This is the type of writing that one has to mull and muse over. Three Uneasy Pieces contains three brief examples of Patrick White's art. I bought it on ebay for a few dollars and thoroughly enjoyed and still enjoy because it because it can be read and read again.
The first piece, The Screaming Potato, is barely two pages long. A mere sketch of recollections and reflections, it is a brief consideration of growing old. White writes, "I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is my wisdom." This is not just any screaming potato, but a particular one that reminds the protagonist of his mother who supposedly peeled “an economical potato.” White’s use of this description appears in the first line, “It has been said she peels an economical potato.” The potato becomes a metaphor for life in so many ways, an icon of memory through which he reflects upon his life and all that he has achieved, or failed to achieve. “We have all done a fair bit of gouging since then, in the name of morality and justice.” The reader is left in the dark – who are the “we” to whom the protagonist refers, how much time has passed and what was the justice that needed to be wrought?
The second piece, Dancing with Both Feet on the Ground, is slightly longer. It looks at "The un-reason of the past and even more the now." The narrator is old, and still he dances, in his kitchen. It is a scene of dilapidation -- the dishwasher no longer works, there is a mess on the floor, on his bathrobe. But there is still a power within, that keeps him moving, dancing "almost without knowing it".
Finally, there is The Age of a Wart, which also ranges from youth to old age. The narrator, as a child, gets a wart from friend Bluey Platt. Bluey isn't particularly likeable, yet he touches something in the narrator -- perhaps both the ugliness and the intimacy suggested by the passing disfiguring wart. The narrator can't forget Blue, and comes close to crossing paths with him again and again -- but Blue (like the memories, like the wart) remains elusive. Times passes, quickly to its ravaging end. Only in old, old age, the mind already going, does the narrator then find some release and understanding.
