The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr (Freemantle Press, 2013)

Tracy Farr grew up in Australia and has lived in New Zealand since 1996, which I think qualifies her for inclusion on a New Zealand book blog.  Farr’s novel is infused with reflections on both countries.  The main character, Lena, or Dame Helena if we’re being official, reflects on her life, and the cities she has lived in: Perth, Sydney, Dunedin and Singapore, to name a few.   As Lena moves from city to city, country to country, we learn of Lena’s love of music which starts with humming into a comb wrapped with tissue paper, to the cello, to learning the instrument in which she makes a name for herself - the Theremin.  The electrical instrument signifies modernity, and that Lena is a thoroughly modern woman.

 

The novel doesn’t have a plot as such, rather it re-tells episodes from Lena’s life as she reflects on her experiences.  At the beginning of the narrative a documentary film maker asks Lena to share her stories.  While Lena has encountered some fame for her musical abilities throughout her life, she is now a pensioner whose fame is now a memory, memories that the filmmaker is keen to capture.  Interspersed between the scenes set in the present, are reflections and memories of the past.  Initially, I thought that Lena’s reflections are the stories she is telling to the filmmaker because the memories are ‘told’ more than they are ‘described.’  By ‘told’ I mean more ‘tell’ than description.  I got this impression because the sentence length in most of the narrative is long, which, to me, indicates speech, a lingering story, spliced with commas, and semi-colons.  But, Lena’s reflections aren’t told to the filmmaker; instead they end up being episodes that she has written about herself.  This made me question the point of having the framing device of the filmmaker if it isn’t the filmmaker that Lena is telling her life story to.

 

However, the intrusion of the filmmaker into Lena’s life initiates her reflections, and it also brings up a conversation about memory, about truth and invention.  Mo, the filmmaker, asks Lena to try to tell her story in a new way, to make the old stories feel new by not relating them in the same way she always has.  Instead, Mo wants Lena to improvise, to make it fresh in order to acknowledge both invention and reality in memory.  Lena says that she will try, but I got a greater sense that Lena was choosing what to reveal rather than inventing elements of story.  Throughout the novel there are pieces of information that Lena is keeping to herself, which for the reader is a little frustrating but it also shows that you can only ever know something about someone if they choose to reveal it.  To emphasise the metafictional qualities of the text, Mo also says that the final film will reveal as much about her as it will Lena.  In filming Lena, Mo is also revealing herself.

 

While the predominant theme is memory, sexuality is also dwelt on in the novel.  Lena has several love affairs with men and women, but the most significant relationship is with Beatrix, an artist and ‘new woman’ of the 1920s.  Farr uses the analogy of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is being built when Lena arrives in the city, to show the increasing physical and emotional closeness of the women.  The two ends of the bridge don’t connect when Lena and Beatrix first meet, but they do eventually, and the pair, along with the rest of the city, walks across it.  This joining signifies their physically relationship, I think, but it certainly isn’t a point that is lingered on, which is strange given that Lena is 18 at the time and there hasn’t been a hint of any other sexual activity.  I would’ve thought it would be a big deal, in more ways than one, that could have been lingered on a little more explicitly.  Not doing so relates to Lena’s keeping some things to herself but I just don’t think keeping everything to herself works in a novel.

While I do have a few reservations about the framing device in the novel, the book also offers a perspective on Lena’s life lived through two World Wars and extending through to the 1990s.  We learn about the personal challenges in Lena’s life however, societal conformities about sexuality and gender roles are held at a distance.  A strength in the novel is Farr’s descriptions and obvious love of the ocean, and the scenes with musical instruments were delightful.  Farr’s novel has been long listed for the 2014 Miles Franklin literary award.

Lamplighter by Kerry Donovan Brown (VUP 2014)

Lamplighter made me think of Lloyd Jones and his philosophy about narrative.  In this interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_CTZrEt81U) Jones says that he enjoys elements in fiction where divergent points meet up, for instance when oral and written traditions make their way into a story.  Jones isn’t interested in plots (although one usually emerges) but in a persuasive narrative voice that communicates playfulness and intense concentration.  Jones also notes how people who are sealed off from the world look to the horizon where possibility and ‘otherness’ exist.  All of these elements are in Donovan Brown’s novel.

The prose in Lightlighter is at times poetic, especially when Donovan Brown is describing the wetland area where the novel is set.  The story is told in third person narration focalised through Candle.  His Grandfather is the current Lamplighter, a role that Candle is set to inherit, and his apprenticeship involves following his Grandfather as he lights the lamps every evening.  While a great deal of the descriptive prose is poetic, at other times, the writing slips into fable, especially when the Lamplighter is recalling stories of the creatures that exist beyond the lamplight.  There are also references to pā sites and battles on the land.  The novel is full of stories about place that are recalled through oral storytelling.  The divergent elements of storytelling – oral and written – meet and play with each other in Brown’s novel, and show the palimpsest of stories that mingle together in a single place.

I found Brown’s narrative voice intoxicating and lulling, like any good fable, but the story is also bound to the realities of life in a coastal settlement.  It’s the meeting of the divergent elements of fable and realism that I really enjoyed, and the combination made the story feel timeless.  While there are indications that the novel is set recently, the inclusion of a video game for example, it also feels like the action could be happening at any point in the last couple of centuries.  The community’s relationship to modernity is playful while also having the intense concentration that Jones speaks of because the sense of timelessness shows the unchanging attitude of some members of the community.

However, the community of Porbeagle is on the brink of change because the lamplighter’s role is being disestablished, which means that Candle’s apprenticeship is nearing the end.  The role of the Lamplighter is to light a perimeter against the dark “and the wildernesses beyond.”  This boundary between light and dark is like the ocean’s horizon to Jones.  In the wilderness lies other ways of being, it’s where ‘otherness’ exists.  The lighting of the boundary against the dark is an allegory for sexuality. Throughout the narrative Candle negotiates the community’s attitude towards his sexuality.  The mix of fable and realism in relation to sexuality is very clever.  A novel that discusses homosexuality in realist terms has perhaps become too familiar, and canny readers are aware of the themes and the feelings of characters who are coming to terms with their sexuality in a community that is perhaps disapproving.  Brown makes a familiar story new by mixing elements of realism and fable in discussions about sexuality.

About halfway through the novel when I had sobered up from the intoxication of the language I wondered where the novel was going, but a plot does come into play and all the stories of the Lamplighter and mythology come together.  The characters in the novel are fully formed and entirely convincing, but the most impressive feature in Brown’s writing is his descriptions (and evident love) of the coastal environment. While I didn’t always know the critters and plants that Brown was describing, the layering of detail added to magical qualities of place.

Monday 10 March

Session: Unravelling the National Grid
Poet, novelist and screenwriter Anne Kennedy on illicit love, passion and embroidery

Anne Kennedy writes across many forms which illustrates her creative philosophy of making every project depart from the known.  Usually an idea for a piece of work suggests a form but on occasion, such as her poetry collection Sing Song, Kennedy changes her mind.  Initially she thought Sing Song would be an article that she could publish in the Women’s Weekly so that she could reach a large audience but when she started writing the article her aims for the project didn’t fit within the confines of an article, so she changed to poetry.  Poetry allowed her space for experimentation which a poetry audience is receptive to, and to a certain extent, expects.  Alongside her philosophy of ‘departing from the known’ determining the form of her project, the expectations of the audience are also a factor.

Kennedy believes that we are all intrinsically artistic but the rigours of life and schooling drum it out of us.  Also, the notion of having to produce something, to be published, or displayed, in order to justify your artistic endeavours also puts people off creating.  A creative act actively fights this shut down, and through writing Kennedy tests artistic boundaries.  She believes that it is beneficial for artists to be immersed in other art forms, aside from the one they’re working in, when they are working on a project.

Kennedy studied music at university and receive a liberal and creative education based in theory, science and essay writing skills which have served her well over her creative career.  This is such an important point to make at a time when the Government continues to cut funding for the Humanities.  Professor Grant Guilford from Victoria University reiterates Kennedy’s point in an opinion piece in today’s Dominion in reaction to the recently released Government’s Tertiary Education Strategy:
“The humanities and social sciences are not just about the joy of living – reason enough to treasure these subjects. They are also pivotal in the development of a progressive, inclusive and internationally connected society. The arts, languages and literature, and other humanities subjects, play a central role in the celebration and critical reinterpretation of our national identity and our place in the world.” 

 

Click on the link for the full article http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/9811702/Humanities-on-path-to-identity#

 

The magic that happens on the page keeps Kennedy enthusiastic about writing and even when the magic isn’t so apparent, she keeps chugging away until it does.  Writing certainly has a work aspect in that some days she doesn’t feel like it, but she usually writes through any road blocks she’s experiencing.  When she begins a project she isn’t sure how it will end but she plans as she goes, makes notes and usually sticks to a three act structure in most of her work.  Character development is the hardest thing, and she gets to know her characters as she writes, and even more after publication. 

Gogo, the main character in Kennedy’s novel The Last Days of National Costume (2013) is “on the westward slope of middle class status.”  Gogo is from a settler family who has struggled to create a comfortable level of middle class existence but once achieved she has started to slide into the “agony of plenty” as Kennedy defines it.  This is in contrast to Shane, a recent immigrant from Belfast who takes a ripped Irish dancing costume to Gogo to mend, who is struggling to make ends meet.  The novel is concerned with what happens to people once the struggle is over – what keeps us going.

So why an Irish national costume?  Kennedy believes that there aren’t enough Irish settler stories in New Zealand literature and points out the important difference between English and Irish settlers.  While the English could, and often did go back ‘home’, the Irish couldn’t because of the continuation of the Troubles.  The Irish immigration was complete; it was a new beginning in a new country because there was no going back.  Kennedy also wants to show the perspective of a diaspora, the rugged variety rather than the green of St Patrick’s Day celebrations.

Auckland is prominent in the novel and this is because Kennedy enjoys writing about place and wants to put Auckland on the literary landscape as much as Fifth Avenue in New York is; we all know what Fifth Avenue is like through literature even though we haven’t physically travelled there.  The story takes place over the five weeks of the Auckland blackout in 1998.  The period of the blackout worked as a plot device so the action could take place over five weeks, and also the blackout delays Gogo mending the dress because she needs the light.  1998 was also a period of innocence; it was prior to 9/11 and what Kennedy considers a more hopeful time.  It was also before the Good Friday Agreement was signed in May 1998.  Before that agreement was signed there was still a sense that anything could happen in Northern Ireland.

The novel is also about the power of storytelling.  Shane’s story takes Gogo out of her middle class malaise, her interior world, and transforms her as well as Shane.  It is also about the contestation of land.

The session was thoroughly engaging and made more special when Anne was awarded the Nigel Cox Unity Books Prize by Fergus Barrowman at the end.

Session: 2014 New Zealand Book Council Lecture
Man Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton will discuss the role of change in fiction.

While waiting to get into the theatre we were told by the Festival staff to bunch up, to stand three abreast, and move closer to the wall.  People waited patiently, tickets in hands, we blocked access to the men’s loos (sheepish looking men widened their eyes and said excuse me to get through), and people were eating vanilla chocolate topped ice-creams or drinking red wine while checking their phones.  Then the doors opened and everyone poured in.  I had heard someone say that they were expecting 500 people, I’m not sure whether that number is accurate but the theatre was packed to hear Catton’s lecture entitled “Paradox and Change in Fiction.”

Catton used the analogy of physics to show the time and space elements in narrative.  We can only move in one direction – forward - in life, and when reading a book (we start at page one and move towards the end), and we occupy the present time in which we’re reading it.  However, time and space are elastic, there are times in life when time seems to drag and at other moments it seems to speed up, and while we occupy a space, we only see what we notice in that space, not the entirety of things in that space.  These aspects of time and space can be exaggerated in narrative.

In the fundamentals of physics no change is instantaneous.  No one goes from being bad to being inherently good in an instant, with no effort expended; we can’t get something for nothing.  In a narrative, a character that changes instantly with no effort is an example of bad writing because change without time passing is meaningless.  As readers, and people, we want to see how a person has changed and why, we want to be able to defend that change and to say why it happened.  Change in narrative needs to be meaningful and rewarding, and is a fundamental property of fiction alongside plot.

Catton noted that a lot of literary fiction lacks plot, indeed, that there seems to be a contemporary bias against it.  Catton cited Harold Bloom’s analysis of Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies and his belief that the character is more important than the plot.  Catton entirely disagrees.  In a Shakespeare comedy an impossible situation becomes possible.  Catton broke the plot progression into five points: an impossible situation is presented, an impartial aid arrives which usually involves some mischief, there is miscommunication, a revision of the impossible situation, and then a marriage.  Throughout this progression, spells and potions may be used in order for characters to gain insight and self-awareness, and it is only through this self-awareness that the impossible, in the case of a lot of Shakespeare’s comedies the impossible is love, is made possible.

In Shakespeare’s tragedies the five point plot progression is reversed.  In a tragedy, the situation that is first presented, the desire for permanent change, does seem achievable but it is thwarted.  Ambitions are never realised and everyone dies at the end.  In a tragedy what the characters feel to be true, and what is true, is never reconciled.  And how we define our truth depends on our lived experiences which form the basis of our definitions e.g. how we define love is based on our experiences of being loved and loving.  In a tragedy there is also a lack of self-awareness in the characters, which is the complete opposite to the comedies.  Catton referred to the differences in the plots of the comedies and tragedies as a plotted paradox.

While literary fiction has a contemporary bias against plot, it also holds ingenuity and action in low esteem, and there are no heroes.  Catton noted that some writers lay claim to insight possessively, and perhaps are reluctant to acknowledge things that they couldn’t have done themselves.  Genre fiction and children’s literature are not easier forms, and Catton notes that we should all be suspicions of a genre that names itself ‘literary fiction’ and to generally be suspicious of all genre labels.  She noted that if Jane Austen’s works were categorised along modern genre forms she would be a romance writer because of her happy endings.

What I take from this, as a writer, is to pay a great deal more attention to plot, to analyse the plots in the narratives I read to see how they are working – or whether or not they actually exist - and to read more widely across genres.  Everyone was captivated by Catton’s talk.  Afterwards, I heard someone mention that they thought Catton’s talk was academic but I’m not so sure.  In many ways I think she was encouraging people to read widely and not just read literary fiction that is studied in tertiary education, and I think in relating her ideas about plot to Shakespeare she was referring to a body of literature that while we may not know intimately, most people in the audience would know something about.  In many ways I think Catton was trying to expand our notions of what literature is, and what texts we define as literature, and who is defining them as such, and I think that is a task that the New Zealand writing community should take on board and is an entirely appropriate message for the New Zealand Book Council’s lecture.

There was time for a few questions at the end of the session.  In response to one, Catton said that literature should enlarge our lives, that it is spiritual and feeds us, and doesn’t repeat what we already live and know. 

Session: 2014 Janet Frame Memorial Lecture
Celebrated author and illustrator Gavin Bishop delivers a literary “state of the nation.”

Bishop remembers going to see a Disney production of Pinocchio at the Picture Palace when he was four years old.  In particular, he vividly remembers seeing the open mouth of a whale that swallowed Pinocchio in the film.  It is a touchstone image for Bishop, an image that had a powerful impact on his psyche.

Going to the picture palace was a ritual.  He would take the bus into town, and walk to the theatre and queue outside and then push on the brass door into the lobby and make his way to the ticket box to buy a nine penny seat in the front row.  As a kid he bounced up and down on the seat, and some kids ran up and down the rows.  The pictures in the films were simple but unforgettable; they enabled him to enter into a magical world.  In that world he learnt the language of cinema, the shadows and the visuals of storytelling.  Opening a picture book is a lot like going to the pictures.  The cover suggests the coming attraction, there is the smell of the book, the feelings of expectations, the opening credits on the title page, and then the story takes-off.

 

The visuals of storytelling were also apparent when he first saw a play.  The sets were the same size and there were no long shots or cropped images, and the perspective of the audience member depended on where they sat at a consistent distance.  A lot of the elements of theatre are apparent in Bishop’s early images.

 

Creating a picture book is a lot like story boarding for a film.  Text is included alongside images but the words and images don’t say the same things.  The images may carry sub-plots which are not included in the text.  A perfect writer/illustrator relationship, according to Bishop, is when both elements are done separately so that the illustrator can show their way of seeing the story rather than have the writer impose their visual perspective.

Bishop reflected on the commercial pressures of publishers.  There are seldom hardback covers for picture books, instead the books produced are lean and mean, and the stories have been reduced and simplified for busy parents.  Quality books that are challenging seem to be in short supply.  Bishop reflected that very few New Zealand picture books were published during the 1940s-60s and while there were more in the 1970s, it wasn’t until Eve Sutton’s My Cat Lives in Boxes in the 1980s that publishing in New Zealand became more confident.

Recently there has been a trend towards nationalistic icons in picture books such as black singlets and rugby balls which Bishop finds boring.  Instead, he attempts to reflect his own world but when he does it is problematic for publication in America.  However, when he writes for the American market, the New Zealand readers found his stories lacking in depth.

The other challenges that writers and illustrators face in New Zealand are the conditions surrounding the Public Lending Rights which excludes work under 48 pages (picture books are typically around 32 pages), and having to compete with writers of other forms for Creative New Zealand funding is extremely difficult.  Writers of picture books are not often included in big awards or residencies.  However, there are also supporters of Children’s Literature such as LIANZA, tertiary institutes that offer training in illustration, Storylines, Te Tai Tamariki, the New Zealand Book Council, and the New Zealand Society of Authors which offers mentorship and professional services which Bishop has used on several occasions.  Bishop did suggest that there should be a Children’s Literature Laureate to help promote children’s literature and literacy in New Zealand, as Australia has successfully done, which seemed popular with the audience.

The session was entertaining and highlighted the positive and negative aspects for those writing and illustrating children’s literature.

Writers Week: Sunday 9 March 2014

Session: Reviewing the Reviewer

Terry Castle joins fellow critic Harry Ricketts for an hour of compelling conversation.

 

The first book Terry Castle reviewed was The Sea by Iris Murdoch for a student magazine.  Castle was a Murdoch junkie.  She read 22 of Murdoch’s novels in a row and named her cat after the author.  Castle recalls attending a reading of Murdoch’s in the States where Murdoch wore a sack-like dress which one of Castle’s contemporaries pulled up at the shoulders and asked if she’d like to remove her coat.  Castle said that while she can have fun with a writer’s eccentricities, and Murdoch had plenty, her main reviewing focus is to show her appreciation for the work, to be humble, and to share her passion for the work with readers.

These sound like good guiding principles for reviewing and her comments have made me think about my reviewing, given that I’m analysing New Zealand books in what is a small writing community where I’m likely to bump into the writers I read around town.  While I want to encourage people to read and buy New Zealand books, I don’t want to be an indiscriminate cheerleader who yahoos anything, or who is seen to favour one publishing house or another.  One way to negate all of these factors is to treat the reviewing process like a workshop.  I say what I like about the writing, I try to see what the writer’s intentions are and appreciate where they’re coming from, but I also show what I don’t understand.   Treating reviewing like a workshop allows me to comment constructively about writing and follow Castle’s aim of appreciation.

 

Harry Ricketts, the chair of the session for the NZ Writers Festival, asked Castle about the value of reviewing, and whether in this technological age there is space for the long essay review, to which Castle replied that there can’t be too many vehicles for reviewing.  She said that academic criticism was deadly boring, and that her own writing style met with resistance in academia because I assume it didn’t stick to the ‘rules’.  I find this fascinating, given that I am in the middle of a PhD in which my critical section investigates some New Zealand novelists.  I find myself asking whether anyone will drag my finalised thesis off the shelf and actually read my analysis aside from my supervisors and external examiners.  I write about NZ books because I want people to feel as enthusiastic as I do about them and my PhD is no exception, but the academic language of my thesis will ensure the audience will be small.  I guess my aim is to write with academic rigour which is also palatable to a wider audience.

Castle released a memoir in essay form in 2011 called The Professor – she read a portion at the session that detailed her sexual awakening.  It was funny, accessible, descriptive and if Ricketts had allowed her a little more time, was about to get a bit rude.  Here is a review of The Professor by Elaine Showalter:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/23/terry-castle-the-professor-review

 

As a reader Castle has been drawn to memoir by a curiosity to know what other people are like.  Biographies were a life line to Castle when she was a solitary child because they showed her how to be human.  Castle also believes that they inspire the reader to create their own story, to compare their life to the one they are reading about, and ultimately help us ‘read’ ourselves.  Fiction, and writing in general, also shows us how to live, how other people function which Castle believes is survivalist mechanism – we read so we can suss other people out and therefore learn to survive in society.

 

Session: Scenes of Secrets and Disguises
Five actors read scenes from Arts Foundation Damien Wilkin’s seventh novel, Max Gate

Overheard while waiting for the session to begin:

“Is Damien going to be here?”
“I hope so.”

Indeed, Damien was there to introduce his novel and the actors who were going to read scenes from it.  He pointed out that the chosen scenes from the book show the juxtaposition between the decorum and recklessness, between confinement and freedom by those living at Max Gate while Thomas Hardy was dying.  A division I didn’t see fully when I was reviewing the book. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Wilkins’s novel and the read-through was no exception.  No changes had been made to the script – sections were lifted from the page to the stage.  Florence, Alice and Nellie were accompanied by the young reporter and Alex, and Mr Cockerill.

 

I was fascinated by the dress of the actor Carmel McGlone who played Florence.   She wore a black skirt, over which was a black lace slip and over that another skirt.  I think this represented the layers of Florence’s character – her inability to emotionally connect with others at the same time that we see her extreme emotional distress; she cannot give or receive comfort.  When I read the book I don’t think I had fully grasped this element, but the visual depiction of it in Florence’s frock has helped cement it in my mind.

Thomas Hardy enjoyed the adaptations of his work, and to extend the idea to Wilkins’s work seemed entirely appropriate, and like any re-reading brings out the themes and reinforces the pleasure of the work.

Griffith Review 43: Pacific Highways Co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Lloyd Jones 2014

(more stories and poetry available at www.griffithreview.com for free)

 

When I first opened this collection of new writing that discusses the history, people and critters of the Pacific I felt a bit disappointed about the lack of new fiction and the over-abundance of essays and memoir, but by the time I had finished the collection my thinking was totally transformed.  I found myself wondering whether it needed the fiction at all.  Not that the fiction is unsatisfactory, they are good stories by incredibly well renowned writers but perhaps the fact that there is only three of them, and the quality of the essays, memoir, and reportage is so high that I think they completely over shadow the stories.  But the essays, memoir and reportage – I felt such joy and excitement about the non-fiction.

Steve Braunias walks to Auckland airport, a journey those emigrating make for the last time and new New Zealanders make for the first, and notes Auckland’s cultural diversity as he goes.  He comes across a sculpture of a giant kiwi on the roof of an airport hotel and notes how, “The setting sun shone on its fat arse,” - probably one of my favourite lines in the whole collection.  Harry Ricketts also talks about migration and the masks immigrants use to fit into a new culture.  Alongside the movements of people, readers also learn about the migration of eels (O’Brien and Fell), sea pumice (Priestly) and the lengths people have gone to communicate with each other across the Pacific Ocean (McDonald).  Finlay MacDonald writes about Auckland, and how rather than it being a separate entity from the rest of New Zealand, it is in fact “becoming New Zealand”, the word ‘becoming’ seems especially pertinent when thinking about the collection as whole, which is about the becoming of the Pacific. 

 The ‘becoming’ also makes me think about Alan Curnow’s ‘state of the nation’s writing’ essay in the introduction of A Book of New Zealand Verse (1945) which Kate De Goldi makes reference to in her essay.  Curnow says that while nineteenth century colonists came to New Zealand physically, their spirit only adjusted to the new country several generations later; it was several generations of settlement “before poets appeared who could express what it meant to be, or to have become, a New Zealander” (20).  While Curnow may have had a point, the word ‘become’ suggests that the job of being a New Zealander is done, and perhaps limiting the ‘become’ to New Zealand is too narrow a frame, and ‘becoming the Pacific’ is a more accurate description; this collection certainly makes me think so.  The Pacific is a big pond which holds within in, and ebbs and flows through, a multitude of diversity and perspectives.  Curnow’s poem The Unhistoric Story ends with these lines:

           
And whatever islands may be
Under or over the sea,
It is something different, something
Nobody counted on.

The word ‘islands’ is the one that catches my eye.  I imagine in writing the poem that Curnow meant the islands of New Zealand, but if we think of the islands as those in the Pacific (and the continents at it edges), we are presented with a literature and perspective that perhaps even Curnow didn’t count on.

While the collection discusses literature (De Goldi, Weavers), it also gives social commentary; I found Bernard Beckett’s and Rob Oram’s pieces particularly illuminating.  David Burton talks about hunter-gathering on the South Coast of Wellington, and sport gets a look in too, as well as Damien Wilkins’s reflections on Stan Walker.  The subject matter is as diverse as the cultures represented in the narratives.  There is poetry too, which I think works well interspersed within the non-fiction.  I have seen murmurings on social media that there are only a few female voices represented in the poetry, which is true, however, overall the collection has 18 female contributors and 24 men, and people who I think of as primarily poets (Baker, Young, Jenner) are represented in the non-fiction rather than poetry.

I thoroughly enjoyed the collection, enjoyed reading so much creative non-fiction.  I found it inspiring; I was driven to write poetry about the Pacific. 

Buy the book. 

The Bright Side of my Condition (Penguin 2013) by Charlotte Randall

Charlotte Randall is one of contemporary New Zealand literature’s most accomplished novelists, and The Bright Side of my Condition is her seventh novel.  The narrative is about four convicts who have escaped the penal colony of Norfolk Island and have been deposited on a remote island in the Southern ocean by a Captain who promises to pick them up in a year.  He doesn’t.  The story of the men’s life on the island is told through the perspective of Bloodworth who comments on his relationship with his fellow castaways Gargantua, Toper and Slangam. 

The four men have very different personalities.  Bloodworth professes to be lazy but enjoys observing nature on the island, Gargantua believes himself the font of European knowledge, Slangam is a worker, and Toper has a religious bent.  Throughout the novel we learn how the men ended up at Norfolk and how they escaped onto the ship, and are deposited on the island.  The four men represent different belief systems and ways of approaching life.  While Gargantua relies on his knowledge, and Slangam finds meaning in life through work, Toper prays, while Bloodworth observes and thinks about different ways of existing on the island without the structures of society determining their actions.

However, as soon as they are on the island Slangam provides a structure for their existence and survival on the island which involves practical things like getting firewood and building a hut, but it also involves the structure of law.  At one point Bloodworth is punished for stealing potatoes and the penal system he thought they had left behind is enacted.  Although the prisoners are free on the island they enact the system of law which is an example of Louis Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus.  The prisoners recognise themselves in the values of the dominant class from which they come and reproduce the ideology by becoming jailers.  Bloodworth comments that, “The nonsense is that free on our island we fashion a little replica of what we come from, a sad little copy of the big world.”  Freedom, and what is done with it, is questioned throughout the novel.

The novel is also metaphorical in that it references story; the correct way of relating a story, and stories the men remember.  At one point the men are discussing Robinson Crusoe and Gargantua notes that readers have to suspend belief to go along with the story, to which Slangam replies, “Yer have to be a fucken idiot.”  The facts of story, whether there should be facts in fiction or not, is debated by the men.  Gargantua notes that the basis of Robinson Crusoe was Robert Knox’s story of shipwreck, to which Toper replies, “that second one were the real story and Crusoe weren’t,” to which Gargantua replies, “the second only provide the facts for the first, that aint enough for a story, in fact it weren’t a fucken story at all.”  It is certainly a more lively debate about the basis of story that I encountered in any university tutorial.  Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is also referenced in the novel.  The island on which the men have been deposited has a colony of albatross and the men become to fear the bird because of what it signifies in the poem; death. 

Questions about religion, belief, and fate come up throughout the novel.  Bloodworth reflects about what God says about men having talents and that they should use them, also on sexual morality, and Toper worries himself about heaven and hell, good and evil.  Although Toper seems to be constantly crossing himself to ward off evil he also introduces to the group Eastern devout practices and different systems of belief.

On one level the novel is a survival story, about the dynamics between the men and whether they work for each other or against each other.  Bloodworth’s journey is the most fascinating because he is the one that is questioning the structures of their lives and undergoes a personal transcendence; magical realism is used by Randall at the end of the novel in a somewhat Rushdie-like fall (if I say anymore I will ruin the ending – but I’d like to discuss it more) which seems to signify Bloodworth’s transition from the real to the magic within the real.

I only have a couple of gripes about the novel.  The first is narrating the story using the idiom of an uneducated man, not because it is hard to understand or read but because Randall used a similar device in Hokitika Town, and while I thoroughly enjoyed that novel and the use of idiom in it, I wanted something different in this book.  Secondly, some of the facts she relates about mental health seem to be left over research from The Curative (another book that I thoroughly enjoyed – though at times the main character seemed too knowledgeable about the future of mental health).  While I think the execution of these elements is great, I question the repetition of their use in this work, I expected something different in this novel from such an accomplished writer.

Self-Portrait by Marti Friedlander with Hugo Manson (Auckland University Press) 2013

 

Marti Friedlander is the photographer that people who know nothing about photography know.  This beautifully produced book of Marti’s photos is more about the images rather than the words, as perhaps it should be, but the words do show that Marti is a curious and intelligent woman with chutzpah.  Throughout the text she explains her interactions with people and places that have bought about some of the most iconic New Zealand images. 

She doesn’t talk about her parents, or how she and her sister came to live in an orphanage in London in the late 1920s-early 30s.  Gaps and silences are as interesting in their omission as to what is included, and I am curious about Marti’s parents, but it is her self-portrait and she gets to choose how she composes the text as much as any photo.  Marti does recollect her transition from having no personal relationship to photography as a child, to starting her career in London, and moving to New Zealand with her husband in 1958.  At that time New Zealand appeared barren, bland and devoid of culture but thankfully Marti managed to find herself amongst European immigrants and the boho crowd who gave her a taste of culture that she missed from London.  While Marti has recorded the lives of artists, writers, protests, and politicans, she also reflects on her opportunities to photograph women at Parihaka and her work with Michael King on his publication Moko.  The memoir in some respects isn’t about Marti at all but is about her recollections of the images and the people in them; it is a social history of New Zealand as much as it is a memoir.

Marti uses a digital camera these days and notes how easily people delete the photos that they aren’t happy with which means, “They will never understand the absolute thrill of rediscovering an image years later which takes on a whole new relevance and wonder” (242).  Her comment made me think of the big box of photos that mum used to have up in the wardrobe when I was a kid.  Our ‘proper’ photos had been put into albums but then there was a box with all the duds.  People in the images weren’t smiling or looking the right way, or the camera wasn’t focused.  As kids we would occasionally take the box down to have a look.  There was one of Grandma (who hated having her picture taken) standing in the backyard next to Granddad’s impressive vegetable garden by the rotary clothes line, with her face turned away.  On first glance the image isn’t a Kodak moment, but it shows her in everyday life, which is what I think of when I think of her; we would hang out in the backyard stealing peas off the vine or water the sweet peas that grew up the side of the shed, or sit inside the state house with the sun streaming in the venetian blinds first thing in the morning and watch the wax eyes in the tree.  The picture of Grandma is one of an ordinary person going about her life, which illustrates Marti’s approach to photography, and with the passage of time that ordinariness has become extraordinary to me because it accurately shows my Grandmother.  People won’t have those boxes of photos in the wardrobe anymore because we’re all deleting the shots that don’t quite look good enough (and even the good ones we upload and never get around to printing).   I can also remember taking the thin brown negatives out of the photo envelopes and holding them up to the light to see the image in various shades of brown.  Marti’s book shows the changing technology of photography and highlights what skills and images we may be missing out on while making technological gains.

I was particularly interested in her impression and images of New Zealand’s artists and writers.  It seems anyone who is anyone has had a run-in with C. K. Stead who according to Marti has, “to get out what he feels, regardless” of the feelings of his longstanding friends (164).   The book highlights how hard it was (and perhaps still is) to gain recognition for art and writing in New Zealand society, the struggle to make ends meet, and for artists who coupled up, what happens when one artist gains more recognition than the other, and the effect it has on their relationship.  Readers also get an insight into Marti’s relationship with her husband Gerrard, and how each of them has grown as individuals, and as a couple.  The book is about being an outsider in New Zealand, being Jewish, coping with illness as a child, and of loss, but alongside these trying experiences there is also an enthusiasm and joy in life.