The city in New Zealand literature – can you help?
Posted 28 May 2009 // Helen Rickerby
The city: civilisation or cesspool?
I know that many of you, our dear readers, are literary types; and when I was asked earlier today about how cities are represented in New Zealand literature, I thought immediately of you.
Ben – one of our theme editors for the Economy and the City theme, which we’re working on at the moment – is writing an entry about how the city has been represented in New Zealand art. He’s got the visual art and movies sussed, but would like some help with literature.
I’ve been having a bit of a think, and have some ideas of my own, but this seems like a good job for the online community. So:
What are some New Zealand novels, poems or stories that feature cities?
How was the city represented? Positive or negative, freeing or caging, civilised or cesspool?
Also, if you know of any studies of cities in New Zealand literature, we’d love to know about them too.
Thanks!
I’d reccommend the “Our City Series” eg http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Fiction_Literature/Literary_Collections/General/product_info/429391/?cf=3
What about that Witi Ihimaera short story, I think it’s called “yellow brick road”, where the family is moving to the ‘Emerald City’ which is Wellington
Chad Taylor’s “Electric” novel is about a data technician who works in a blacked-out Auckland city. A couple of Maurice Gee’s books for young adults include “Orchard St” which is set in Auckland during the 1951 Waterfront Strike and “Under the Mountain” which feature’s Auckland volcanoes. I’m not much of a fiction fan but really enjoyed Maurice’s “Blindsight” title which is loosely based on Wellington’s “bucket man” who died in 2003. This book features lots of Wellington references. Another Wellington writer is Elizabeth Knox and her trilogy of “Tawa”, “Pomare” and “Paremata”.
1) Countless signs : the New Zealand landscape in literature : an anthology / compiled by Trudie McNaughton
2)Here on earth : the landscape in New Zealand literature / introduction by David Eggleton ; photographs by Craig Potton
3) The Power of Place: Landscape in New Zealand Children’s Fiction, 1970-1989.
It’s a long time since I read the Plumb trilogy, and perhaps someone who has read it more recently can help me out, but I recall the first two books (Plumb and Meg) being more rural, while Sole Survivor, which is more about the younger generation, is more urban. I seem to recall the city being a faster, racier, younger sort of place. A place to escape to, where you can be someone else. But you have to go home to the ancestral farm/town to truly find yourself. I could just be making all that up though.
My novel The Blue [Penguin 2007] showed Wellington as the ‘big smoke’ for a boy from Arapawa Island - not just for its size but its chutzpah in claiming more land from the sea to grow. Other novels with Wellington settings include work by Elizabeth Knox [early novels and her trilogy], Lloyd Jones [Splinter was set in Lower Hutt - see NZ Book Council website write-up, This House has Three Walls on Somes], Maurice Gee [especially Crime Story - Somes - and The Fat Man - the Hutt], Patricia Grace [Tu], Damien Wilkins [The Fainter is partly set in Wellington], Susan Pearce [Acts of Love], Alison Wong’s new novel about the Chinese community in Wellington. And so on…
Jean Watson’s 1975 novel, ‘The Balloon Watchers’, revolves around a group of people who meet regularly in Wellington (outside the library or in the botanical gardens) to hold balloons together and think about the big questions in life.
And in poetry, you can’t go past the ‘Big Weather’ anthology, edited by Greg O’Brien and Louise White. There’s also ‘Just Another Fantastic Anthology’ - Auckland poems, edited by Stu Bagby.
‘Departure Lounge’ by Chad Taylor is a noir novel set in Auckland city, like ‘Electric.’