Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

REMEMBERING VINCENT O’SULLIVAN

A fortnight ago, I flew back from holidaying in Australia to discover that Vincent O’Sullivan had died at the age of 86. In the days that followed, there were many tributes to him in the press and on line with many contributors telling anecdotes about how well they knew him. Of course O’Sullivan’s death saddened me because I regarded O’Sullivan as our greatest living writer – poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer, scholar and certainly the most alert and broad-minded New Zealand writer of his advanced age. I am still certain that his novel All This by Chance is the best novel yet written about what I call the “Kiwi condition” – that is, the awareness that we are fully New Zealanders and yet know deep down inside that our bedrock culture comes from Britain and Europe. I also recall the late editor Stephen Stratford remarking wittily that the titles alone of O’Sullivan’s poems were better than some other poets’ complete poems. Quite right. In the world of criticism, there will always be those who dissent. For some obscure reason, a very good friend of mine has little time for O’Sullivan’s work, but I can only put that down to de gustibus non disputandum est.

I cannot say that I was a very close friend of Vincent, but I can certainly say that I was one of his friends. A couple of times, when he came up from Otago to Auckland, we arranged to meet and have a chat over coffee in the cafeteria of the city’s art gallery. At first I thought he was being polite, perhaps as a tribute to my (long deceased) father who had been one of his mentors when he was, in his early years, a student at the University of Auckland. But it was soon clear that he was interested in me because he enjoyed the blog you are now reading, Reid’s Reader. In the last week I have looked through all the very many letters [i.e. emails] we exchanged and I note that he first started contacting me only a year or two after I began writing my blog in 2011. In 2018 he wrote “Your blog Reid's Reader is still just about the only place one can be certain of reading informed, considered reviews.” When I wrote a detailed review of Terry Sturm’s biography of Allen Curnow Simply by Sailing in a New Direction, Vincent told me that his review of the book, on another platform, was very different from mine but both reviews were valid as we had dealt with different aspects of Curnow’s life and achievement. When All This by Chance came out he wrote “I'm not sure that it's quite kosher to write warmly to a reviewer of one's work; partly because how is one to say, I can't imagine a more perceptive, sympathetic reading of the novel…I feel in your debt for such a careful reading.” Later he also complimented me for noting that in his novella Mary’s Boy, Jean-Jacques I was one of the few reviewers to pick up some of the story’s specifically religious ideas [perhaps because we both came from Catholic roots]. Of course I am not so naïve as to be unaware that many authors like to cultivate reviewers in order to get positive reviews. Maybe Vincent was just being polite, but I don’t think that was his style as sometimes he could rap me over the knuckles if I misinterpreted a text or missed the point of something.

Vincent could be salty in the way he expressed himself to me. Ever the critic, he once condemned “the fuck-wittery of the NZ literary scene” and literary prizes that had been awarded for little merit. He often scorned a certain pundit for “trying to run the literary world” and he was particularly angry about people with little real expertise in literature who were awarded university positions in humanity departments. But of course he was always diplomatic when he met such people.

I was aware that over the last year, his messages became more concerned with his declining health. He told me that he was planning to write a novella set in “the Irish Catholic world of my early years”. I do not know if this was finally written.

I owe two great debts to Vincent O’Sullivan.

First, he was very helpful with my own attempts at poetry and other writing. I produced two collections of poetry, one in 2012 and one in 2016, after which I dried up. He had read and given me advice on some of my poems before they appeared. He also consoled me by saying that he too had once been “dry” for nine years… though I must admit that I’m still “dry” after eight years and the muse hasn’t yet come back to me. Vincent also gave me some positive advice on another literary endeavour which has yet to reach fruition.

Second, he supported me two years ago when a very questionable petition was devised against me. Many signed it. Vincent was overseas when this blew up, but when he returned he was appalled by the petition. He wrote to me the following letter which I give here in full: “Dear Nicholas, I've been away, and just caught up with the hollers of the mob. I'm ashamed as a New Zealand writer, when I see some of the names on the list, and the rage at a temperately expressed opinion. God knows what it tells us about ourselves, that hate and resentment are so easily fuelled. You're consistently the fairest reviewer we've had for years. So much about this that saddens me.” Four days later he sent me a more detailed letter, this time naming somebody he definitely thought shouldn’t have signed. I hasten to add that other people in the literary world also deplored the petition, but they didn’t put it in writing.

Given that I am here remembering Vincent O’Sullivan as I knew him, this might seem a sour way to conclude. But I hope not. In many ways we saw the world in the same way, but not slavishly. As a great wit once said “If two people agree on everything, one of them isn’t doing any thinking”. I don’t endorse everything Vincent wrote or said, but I do know that he was a great writer, a scholar and a congenial friend. He is sorely missed.

Requiescat in Pace

______________________________________________________________________

For the record, you will find below some of the reviews of Vincent O’Sullivan’s work that appear on this blog.

Prose

The Families [2014]

All This by Chance [2018]

Vincent O’Sullivan: Selected Stories: Selectedby Stephen Stratford [2019]

Mary’s Boy, Jean-Jacques and other stories [2022]

Poetry

Us, then (2013]

Being Here – Selected Poems [2015]

And so it is [2016]