Shabbat Reading: Gerald Murnane’s Barley Patch

#whatireadovershabbat Gerald Murnane's Barley Patch

Barley Patch, by Australian writer Gerald Murnane, is one of the weirdest and most expansive books I’ve read. It’s a work of fiction about why the narrator (who closely resembles Murnane) has given up writing fiction. The narrator spends most of the story describing books he’s read, the images they’ve conjured for him, and the fiction he’s written as a result of his impressions. It sounds simple, even boring, yet the writing is hypnotic. The “country on the far side of fiction” Murnane conjures is the closest you might come to picturing a truly infinite universe.