The 'memoir problem', revisited.

The ‘memoir problem’ revisited “That you had parents and a childhood does not of itself qualify you to write a memoir”. Neil Gunzlinger, book reviewer for the New York Times, griped in a review of yet another confessional memoir. It’s true; suddenly everyone is writing memoir, even people who only ever wrote fiction, rock music or poetry, or never wrote before. I even find myself writing memoir, but mining some of my own fictional writing for triggers and nudges, delving into old poems for clues and lines of inquiry. After all, the memory does not always linger on. Now, since revisiting this autobiographical writing as a resource for chapters of my Creative Nonfiction PhD thesis, a food memoir, in this paper I’ll discuss attempts made to fictionalise the ‘true’ events of the stories, and the uses made of them, to revitalise memoir. I also reflect on the work of controversial memoirist Karl Ove Knausgaard, whose six-volume work, ‘My struggle’, has offended members of his extended family, critics and purists, or simply bored many readers with the impossibly detailed accounts of his life, to ask again of memoir, “Should it be artful or truthful?

Like an operatic quartet

Any reader drawn to this first edition’s cover image of summer catalogue pastels, sand dunes and deck chair, or by Catherine Robertson’s happy association with the romance genre, is bound for a deeper richer read than expected. Bookended by a literal eye of dog, from the perspective of King, the resident black Labrador of Gabriel’s Bay the township, ‘Gabriel’s Bay’ wisely refrains from the picturesque or breaking wave scenario so popular in beach art. Robertson‘s town is an anywhere and everywhere coastal New Zealand settlement; familiar ribbon development along the stretch of bay, with supermarket, two pubs, one closed, a petrol station, doctor’s surgery and pop-up café. The nearest town is Hampton, just ‘over the hill’, by a windy and precipitous country road

The ghost of Sigurd the Volsung in Eketahuna

While William Morris was creating the narrative poem based on his translations of the Icelandic tales of Sigurd the Volsung, in the 1870’s, groups of Scandinavian settlers were encouraged to come to New Zealand as part of a grand scheme of borrowing money from Britain to develop the new world country for further settlements. These immigrants were to clear and fell some of the densest bush remaining in the hinterland of the North Island for road, rail and the concomitant communications that would follow. They came willingly, anticipating better lives for themselves, although the reality was disappointing at best and devastating at worst. While the foot print of their efforts is still evident, and the towns and even cities they created, including Palmerston North and Eketahuna, are flourishing, the immigrants have become invisible, no more remembered than the nameless chain-gangs of prisoners or the unemployed, who took over their effort and continued with progress in the early 20th Century, on land that had been bought cheaply from the indigenous Māori. But what intellectual footprint did they leave this inhabitation? What stories and links with stories did they bring, coming from the great Viking traditions of Saga and Skald? This paper will consider the stories brought and left by the Scandinavians and their small, flickering presence in New Zealand poetry, song and story

Ngaio Marsh's New Zealand Gothic

While well established as a crime writer in her native country New Zealand and abroad, in the Golden Age of crime writing, between the two World Wars, Ngaio Marsh also explored more than the simple whodunit genre. Along with mysterious and sudden deaths and the investigations by her professional police investigator, Roderick Alleyn, whose intelligence is matched by his intuition, Marsh also revels in the uncanny and supernatural, several spectacular and innovative means of murder (involving wool presses in one and a boiling mud pool in another), the impact of locale, especially isolation, on the actions of criminals and victims, and the workings, in a couple of her New Zealand based stories, of Makutu or Maori magic. In an attempt to further the debate concerning New Zealand writing and the nature of a New Zealand Gothic, first identified by William Shafer in his 1998 work Mapping the Godzone, this paper will consider the Gothic elements of Marsh’s four detective novels set in New Zealand, A Vintage Murder, 1937, Colour Scheme, 1943, Died in the Wool, 1945 and Photo Finish, 1980

A New Land: Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud

Physical isolation and geographical variety are strong factors in New Zealand\u27s independence and individuality in art, music and literature which had all become distinctive by the early 20th century. Surprisingly its individuality in food production and presentation has taken longer to develop

Food for finality: feeding the bereaved and ‘feasting’ the dead

While death is a taboo subject in most cultures, and surrounded by practices of prayer and purification, it is surprisingly often ritualized through the sharing of food or drink, or both. This article will consider some mythological and religious sources for connections between food and death. Then it will take a cross section of New Zealand ethnic cultures: Māori, Pakeha (European), Pacific, and Asian, and reflect on the symbolism and customs that are involved in the sharing of, or abstinence from, food, when commemorating the dead. Following on from Fischer’s model of the ‘five P’s’ of ritual analysis, namely performance, persons, period, paraphernalia and place (1996: 57-8), consideration will be given to similarities, differences, and matters of etiquette and faith

“The saga night that sends dreams to our earth”: Scandinavian connections with New Zealand in literature

This paper will reflect on some of the representations of Scandinavian, especially Norwegian, characters, culture and conventions in literature that have been written in or about New Zealand. Commencing with “Johanna’s World”, by Oystein Molstad Andresen which is the fictional treatment of a story of migration from Norway to New Zealand, (from this author’s own family), then referring to texts by Yvonne du Fresne and Joan Rosier Jones the paper will explore ideas of identity, geography, settlement and above all the shared traditions of saga and voyaging that link these distant shores

Classical Food and Literature from Archaic Greece to the Early Roman Empire

This chapter will consider the themes of hospitality, conviviality and the impact of unsociability which recur as tropes throughout key ancient texts, from Greek Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey through to Roman Virgil’s Aeneid, and on to Petronius’s Satyricon, a range of over nine centuries (from 800 BCE to 200 CE). While it is common today to consider any text from the ancient world as ‘literature’ so rare and treasured are they as artefacts, the focus herein will be upon those written in what have become considered conventional literary modes. Falling within this range come writers of epics, drama (both comedies and tragedies) and a wide range of poets and satirists, including Hesiod, Plato, Aristophanes, Ovid, Catullus and Athenaeus, but excluding non-fiction writers, historians and politicians such as Julius Caesar, Cicero and Tacitus, as a matter of necessity, in containing the time frame and range of sources. This chapter will first consider Greek literature and its discussion, and key representations, of food, and then proceed to consider food in Roman literature. Key themes of hospitality or commensality and contrasting extremes of inhospitality will become evident, alongside the elements of conviviality, which derive from ritual or worship, in these texts

The case of Katherine Mansfield: Review of performance

Gail Pittaway, reviewer of: Keenan, Louise (dir.) 2019, The Case of Katherine Mansfield, Cathy Downes, Cheeky Pukeko Productions, The Mansfield Garden, Hamilton Gardens Festival of the Arts, Hamilton, New Zealand, 23 – 24 February