Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“THE SECRET LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE” by Nathalie A. Cabrol (Published by Simon & Schuster. Marketed in New Zealand by HarperCollins, $NZ30). ;  “NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT – The Misadventures of a Kiwi Soldier” by Dario Nustrini (Published by HarperCollins, $NZ39.99)

Let me make a very obvious statement. I am not a scientist of any sort, and I would be totally lost if I were to attempt reading a genuine scientific treatise. For one thing, I would be floored by the necessary terms and jargon that science requires. But this does not mean that I am completely ignorant of scientific developments, scientific discoveries and for that matter scientific controversies. How do I know such things? Not by academic treatises, but by reading good popularisation written by scientists. In this matter “popularisation” does not mean “dumbing down”. It means good information passed on by scientists to lay people like me (and let’s ignore the fact that there are – alas – bogus non-scientific writers who produce unscientific clap-trap – see my think-piece on this blog U.F.O.s and My Tin-Foil Hat).  

Sub-titled “An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life” The Secret Life of the Universe is the work of a genuine scientist. Nathalie A. Cabrol is an astrobiologist – that is, an astronomer who specialises in seeking signs of life in our solar system and beyond. This does not necessarily mean searching for intelligent life. It means searching for any form of life beyond planet Earth – even if that means tiny, microscopic building-blocks of life. And of course there is also the quest for water beyond planet Earth. Inevitably, Cabrol uses some scientific jargon – which slowed me down in some of my reading – but not so impenetrable as to miss their meaning. Read slowly and carefully.

In her opening Chapters, Cabrol introduces us to exoplanets – meaning planets moving around suns far beyond our solar system. They have been detected by the most modern telescopes and radio telescopes. Astronomers have so far discovered at least 3,800 stars with planets circling about them in our galaxy. This leads her to discuss how vast our galaxy alone is, and how planets were formed and how they will probably die. One theory on how Earth was formed, embraced by many astronomers, is the Theian theory. This is the idea that another huge planet, now dubbed Theia, crashed against the embryonic Earth creating the Moon and its tilt. This was mere thousands of millions of years ago. But, more to the point of the search for life in the universe, the crashing of two planets could mean how the earliest building blocks of life were passed on from one planet to another. In fact, there are many theories about how life is passed from one planet to another. One is the Panspermia theory which says that dust was scattered about the universe, seeding minute elements that could develop over eons and become minute forms of life. But this doesn’t tell us where minute life came from. Another theory sees life beginning with biochemistry; not to mention the idea that life began in the hot springs in the deep sea.

However Cabrol lays down some universal laws about life, telling us that thanks to recent astronomical work “…the elementary compounds that make the life we know, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur… are common in the universe. It is no accident that we are made of them… Organic molecules and volatiles are found at the surface of Mars, in the geysers of Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus, in the atmosphere of Triton, in Triton’s stratosphere and on comets…. Much further away still, nearly two hundred types of prebiotic complex organic molecules were detected in interstellar clouds near the centre of our galaxy. They included the kinds that could play a role in forming amino acids – the building blocks of the life we know. Granted that organic molecules are not life, but they are the elemental building blocks life uses for its carbon and hydrogen backbone, and they are everywhere.” [Chapter 1, Pg. 14] She also makes it clear that “When it comes to the environments in which life could have originated, we can only test various hypotheses to the best of our current abilities: warm, cold, acidic, alkaline, and anywhere in between, and see how the chemistry works out. But there, too, a transition from prebiotic chemistry to life appears possible in more than just one scenario, as demonstrated by the various theories.” [Chapter 2, Pg. 42]

Having set down these universal facts, in the following five chapters Cabrol proceeds to take us through the possibility of life on planets and their moons in our solar system. Mercury, nearest to the sun, is brushed aside. Being closest to the sun, Mercury is essentially scorched and cooked by the sun – an arid rock where even the most microscopic life is improbable. Cabrol turns to the “solar habitable zone”, meaning warmed by our sun enough to nurture life, but not so cold as to be inhabitable. In the habitable zone are Venus, Earth and Mars. Obviously Earth is teeming with life, so no more need be said. Venus is shrouded in steam and clouds. 96% of Venus’s atmosphere is carbon-dioxide, which does not encourage life. Possibly vestiges of life might once have existed on Venus. But we have to remember that slowly, over millions of years, the sun expands; and in this long process the growing heat would have destroyed such life as there might have been on Venus. Also discouraging Venusian life are Venus’s winds, which constantly run at 360 kilometres per hour. Incidentally, Venus spins in the different direction from most planets.

So we are taken to a more likely planet – Mars. Smaller than both Venus and Earth, Mars was once regarded as most likely to bear life – perhaps intelligent life. There were tales about canals on Mars etc. But a few sweeps around the small planet by Viking 1 and 2 in 1975 definitively destroyed such fantasies. The country that takes greatest interest in Mars is now China. Mars could have once been habitable as there were organic molecules there – but Mars lost its atmosphere. There may have been water on the surface of Mars 100 million years ago and there still is volcanic activity on Mars. There are on Mars mudstones [mud petrified] that suggest that eons ago there were lakes in the planet. Referring to NASA’s Viking explorations of Mars, Cabrol remarks:  “It gave us the first in-depth view of the history of a planet where everything looked incredibly familiar: ancient channels and dry lake beds, polar caps, dune fields, volcanoes, and lava flows now frozen in time. There is no need to invent new words to describe Mars. Its landscapes are very Earth like and yet so different, a red planet with blue sunsets, where rovers have sunken their wheels in the dirt for the past couple of decades now.”   [Chapter 4, Pg. 67] Further she notes of Mars: “Despite hostile conditions on the surface today, all data converge to show that Mars is on the high-priority list of worlds where life could have developed and survived over time. The new findings encourage us to think we are on the right path.” [Chapter 4, Pg. 86] It is quite feasible that Mars in its formation sent dust to Earth, in effect one factor seeding Earth.

So much for Venus, Earth and Mars, the three planets in the habitable zone.

Turning to the [apparently] largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is essentially a bubble of gas – not a planet where there is firm ground and therefore not a place where life could develop. But Jupiter is surrounded by many moons, and it is they which Cabrol examines in detail. She remarks “Earth is only one of many ocean worlds in our solar system.” Jupiter’s moon Juno is covered in ice [NOT H2o], with possibly water deep under its crust [water is not one of the building-blocks of life, but it is needed to nurture life]. Possibly Jupiter’s small moon Ganymede carries water, but it is most likely to be found in the moon Europa.

The planet Saturn has not been examined as closely as its largest moon Titan. Titan  has been examined by NASA’s Huygens probe in 2005, which forced its way through Titan’s thick atmosphere and landed, despite the moon’s very strong winds. Later the Cassini voyage circled around Titan and examined it in detail: “Cassini completed over one hundred close flybys of the giant moon, mapped its surface, and continued to make detailed studies of the atmosphere. The detection of large gravity tides seemed to confirm the presence of a layer of liquid water underneath an icy crust, kilometres below the lakes and seas of methane sitting on the surface.”  [Chapter 6, Pg. 118] But does this mean water as we know it? Triton has some forbidding aspects – nor least that it revolves so slowly that each of its seasons takes 17 years. There will be more searches for prebiotic signals in future landings but as yet there is there is no evidence of signs of life. As for other objects in our solar system, the dwarf planet Ceres [in the asteroid belt] appears to carry water, Pluto’s moon Charon carries water and possibly that there is water underneath the surface of our Moon.

At which point you will reasonably ask why a book about finding life should be so concerned with water. Remember that over millions of years, the sun will expand and swallow planet by planet. Our Earth is in the habitable zone now, but it won’t be habitable forever. Our [very distant] descendants will find Earth becoming hotter and hotter. Could it be [and this is only speculation] that our descendants will then seek out moons in our solar system to which they can move … and they will need water. Science fiction? Maybe, but reasonable.

Having dealt with our puny little solar system, in her last five chapters Cabrol turns to the bigger picture of our galaxy and whether there are any signs of life therein. Astronomers are now able to detect distant suns which, in the way they “wobble”, reveal that they have planets circling around them. It is possible that there are between 20-trillion to 80-trillion planets in our galaxy alone, the odds therefore being that life must exist far from our solar system. AI systems are able to detect not only stars with planets, but stars very many light-years away. The gas giants we know [like Jupiter] may have small rock cores carrying a form of life… but we do not know. Nevertheless Cabrol says “The laws of physics and chemistry are universal and the building blocks of life on Earth are abundant and common, and though they might not be exactly the same elsewhere, the odds suggest that many more analogue blueprints of the process of life could exist in the universe, in the same way synonyms provide different means to convey the same information in grammar. Now we just have to figure out ways to test this hypothesis and see how it may help us to search for life beyond our planet.” [Chapter 12, Pg.249]

Remembering that some suns are well on the way to dying and other suns are newly bred, it is possible that there are not only signs of life but there may be ancient  civilisations in our vast galaxy with whom we have not yet connected… but of course this is only [reasonable] speculation. In the meantime, the SETI project has now for over six decades been attempting to detect extra-terrestrial techno-signatures; and there are many discussions among astrobiologists about what sort of extra-terrestrials might be interested in us… but so far nobody has met an extra-terrestrial. In her very last chapter, Cabrol deals with the possibility that the whole universe teams with life, but not intelligent life. In her epilogue, she discusses the decline of Earth in its pollution and constant loss of species… and pessimistically, she says that it is very unlikely we human beings will ever find an alternate home.

In putting together this synopsis, I have grossly simplified Nathalie A. Cabrol’s complex theses, and I admit that I found it harder to understand her ideas once I got into the last five chapters. That is why I wrote comparatively little of those chapters. For all that, The Secret Life of the Universe is an enlightening book and certainly one that reminds us of our status in the order of things.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.    *

 

And in the immortal words of Monty Python, now for something completely different. Nothing Significant to Report, subtitled “The Misadventures of a Kiwi Soldier” is Dario Nustrini memoirs of six years in the New Zealand army before he resigned and was honourably discharged. He joined when he was 19 and was discharged when he was 25. Most of those six years were taken up with training.

            As it begins, Nothing Significant to Report is almost a breezy, rollicking tale, but eventually moves into darker things. Dario Nustrini (his name came from his Italian forebears) divides his tale into four sections.

First there is “Basic Training” at Waiouru, which involves getting used to being messed about, first by corporals then by NCO’s. There are such things as almost having to wear the wrong sized uniform; marching, marching and more marching; the inevitable incompetent barracks fool who always does everything wrongly; beginning to fumble with rifles before getting used to them; route marches and other necessities. Dario Nustrini is attracted to the signals corps. All this is told in humorous tone – yarns about doing things wrongly, cracking jokes and of course swearing as often as possible. Rough Kiwi jokers in short, with laughing camaraderie.

Then there is “Corps Training and Beyond” down south at Linton and Burnham Camp, which at least has a bar where young soldiers can booze in their off hours. Nustrini becomes an Electronic Warfare Operator [meaning signals] and now has the onerous task of carrying around heavy equipment in marches and field manoeuvres. There is much training in mountains and bush in the South Island and tales of twerps who have to be shown how signals work. And then there are lectures on wars going on elsewhere… especially Afghanistan.

“Fun and Games” (of course the title is ironical) deals with his being sent to various allied countries, including Canada for a while, to understand more about signals. His craft is honed in New Zealand, including having to know how to set up a site for sending and receiving signals, with camouflage and other cover. There is one tale of him and his team being ordered, at night, to penetrate the Auckland Zoo without being detected – a tale that ends in laughter. On brief leave there are [largely] harmless capers about picking up girls. And there are further exercises with the Australian Army in Exercise Listening Redback. Both Australia and New Zealand are readying to join the U.S.A. and U.K. to fight in Iraq.

And so to “Around the World”, which happens to be the shortest section of Nothing Significant to Report. In Iraq, Nustrini is mainly together with the Aussies and the Yanks. Naturally there are the discomforts of active military life, with barely sanitary barracks and of course much danger. There are many fire-fights. He has respect for the Iraqi soldiers who are fighting against the terrorist ISIS, but he gradually becomes disillusioned with army life. After just this one “deployment”, when he returns to New Zealand he resigns, is discharged and leaves the army.

While much of Nothing Significant to Report is written tongue-in-cheek and making light of army life, its humour is only fitful. Nustrini’s admiration for his comrades is real, but the comedy is sometimes strained and slowly falls away. Still, the life in barracks seems painfully real.

 

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.

"UNE TENEBREUSE AFFAIRE” [“A Murky Business”] by Honore de Balzac ( first published in 1841as a “scene from the political life” in Balzac’s “Human Comedy”). Sometimes translated as “A Gondreville Mystery”.

            As you will know from my review of Honore de Balzac’s The Chouans, I am now working my way through other of Balzac’s novels which I have previously neglected. With Une Tenebreuse Affaire, Balzac, by now fully involved in penning novels set in his own era, reverted to writing in this novel about [partly fictious] events which would have happened when Balzac was a baby. The novel takes place between 1803 and 1806. Napoleon is on the point of becoming emperor and building up his empire, but [as in Les Chouans] there are émigrés , still pining for the Ancien Regime, who are returning to France and plotting against Napoleon. The aristocratic woman Laurence de Cinq-Cynge is shielding four young émigrés. Two of these émigrés are her cousins, Paul-Marie and Marie-Paul Semeuse (who happen to be identical twins and who are both in love with Laurence). The other two are Robert and Adrien d’Hauteserre. The émigré Semeuse twins have been deprived of their chateau and estate by one of Napoleon’s senators, Malin. The police agent Corentin [who figured in Les Chouans], together with his assistant Peyrade, is trying to track down the unwanted émigrés. Largely thanks to the cleverness of Michu the bailiff, the aristocrats evade arrest. At which point Napoleon issues an amnesty for the émigrés, so long as they keep the peace.

            But the story resumes two years later. The police agent Corentin takes revenge for having been outwitted. Malin, the senator, is kidnapped by assailants who resemble Michu and the four émigrés who are supported by Laurence de Cinq-Cynge. They are arrested and tried and (particularly because Corentin has tricked Michu’s wife into implicating her husband) they are found guilty, despite the excellent defence prepared by their lawyers. Poor Miche is executed. But Laurence de Cinq-Cynge, thanks in part to the good offices of Talleyrand [the famous diplomat who was able to go along with any regime that happened to be ruling] she is able to visit Napoleon in person on the eve of the battle of Jena, and she begs for clemency. The four aristocrats have their prison sentences commuted to service in Napoleon’s army… and we are told that three of them die in various of Napoleon’s battles. The fourth, Adrien d’Hauteserre, survives and marries Laurence de Cinq-Cynge, and they live to see the Restoration when, after Napoleon fell, the monarchy returned.

            This novel is, however, in part a detective story. Who really kidnapped Malin, if it wasn’t the four émigrés? It turns out that it was disguised ruffians who worked for the Imperial (Napoleonic) Police and who had been organised by Corentin himself. We learn that, in the giddy political  manoeuvering of the time, Malin – who lived through the July Monarchy as the Comte de Gondreville – was up to his neck in a plot, contrived by Fouche, Sieyes, Talleyrand and Carnot [all historical figures], who wanted to restore the republic, rather than the monarchy, should Napoleon’s campaigns fail. Though the novel as a whole is largely fictional, the kidnapping of Malin was loosely based on a real case.

            If you are not au fait with French history, the synopsis of this novel I have given is very dry and misses the fact that much of this [relatively brief] novel is also romantic. Once again, as in Les Chouans, Balzac appears to have been influenced by Walter Scott.  Indeed in his papers he paid Scott the direct tribute of claiming that the character of Laurence de Cinq-Cynge was based on Diana Vernon, the strong-willed heroine of Scott’s novel Rob Roy. Naturally this novel has its melodramatic qualities – notably the secret vault in the forest, under a monastery ruins, in which Michu hides the émigrés, and where later Corentin has Malin imprisoned. There is also the romantic contrivance of selfless, idealistic identical twins both in love with the heroine. Nevertheless, despite the laborious time it takes before the main characters are introduced, Une Tenebreuse Affaire is sharper and more-to-the-point than Les Chouans. There is a comparatively tight structure in the outwitting of Corentin, the kidnapping and the particularly dramatic trial – with a satisfying denouement in Laurence de Cinq-Cynge’s quest for clemency and the result.

            Regarding the political implications of the novel, it is again more enlightening than Les Chouans. “Will you be sensible henceforward? Do you realise what the French Empire is to be?” Napoleon asks Laurence de Cinq-Cynge rhetorically when she seeks him out at Jena. Being “sensible” is the essential theme, for the novel shows how old-school aristocrats, no matter how noble and how much admired by Balzac, they have to come to terms with the fact that the old regime is over and the nouveau-riche are in the saddle. Malin, former Themidorean and possessor of an émigré’s estate, is the archetype of nouveau-riche (despised by Laurence de Cinq-Cynge and her cousins, despite the fact that Malin gave generous testimony for them). Laurence de Cinq-Cynge initially idealised Charlotte Corday – the young woman who assassinated the extremist revolutionary Marat – and hated Napoleon. But she has to swallow all her noble pride. Even so, she continues to hate the Restoration and the July Monarchy because she sees that it is the “trimmers” who prosper in that and any other regime after the revolution.

            Balzac himself appears to be on the side of the “trimmers” – people like the older  d’Hauteserres and the old Marquis who would rather let their aristocratic privileges go than being involved in a sort of civil war.  They must conform to Napoleon. Perhaps this is why, in his pragmatic way, Balzac puts in some favourable words for the likes of Fouche and Talleyrand  - arch-trimmers both. In a long aside on the administration of justice under Napoleon, Balzac also suggests that a trial should be interrogation by professionals rather than having emotion-swayed juries.

            The historical moment caught by this novel is one in which Napoleon is menaced both from the “right” (aristocratic plots) and by the “left” (republicans), yet the conspiracies are so contradictory that they never succeed. Presumably, had Balzac been so inclined, he could have written a novel about an unreconstructed republican learning to be “sensible”.

            While Une Tenebreuse Affaire is widely read in France, it is not regarded as one of Balzac’s greatest works and it is less read outside France

 

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. 

                                                       CARAMEL AND DUMP

For the last few weeks I’ve been annoyed by two irritating people who have dominated our television news and “think pieces” in what pass for newspapers. There’s Caramel and there’s Dump. Both of them wanted to be President of the Divided States. Caramel became a candidate only because her boss, President Joe Burden, was discovered, rather late, to be deep into cognitive decline. It was painful to see him slowly reaching for words when he tried to debate with Dump. And it was twicefully painful to see Burden’s wife Shrill holding a meeting where Shrill pathetically said “He answered all the questions!”… which was patently untrue. Behind Shrill stood Burden not saying anything, incapable of speaking. The Dimmercratic Party went into panic mode and dumped Burden as their candidate. But time was running out before the election. So, without considering who could be the most capable candidate, they quickly chose Burden’s lacklustre vice-president Caramel.

Meanwhile Dump, the Reprehensible Party candidate, was running around talking about illegal immigrants eating pet cats and dogs and mis-order at the border. He had been President of the Divided States before; and the Dimmercratic Party were always ready to remind people of his reluctance to hand over power once his term as president was over. In fact he encouraged his followers to storm the capitol. Dimmercratics also harped on Dump’s lecherous ways – he had consorted with prostitutes and then lied about paying off one of them. A court said he was a felon. Really, his shagging seemed almost as bad as the titantic shagging of the Dimmercratic JFK – but JFK was lucky to live in an era when reporters didn’t delve into president’s private lives. Caramel was ready to say that Dump was a misogynist and also she proclaimed that she was “a woman of colour”. Early in her [relatively brief] campaign, Caramel proclaimed that she was the party of “freedom” and women’s rights which included something called “women’s reproduction rights”. I’m in favour of women reproducing if they want to. But then I realised Caramel really meant abortion. So why didn’t she say so? Funny that.

Anyway, the two campaigns bumbled on. And there were massive rallies on both sides (people of the Divided States love overblown shows). And there were “think pieces” which claimed Dump could win only if there was a massive wave of racism and misogyny. And most of the media backed Caramel. And even in my country – New Zoohouse – I heard a woman saying hysterically that if Dump won it would be the end of democracy. And on the whole our main New Zoohouse television station tended to say nice things about Caramel’s followers and more-or-less condescending things about Dump’s followers.

Then came the election. And Dump won by a country mile. Okay – I know and you know that the Divided States have a weird system called the Electoral College whereby state by state determines who will become president for the whole country. And often there are “battle states”, meaning states that can be coaxed into changing their minds election by election. The result of which is that sometimes a president is elected when the other candidate won more votes nationwide, that is, the popular vote. [Not that I’m being snooty about this – until some years ago, New Zoohouse used to have a similar system called First Past the Post and a number of times a prime minister came to power without having won the popular vote.]

But the fact is that Dump this time won both the Electoral College AND the popular vote. To put it more simply, over half of the Divided States voted for Dump. Is it possible that all those who voted for Dump were racist and misogynist? Obviously not. Not only did many tens of thousands of women vote for Dump, not only did many tens of thousands of people of many ethnicities vote for Dump, but people were concerned about rising prices for food, an uncontrolled border, and a rookie candidate who was clearly out of her depth. So Dump has become – or will become - only the second president to serve two non-contiguous terms [the first was Grover Cleveland in the late 19^th century].

All of which may lead you to think that I’m being partisan and “voting” for Dump. Not a bit of it. I’m going with Mercutio’s immortal “A plague on both your houses”.

The main problems with Dump as seen by a New Zoohouser are this -  Dump is essentially an isolationist, interested only with what benefits the Divided States. Therefore he’s prone to say that he might withdraw help for NATO if the countries of NATO don’t pay their way. This means opening the way for a real autocrat, like Vladimir Putin, to push his intended empire further and further west. There is suspicion about how Dump has dealt already with Putin. And clearly Dump wants to withdraw any help to beleaguered Ukraine. Then there is Dump’s determination to boost his economy by declaring tariffs on incoming goods. For a New Zoohouser, this could mean a huge loss of income – or no income at all.

And what of Caramel and her followers? Their cardinal fault is their smugness. Dimmercratics embrace fashionable causes and like to present themselves as being interested in the poor and deprived. They like to see the leaders of the Reprehensible Party as made up of billionaires and corporations. Now it’s true that Dump and his friend Elon Musk are billionaires… but so are the leaders of the Dimmercratics. In fact there are probably more billionaires on the Dimmercratic side than the Reprehensible. Dimmercratics look down on the lower classes. Dump’s followers were labelled “deplorables” by an earlier unsuccessful Dimmercratic candidate. Joe Burden called Dump’s followers “garbage”. Night-time satire TV depicted Dump’s followers as yokels, dimwits, bigots, uncouthed etc. etc. This is not exactly a way to woo most of the electorate. The working classes rebelled… and they were not placated at all by movie stars and pop-singers who endorsed Caramel in her rallies - George Loony, Taylor Schitt, Bruce Springroll, Robert de Nightpot etc. etc.  By this stage, working classes understood that such “celebrities” were themselves pampered billionaires who live lives far from hard toil. Personally I believe the more entertainers appear at political rallies, the less likely they are going to persuade the electorate.

FOOTNOTE : So you think I was going hard on the Dimmdercratics? Please pause a moment and remember that it was the very left-wing Bernie Sanders who said "The Democrat Party left the working class so the working class left the Democrat Party." Yep. True.

 

Something New

  We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“KATARAINA” by Becky Manawatu (published by Makaro Press, $NZ37)

 

 

            When I reviewed on this blog Becky Manawatu’s break-out novel Aue, I noted that, great as that novel is, I was sometimes confused about which characters were related to whom. I am therefore grateful that Becky Manawatu’s second novel Kataraina begins with a whakapapa, making clear who the main characters are and how they are related. I also noted that sometimes Kataraina has been referred to as a sequel to Aue , but I would prefer to see Kataraina as an extension of Aue. Some of the new novel elaborates events that have been touched on in the earlier novel. In Aue, Kataraina was called Kat most of the time and was a minor character, although we did hear of her failed marriage, the bullying of her Pakeha husband Stuart Johnson (Stu), and her eventual flight from him. But in Kataraina, she is the centre of the novel - an account of how she had become the woman she is and how she eventually embraces her traditional culture.

 The style of Kataraina is similar to the earlier novel. Once again Becky Manawatu does not tell her tale in sequential order. Chapters deal with the present or the near past or the distant past, not necessarily in order – we are thrown back and forth in time. Chapter headings refer to the momentous event when Stuart Johnson was shot dead by the young girl Beth – thus headings say “Twenty-two years before the girl shot the man”, “A hundred and twenty-eight years before the girl shot the man”, “The moment before the girl shoots the man” etc. etc. Is this the drum-beat of Kataraina’s guilt or is it the ghost of whatever trauma has haunted her? Or is it simply reminding us that Stu’s death was a turning point in Kataraina’s life? Then there is the voice that the author often uses. “We”, the first person plural voice, narrates much of the novel, suggesting the voice of a whole community of wise kuia.

 

It's important to note that Manawatu does not present Kataraina as a paragon. She has very many faults and her behaviour is sometimes self-destructive… but then she has a major identity problem. When she’s a little girl, she prefers to live with her grandparents Jack Te Au and Liz Wixon rather than with her parents Henare Te Au and Colleen Davis, even though she knows her grandparents are often very quarrelsome. The family appears to be a tightly-knit one. There is much talk of food and many family gatherings, though the grandparents quarrelling becomes more violent. As a teenager, Kataraina has many of the adolescent problems. She has a sense of being awkward and is self-conscious. She gets drunk. Sex begins to interest her. Later she knocks around with her brother Toko and meets up with a friend called Pare, who isn’t necessarily a helpful role model. She is disoriented – perhaps through drugs. Aged 16, she has unwanted sex forced on her by an older man, Jared in his 40s. She is assertive enough to walk out of a job at a restaurant when her boss has pushed her too hard. And then she gets together with Stuart Johnson. At first their life is perfect – he’s a young healthy Pakeha farmer, she’s attracted to him and they marry. But gradually their marriage goes sour, Stu becomes more bullying, more violent, throwing things around, more suspicious of his wife… and Kataraina does have an affair with the nearby Tom Aiken, whom we saw in Aue as a very sympathetic character.

Then there is this unresolved matter of Kataraina’s major identity problem. It comes in the form of a piece of land. On Stuart Johnson’s land there is what is colloquially called Johnson’s Swamp. It is regarded by the Maori community as tapu – partly because of a death that happened there in the nineteenth century, but also because it is connected to ancient lore which says the swamp should connect with the sea and that water should always flow through it. A researcher, Eric Green, is interested in the health of wetland geology. He – a Pakeha -has one view of the swamp, seeing it as interesting for scientific research. Cairo, who is Maori, is another researcher specialising in braided rivers. She has a radically different attitude to the swamp after having been told about the history of the swamp by her kuia [grandmother] Moira Sterling, seeing the swamp as sacred and understanding it teems with living things. When he first married Kataraina, Stu had no interest in the swamp and was happy to let it lie. But as his farm loses money, he begins to obsess about the swamp and tries to expand his grazing fields by draining the swamp. Kataraina’s mother Colleen Davis sides with Stu on this issue, but when he tries again and again, he merely ends up with some sedge-e fields and the swamp renews itself. And Stu’s anger grows worse, partly taken out in violence on Kataraina. She sees him as a man “with no interest in poetry or the way a lyric in a song could declare love without using the actual word, and no interest in land too wet to fatten cows…” (p.111)

But what about Kataraina’s major identity problem? The whole narrative of the swamp, and different attitudes towards it, appears to symbolise the difference between pragmatic Pakeha views and Maori deeply-held beliefs. The Pakeha wants to make a buck and ignores the sacred. The Maori want to preserve what is sacred…. and they have an awareness that Pakeha settlers have taken much land that is sacred, such as the swanp. Kataraina is placed between two different cultures – her mixed Maori-and-Pakeha forebears and the Pakeha farmer she has married. What is her culture? Only shortly before Stu is killed does she  understand what culture is really hers. “She knew that she was tearing up, and it wasn’t Johnson’s place, that way, or Aiken’s place, that way. [i.e. she is not trying to chose one of two men] It was a new ancient world inside her, trying to escape her ribcage and fold over the whenua with her, spread out from her, and remember its way up towards the sun.” (p.277) She has embraced the land and its ancient beliefs. And years after Stu’s death, Kataraina laughs and “A crevice open, widens, and her laughter is like cool water, and her cool-water laughter finds this new channel and rushes through it, like a dam has suddenly collapsed, and the cool-water laughter rushes through the channel, right back through time, rinsing us clean.” (p.279) Symbolically, Kataraina is identified with the swamp opening up and cleansing the flowing water. She is now firmly aware of her Maori identity.

And the land is regenerated. After Stu is dead, we are told that there is a flourishing of nature when young Beth and Arama [important in the earlier novel, but minor characters in this one] return to the deceased Stu’s farm and they see “the entire landscape of farmland appeared to have reverted, wild with life: manuka, rimu, kowhai, nikau, ponga. Some grew overnight. Bold. Hungry. Obscenely generous, the air was fresh and rich.” (p.19 – note that this is said early in the novel, but then the novel is not presented in sequential order ].

It would be very amiss of me if I did not note that there are moments in this novel where Becky Manawatu writes in a style that is very lyrical, especially when Cairo is dreaming of, or thinking about, nature and its bounty. And then in complete contrast she presents extreme psychological stress when Kataraina “loses it” . Take the sad moment (pp.132-133) when, months after Stu’s death,  Kataraina virtually takes on a new persona, and considers thus: “ For some tasks she’d been letting loose the ghost of her. Ghost-Kat escaped the towering bowls to do the basic things that proved she was a person. Ghost-Kat faked flesh and substance. Trained itself to hold things )and associated skills such as not falling into the earth, through floors etc.); to toast sandwiches (and associated skills like making Bolognese, cooking whole roasts, peeling and chopping vegetables but not wrists); to hold a glass to drink water (and associated skills like drinking beer, wine and top shelf, even putting the salt on the side of her palm, locking it, dropping the tequila, pressing the lemon to her mouth, but not ramming it down her throat); tidying up, sometimes cleaning even (but not drinking bleach or window cleaner); had even mastered yahooing, bouts of laughter and some facial expressions to reply in the group chat (and associated skills such as making/cancelling dinner plans sending funny GIFs and memes and pressing the happy, sad, angry, hundy-per-cent emoji buttons to react to people’s online lives but avoiding writing I WISH I WAS FUCKEN DEAD….” This is despair before her life is regenerated.

It's up to the reader to wonder where Kataraina goes after she has accepted who she is. Will she have a happy life or a fruitful one? Does embracing a culture necessarily make for happiness? How long will Kataraina’s epiphany last? In Aue, Becky Manawatu depicted much that was negative in both Pakeha life and modern Maori life (gangs, drugs etc). In Kataraina she basically focuses on the positives of Maori life.

I conclude with one personal view. By focusing on one major character, I think Kataraina is a more pared back and focused novel than the earlier Aue, and all the better for it.

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.

     “THE CHOUANS” by Honore de Balzac ( first published in 1829; revised in 1845 to become a “scene from the military life” in Balzac’s “Human Comedy”)

            Anybody who had read this blog regularly will be aware that Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) is one of my literary idols. In fact on this blog I have, over the years, written reviews of eight of his novels and a review of a collection of his short stories. To put them in the order in which I would judge his best and his second best, you can find on this blog his very best Le Pere Goriot [Old Goriot],  La Rabouilleuse [known in English as The Black Sheep], Le Cousin Pons [Cousin Pons], and La Cousine Bette [Cousin Betty].  Second best – in my humble opinion -  are Eugenie Grandet , La Peau de Chagrin [The Wild Ass’s Skin], and the disjointed Les Illusions Perdues [Lost Illusions]. And, as I have often declared, if you really want to be turned away from reading Balzac, then torture yourself by reading his dullest and most tiresome novel Cesar Birotteau . As for the volume of Balzac’s Selected Short Stories it contains some of the Master’s best work.

            All this is by telling you that I am about to inaugurate a series of other novels by Balzac that I have not yet covered. I begin with Les Chouans [The Chouans] because it was the first novel Balzac wrote under his own name  -   hitherto he had been churning out pot-boilers under various pseudonyms, which he himself regarded as rubbish (even now, learned professors have not been able to track down all the pot-boilers he wrote under false names). Les Chouans is an historical fiction – a genre that Balzac rarely wrote. He preferred to write about his own times. Many have suggested that the thirty-year-old was inspired to write Les Chouans by the success Walter Scott had in writing his Waverley (published in 1814). Scott’s novel was a very romanticised version of the mid-18^thcentury Jacobite Rebellion – in which the romantic Scots were defeated. Les Chouans (first published in 1829) is also about an uprising that ended in defeat, replete with romantic asides. Yet in some ways, romantic moments and all, Balzac is more realist than Scott. First, his tale in set in recent times, Brittany in 1799-1800, when Balzac would have been a baby. Second, when he deals with soldiers and battles, he does not glamourise. 

            Here’s the general historical situation. The French Revolution has happened. The king has been executed and many émigrés have fled from France. The new regime is unstable and Napoleon carries out his coup (Brumaire), making himself the First Consul. France is a republic. But in much of the countryside, including Brittany, there are still many royalists and some aristocrats who want to bring back the Ancien Regime. So there are uprisings. In Brittany, the insurgents are called Chouans. Marie de Verneuil, the beautiful bastard daughter of an aristocrat, is sent by Fouche (Napoleon’s master spy and general thug) from Paris to Brittany in the hope that she will penetrate the Breton royalist conspiracy and possibly capture the “Gars” (Breton slang for the royalist leader). The Gars is the young returned émigré, the Marquis Alphonse de Montauran. The novel opens with a relatively realistic account of Chouans ambushing Republican troops (whom the Bretons call “Blues” because of their uniforms) and freeing Bretons who had been pressed into Republican service. This is all very credible with the soldiers on both sides calling insults and curses at one another.  But then the melodrama steps up. Marie de Verneuil and Marquis Alphonse de Montauran fall in love with each other. This often puts Marie in conflict with Corentin, the agent of Fouche who is supposedly at her command. Early in the romantic tale, Marie helps Montauran to evade arrest when he has entered France under disguise. Later, Republican troops march into a trap on Montauran’s old estate, but they are slaughtered by Chouans. After this atrocity, Marie is denounced by Montauran’s mentor, who reveals that Marie is spying for Fouche. But this time Montauran lets Marie go. There is much suspense (and further meetings) where Marie is not sure whether she wants to unite with Montauran and marry him or to betray him – her mixed feeling because part of her really believes in the Republic. Eventually she leads the Republican troops to where Montauran is hiding… but at the last moment she realizes that her true love is Montauran. She marries him in secret… and the two lovers die romantically when they are about to escape.

            Horribly melodramatic isn’t it? The shadow of Walter Scott hangs over him. Here is a doomed rebellion on behalf of a dying regime. Elements of the Marquis de Montauran are very like Scott’s version of Bonny Prince Charlie – a personally brave man but too weakened by his amorous interests. Like Scott, Balzac lays on the minute descriptions of the landscape (in the case of Brittany, hedgerows  and scrub, just right for ambushes and guerrilla warfare). After its lively and realistic start, Les Chouans becomes melodrama, filled with oaths, vows, declarations of love, curses, vengeance etc. The major improbability of the novel is Marie de Verneuil’s ability to go anywhere (Chouan side or Republican side) without ever being challenged or questioned until the last moments, simply because Balzac wants her to be in the right place to witness various events. Grotesque minor characters are also in the spirit of Scott, especially the Chouans with their noms de guerre (March-a-Terre, Mille-Piche, Galop-Chapine). Incidental grotesqueries  in action flavour the romantic melodrama with Grand Guignol, such as the miser D’Orgemont, with his secret cell and his brother walled up in it; Galop-Chapine decapitated on his own table by other Chouans who believe he has betrayed them, his head then being hung up as a warning. Unlike Scott, however, there is a relative frankness about sexual matters and some sophistication in analysing the passions of women and man. Frankly, after all this I think young Balzac was straining a picturesque style he was soon to outgrow.

            Les Chouans seems to be a case of romantic-but-irresponsible rebellion pitted against a realistic-but-dour authority – rusticism versus advanced “enlightenment” civilisation – or at least that is what the Republicans believe.

Balzac’s sympathies seem mainly on the side of the “Blues” – the Republican soldiers – with a French pride in their achievements regardless of their politics. Thus the professional soldier, Commandant (i.e. Colonel) Hulot, and the salty Sergeant Beau-Pied, with his sneer shouted out at a speech made by a royalist in the midst of battle: “Less talking gentlemen – one can hardly hear oneself kill.” Yet to balance this, there is the Republican police spy Corentin who is presented as devious, cold and heartless, which was the popular idea of spy-master Fouche (who does not appear in the novel, though he is much talked about.)

By contrast, the Chouan guerrillas, clad in their sheepskins and goatskins, are rural barbarians – superstitious, constantly crossing themselves and swearing oaths by Saint Anne of Auray, led by a fanatical clergy like the Jesuit Abbe Gudan with his fake miracles. Of course Balzac [who was more-or-less Catholic] balances this image by creating the  pious Breton girl Francine (Marie de Verneuil’s maid) and the self-sacrificing priest who appears in the last pages marrying Marie de Verneuil and the Marquis Alphonse de Montauran. But the abiding impression is of a backward people.

Balzac’s constant theme is that the Chouans were being led on by émigré place-getters who were merely seeking their own advancement and the restoration of privileges, should the Republic come crashing down. On the last page, the Marquis’ final wish is that his younger brother “should not bear arms against France, although I hope I will never cease to serve the king”. The ambiguity is Balzac’s own. He was the liberal monarchist opposed to both Chouan fanaticism and the Republican coldness, but a patriot withal. Remember, too, that when Balzac was writing, France once again had a king.

Les Chouans has been translated into English a number of times, but is not regarded as one of Balzac’s more important novels. Tastes have changed, and the scenario of - essentially – lovers dying heroically seems more appropriate for a bel canto opera than a hard-headed account of a rural uprising. A little research tells me that Les Chouans has a couple of times been turned into a movie, but it seems never to have been seen outside France.

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. 

                                                  IN PRAISE OF THE TUI

I’m a volunteer guide going out every so often to the open sanctuary island Tiritiri Matangi. Birds, being saved from the predators found on the mainland, are one of the great attractions, and of course over the years I’ve become more aware of our indigenous birds  - the cheeky toutouwai [North Island Robin] who will hop ahead of people on the tracks looking for mites to eat; the piwakawaka [fantail] who has a similar strategy, though it comes behind walkers, not before them; the endlessly chattering tieke [saddleback]; the elegant and very elusive kokako, hiding in the forest but occasionally giving out its mournful cry, the nearest thing to the out-breathing of an Aue! But when it comes to the birds on the island, my favourite was the kereru – formidable and bulky in size, falsely called a wood pigeon, flying through the tracks with the woop-woop sound of its long and busy wings; and also known for its eating and sleeping routines. The kereru eats berries and then sits on a bough allowing its food to ferment as it sleeps. I regard the kereru as a happy drunk. My ideal of the lazy life.

                                                       A happy fat kereru

But there’s another bird that now gains my attention. In the right season, when you have tramped up to the centre where you can get a cup of tea, you will find tuis quarrelling. Tuis are aggressive and quarrelsome birds, not attacking human beings but attacking one another, vying to be first to sip the sugar-water that has been prepared for them. Tuis are nectar birds - that is, they drink the sweet water from flowers. But then there are smaller nectar birds, korimako [bellbird] and hihi [stitchbird] who seek the same sustenance. To protect these smaller birds, cages on the island, holding sweeter water, are deliberately designed with openings too small for the aggressive tuis to get in. If tuis could go in, they would intimidate and chase away the smaller birds.

            So far, I’m giving tuis a bad rap, aren’t I? This is very unfair. Unlike some other birds, tuis are in no danger of extinction. They proliferate all over suburbia  … at least that is true in Auckland. And as I write, a group of tuis are occupying our Australian bottle-tree with its bright-red flowers, giving the same pleasure we get when the pohutukawa blooms in our back yard. The tuis come along when summer is approaching, unlike the nuisance magpies that worry our back yard with baleful noises and take over the tree in winter. It is a pleasure to hear the click-wark-rattle-awk-ock of the male tui asserting his presence. No – despite old lore, tuis do not have two voice-boxes. What they do have are nine sets of muscles that allow them to amplify and produce many noises. And of course tuis feathers are not only black and white. That idea was the fault of colonial settlers in the 19^th century, who quaintly called the tui “the parson bird” because they didn’t notice how iridescent the tui’s feathers were.

                                                         Tui in its glory
 

Incredibly cheeky footnote: I was never persuaded that Denis Glover’s “quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle” sounded anything like that call of a magpie. But I do think I have caught a tui’s “click-wark-rattle-awk-ock” accurately… or at least the tui in my tree.

Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

     “BEGINNINGS IN AOTEAROA AND ABROAD” by Michael Jackson (published by Ugly Hill Press, distributed by Bateman Books, $NZ 39:90 )

            Michael Jackson – academic, anthropologist, poet and traveller – is now 84 years old. Beginnings in Aotearoa and Abroad is the nearest he has yet come to a full autobiography, although he has dipped into personal things in others of his books. [I admit that back in 2019 I wrote a not-very-positive review on this blog of his The Paper Nautilus,which had many personal asides.]  In his preface to Beginnings in Aotearoa and Abroad he explains what he means by “beginnings”. In his view, we are always changing. We say goodbye to one phase of our life and a new one emerges – a new beginning. It can simply be growing up, but it can also mean understanding new things, meeting new people or  going to other countries and immersing in different cultures, which is, of course, Jackson’s profession.

            Jackson divides Beginnings in Aotearoa and Abroad into two halves.

            Part One is headed “A Taranaki Childhood Around 1950”. Born in 1940, Jackson grew up in a lower-middle-class family. His father was a bank-clerk. The family was not exactly poor but they sometimes had to struggle to make ends meet. Mount Taranaki dominated the countryside. By 1945, the little boy was aware of uncles coming home from war. It was also in 1945 that he first went to school, feeling deprived of his mother. Although he was never good at games and sports, he still pitched in, even if he often found himself practising all on his own. He did begin to understand that there were separate social classes in their small town, with working classes on the other side of the railway track from the side where the Jacksons dwelled. Still when he was very young, he learnt some lessons about farming, which was not his family’s metier. He once fell into a pit if cow dung to the great amusement of farming kids. [Jackson insists that “dung” is really a euphemism and the correct word should be “shit”]. His family did sometimes go on holidays at the beach, but at first he saw the sea as a daunting, frightening thing. [On this I sympathise with him – when I was very young I felt overwhelmed and frightened when I first holidayed at the sea.] He says the experience of the sea at first shook him, and in a way shaped much of his early thinking, as in this reaction: “Was this the first inkling that I could manipulate my dreams and, by extension, use my imagination to gain some mastery over things that threatened to overwhelm me? Certainly, I have never given up on the fantasy that I can travel through time and forewarn my childhood self of the perils lying ahead of him, and perhaps advise him on how to face them. Although most of us are destined to have children of our own and worry about their vulnerability; it is also true that we become the parents of the children we once were, and sometimes wish we could retrospective show them an easier path through life than the one we took so blindly.” (pg. 34).

            Jackson tells us that his parents had different interests. His mother had great fortitude, though she was often sick. One of his most vivid memories is of how onerous it then was for a woman – his mother -  to shoulder all the housework that had to be done before there were refrigerators or washing machines. He remembers his mother boiling clothes in a hopper, wringing clothes by hand and then struggling with a clothes line. Mother was interested in painting and worked in a Toss Woollaston style. His father, as a hobby, was interested in technical things. Jackson says it was “an uneasy relationship between the technical and aesthetic”.

            Together with his older sister Gabrielle, young Jackson slowly came to terms with the presence of Maori in Taranaki and gradually began to understand how nearly all the Maori land had been “confiscated” [i.e. stolen] in the 19^th century. Later, when he got a bicycle, he roved around parts of Taranaki, acquainting himself with Maori settlements and Maori art… perhaps being the origin of his life as an anthropologist.  Countering this, there was the fact that as a youngster he was brought up on English comics and books and often thought of England as the promised land. Like many young people, he did have a sort of religious crisis, wondering if God could help him. Once, when he lost a cricket ball, he asked God to help him find it… and he found it… so maybe God could help him further… though that was not the direction he went. In his solitary rambles, however, he took to admiring plants and trees and the wind and did come close to the quasi-religious attitudes of Wordsworthian romantic poets. But this attitude did not last for his life. He writes: “In the English romantics, I would, years later, discover my spiritual forebears, though I would discover also that nature was a poor substitute for the company of friends, and that the writers who made a religion of nature were often conflicted rather than enviable figures.” (pg. 65) Becoming a young teenager, he also inevitably wondered about sex (the chapter dealing with this is called “Sexual Awakening”) and often heard the more uncouth lads of Inglewood speculating on what “rooting” involved.

            Turning the spotlight away from himself, he considers some of the eccentrics who lived in Inglewood and environs, also noting that the area was known for having a higher rate of murders than most country towns. Two eccentrics behaved in very different ways – one ultimately violent. Their different behaviour led him to wonder if he himself had to “choose between withdrawal and engagement, changing myself or changing the world”. This really leads to crossing into young adulthood. But before he moves into adulthood, he gives some background to his family. His grandfather was the sole police officer of the town, mainly having to deal with rowdy drunks but sometimes dealing with more weighty things. He remembered how, in the First World War, exiles (European foreigners) were targeted by thugs regarding themselves as patriots.

            Jackson did almost broke from his father when he believed that his father was making things hard for his mother. His father had him inducted into the local Masonic Lodge but young Jackson quickly broke from it and in fact denounced Mason-ism. Oddly enough, his father came to agree. All of which brings us to the end of the first part of Beginnings in Aotearoa and Abroad.

Now here is a very odd thing whenever I read an autobiography. I always find that the first part – the childhood and adolescent part – is more vivid and engaging that the second part – the adult part. Could it be that childhood and adolescence are remembered better than adulthood? Are memories branded in our minds when we are seeing things for the first time? And to revert to Wordsworth, “the child is father of the man” – that what happens in childhood is likely to form what we become as adults. I am not here suggesting that the rest of Beginnings in Aotearoa and Abroad is less interesting than the first part, but I found Michael Jackson’s account of his childhood something I could identify with – and he has great skill in describing his youth, though he does sometimes interpose at length psychological theories he cherishes.

Which brings us to the Part Two, called “The Startling Unexpectedness of New Beginnings ”.

 

After childhood, in adolescence Jackson was sent to a dull secondary school. He gained some relief in visits to his sister in Wellington and the bohemian crowd she dwelt with. Starting in a new way after some time at university, he travelled for five years. He went to India experiencing a new culture and in London he helped homeless people. He also volunteered for work in the Congo. As a welfare worker in Australia, he was disgusted by the way Aboringinals were being forces into assimilation. What really gave him a new perspective, however, was when he met Petra Hawarden, who became his wife. He says “Just as every beginning is foreshadowed by false starts and tantalising glimpses, so too is love. In my attachment to my mother, or the two teachers at my primary school, or my infatuation with the high school French teacher, or the several short-lived affairs in my early twenties, I can retrospectively trace the lineaments of the love that finally flowered in my relationship with Petra Hawarden. Falling in love is like being born again. Instantly the past is eclipsed by the present, and even the future is not given a second thought. But just as every traveller on the threshold of a new departure may get cold feet, even so romantic love is accompanied by doubt, hesitancy, and a sense of loss.” (pg.122)

There followed when Jackson and his wife Petra lived in various parts of New Zealand. He gives a very affectionate account of husband and wife spending time with Sam Hunt, sometimes sharing Hunt’s shack…. But some years later, he says, Sam Hunt had coarsened as he gained fame:  “I was … dismayed that Sam’s acclaim seemed to encourage in him a vulgar popularism that consisted of trashing married couples and academics…” (pg. 143)

Jackson and his pregnant wife Petra went to Sierra Leone where he blossomed as an anthropologist. Petra had a very hard and painful birth, but their daughter Heidi was born safely. Jackson studied initiation rites. This included clitoridectomy. Jackson sees this as essential to the tribal people in preparing for hardship and becoming stoic. He writes:  “By construing clitoridectomy as ‘genital mutilation’ we lose sight of the transfigurative power of the rite of passage in which girls are prepared for the hardships of childbearing, child-ready, and marriage.”  (pg. 156) Doubtless this was how the tribes saw it, but not everyone will agree. Frankly, I am glad that Jackson notes widely in Sierra Leone now the ritual is no longer practised.

Upon returning to New Zealand he took up a university role. Petra and Jackson sought  a rural house in Manawatu and settled there. He studied with Te Pakaka and made himself more aware of Maori cosmology and Maori beginning beliefs. But Petra was inflicted with cancer. Calming herself, she took to Zen as her health declined. Eventually she died. Like so many in this narrative, there are beginnings – one being Jackson’s turning to Yoga. He discusses how he deals with it and what different perceptions he had. In the longest chapter in the book, called “Epiphany”, he visited a self-sufficient family in a remote part of Coromandel. The visit changed his view of the world – simplicity and fellowship being most important. He returns to overseas research, going back to Sierra Leone which he sees as having declined since her was last there. The visit gives him the opportunity to talk about the slave trade that once sailed from Sierra Leone, with side comments on how former imperial nations still benefit from what was plundered. Later he spends time helping refugees in New Zealand. He marries again to a woman called Emma – yet another beginning in his life… and where his final chapters he has a sense that life is an eternal cycle, and that our true home is the people we love.

For anyone who reads Beginnings in Aotearoa and Abroad will be outraged that I have simplified what Michael Jackson has written. I have given the outward chronicle of his life, with only passing comments on his ideas and theories about the nature of human thought. Often his detailed comments require close scrutiny and can be thorny to read. These things are to be respected… but it is the chronicle that is most readable.