We lost a literary giant and I had nothing to do with it, I swear

Last month we lost a giant in David Malouf, and I had nothing to do with it, despite what his inbox says. Like you, I learnt the news from the media. Unlike you, I nursed an unease, a misplaced guilt reviving the author’s own words: “All the things we achieve are things we have first of all imagined”.

Let me explain. By chance, I’d emailed David on the eve of his death, unaware the 92-year-old was unwell. For the record, I’d contacted his London agent 24 hours before the news, eager to sort an adjective problem. Joanne Karcz, a Wordplay reader, had floated the quibble back in March, spotting a potential slip in Malouf’s 1981 anthology Child’s Play.

I didn’t know the collection, though I’d relished many Maloufs over the years, adoring the centaur boy called Johnno (“half-boy, half-bicycle”), the Brisbanite’s coming-of-age novel from 1975. Later I explored Harland’s Half Acre (the Australian novel I’d jammed in my backpack as a Eurail pilgrim), the Miles Franklin-winning doorstop of The Great World, the Homerian fable of Ransom. His words and wisdom were a constant for many.

Joanne’s quibble, however, concerned a dying woman: “During my training as an occupational therapist, I learnt the word ‘prone’ meant lying face downwards. Supine means the opposite – lying face upwards. However, many writers describe a body as lying prone and meaning that they are facing upwards. Only today I read in David Malouf’s Child’s Play where the dying woman lay ‘prone, gaunt, flat-chested, her mouth slightly open to take in air …’.”

It’s possible, I thought. Even the Wikipedia graphic allows for wiggle room, the prone body’s face rucked sideways to enable oxygen to flow. Prone stems from pronus in Latin, meaning “leaning forward”, just as gamblers are inclined to risk, tilting towards danger. In contrast, supine and spine are twins, the word arising from Latin’s supinus, with “the front of one’s body upwards”.

Maybe the woman, I conjectured, was on her stomach for comfort, her face turned to breathe, but Joanne was sceptical. “I think not – she was in hospital, being kept alive by a machine. And if she was prone you would not be able to see that she was flat-chested.”

Joanne had a point, plus a writerly instinct. “Prone certainly sounds better than supine in a sentence. It jars less. And readers understand the intent. But to me it is the wrong word. I’d love to hear your thoughts.”

Here’s where I took the plunge, inadvertently abetted by former NSW premier Bob Carr. In Carr’s grief memoir Bring Back Yesterday [Allen & Unwin, 2026], a love letter to his late wife Helena, Carr cites a memorable dinner with Malouf, saying, “at nearly 90, David is trim, alert, sharp-eyed, unlined”.

Healthy, in a word. Fit and firing, immune to the stuff of mortals. Surely two years can’t make a big difference, so I put the hospital quandary into words, sent it to the Gold Coast via London W11. Face up or face down? What did the author envision? Only to feel that icy stiletto of coincidence some 12 hours later, reading of the writer’s death. In bed, perhaps. In comfort, I hope. Lying however the great man saw fit.

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