peter Carey at the Internet Book List
- Peter Carey at the Internet Movie Database