George Johnston - Clean Straw for Nothing and a Cartload of Clay

First published in 1969, Clean Straw for Nothing is George Johnstons sequel to the hugely successful My Brother Jack . In his Authors Note Johnston expressed his hope to do now one more novel to complete the Meredith trilogy. Sadly, his wish was not granted and, at the time of his death on 22 July 1970, the manuscript of A Cartload of Clay remained incomplete. Johnston had continued to work on the manuscript until a few days before his death, and it was published in 1971.

Johnstons biographer, Garry Kinnane, describes A Cartload of Clay as containing a large proportion of Johnstons best and most mature prose, written with great care and more discipline than in any previous novel. Given that first My Brother Jack and then Clean Straw for Nothing had won Australias most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, it is tempting to speculate as Johnston himself did while working on it whether, had it been completed, this third volume could have carried off the hat-trick.

All three novels of the Meredith trilogy My Brother Jack, Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Clay have been seen as autobiographical, a fact to which Johnston draws attention in his Authors Note to Clean Straw for Nothing . While they do make use of autobiographical material (Johnston and his character David Meredith having both lived in Greece, for example), it would be misleading to approach these volumes as autobiography in the full sense of the term. John Douglas Pringles comments in his preface to the first edition of A Cartload of Clay apply equally to the preceding two works: This novel must be judged as a novel, not as an autobiography; as a work of art, not as a work of history. This edition of Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Clay includes brief notes by Garry Kinnane at the end of each novel, which include details of some key differences between Johnstons life and acquaintances and David Merediths.

While My Brother Jack remains the best-known of Johnstons works, it is upon all three volumes of the Meredith trilogy that his reputation rests, and where his true literary legacy lies. These three novels remain as vital today as when they were first published.

Sydney, 2001

What the critics said about Clean Straw for Nothing when it was first published in 1969:

A modern classic even better, more poignant, than My Brother Jack . Here is one man bearing his soul as no Australian has ever done. Melbourne Sun

Prickling with insights and inquiries it stirs the imagination primarily because of the acuteness of a particularly human dilemma that of David Meredith, whose fate it is to discover that his sense of incompatibility is not a product of one provincial city, Melbourne, but of his nature as an artist and a man. An absorbing work, which deserves at least as much success as its famous predecessor. Sydney Morning Herald