Something New

 

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

    “LIAR, LIAR, LICK, SPIT” by Emma Neale (Otago University Press, $NZ30); “BLUE HOUR” by Jo McNeice (Otago University Press, $NZ30); “HOTEL THERESA” by Doc Drumheller (Cold Hub Press, $NZ28. 

 

The 85 poems of Emma Neale’s 7^th collection Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit has a title, drawn from an ancient chant, focusing us on the human capacity to lie, misinterpret or misunderstand reality, and sometimes suggesting that dreams can both beguile and confuse us.

The opening clutch of poems deals directly with lies. First there is a tragic situation. In  “False Confession”,  a dissenter in a tyrannical country is tortured until he gives a false confession – a case of the lie being forced. Then there are children’s lies. “Porky” has a little girl lying her first lie to mother ; then “The Quiet Type” has a little girl telling a lie to her teacher in primary school. Turning to more mature people, “Spare Change” displays the lie of a con artist. Perhaps God lies to us and is not fair – or at least this is implied in “Like girls were hot soft scones”. “Pandora First Gets Feminism, Age Ten” has the ten-year-old discovering her father’s stash of girly (or soft-porn) magazines – and then her father lies about it. “Threat” has a false bomb threat at a school – a malicious lie that scorches children’s minds for years after. “Androphopia”, a tale of a boy being physically mistreated by teacher, says “It begins when the child finds deceit / turns to truth if certain adults use it. / His tongue still curls at the grit of wrong, / like it did in the crumbs stuck to the sweets / from the man’s jacket pocket.” “Little Fibs” displays the small lies we all tell, as in  “Let us praise / the small evasions: / the missed call / the slight sore throat / the prior engagement…”. “Player” shows the capacity men have to spin untruthful yarns in casual conversations

So we learn of direct lies, forced lies, innocent lies, theological lies, foolish lies, well-intentioned lies – as in “white lies” – and malicious lies. Human beings are flawed, even the best of us. But what of the way we often lie to ourselves? Our false memories are a sort of lying. “Like the albums on rotate in your first year away from home” deals with the bric-a-brac of memories, of things left over and misunderstood.

But it would be quite misleading to suggest that Emma Neale is plucking only one note. There are tragedies, as in “Terribly Involved” wherein a new-born baby is cruelly being neglected in a hospital ward. There are sad let-downs – in “Wanted to believe in the butterfly event” a mother is aware that she wants to save the world… but her sons ask if that’s so, why did she have them? “Night-call” is essentially a lamentation for somebody who has died, but given to us in terms of multiple harsh or lowering images. In fact in this collection there are a number of poems that have the terror of night and dreams. “Sleepless” is literally nightmare-ish in its imagery, while “My Blank Camouflage”, also frightening, may or may not be read as a real event being told, or another nightmare. It appears to be related the fear of rape. In similar territory, “Scapegoat” has a woman who has a birthmark and who knows that her forebears once would have superstitious-ly regarded such a birthmark as the sign of a witch. One could also say “The Night Shift” is a fantasia. One poem, again nearing to dreams, is called in full “Dreams are the dark glasses and heatproof shell the mind wears when the truth is a hot, burning ball of plasma and at least sixty-seven known elements”

Emma Neale gives us a number of poems about 19^th century colonialism : “Tricks of Trade” suggests, in an almost jocular way, that white traders routinely cheated the Maori people; while the long poem “Genealogy” questions in detail how Pakeha genealogies gloss over things, especially forgetting the great help by iwi that had been given to white settlers. And in “Histology Report” there is an ambiguous memory of the poet’s family and its events in the past… perhaps another case of the mind telling untruths.

What is one to make of the poem “#notmetoothanks”? Is this poem based on a real meeting the poet had? At any rate, the first-person narrator refuses to honour a crass poet whom she once admired. There must be many cases like this in the poetry community. And what is one to make of “If you saw a miracle, would you speak of it?” It begins with the delight of seeing an unusual creature – but it turns into a call to leave creatures alone before that become categorised and examined. There is a strong conservationist idea here.

I have, of course, not mentioned every poem in this collection. It would take many pages if I did. Emma Neale has a very robust and sure way of expressing herself. This time, she encourages us to consider our own habitual ways of thinking, especially when we become complacent and assume that our lies and distortions of memory are the truth. Yes, we are flawed. But balancing a very questing collection, there is also Neale’s skill with the nightmare-ish, the dreams, and all the imagery that holds it up.

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

 

 

When you first open Jo McNeice’s debut collection Blue Hour, you might think you are in for a romantic perspective on the world. Blue Hour begins with the poem “Aro Valley”, almost an idyll under the moonlight with delightful romanticism. And so too with the second poem “This Summer” with its “Millions of stars / in the emerald sky.” But this has simply lured us in. With great skill, with detailed images and metaphors, McNeice presents us with a tortured and generally unhappy world. One of the collection’s longer poem “An analysis of us as a film” begins with “Light & dark, / deception & betrayal…” and “Ordinary world, / conflict, / change / failure.” It goes on to tell us that drunkards never really reform and that there are “A swarm of killer bees & / a psychopath waiting in the woods.”… at which point the poem morphs into a movie of a discontented young man and his buddy, apparently having been dominated by his mother.

Many poems are presented in the first-person voice – not that this means the poet is necessarily giving us her autobiography. Some poems draw on images of the more sinister fairy tales, as in the nightmare setting of the poem “Wolf”. The macabre persists in “Not out of the woods yet” which is a distorted version of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. Presented more in the present age is “Candles squint into the sun” wherein dead bodies lie on the street and “I walk the narrow road / between them / tiptoeing to avoid / the blood splatter / on the pavement.” Often we are presented with what amount to unhappy and despairing situations. Three “Mermaid singing” poems appear to refer to a young woman medicated and being dealt with by a psychiatrist. There is the image of the tide… and in the third “Mermaid” poem, the mermaids sings “we burn in this dark weather / & we drown in this dead weather”. “Laura” has a young woman with migraine and under a psychiatrist’s care… and yet in this case there is the redeeming factor of a wider perspective on nature in the background. Returning to the despairing, “Schizoaffective in spring” decides “You are just / molecules erasing / themselves, / a collection of / moments & dust, / a melted bullet, / an empty cartridge…”  The poem “Ghost Heart” appears to be dealing with bipolar disorder. “She’s feeling old” is not a poem of despair but of resignation to the fact that things change – in this case in terms of architecture inevitably changing. “Admission” begins “Admit nothing. / Your mind is a blizzard. / All the eyes of the creatures / from the bottom of the ocean / are on you. / You have planted rue & honesty / in a patch of black earth, / ingested doubt, like / a daily dose of arsenic.” And the poem ends “poison is the only cure for madness”. However, “Maybe” has the poet apparently unhappy in love or having lost love, but this time not despairing with the determination “I will wear an armour made / of misery & mania, / delusions & hallucinations, / fight my way out of this.”

I have, as I so often do, essentially given you a sort of synopsis, telling you of the contents of this collection. On the whole, these poems deal with moods; and the moods sometimes verge on the nihilistic – almost suggesting that life is not worth living or that life is only painful. But this does not negate the fact that Jo McNeice writes forcefully, presenting compelling images even in despair, and does, after all, understand what is the fate for many people.

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

 

 

            The blurb tells us that Doc Drumheller’s Hotel Theresa is named after the New York hotel in Harlem which was frequented often by many famous jazz players and fighters, from Duke Ellington to Malcolm X. Drumheller has dual citizenship as American and New Zealander, and the famous hotel becomes eventually the cornerstone of all the countries he has visited.  He is very disciplined in this collection of 79 poems. All are written in seven couplets [with one exception] and all deal with place and local atmosphere. The poems are divided into nine sections, each having seven poems.

The seven poems of Psalms for a Broken City begin with ancient Maori concepts of how the Earth was formed, and then give us a part jocular and part lament for scenes in New Zealand – the end of a performance poet, the clogged city, a broken rural town and yet happy moments with rough mates.  The Treasured Places again begins with Maori lore but moves into almost idyllic images of New Zealand shores and parks. My Republic is more personal, dealing with how he prefers to raise carrots et al. [none of your chemicals please!], how he regards the Earth, and remembering both his mother and father in their gardening. The Swamp of My Childhood takes him more to his roots in America – the different flora and fauna like snapping turtles in the streams and the different mores with memories of old Dixie and also how his daddy used to speak. Hymns Behind the Iron Curtain do deal in part with his visits to countries that were once Communist, but not exclusively, and there is much irony in the way he deals with the different cultures he meets. And irony looms large in the next section called The Death of Irony, which deals more with sex and disgust at censorship. Learning Mandarin deals respectfully with the Chinese culture Drumheller has experienced, but he also writes ironically about Mao. The Oracles of Delphi moves from Greece and its antiquities to India with its great wealth and immense poverty. Viva La Vida is naturally about Mexico and leans towards its revolutionary side but with some jests as well. And finally the last collection of poems is Hotel Theresa itself. The mean streets looking for the remnants of the long-gone hip and beat days. The wild cactus centre of the U.S.A. A memoir for those killed in the Mosque massacre in Christchurch. And finally a peaceful poem reminding us that most people are our friends.

As I so often do, I have given you an account of this collection without examining the quality of the work. So I will be brief. I enjoyed this collection. I liked the way many of Doc Drumheller’s lines read like epigrams – straight forward, brief, sharp, accessible and very readable. And often enough there are some wild imagery and metaphors. A good sock on the jaw.

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 COUNTRY DOCTOR” [“Le Medecin de Compagne”] by Honore de Balzac (First published in 1833)

 

Honore de Balzac often prided himself on being able to write swiftly, and it is well-known that he often wrote through the whole night, fortified by gallons of coffee. But then, having written a whole text, and after the proofs had been sent to him by his publisher, he would virtually re-write the whole work. This was the case with Le Medecin de Compagne. Balzac said that he had written the whole novel in three days and three nights in August 1832, but it is probably true that it was extensively re-written before its publication in September 1833. For modern readers, Le Medecin de Compagne is hardly what we would now call a novel. It is more like a series of vignettes embodying a social and political idea, centred on the idealised portrait of a devoted country doctor. The “novel” divides into five sections, which I will attempt to summarise briefly.    

            First is called in English “The Countryside and the Man”. Doctor Benassis is the mayor of a small alpine village. Late in 1829 an officer called Genestas arrives wanting medical help from the doctor. The doctor puts him up in his guest-room, and cares for him during his convalescence. But the main substance of this section is Dr. Benassis explaining to his guest how he has rejuvenated the village by wise  economic and other social policies over the years – aided by the kindly priest Janvier, the Justice of the Peace Difau and the notary Tonnelet. Cretins are given a tidy refuge. Cottage industries are encouraged so that the village will be self-sufficient. A passable road has been made to reach the outside world and therefore trade is thriving to the prosperity of all. In effect, Benassis outlines the ideal programme for paternalistic village reform. The village now boasts its solid middle-class citizens, as well as thriving peasants.

            Then follows “A Doctor’s Round”, which shows us how Benassis’s benevolence works in practice. The healed Genestas accompanies the doctor on his rounds. The doctor is highly esteemed by all his patients and all the inhabitants of the village and environs. A visit to a house shows a middle-class family unprepared for the coming death of the family’s eldest man… but the doctor also visits a larger peasant family, higher-up in the mountains, where the family patriarch has just died. But the value of sturdy peasant tradition is shown when the mountain family’s widow immediately hands over family authority to the family’s oldest son and the new patriarch is fittingly respected. Other illustrative encounters are a fanatically loyal soldier in Napoleon’s army who now refuses to believe that the emperor is dead; a hardy old peasant called Moreau; and a brickmaker who now owns a village tile factory. A Mother Colas is mortally sick and has to be comforted by her 15-year old son.  The good doctor encourages a notorious poacher and smuggler to mend his ways. There is also some conversation on a 22-year-old girl who is being treated by the doctor for what we would now think of as a psychiatric problem – deep melancholy at least.         

So in part three “The Napoleon of the People”, after having heard Dr. Benassis’s theories and seen his practical work, we now hear his political agenda. At a dinner party, Benassis, Genestas, the priest Janvier, the Justice of the Peace and the notary discuss politics – which means Benassis holds forth. Basically he believes in a limited democracy. The franchise should be restricted, as those without property and talent are easily swayed by giddy orators; yet equality before the law should enable those of ability to rise. Authority must be respected or there will be no security in the state. The state should not be based on pre [French] -revolutionary privileges, but there should be a gulf between the rulers and the ruled. In providing a stable framework for society, the church has a valuable role to play. The talent of the individual entrepreneur will provide benefits to the whole community. Not all men are equally talented – indeed the mass of the population will always be dependent. Hence there is a need for strong men at the top. As if to illustrate the mentality of the [peasant?] mass of the population, the second half of this section has Benassis and Genestas visiting the old Napoleonic soldier who holds an audience spellbound with his tales of Napoleon’s conquests and military glory – embellished with folklore flourishes. It is so exciting that Genetas jumps down and embraces the old soldier, declaring that he marched in Napoleon’s legions too. Is this intended to illustrate for the reader the greatness of Napoleon in arousing among the peasants spirit and a sense of nobility and sacrifice? Or does it really reveal the credulity of the masses? Either way, this episode illustrates the gulf separating the masses and the “great men”.

 

Shifting the perspective considerably, and indeed moving into melodrama,  “The Country Doctor’s Confession” turns to telling us about how Dr. Benassis grew to be the man he is. His backstory, as Benassis tells Genestas, is that he came to this obscure village to practise benevolence because he had suffered tragedy in his life. As a young rake, he had seduced a woman who had his son but who then died. He looked after the boy as best as he could. Then he fell in love with another young woman, Evelina – but her strict Jansenist family refused to let her marry such an immoral man as Benassis . Then his little son died – and all happiness drained out of him. [This catastrophe befell when Benassis was 34 – which was the age Balzac was when he wrote this novel.] Benassis contemplated suicide, reading philosophers to justify himself. But a reading of the Gospels re-awakened his Christian senses. He decided to bury himself in a monastery, and visited the Grande Chartreuse… but monastic life suddenly seemed selfish. Instead, he came to this village to practice the Christian virtues in action. “For a wounded heart – shadow and silence” says Benassis (which Balzac makes an epigraph to this book.)

And in the final section, “Elegies”, Genestas also reveals his true identity and his motives. He too had suffered from the death of a wife; and her boy Adrien is mortally sick. Genestas had heard of the village doctor’s skill and his profound virtue. Genestas, having had dealt with his own medical problem, was also testing to see if Benassis would be worthy of tending young Adrien. Adrien is brought to the village. Benassis says the boy is not consumptive. He simply needs a healthy outdoor life, far from the unhealthy indoor school life in Paris which has ruined him. Benassis introduces the 16-year-old to La Fosseuse, whose profound charity for those suffering is revealed – the suggestion being that Adrien and La Fosseuse will grow together…. Eight months later, Genestas, who has gone back to the city,  gets a letter from Adrien in the mountain village saying that Benassis is dead. He was felled by the final shock of learning that Evaline, the woman he loved, has died. Genestas returns to the village. He sees the sorrow of the whole village at Benassis’s funeral. He finds his son Adrien is now in full health. A grassy mound is raised in Benassis’s honour. The final words of the novel suggest that Genastas will now settle in the village – and possibly the cycle of having a talented, benevolent man in charge will be repeated.

In many ways it is hard to criticise Le Medecin de Compagne as a novel. When  Benassis speaks it becomes a tract (or statement of faith) and anything that happens is really intended to illustrate a thesis – either by showing Bebassis in action, or by revealing the mentality of the people. It thus has no real “plot” as such. Nevertheless, there are vivid vignettes in the various portraits of the people of the village, the vigour of the old soldier’s narrative, and everywhere a very Romantic interpretation of alpine scenery. Le Medecin de Compagne is one of Balzac’s “scenes of country life”, depicting a man retiring after the struggle of city life – yet it was written before Balzac’s better novels about the urban battlefield. Indeed, despite the venerable nature of the novel’s main character, Le Medecin de Compagne is a relatively young man’s novel. Surely the notion of Benassis driven to benevolence by personal heart-break is a young man’s romantic concept? Would such motives sustain him through years of rational planning and toil? Would such a “sensitive plant” be finished by the news about Evelina? But there is a reason for this Romantic swing. The biographical facts are that 34-year-old Balzac wrote this novel after his break with one mistress, Madame de Castries, and after making the acquaintance of the Pole, Evelina Hanska, whose religious outlook was very similar to the novel’s fictitious Evelina.

Where Le Medecin de Compagne would now be most criticised is in its social outlook.  Balzac’s views are what we would now call paternalistic. Balzac, in this novel, sees no contradiction between the maintenance of hardy peasant virtues and the bringing of “progress” to the village. The question of the “lower orders” place in an industrialized society does not appear to exist for Balzac. Benassis (like Balzac) idealises an indefinite extension of the workshop and handicraft industries as means of bringing villages prosperity. He sees social happiness in the peasants trading their specialities with those of other villages. This is an essentially 18^th century concept from the era of “Philosophes”.  Certainly there is unintended irony in this novel when Benassis rejoices that the peasants are now so civilised that they no longer have to bake their own bread, but buy it, and a village bakery has been established. This strikes at the very roots of the self-sufficiency that elsewhere is eulogised. While Balzac may be right about the scarcity of real talent in the general population, he still puts an awful lot of faith in the individual entrepreneur. And, mes amis, how many entrepreneurs are more interested in growing their own wealth rather that serving the general public?

It's only fair to note that France was a little slower than Britain in industrialising, but by the time Balzac wrote, many large factories were appearing in France, railways were being built and France was ceasing to be largely rural. In a way, Le Medecin de Compagne is conjuring up a world that was already disappearing. And certainly, in the way Benassis is depicted, we are given somebody who amounts to a diligent squire to whom the peasants tug their forelocks. Even so, there is much to enjoy in the way the village is presented and the characters who have minor roles. Not one of Balzac’s best, and probably one of his least read, but still very readable.  

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.

                                                 SPEED AND IMBECILITY

            My wife and I are driving on a highway north of Auckland. I am at the wheel. We are enjoying the clear sky, the scenery and the cool jazz we’ve chosen to listen. A perfect ride. I am driving on the left lane at 80 per k. To our right on the inner lane there are cars buzzing past us at about 100 per k. This is now legal, so good luck to them, though I prefer 80 per k. and a slightly more leisurely pace. Suddenly my rear-vision mirror shows a car rushing up to us and then placing itself all of about two metres behind us. He obviously wants us to speed up. I say a few choice words to myself, wonder why somebody wants to sniff my bum like this, and I continue at the speed I am already driving. After some cars on our right have left open a gap, the road hog moves over, joining the 100 per k. group, and goes on his way… but in the distance ahead, we see him dodging and weaving between lanes, trying to get ahead of any car on the highway… and obviously going over 100 per k. Is it an emergency? Is his house burning down? Is his wife giving birth? Does he have to be on time for an important appointment? I suppose this is possible, but I doubt it. About five kilometres later the traffic has to slow down because of some event ahead of us. We find the road hog all of one car ahead of us. So what price all the speed anyway?

            I’m not a saint when it comes to driving. I have been known to use out-loud un-printable words when I’m trapped in a traffic-jam. But I do wonder why some people feel compelled to go as fast as they can when they don’t have to. At best, it appears to be a mania for teenaged boys… and teenaged boys [and some immature men in their twenties] are always way ahead in the statistics of death-by-car.

            Which brings me to a phenomenon that I have dealt with before on this blog. There is a prejudice claiming that “truckies” [drivers of large heavy-weight trucks] are boorish, thoughtless and careless about other traffic on the road. Quite the opposite is true. See a skilled truck-driver on the road, and you see somebody who knows how to load and handle goods without breaking them; who knows how to slow down when the road is twisty; who knows how to let cars pass when there is a slow-down lane; and who knows how to manoeuvre when having to reverse. See if you can back-up a large truck through a narrow gate. I have often seen this and I know it takes great skill. Of course trucks sometimes crash – usually on difficult roads far from the motorways – and when they do, they make headlines in newspapers and on the evening news. But every year, far more crashes are the result of thoughtless car-driving idiots who think their only purpose in driving is to go fast as possible, often to show-off with their mates or girlfriends. It happens on both motorways and rural back-roads.

            As for the legal 100 per k. speed on motorways and rural roads, as has often been said, 100 per k. is an option, not a target. Yes, you can be charged for deliberately going too slow and holding up the traffic; but the fact is there is no law compelling you to go at top legal speed.