Bryce Courtenay's 'proudest moment'
Bestselling author Bryce Courtenay has died at the age of 79 after suffering from stomach cancer.
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EACH November for 20 years or so Bryce Courtenay produced a blockbuster that delighted many thousands of loyal readers. This year's , Jack of Diamonds is little different in style or content.
But it will be his last.
Courtenay, who has been suffering from stomach cancer, died in Canberra late on Thursday with his wife Christine, his son Adam, his family pets, Tim the dog and Cardamon the Burmese cat, by his side. He was 79. He knew he had little time left, but approached his final chapter with his characteristic cheerful spirits and brave face.
Storyteller supreme: Bryce Courtenay. Photo: Sahlan Hayes
''We'd like to thank all of Bryce's family and friends and all of his fans around the world for their love and support for me and his family as he wrote the final chapter of his extraordinary life. And may we make a request for privacy as we cherish his memory,'' Mrs Courtenay said in a statement from Penguin publishers.
Courtenay recorded a farewell in October in which he said his ''use-by date has finally come up''. He didn't mind that he had only a short time to live because ''I've had a wonderful life''. ''All I'd like to say as simply as I possibly can is thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.''
His long-time publisher and friend Bob Sessions, who will deliver the eulogy at the writer's funeral, said that when Courtenay let him know him Jack of Diamonds would be the last book he was stunned and saddened. And there was the question of the book - the plan had been for two.
"I said to him, but what about Jack? And Bryce said 'don't worry, I'll tell them what happens'. And he also took the opportunity (in the book) to say farewell to his readers.''
Sessions said Courtenay's strength as a novelist was that he was a marvellous storyteller. ''I often likened him to Charles Dickens, and I don't say that lightly. He tells sweeping stories and he had larger-than-life characters. And the readers had a sense of learning something about the world.''
Courtenay had always wanted to be a storyteller and writing The Power of One, published in 1989, ''changed his life''. Courtenay, then 50, was in advertising and, according to Sessions, "overstressed, drinking several bottles of wine a day, and smoking a hundred cigarettes". He realised this would be the death of him, and changed. .
Bryce Courtenay's reputation for storytelling in print extended to the telling of his own story, frequently embellished. He was born in South Africa in 1933 and brought up partly in an orphanage. There he told stories to avoid being bullied, and also learned to box. A schoolmate told him: ''If you can't bullshit your way out then you better know how to fight''.
Courtenay said in an interview that he had been bullshitting ever since.
He won a scholarship to a smart school in Johannesburg, and when he left opted to study journalism in London. He paid for that by becoming a ''grizzly'' in the copper mines of what was then Rhodesia, a dangerous role involving explosives.
In 1958 he left London for Sydney and the beginning of what he called his love affair with Australia.
But he didn't manage to get into journalism and started writing advertising copy. His plan was to work until 35 and then write novels.
But with son Damon a haemophiliac, he needed a regular income and eventually reached the top of the advertising business. Signing a $1 million deal for The Power of One at 55 changed all that.
He followed the story of Peekay the orphan with the heart-rending April Fool's Day and a further 19 novels, including Jessica, Tommo & Hawk, and Sylvia, starting each one on the last day of January and completing it by August. He delivered the book to Penguin chapter-by-chapter so the book could be in the shops in time for Christmas.
But he didn't stop there: he also had a serious say in how they were marketed.
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