It was peaceful, secure, and often very boring." Marsden's father managed a bank, a job he maintained for forty-eight years. This had a marked yet contrary effect on the young Marsden. He related to
SAAS: "Perhaps one of the things I've done in my adult life is to react against that kind of commitment. At the latest count I've had thirty-two different jobs."
Growing up in small Australian towns during the 1950s gave Marsden experiences that were quite different from children in urban America during the same era. In his village, ice was still delivered to people for their iceboxes, cooking was mainly done on stoves powered by fuel, and no one he knew owned a television set. "I first saw television when I was ten years old. In our small Tasmanian town an electrical shop brought in a TV and put it in their window, for the wedding of Princess Margaret. On the great day the whole town gathered in front of the shop and the set was switched on. All we saw was 'snow'--grey and white static, with a few figures vaguely visible through the murk," Marsden wrote in SAAS.
Marsden was too infatuated with written literature to care if his family had a television.
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