It’d be an exaggeration to say that someone like this author would have to be invented in fiction because she simply couldn’t exist in real Australian life, but this is almost a forgivable exaggeration, given the interests of the populace there in mainly competitive activities.
Being in the creative fields in Australia is often a bit like being labelled as a poser. In that wide, brown land the word “intellectual” is sometimes used as a type of insult.
At one point in JM Coetzee’s novel, Costello apologises to her audience: “I usually take care to conceal the extravagances of the imagination.”
Costello though, as the author sets her out at least, is as good as a polemicist in the public lectures where she is invited to speak.