biography – Page 3

Three Men Who Defied Authority

September 1, 2017 Leave a Comment

Andrew Paul Wood

Breaking Ranks by James McNeish (HarperCollins, 2017), 304 pp., $35

When James McNeish passed away last year he left behind a significant body of prose, specialising in historical novels and (in the modern parlance) ‘creative non-fiction’. In practice, his books are impossible to categorise, which is entirely part of their charm. His persistent theme was the salvage and apotheosis of the romantic, larger-than-life individual directly or indirectly shaping the course of world around him (and it was usually a ‘him’), preferably doomed or otherwise frustrated in their potential.

The form and feel will be familiar from McNeish’s 2003 book The Dance of the Peacocks, ultimately owing much to Sebastian Faulks’ 1996 The Fatal Englishman and the likes of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) and G.K. Chesterton’s literary biographies: that is to say, they owe as much to whimsy as they do to cold fact. [Read more…]

The Tragic Sense of Life

August 1, 2017 Leave a Comment

Denys Trussell

Notes from the Margins: The West Coast’s Peter Hooper by Pat White (Frontiers Press,

2017), 202 pp., $40

Peter Hooper (1919–1991) spent most his life in Westland, but travelled far by means of literature. His adult life was lived alone, but he was not a loner. He embedded himself (with reservations) in the community of the Greymouth district and had a professional life as a conscientious and imaginative secondary teacher. In this role he mentored many students, nudging them in the direction of literature and ideas. One of these was Pat White, the author of this portrait.

White has done us a favour by placing Hooper before us. Despite having lived (almost literally) to one side of the main literary developments here, Hooper was and still is of interest and relevance. To the generations born after 1945 he might seem a bit prim, even conservative in personal style, and definitely not up with the game of postmodern critical theory. As a writer he was in the main a Modernist with Romantic antecedents, and he was happy to acknowledge the prophetic American, Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), as the most powerful influence on him philosophically. [Read more…]

Bringing Katherine Mansfield to Life

April 1, 2017 Leave a Comment

Claire Mabey

Mansfield & Me: A graphic memoir by Sarah Laing (Victoria University Press, 2016), 336pp, $35

There is something to be said for judging a book by its cover. Particularly a book within which the images are as important, as lively and revealing, as the text. The cover of Sarah Laing’s graphic memoir Mansfield & Me is striking in its intensity. At each glance, it is alive with the skill of the artist: the hand-coloured faces of Laing and Mansfield face off. Mansfield’s brown eyes and Laing’s blue are locked, while the vivid geometry of the wallpaper behind them is concealed by smokey smudges or shadows. Katherine’s stare is challenging and bold, while Laing’s is less certain, almost pleading. This cover is at once crisp and present, ambiguous and dreamlike – a perfectly concise indication of the life stories and the relationship to come. [Read more…]

Otara Millionaires Club and the Flying Nun Sound

October 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

James Dignan

How Bizarre: Pauly Fuemana and the song that stormed the world by Simon Grigg (Awa Press, 2015), 255 pp., $38; In Love with These Times: My life with Flying Nun Records by Roger Shepherd (Harper Collins, 2016), 295 pp., $36.99

Two fine new books from insiders at the heart of two important chapters in the history of New Zealand popular music that will grace the bookshelves of lovers of home-grown musical talent. It would be only too easy to make facile comparisons between the works, and indeed there are many parallels. Both Simon Grigg and Roger Shepherd had their hands – albeit only nominally at times – on the helm of New Zealand music gold. In both cases, mistakes were made, lessons were learned, and the authors made it out alive, albeit barely, after changing the face of the local music industry and running headlong into the grey bureaucracy of corporate music. Both books tell the story of taking a provincial scene and propelling it to world status. Most importantly, both stories are compelling reads, and both are among the best books on the inside story of the New Zealand music scene ever written. But these parallels only tell a small part of the largely unconnected episodes which lie at the heart of the books, and indeed it shows the strength of New Zealand music that these two tales can co-exist largely without interacting with each other in as small a musical sphere as ours. [Read more…]

The German Wrestler and the Nazis

September 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

Brian Clearkin

Seelenbinder: The Olympian who defied Hitler by James McNeish (Steele Roberts, 2016), 242 pp., $34.95

The first question for any book purchaser is ‘Why should I buy this book?’ For a biography, the answer may well be ‘to learn more of some person I admire, like, despise, etc’. For a novel, it could well be because you enjoyed previous works by the author, or something in the cover illustration, title, or précis attracted your attention. Here we have a biographic novel of an individual that few will be aware of with a simple monochrome cover – enough ingredients for easy rejection. However, for those who know James McNeish, the author, and make the purchase, their trust will be amply rewarded. [Read more…]