Byline: Deborah Stone

SOME, who never liked the book, feel vindicated. Others, impressed by the text, admit a little discomfort with the author. And some cannot quite see what all the fuss is about. As other Australians ask "Who does Helen Demidenko/Darville think she is?", the literary community is struggling with a bigger question: "Does it matter?" The fake identity of the Miles Franklin winner who claimed to be telling oral history through her novel `The Hand That Signed the Paper' has thrown on to the front pages a literary debate that has occupied writers and academics for much of this century. Is a novel a world unto itself, a sort of sacred territory with no responsibilities to truth, history or morality? Or is it a part of society, its validity affected by the author's experience, motives or politics? "I don't care if her parents are Eskimos," said Mr Rodney Hall, novelist and former chairman of the Australia Council, who believed the controversy was a result of people turning artists into celebrities. "It's a sad comment on the fact that we don't read the novel as novel, only as an object of the publicity machine. " "I care who she is," said the poet Professor Chris Wallace- Crabbe. "I care if she is sane or...