Fact and Fiction

This week saw the death of the great American boxer, (Smokin') Joe Frazier, of liver cancer at the age of 67. The grief expressed by sportscasters and fans around the world has been enormous, and indicative of the place that Smokin' Joe has in sports mythology. Boxing is the most mythologized of all sports, and it's no coincidence that a survey of sports movies once reported that half of all sports movies are about boxers and boxing. It's a little like the Western genre, a scraping away of the accoutrements of 'civilization' to return to a more primeval state, where life and death and the potential for sudden loss is ever present. Where excuses won't save you, eloquence won't protect you.

One of the aspects of this week's reportage of Frazier's death is the twinning almost immediately of Frazier's story with that of Muhammad Ali. This is crucial, for in Ali's constructing of his image was his positioning of himself as pretty/sweet/good against ugly/sour/evil. Ali's ability to sell that image, rocked at first by his (then, for the 1960's) radical cultural and ethnic politics, was eventually all pervasive and persuasive. In the late 1960’s he harangued Frazier publicly, with insults about how (in Ali’s view) ugly he was and how dumb he was. Frazier was then cast as the villain in the public’s eye. The reality was very different.

When Ali was banned from boxing (anywhere in the world) in 1967 he was soon broke, and unknown to the general audience at the time, Frazier, then his sworn enemy, financially supported him. They would meet and Frazier would hand him envelopes with several thousand dollars in them. Ali would then go on insulting Frazier in public. Frazier said nothing, partly because he believed Ali’s banning was unjust, and partly because he wanted to fight him one day, eventually buying into Ali’s taunts that they were destined to meet in some kind of heavyweight boxing apocalyptic moment, which they did, when Ali was allowed to box again. Frazier won, clearly. He quietly went home. Ali went on insulting him.

Boxing in the 1960’s and 1970’s was caught up in the storm of words of a storyteller of genius – in Muhammad Ali. He was able to define other fighters in terms they could never escape from. His characterization of them became the accepted. His three most iconic opponents, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman were all cast firmly into the villain box, with Ali as avenger for all that was good. A deeper reading saw that Ali, the political activist railing against the poverty, lack of educational opportunities and racial prejudice of Black America, had not actually lived that upbringing. Liston, Frazier and Foreman had. Ali had the shadow of slavery over his ancestory, but his parents were part of the black middle-class. Liston was one of 25 children of an itinerant sharecropper, never knew the date or even the year he was born, never learnt to read and write. Frazier’s family were broke tenant farmers who ran bootleg whiskey, Smokin Joe’s first punchbag was a rolled-up blanket stuffed with straw and old clothes and tied to a tree. George Foreman grew up in a Houston, Texas slum called ‘The Bottom.’ Named so because if you arrived there, you had hit rock bottom. They knew the sharp end of being poor and black in the U.S.A. When Sonny Liston won the Heavyweight title he spent the plane journey home memorizing his speech for the press (since he couldn’t read.) When he landed, there was no one there to meet him.

Frazier’s victory over Ali in 1971 didn’t bring him the popularity he’d hoped for, he was respected by aficionados, but not liked by the public. Partly because he had shot down the good guy. He went on about his business. That’s what he did. There was never a more straightforward fighter than Frazier, he just worked and worked. No frills, no fancy moves. His comparitively small stature and short reach meant he often took 2 or 3 punches for every one he landed. He and Ali fought twice more, Ali won both. The third (in 1975) was an epic battle of will where Frazier’s manager Eddie Futch, in a rare (for professional boxing) moment of compassion refused to let the battered and half blinded Frazier come out for a 15^th round, as he said he 'wasn't going to watch him die.' An exhausted Ali later said that he himself wouldn't have made it through the round.

In the lead-up to the 1975 fight in the Phillipines Ali had gone all out on Frazier, saying it would be 'a thrilla, a chilla and a killa, when I get the gorilla in Manilla.' Then he called him an Uncle Tom, the ultimate insult for an African-American man of the age. He said he’d done deals with the white man to advance himself. That cut Frazier deep, and he never forgave Ali for that.

In the mid 1970’s a huge chunk of Frazier’s biography was finally brought out into the light, only he wasn’t in it. That’s how his luck ran. He had spent time working in slaughterhouses, punching frozen carcasses to harden his hands. Running in the Philadelphia sleet and snow. The end of his run took him to the steps of Philadelphia city hall. From there he went home. All those moments were used and later immortalized on the movie screen, by Sylvester Stallone’s character Rocky. The Rocky character won enormous cultural currency in America. Once again, fiction had won over fact.

A few years ago the city of Philadelphia decided to erect a statue of a boxer on those steps that Frazier had run up. The statue went up with great ceremony, and - you guessed it - now the character of Rocky stands there in all his homespun glory. No statues went up of Smokin’ Joe Frazier.

Muhammad Ali is now locked away in a world of Parkinson’s syndrome, from where he can no longer tell his stories, Sonny Liston was long ago found dead of a drug overdose at the age of 38 (or 40 or 42 – no-one knows for sure.) It may have been murder, as Liston was not a drug-taker and was terrified of needles. A needle was found in the middle of his BACK. George Foreman has managed to get out from under the villain image of Ali’s creation, and it was an inaccurate image. Through sheer power of will and relentless optimism he has found his own place.

And now Smokin’ Joe Frazier is dead. He was diagnosed only a month ago, and went on making appearances and signing autographs until they put him in the hospice. We now know the story of Ali and Frazier was very different to the one we were sold but the statue of Rocky still stands in Philadelphia’s heart and in America’s cultural heart. Maybe the fiction will always be preferable, and maybe men like Joe Frazier will always be in the shadows, and as characters in other people’s narratives.

R.I.P to a great, great, fighter. And a good man. A man of fact, not of fiction.

'...there are lit up moments, and the rest is dark.'

The above is a quote from Jeanette Winterson's wonderful book, Lighthousekeeping (Fourth Estate, London, 2004) which I finished reading a few days ago.

It was a revelation, quite possibly the best book I've read for... goodness knows how long. Everything about it is luminous, from the names of the characters - Silver, Miss Pinch, Pew, Josiah Dark, DogJim - to the language ( 'As for myself, I am splintered by great waves.' says Dark on page 166) to the commentary on storytelling itself.

There's also a sense of transcendence to the narrative voice - it's the kind of voice that creates a feeling of total uniqueness yet, at the same time, there is immediate recognition and connection. The kind of voice every writer longs for and reaches for. I was heading home from paragraph one.

So much is confessed, so much is not explained, and it all makes the most perfect sense - oh, for such narrative discernment, such confidence!

On page 134 the main character Silver says, '...and the stories I want to tell you will light up part of my life and leave the rest in darkness. You don't need to know everything. There is no everything. The stories themselves make the meaning.'

If you haven't already, read this book.

Here is a link to some reviews of Lighthousekeeping.

Reading and writing locally

Last week I was chatting to another Auckland writer and reader who commented that my work had a strong sense of being of and from New Zealand-Aotearoa. In particular, they said, this came out in the way I described the landscape, and used it to show aspects of character and psychology as well as to give a sense of place. I took this as a compliment and was rather flattered they had paid so much attention to the story. They then went on to say that they didn't want to write like that, that they wanted to appeal to a wider, more international audience, and that they weren't writing a 'New Zealand' story at all, they were writing for a global market. They had been told - and I'm not sure by whom - that anything too local had little or no chance of being published or read.

Well, I've heard that argument a number of times and it reminded me of hearing Margaret Attwood say that when she was starting out as a writer she was told the same kind of thing - that is, no-one would want to read about anything recognisably Canadian, it was too local - I think what that meant at the time was that it wouldn't appeal to an American audience. So whenever I hear these kinds of comments a part of my brain goes: oh, here we go, the cultural cringe argument again. And I think of any number of great writers whose work is steeped in local environments and communities, e.g. Annie Proulx, Katherine Mansefield, William Trevor, Patricia Grace, James Joyce...

It also reminded me of all the times I've heard writers - mainly but not only, unpublished - bemoan how hard it is to get published in New Zealand, yet when you ask them how many New Zealand books they read in a year they say none. They only read books from overseas such as international best sellers. Hmmm...

I'm not concerned that people are interested in overseas literature and popular fiction - I enjoy it very much myself - but I am always shocked and saddened if they aren't interested in the literature (and other forms of cultural expression) of their own communities. Can you demand the right to be heard, and published, if you aren't prepared to listen, read and support others?

Changes occuring in publishing (mentioned in a number of earlier posts) mean that we now have the opportunity to be published much more easily, but the new technologies and opportunities guarantee no-one an audience by right. Audiences are communities built up through shared interests, relationships and connections. They are not just marketing tools to make a buck out of.

The Western Front, in Second Person Point of View

Talking with another writer earlier this week (who is doing AUT's Master of Creative Writing) about war scenes, I recalled a scene from the 1930 classic All Quiet on the Western Front, Lewis Milestone's epic film of life in the World War One trenches, adapted from the novel by Erich-Maria Remarque.

The scene is one of the most famous of all war scenes, prepared with meticulous care and edited with real edge to create an unusual effect. The crew used cameras mounted on dollies on small railway tracks, and also overhead dollies to sweep across the landscape. This was all done on a 1:1 scale, with real actors, years before stop motion, then the CGI wizardry that followed.

The central shot is a sequence that intercuts between a 'looking in' shot to a German machine gun nest, and a 'looking out' shot from that same nest (and along the trench lines, framed with barbed wire) at the charging French infantry, who are cut to pieces. The thud thud thud of the machine gun and the squeal of artillery shells gives a frightening soundtrack.

The cutting, and the intimacy of the viewpoint serve almost to convert the sequence to Second Person Point of View, very rare in film. The viewer is forced to become the shooter, to be responsible for the shooting. This gives the scene rare emotional force. As it proceeds, the whole frame fills with smoke, almost turning the figures into ghosts.

Here is a link to the whole sequence, the machine gun segment goes from 1:21 to 1:58. It is stunning film making: raw, honest, confrontational.

This great film's final scene is also justly famous, and a beautiful and sorrowful metaphor. You can watch it here.

Passing...

The recent death of Christine Cole Catley (1922-2011) has left a large empty space in NZ letters, though with each day I begin to appreciate more what her life gave to NZ literature than what her death has taken away. Trisha and I were fortunate enough to have dinner with her and a few friends a few months ago, at which she still looked in great vigour.


She was an author, a publisher, a champion of NZ writers and writing and someone who (with the many good people on the Sargeson Trust) actively lobbied to get NZ writers financial backing, believing that our stories matter, as much as our rowing and rugby and what mountains we've climbed.

One thing I always appreciated about her was her lack of complete sureness, of a sense that she must be right because...well, she must be. That was refreshing. At the age of 88 she was asking questions and adding to her knowledge right up to the end.

Here is a link (from the Booksellers, NZ site) that gives some details and observations of what was certainly 'a life less ordinary...'

It seems almost redundant to say 'we shall not see her like again' but it's true.

The American Novel...

Been looking at a review (by Joseph Epstein) of a new book on American fiction. The Cambridge History of the American Novel.   I found myself agreeing with many of the points the reviewer makes early on. Such as:

These scholars may teach English, but they do not always write it, at least not quite. A novelist, we are told, "tasks himself" with this or that; things tend to get "problematized"; the adjectives "global" and "post"-this-or-that receive a good workout; "alterity" and "intertexuality" pop up their homely heads; the "poetics of ineffability" come into play; and "agency" is used in ways one hadn't hitherto noticed, so that "readers in groups demonstrate agency." About the term "non-heteronormativity" let us not speak.
 
For a start, global, may be the most currently overused word in the English language. (With perhaps Going Forward, being the most overused phrase.) However the further I read the more the reviewer sounded like a literary reactionary. Consider:

The Cambridge History of the American Novel" could only have come into the world after the death of the once-crucial distinction between high and low culture, a distinction that, until 40 or so years ago, dominated the criticism of literature and all the other arts. Under the rule of this distinction, critics felt it their job to close the gates on inferior artistic products. The distinction started to break down once the works of contemporary authors began to be taught in universities.

or...


Multiculturalism, which assigned an equivalence of value to the works of all cultures, irrespective of the quality of those works, finished off the distinction between high and low culture, a distinction whose linchpin was seriousness.

There is an equivalence of value in the works of all cultures, as cultural artifacts, as statements that such cultures do or did exist. That in itself is not a statement about quality but about identity and longevity and continuity. Quality is a separate and subjective issue. It's difficult not to pick up on a dog whistle about cultural primacy in such a statement.

But for all that, my favourite quote is:

(...) ... the deleterious effect that creative-writing programs have had on the writing of fiction.

Oh brother. Somehow I knew that was coming.

Any book on literature surely has a right to exist within its own framework, its own scope and opinions. Even if those opinions are ideologically driven. A smart reader is free to see the agenda behind the work and the opinions expressed as just that - opinions. I'll check out this history when it heads this way, with an open mind. If it is full of lit/crit jargon and ever decreasing circles then, well ... then it is, and the reader is free to put it down without injury. 


I don't believe readers need to be protected from the barbarians at the gate, and anyway, who gets to define the barbarians as barbarians?  

Here's a link to the full review.

The road out of isolation.

Reading Trisha’s post below prompts me to think of several issues.

·        In the traditional model the decision to publish is now economical, not qualitative. It always was, to an extent, but is more starkly so now. If a major publisher can say in November they’ve settled on their one new author for the coming year, then they seem to have shut the door on any other factors. I mean, how can you put a cap in advance on how many quality manuscripts you’ll be receiving.

·        With the new model of p-book (printed book) self-publishing (to a degree) and most especially e-book (electronic) self publishing the economic factors may lessen and the issue of quality of work becomes more black and white. If you can publish at the push of a button, then anyone can. How do we know that anyone/everyone has done the necessary diligence with their work’s quality before they push that button. The reading community will make their own judgements about quality as they always have. The writers need to be very clear-eyed in their qualitative judgements of their own work prior to publication.

In the new model I sometimes come across writers who are consumed by the how, in how to publish, and don’t always give enough focus on the when and what.

·        When – when is the manuscript ready to for me to hit the go button?

·        Why – what have I done/not done to ensure the manuscript is as high a quality as it can be?

The new model of self-publishing takes away the gatekeepers who decide we can/can’t publish, but now so much of the work they’ve done in that role needs to be taken on by the author.

·        Assessment

·        Layout

·        Artwork

·        Editing

·        Marketing

·        distribution

A couple of things spring to mind.

1)    Are potential self-published authors bearing all these tasks in mind when they consider their options

2)    These tasks need to be done, but not necessarily by the writer

When we consider these issues and tasks, how much are we thinking of gathering and pooling knowlege and ideas to work collectively, and how much are we approaching the new world in isolation. 

If we take one aspect of the list – Assessment  - and look at ways to do this, it’s not as daunting as it may seem. It is critical however. Writers and readers will not benefit by having first draft manuscripts published. I’d recommend the smart writer covers this issue in several stages.

·        Get together with a writing buddy or a writers critique group. Start assessing and critiquing your manuscript right from the start. Find out major issues early on, not at page 276. Be part of a pro-active servo mechanism – get other writers to critique your work with you critiquing theirs. Don’t expect anything for free, that’s disrespectful. Listen to advice, you don’t have to accept it, but to not listen is to miss out of fruitful opportunities to learn. For more info see my post on writers’ groups.

·        Attend writer’s workshops, or bang the drum to organize them yourself, with a group of writers. I have conducted workshops with several groups who have contacted writers and teachers themselves.

·        Get into a mentoring scheme. The NZSA has a good one, and it’s very cheap. Numbers are limited, but keep plugging away at it.

·        Have a professional assessment done – but only after you’ve already had several pairs of eyes look at it – on a quid-pro-quo basis. Don’t have the professional assessor be the first person to look at it. Iron as many of the kinks out as you can, prior to that point. Remember, peer critique is an effective way to upskill yourself, both by being critiqued and critiquing.

·        Read read read read read. I’ll say that again – read. Read as a writer – for technique as much as enjoyment. Deconstruct what you see, especially books that either work very well for you or don’t work at all. What are the differences – beyond personal taste.

A lot of writers’ trepidation about this issue, and most of the issues writers now face is based on the feeling that we are isolated. In the moment of creation, that’s true, but it doesn’t have to be in all aspects of what we do. There’s a wealth of ideas out there (but perhaps untapped) on how to get away from this, so we can form collectives and groups to negotiate our way through many of the tasks in the list above.  As Trisha notes, indie film-markers and musicians have already galvanised themselves to face the new reality.

In upcoming posts we’d like to go further into this, and call for ideas on how writers can get on the road out of isolation.

Vanity versus Independent - time for Indie publishing?

Last Friday night at the September meeting of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors there was the beginning of an interesting discussion about self-publishing. I use the word beginning deliberately, because while some important issues were raised, they need much more time and space to be thought about and talked through.

The advent of ditigal publishing, book selling and distribution, print on demand, and the seeming demise of traditional publishing opportunities (with multi-nationals like Random House or Penguin) are part of the context for the concerns and questions many authors, both published and unpublished, have. Although in fact, these days the very terms themselves - published and unpublished - are no longer clear cut.

One of the concerns many authors express is over who will now set the standards for publication, given that any one is now able to to publish digitally, and that it is much cheaper to print smaller runs.

Under the old model, self-publishing, especially of fiction, was given the put-down term of vanity publishing. It implied your work was any or all of the following: amateurish, second-rate, badly written, unedited, poorly designed, and only of interest to your family or friends. Most of all it implied that you weren't good enough to be taken seriously, reviewed, distributed or sold in mainstream bookshops.

Published, on the other hand, meant that someone other than yourself - usually a recognised publishing company - had chosen your work, agreed to have an editor work with you, took care of the design, production, marketing and distribution and, if you and they were lucky, made a profit. The publisher set the (literary) standard and bestowed the appropriate status that went it. Of course it was still possible to get bad, even horrendous, reviews under this model, and have almost no-one buy the book, but even so, the writer still belonged to a category whose status was well above that of 'vanity'.

Status and standards, and who has the power to define, bestow and control them, are an integral part of any industry or human activity, whether it be the film or wine industry, plumbers' association, architects, rugmakers or writers. And wanting to belong to an exclusive or high status group, that is, being up there with the best, is a natural human ambition. But just like in the music and film industry, changes in technology and access to that technology, give writers the opportunity to take more control of their work, and break down the old distinction between published and vanity. In itself this doesn't guarantee the quality or sucess of their work, and marketing and distribution remain major concerns - these are issues well worth discussing in another post.

Indie music and films are now thriving. There was a definite feeling at the meeting last Friday evening that it's time Indie writers did too.

Contrast and Montage

In the clip below, made of Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard's piece - Now We Are Free - there is superb use of montage effect and equally fine use of contrast. In fact the whole video is a treasure trove of sophisticated visual language.

Note how most of the shots feature a key contrast:

• size - large against small
• motion - movement against stillness

That level of contrast allows successive shots where there is minimal movement, but the key elements in the shot are moving against each other. This is an important facet of any form of storytelling, movement is always in relation to something.

I sometimes see student work where everything is moving quickfire, tension rises to a fever pitch and holds it. But continuous rapid movement needs to be against something that isn't rapidly moving, or it's like glancing across at another car next to you on the motorway, going at the same speed. Even though you're moving against the background, you're not against each other, you're still. A story which is nothing but constant movement, can actually flatline.

At 0:08 in the clip our eye focuses both on the boy's face and the water, because of their contrast. The effect of each is intensified because of what it is and what it isn't.

A writer can apply this process of contrast to many story elements:

• light/shade
• movement/stillness
• dialogue/narrative description
• spoken dialogue/body language 
• a scene of intense emotionality/writing in extreme plainness
• present/flashback
• realistic representation/dreams
• text/subtext

In the video below the use of contrast reaches its peak with the exquisite sequence from 1:00 to about 1:17 with the children running beneath the elephant's face in the rain. It takes an eye of some discernment to spot the angle to shoot from that intensifies that contrast, and these film-makers possess it.

Another thing that strikes me is the use of montage, where individual shots are layered one after another, and the glue between them is in the viewer's experience, the carry-over from one scene to the next. This is a facet of the reality of modern film. In the silent movies of the 1920's each scene was joined together by inserting a piece of written text that told something of the narrative. (e.g. ... meanwhile, the dastardly villain had kidnapped the heiress and taken her to his lair...) These insertions are a form of transition, corridors and lobbies in the story to take the reader from one scene to the next. Writers often insert these moments into the text, between scenes. e.g:
  

• meanwhile, on the other side of town...
• two weeks later, once he'd returned home from his trip...
• the following year, they...

Or my particular favourite, from war stories:

• That night, somewhere in Germany...  (usually written in old fashioned manual typeface)

But as readers and viewers we're capable of constructing such transitional moments in our heads, almost unconsciously, by making our own connections. We can and should be given space to do this.

In the Now We are Free filmclip they use the continuous stream of the music to glue the individual shots together, accentuated by the use of a single colour palette (variations of sepia.)

There are clips available on the 'net now, often created via a montage of 'found' materials that feature more artistry in a few minutes than many films have in 2 hours. Here's another example - also using the music of Lisa Gerrard. The shot of the 4 elephants standing up out of the water is stunning.

This is film-making so alive it breathes. 

Lisa Gerrard - Now We Are Free

2011 BNZ Literary Awards - Novice writers' category

Here is a link to the judge's report for the Novice writers' category of the BNZ literary awards. The judge of this category was Rachel King and I have found her report worth reading for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is purely personal: I was lucky enough to gain third place in this category with a story called The Rings of Saturn and to get mentioned in the report. I am grateful for her comments on the strengths and weaknesses of my story, not just because I respect Rachel King as a writer and critic, but because she obviously took the time to reflect thoughtfully on the top four stories and give some constructive feedback on all of them.

The second reason is that she has made some general comments about the topics and themes of many of the fifty shortlisted stories she read in this year's novice section of the competition. She states her concern that the topics (often around grief and death) might be being used to elicit an otherwise unearned emotional response in the reader. This is a very interesting comment and one worth pondering in more depth. I'm inferring that she means by this that the writing (of any story) needs to be a stronger vehicle for transporting the reader and making them feel and respond than the topic (or plot?) of the story, not that there is anything wrong with these topics/themes themselves? After all, many truly great short stories have been based on these themes, but I guess what makes them great is that the emotional response of the reader has been earned by the quality of the writing and the skill of the storytelling. Definitely something to aim for.

Here is a link for those of you interested in reading my story, The Rings of Saturn.

ebooks, epublishing and how we read and write

Here is a link to an interesting article from the Independent on how the Internet and the development of ebooks (and epublishing) is changing the way we read. I'm not sure I agree with everything Johann Hari is saying but I think many of his points are worth discussing. His article reminded me how much we need to debate what we think the gains and losses of ebooks and epublising might be for those of us writing (and reading) novels and short fiction, given how much these literary forms have changed and evolved in their (short) history and what has influenced and caused these changes and developments.
For example, a large and on-going influence on contemporary fiction and written storytelling has been film and the film industry. Currently, Hollywood 'experts' like Christopher Vogler (The Writer's Journey) and Robert McKee (Story), who have written interesting but formulaic how-to books on the construction of narrative/story, have been held up by many as the new 'masters' to take note of and follow. While their experiences and opinions are fascinating and informative, they are culturally and industry bound and not the definitive summary of all that narrative is, or how it should work - in the end they are talking about what they think works in Hollywood.

A couple of weeks ago I attended another discussion on the woes of the current publishing industry. A claim was made that ebooks and epublising are as big a cultural revolution as the advent of the printing press. This may well be true, and if it is, then writers and readers, as much as publishers, book producers, booksellers, and Hollywood experts, need to have a say in what is written, what is valued, how it is produced and distributed, and who benefits.

How we respond to the changing nature of publishing and distribution is critical to our cultural and financial survival as writers - lets not leave it the hands of the very industries that have always made more money out of our labour than we have.

Mana Waka - a piece of history

Trisha and I went to a screening of a new print of Merita Mita's 1990 re-visioning of Mana Waka, a film documenting the felling, carving and floating of Maori waka (canoes) by Tainui, in preparation for the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi, in 1940.

Aside from its historical significance the film is notable for a few interesting filmic variations. The use of voice-over (bi-lingual) was sparing, filling in detail only when it added to what was shown on screen. Much of the running time was filled with scenes with no spoken words, but relying on the sounds of the bush (axes, timberjacks, yoked bullock teams, the birds and insects of the forest.) Because these sounds were primary, they were in fact dialogue, in the way that another film might use spoken words. The sounds had an ebb and flow, a dynamic range. The audience responded to moments (when the waka base was being transported down a steep gully it almost upended - and the audience gasped) as they would to any other filmic dialogue. With intensity, with intimacy.

The film was a reminder of the giant of NZ cinema that was Merita Mita, and it was a privilege to be in the presence of her whanau and iwi in the theatre.  

Waka on the Thames

Here's a link to a short article and other links about the historic floating of the waka commissioned by Toi Maori Aoteroa (The Maori Arts Council) on the Thames in London earlier this month. I have to say, with an eye to history, this image has a mischievous edge that makes me smile.

There's certainly an Alternative History novel in there somewhere.

Katerina Mataira - Groundbreaker

Sad news on Saturday of the death of Katerina Mataira at the age of 79.

Katerina was a groundbreaker in the field of writing for children in Te Reo Maori, both as a writer and a translator. She was born in Tokomaru Bay in 1932 and trained as a teacher and art educator.

Katarina had nine children and leaves behind 50 grandchildren and great grandchildren and one great great grandchild.

In the few times I spoke to her I always found her wise and very progressive in her thinking, while retaining her feel for roots. She had a strong sense of the linking of past, present and future and of language and the arts being a living thing, constantly changing but always born of the past, of whakapapa, of those who have carved their paths before us.


A tangi will be held on Tuesday at Ohinewaiapu Marae in Rangitukia, 25km north east of Ruatoria. Farewell to a great lady.

Legacy Writing and Self Publishing workshops in Whangarei

The Story Bridge ran 2 days of Legacy Writing workshops in Whangarei last weekend. We had around 30 attendees over the 4 workshops, including several people repeating seminars. Some took the Intro to Legacy Writing, then the Advanced the next day. Some took either of the Legacy workshops then the Self Publishing workshop on the Sunday afternoon.

Whangarei city library is a modern, glass walled building with great light and a real feeling of space and airiness and had a real feel of community. Reminds us of the centrality of libraries in communities, especially in the smaller centres. Trisha and I headed out to Whangarei heads the afternoon before the workshop. Man, it was cold but, I think the term is 'bracing.' Beaches are awesome in any season, in any weather, with the earth showing you her different faces, different voices.

Most of the attendees at the workshop were from the Whangarei area.Some were well advanced into their writing projects, and a few were just starting out on theirs, so we had a great mix of students.

Participants learned how to approach their legacy/life story project as a writer would - using storytelling approaches to engage the reader in your story - including:

• description using Show/Don't Tell
• use of metaphor and motif
• how to layout dialogue to ebb and flow and contain a sense of place and landscape
• how to bring your dialogue scenes to life (to give the reader insight into the people in your legacy story - even though they never met them)
• how to structure the narrative, including flashback technique to capture moments from the past in immediate time
• how to think of your writing in terms of both the horizontal (plot and sequential event) and vertical axis (resonance, meaning, character insight)

Jocelyn's Self-Publishing workshop was an intensive introduction to the field, including comparisons with traditional and self-publishing options, and the whole process mapped out from finalizing the writing, to book production costings, print/e-book comparisons, down to writing your back-cover blurb and arranging book launches.

Many thanks go to Paula Urlich and her dedicated team at Whangarei Library for making us all welcome. 

The next legacy writing workshop series will be in Auckland, likely early next year. Will keep you posted.

Jocelyn and I are running a couple of workshops at Auckland University Continuing Education in August, on self-publishing and blogging (aimed at writers looking to develop an online presence). Here's a link to more info.

While we were at Whangarei Library we checked out the model of the proposed Hundertwasser Whangarei art centre. Frederick Hundertwasser is intrinsically linked with the north, and this would be a great addition to the region's public buildings.

I love Hundertwasser's playful pragmatism. A grass slope leading up to the roof of a building is a classic of the guy. Reminds me of all the unused roofs in Auckland City. When I look out from my office at AUT and see all the great spaces just left for air conditioning exhaust towers and roof tilings. We need more green, grass, trees. Even if it's seven floors up.

We give thanks - a visit to Whangarei library

On the back wall of the ground floor of Whangarei library there’s a painting (created in 2003) by a group of local intermediate students. These young artists acknowledge the influence of Nigel Brown and their work reflects his iconic paintings which tell stories and myths using a mixture of images and words.

Around the outside of the painting are the words: we give thanks for the invention of the handle without it there would be many things we couldn’t hold on to. Inside the painted frame there are images of hands grasping saw handles, rose stems, a garden spade or fork, the handle of a ghettoblaster, the woven flax of a kite, a carving, and the elegant, flowing lines of (what to me looks like) a seahorse. Beside each image the students have written their names.

Looking at the painting I thought of cups, teapots, scissors, door handles, the smooth bone handle of an engraved knife I bought in Spain in 2009; the way my hand curves around things, that useful opposable thumb that allows so many things including the ability to grip a pen in order to write; the way a child’s feather-light hand held mine as we crossed a busy road.

Then I thought of how we hold on, hold out, hold forth, hold down, hold back, hold up, how we try and get a handle on things, how we say, ‘get a grip’ if we think someone’s losing the plot. I thought about how porous and flexible and metaphoric language is, yet how it’s rooted in our sensory experience. I thought about how metaphor is a handle, how it opens connections between my physical and emotional senses and my imagination, how making connections is a way of creating meaning.

I took a couple of photos of the painting on my cellphone because by then I wanted a copy so I could go back and re-read it.

When I look at it again now, I think about how some paintings, like some songs and movies, work on me like a really good short story - how the artist/writer/actor/singer creates spaces for the reader/viewer to enter; how being able to transform objects into texts makes them alive and three dimensional and how powerful and pleasing that is.

For all of the above, we give thanks - without them there would be many things we couldn’t hold on to.

The Short Review: 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize Shortlist

For those of you who like to keep up with short story collections here is a link to the shortlist of one of the most prestigious international short story competitions. I see that New Zealand author Sue Orr, who was longlisted for her latest collection, didn't make it to the shortlist.

The Short Review: 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize Shortlist

Continuing Education...

I just finished teaching a week's intensive course on Writing the Novel, at Auckland University's Continuing Education department's, Winter Writer's week.

It was a good course, spread over 5 days. Keep an eye out at their website for upcoming courses in short stories, the novel, life writing, and freelance journalism and non-fiction.

In other course news Jocelyn Watkin and I are running a two day workshop this weekend (July 9/10) at the Whangarei library, on Legacy Writing (writing personal narratives using the new multimedia technology). Only $25 per workshop.

You can check out the info and book here.

New biography of James Joyce

The new biography of James Joyce by Ian Bowker, has received a lukewarm review in The Guardian. Here is a link to the review. I had to smile at the reviewer's (Adam Mars-Jones) point about the biography's use of cliches.

Joyce loved cliches, but only for the purposes of taxidermy. Ulysses in particular is full of them, stuffed and mounted. What would he have made of: "Unknowingly, Nora Barnacle from Galway had made a date with history"? Or: "Little escaped the voracious mind of the observant epiphanist"? Such formulas are a challenge to parody.

The first example comes close to my my most hated cliche in all writing: Little did they know... Such phrases should attract demerit points, even an instant fine.

 Ulysses was originally published by a 'group of friends', led by Sylvia Beach. Beach was an extraordinary supporter of writers in Paris in the 1920's including Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. I recall reading in a bio of Hemingway that Beach was in fact the only friend Hemingway ever had whom he never 'fell out' with.

One notable NZ book published in a similar way was The Bone People by Keri Hulme, only brought to life as a published book by a group of friends, when publishers had dodged it. Those who seek books of significance have much to thank such passionate supporters for. 



Looking at the photo of James Joyce and Sylvia Beach reminds me of going to the modern incarnation of her famous bookstore in Paris, and enjoying the history of it, then realizing it isn't the original store nor on the original spot. I believe the original spot is now a $2 junk store. Kind of sums up so much of the modern world, really...

Controversy: A Publisher's Dream

There is a biting article by Paul Little in today's Herald on Sunday about how the controversy over Ian Wishart's book on Macsyna King will in fact likely generate more sales. There are many angles to come at this deeply troubling case and its aftermath, including who gets to benefit.  I like (and cringe at) Little's description of Ian Wishart as a 'controversialist.'

Some of the aspects of the media's role in this case are beginning to remind me of the dark satire Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre, about the aftermath of a school shooting in the United States and the frenzied selling of the story as commercial artifact. In that frenzy all emotional traces of the deaths (and lives) of the victims became fainter and fainter.  

Here is a link to Paul Little's full article.

This whole issue opens up enormous questions of how we illuminate and investigate tragedy, and the processes by which we can actually learn something. When thinking of this case I always think of Pita Sharples' response when asked if the Kahui twins (at their tangi/funeral) looked peaceful.

He said simply, 'They looked dead.'

The banality of evil

Thinking about my post below about Franz Kafka and noting Trisha's reference to the 'banality'  of criminals we prefer to disassociate ourselves from reminds me of Hannah Arendt, the influential German Jewish philosopher and her famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. She observed at close quarters the trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, kidnapped from a Buenos Aires street and taken to Jerusalem to stand accused of his crimes in the Holocaust.

Here is a link to some biographical and educational material about Arendt's life and work. Her notes on Eichmann and her subsequent book (revisited and reviewed here at Steve Reads) spoke of how easily a figure of such evil fitted into the world, how he seemed too ordinary to be evil, and in many ways the difference between he and we who think of ourselves as being outside of such capability are never as great, or as concrete as we think. It is an uncomfortable read, and resonant and disturbing in far wider contexts than war crimes.


Misuses of power and the exploitation of uneven power relationships are all around us. We stand righteous against bullying then watch reality television shows that ridicule people perceived as weaker than 'us' or just different. We ask how bullies are created then back politicians who exploit existing prejudices against the vulnerable (unemployed, beneficiaries) for electoral gain. We talk of our collective generosity then try to drive down the wages of the lowest paid among us, for the 'good of the country.' I'm also puzzled by our revulsion of violence against children, then our championing of it with all sorts of euphemisms from 'disciplining' to 'teaching hard lessons.' Language is such a malleable tool, it can wrap acceptability around almost anything.

After all, Eichmann believed he was one of the righteous.

Franz Kafka

Today is Franz Kafka's birthday. My first encounter with Kafka (as many people's probably was) was in being asked to read Metamorphosis, as part of Intermediate School English class. My first reading took it at face value, thinking about it as surreal fiction. Later readings saw it as metaphoric, with it being more a story of prejudice, applying a searing lens to the characters and how they spoke of the world at large.

Subsequent reading led me to his novels, namely The Trial, with its main character 'K' lost in the most labyrinthine processes of legally driven oppression.

Kafka had nothing published in his lifetime and in fact asked his friend Max Brod to destroy all his manuscripts on his death. Thankfully, Brod did not do so. I always liked Hannah Arendt's famous quote about Kafka's 'later' success.
 

"during his lifetime he could not make a decent living, Kafka will now keep generations of intellectuals both gainfully employed and well-fed."

Here is an interesting site devoted to Kafka with many resources and articles. Great to see people keeping at it, keeping the names of authors alive, as part of our living whakapapa as writers.

Story of the week

The recent media attention (on Facebook and elsewhere) about the release of a book about Macsyna King's perspective on what happened - and why - to her two children (the Kahui twins) has highlighted the problem that comes from having a simplistic view of what constitutes a 'good/proper' story and one that therefore should be published.

Some of those who have expressed their views on Facebook have suggested not just protesting about, or not buying, the book but banning it. Why? Because the author (s) are unpleasant and want to make a buck about an awful tragedy? Perhaps some are motivated by annoyance or even disgust at that possibility.

However, my reading of the demands for a ban is that its an easy way to create an 'us and them' stance about child abuse. There are good people like us who would never do such a thing, and then there are monsters like Macsyna King that we can righteously hate and despise. In other words, the 'story' being told by many of those who have commented on Facebook is that this is a good old-fashioned tale of goodies and baddies, heroes and villians and we all know - even before we have read it - who is wrong and who is to blame. Sounds like Hollywood to me, not the real life complexity, banality and misery of child abuse, or the fact that as a community we are all guilty of turning our faces away from the neglect and abuse of the vulnerable, and of protecting bullies and abusers by our own silences.

Whatever the truth is about the awful tragedy of the Kahui twins banning the book won't make a jot of difference.

Two other stories being 'published' this week have much more complexity and depth: the interview with Rob Hamill on National Radio by Kim Hill this morning on the release of a documentary about the capture, torture and murder of his brother by the Khumer Rouge, called Brother Number One, and the release of Waitangi Report Wai 262 today in Northland, which has taken two decades to see the light of day - I wait with baited breath to see the public response.

Hollywood loses its nerve...

I didn't think last year's hit movie Inception was an exceptional film, as this article from GQ Magazine online says, but it was at least a rare attempt by a Hollywood studio movie to explore a story with intelligent ideas and some range of psychological depth. I felt the creativity of ideas in the film's first act got taken over as the film went on by the usual over-reliance on special effects. But it was an attempt to get away from - (to quote from the article)...

 ...the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon...

Article author Mark Harris posits that Hollywood's terror of producing any movie not aimed directly at the youth market can be traced back to the 1980's hit Top Gun, an awful piece of schlock if ever there was one. Films, encompassing that grand old word - stories - have been superseded by brand management.

Such an unrelenting focus on the sell rather than the goods may be why so many of the dispiritingly awful movies that studios throw at us look as if they were planned from the poster backward rather than from the good idea forward. Marketers revere the idea of brands, because a brand means that somebody, somewhere, once bought the thing they're now trying to sell.

To keep us sane there are still decent Indie movies coming from places other than Hollywood. Check out Mike Leigh's superb character study film Another Year.

MM - Personal

The New York Review of books has a very well written article/review by the Western writer Larry McMurtry of a new book of photographs of Marilyn Monroe. The article is worth collecting by itself. There is a touching moment when it mentions a correspondence between Marilyn and the great writer Somerset Maugham.


Here is a link. 

Reading the article reminds me of a piece the film critic Roger Ebert wrote about Marilyn taking a walk, holding her shoes in her hand, with Truman Capote in downtown Manhattan after a funeral of a friend they'd both attended. Monroe had worn an elaborate black veil, not just because it was a funeral but to try to escape the attention of reporters. It worked, and she and Capote were able to escape out a back door.

Ebert is an interesting critic who thankfully just reviews the movies he watches, and doesn't give us a lecture on every subject he knows and holds dear, and in that particular article he achieves the sort of poignancy that would grace a novel. I'll hunt it down.

Seeing the cover shot of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil reminds me also that an excellent film version of the novel came out 3-4 years ago, one of the more successful book-to-film adaptions I've seen.

Scripted to oblivion

One of the more worrying trends in political communication in recent years has been the very obvious scripting of politicians to 'stay on message.' The hand of the scriptwriter is all too obvious, and we run the risk of never hearing our politicians tackle questions with frankness and honesty.

Consider this appalling example from British politician Ed Miliband. If you saw only a brief 'made for television' soundbite, then you'd get one impression. But the BBC here have put the entire entire charade online. Watch how he says his scripted piece, then faced with 3-4 other genuine questions, says exactly the same thing each time.

This is non-speak, and because the writing itself is likely just a catch all cry to his support base, it's non-writing too. I'd guess most fiction created is more honest than this.

(Nb: at least the Maoi (statues) on Rapanui (Easter Island) have symbolic power.)

... sung real sweet

In my post about the passing of Anne Frank's birthday and the tragedy and criminality of her murder I quoted from Hone Tuwhare's poem about the death of Martin Luther King. The poem doesn't have just one sense. It's a crashing together of sorrow, anger, fatalism, irony, desparation and bleak rock n roll.

Out of respect to both of the late kaumatua I will quote the poem in its entirety.

Martin Luther King

In Vietnam they’re using a new rifle shell
that’s a real honey. It describes a tumbling
parabola that could punch a hole in you
a foot square, check?

But when that 30.06
made a bloody mash out of your jaw, it didn’t
stop there: kept ploughing right on through to
drain the marrow out of your dream.

That bullet wasn’t meant to grunt an apology,
the meanie. When you slumped down, mankind
was hurled back a billion years, to a
jellyfish.

Let’s face it, King: when news of your death
came through, lovers all over the World
turned each other on, rolled over and turned
the radio off.

But you were hip. And you never did fancy
fancy-names like Uncle Tom or Handkerchief-head.
You really dug the scene, man. From Birmingham
on you stuck your neck out; opened your big
black beautiful mouth to protest about the high
cost of dying in Vietnam. And you marched

armed only with a dream: a dream held aloft
in your red-hot parable-picking hands. Hell,
your continued existence had become an untidy
question mark sloshed across the American
Declaration of Independence. Yeah: and that
is why they shot you, King.

Before your light was snuffed out, you asked
for a song sung real sweet: hell,
this ain’t much. Treacle in my veins: death-cart
rumble in my ears.

` Hone Tuwhare

Ghost Stories

The furore that has erupted this week, likely fueled by the source magazine itself as much as anyone, over the article and photograph in Newsweek of Princess Diana at 50 has brought out the issue of people having - and fighting to protect - their own image of famous people. The anger her fans, and even the casually interested have felt shows how important our icons become to us and how much we invest in them. Also how much of their narratives are in fact our creations.

Diana has become one of the great heroines of contemporary storytelling. Whatever we know of the real woman (likely nowhere near as much as we think) has long been overpowered by her legend. It wasn't at all inappropriate that Elton John resurrected his song about Marilyn Monroe to act as musical eulogy to Diana. The two women's individual identities have been lost. It's hard to compete with a legend.

Sometimes we create legend because the ideal of it addresses our yearning for perfection, for the romantic breaking free of the bounds of mundane reality. Sometimes we do it because it's preferable to the truth. Marilyn Monroe's legend cloaks the cold reality of a woman who was used, abused and spat out by men all her life, and her subsequent attainment of perfection and grace in legend has largely absolved those men (and all those who ogled) of their collective culpability. 

And sometimes we just need to create heroes to fill gaps. The fictional Princess Diana was theatre from the start, with the narrative of being an ordinary young woman swept away to marry a prince. She wasn't in fact, an ordinary young woman, not in the world most of us live in. Even her funeral was a masterpiece of theatre. The extent to which her story was fictionalised in the public mind though does not diminish the reality of the grief people felt at her passing. The grief was and is real.

The long running battle by Mohammad El Fayed to find a conspiracy that ended her life (and his son Dodi's) included fantastical elements not out of place in a Robert Ludlum thriller.

Diana, like Marilyn, is an ongoing testament to the power of storytelling, and the place it has in our lives. Also the danger of it, for those turned into largely fictional characters, and for our own collective honesty. Shame they couldn't just have been themselves, but I guess that's not how legend works.

The Girl in the Window

A couple of years ago a film surfaced showing an ordinary scene, filmed in Amsterdam on July 22, 1941. A young woman is getting married and her friends gather to watch her emerge with her husband-to-be. In the window above, a young girl leans out, smiling, laughing.

That girl was Anne Frank, and this is the only known footage of her. She of course survives because her humble journal, later titled Diary of a Young Girl was posthumously famous, and one of the finest and most enduring narratives of honest struggle with both ordinary and enormous forces in all literature.

That it is literature is undeniable. Anne Frank was already a writer of skill and clarity and precision and that ability was destined to grace many works to come. Her death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is a permanent insult to everything we should be. Thinking of it reminds me of poet Hone Tuwhare's lines upon hearing of the death of Martin Luther King.

When you slumped down, mankind was hurled back a billion years to a jellyfish.  


Anne Frank would have turned 82 last week.

She should have.