Riders in the Chariot was published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in London and Viking in New York in 1961. It is White’s most overtly spiritual novel — a work that examines the presence of mystical experience within the most unpromising social contexts, and the persecution that inevitably follows those who perceive the world differently from the majority.
The four “riders” — who share a vision of Ezekiel’s chariot (the Merkabah of Jewish mysticism) without fully understanding their connection to each other — are drawn from the margins of 1950s suburban Sydney:
Himmelfarb is a German-Jewish intellectual, a Holocaust survivor who has emigrated to Australia and works in a factory. His European learning, his mystical Judaism, his very survival constitute an affront to the determinedly ordinary suburb of Sarsaparilla.
Alf Dubbo is an Aboriginal man — orphaned, institutionalized, self-taught — who paints visionary canvases in secret. His genius is invisible to white Australia, which sees only his race.
Miss Hare is an elderly spinster living in a decaying mansion, communicating with animals and the natural world in ways the suburb finds insane.
Mrs. Godbold is a washerwoman — poor, religious, bearing six children by a brutal husband — whose simple faith constitutes a form of grace that the world around her cannot recognize.
The novel builds to a crucifixion scene: Himmelfarb, on Good Friday, is assaulted by his co-workers in a scene that fuses anti-Semitism, Australian anti-intellectualism, and the mob violence inherent in conformist societies. White’s point is theological: the sacred manifests in the despised, the holy in the outcast, and society’s instinct is always to destroy what it cannot comprehend.
Collecting Riders in the Chariot
First edition (Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1961; Viking, New York, 1961): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- Eyre & Spottiswoode first UK edition in dust jacket: $75–$200
- Viking first US edition in dust jacket: $50–$150
- Signed first edition: $200–$500
- Without jacket: $15–$30
White’s most controversial novel — praised for its ambition and attacked for its treatment of Aboriginal experience (written from outside, by a white author). Its theological vision and structural ambition place it among his three or four greatest works.