SOURCE: “More Burnt Ones: Patrick White's ‘The Cockatoos,’” in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1975, pp. 520-24.

In the following essay, Beston asserts that the short story form “does not offer White the space he needs for his greatest strength,” which is the portrayal of his characters' fantasies.

In The Cockatoos, Patrick White's latest collection of stories, there are only six stories against the eleven in The Burnt Ones (1964), his last collection. Two of the stories are of novella length (“A Woman's Hand” and “Sicilian Vespers”), and another two could also be considered novellas (“The Night the Prowler” and “The Cockatoos”). Nevertheless, White's concept of the novella is no different from his concept of the short story, so that one can validly refer to all the stories as short stories.

The short story as a form does not offer White the space he needs for his greatest...