CQU Press review - National Treasure
Published on 07 June, 2007
Having successfully survived a plagiarism scandal, National Treasure Scobie Spruce pumps out his iconic novels with the help of a prescription pill popping habit and marriage to the wealthy Claudia.
Then his research assistant Fullalove becomes seriously paranoid after being beaten up while researching Scobie's body parts novel. The enigmatic Plant replaces him and inserts himself into Scobie's household, helping fake original manuscripts to sell to Mac Arber, the dubious second-hand bookseller.
National Treasure
Michael Wilding
Central Queensland University Press (2007) RRP $25.95
ISBN 1 921274 00 X 240pp
Things fall apart when Claudia goes to reclaim the family assets in Central Europe. Scobie finds himself increasingly distracted by coke-snorting Nada, the writer who never publishes, and by the beastly British publisher Bentley who comes to stay.
After Scobie strips naked to a literary lunch of derisive old ladies, Claudia has him banged away in the Bel Ami clinic. But someone has to write the books. . .
And Scobie still manages to escape into bed with Claudia's lubricious mother and Daddy's au pair the mysterious Magdalena.
Climax is reached in the Opera House where Scobie proclaims his newly discovered aboriginality at the book launch with no beer.
Michael Wilding's hilarious black comedy treats the literary world with the same sparkling wit, incisive analysis, and inside information that characterized his portrayal of the university in his best-selling Academia Nuts.
Over the years Michael Wilding has been a milkman, a publisher, a Cosmopolitan bachelor of the month, an apple-picker, a newspaper columnist and a professor of English, experiences he has distilled into unforgettable fiction. 'The story of a maverick' - Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Cover art: Hazel Dooney (2001): 21C Feminism: Toward a better future?
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