I'm not so sure that Patrick White, whom I used to admire, has sufficient negative capability in his makeup to submit his intimations to much of a battering by fact.

These heretical thoughts were first suggested by a re-reading of The Aunt's Story some years ago—reputedly the author's favourite amongst his own novels. I came to the conclusion then that the vision White set over against grubby human duplicity was altogether too nebulous and undernourished, and The Twyborn Affair does nothing to help change my mind. (pp. 92-3)

Here's the … treatment handed out to a Sydney hotel:

As the waitresses, plump or sinewy, wove and interwove in their uniform black with white flashes, the head waiter, that giant currawong, a sheaf of menus tucked into a wing, swirling and descending, in nobody's pay yet open to persuasion, and woe to the heads he might crunch off as...