SOURCE: “Epiphanies in Tables and Goats: The Burnt Ones, The Cockatoos, and Four Plays,” in Patrick White, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 87-103.

In the following excerpt, Weigel surveys the critical reception of White's short story collections and points out that White's short stories “employ diverse techniques for a wide range of effects like the author's novels.”

Most of Patrick White's short stories have been collected and published in two volumes, The Burnt Ones (1964) and The Cockatoos (1975). Four of his early plays, originally produced in Australia, have been published in one volume in 1965. For many admirers of Patrick White, his shorter fiction and his plays are epiphenomena. That is, although White's reputation as a significant writer may be reinforced by them, they are not essential. Like his novels, they do, however, bear witness to the author's cosmopolitanism and his ambivalence about Australia. The stories in particular, which vary in length...