Politics & Power Quote by Patrick White

The line lands because it refuses the tidy myth of the “inevitable” literary genius. White frames his move to New York with the frank, almost sheepish confidence of someone who’s tasted acclaim and expects the world to keep its end of the bargain. Then he punctures that expectation with the blunt indignity of near-universal rejection. The rhythm matters: “expecting” gives way to “turned down,” and the phrase “almost every publisher” isn’t just a statistic; it’s a bruising tally, a reminder that prestige doesn’t travel cleanly across borders or markets.

The subtext is White’s quiet contempt for the machinery of literary validation. New York appears less as a cultural capital than as a sorting office: manuscripts stamped approved or returned to sender. Success, he implies, is not a pure reflection of talent but a contingent outcome shaped by taste-makers, timing, and an industry’s appetite for the familiar. For an Australian author (and a famously prickly one), the episode also hints at the colonial hangover of Anglophone publishing: the periphery can win laurels, but it still has to audition for the center.

Then comes the twist of loyalty: Viking Press “thought of taking me on.” Even here, the phrasing stays dry, minimizing melodrama. A “lifetime” relationship is described as an afterthought, which is precisely the point. White makes durability sound accidental, as if the most consequential support in a writer’s career can arrive not with trumpets, but with one editor’s pragmatic decision to say yes.