A stellar bunch of friends and colleagues of Greg
McGee joined him at Unity Books last Wednesday evening to celebrate the launch of
his novel Love & Money. Photo above shows Greg along with fellow
Penguin author Nick Edlin enjoying
the festivities.
Metro Editor and
man about town Simon Wilson launched the book with an address that was both
thoughtful and humorous which I felt was especially relevant as it reflected
the book perfectly.
Wilson said he first
met McGee in 1980, in the premises of the drama school in Vivian St in
Wellington. It was a big year for the Playwrights’ workshop, with McGee’s
Foreskin’s Lament being the standout,“ bloody exciting
theatre”.
He went on to
suggest that while comic writing looks the easiest it’s actually the hardest.
Then he addressed McGee’s
characters –
“Some of them are in the room.
Actually, that’s not true. They’re on the page. He
made them up.
So if you did happen to write speeches for David Lange,
or take your yoni off for weekend visits to Centrepoint, or let your monstrous
ego loose on a theatre company, or give your children ridiculous names…. you’re
not in this book.
Although some people a bit like you are in it.
Great types, great individuality in all of them: Greg
is a democrat who doesn’t leave his minor characters with too little to do, and
yet doesn’t let them obscure the focus either – that’s another valuable
writer’s skill.
Mike McGuire: the great NZ archetype
Bashful and full of himself
Capable and useless. Reliably unreliable and a decent
man
A loser who wins.
All these contradictions are true in real people, and
it’s a fiendishly difficult thing to capture them on the page”.
“So, writing about what’s important, and using comedy.
Scene where Roland, the academic who decides for the
sake of his career to become a feminist fellow traveller:
Lectures on the NZ woman alone, the lineage from KM to
Keri Hulme, that wonderful writer who will undoubtedly bless us all with new
books for years to come. Roland hated the bone people.
Gives the lecture, employs all his dramatic skills,
has the students eating out of his hand, it’s all lies but he’s bloody good,
finishes, turns, opens the door and leaves the room.
And finds himself in a broom cupboard, in the pitch
black, with no internal handle.
Greg loves his metaphors, and he has the courage as a
writer to raise them against himself as well as everyone else. He makes himself
vulnerable, and that doesn’t even occur to most writers. Is he Roland? He knows
he could be”.
I found Love
& Money, (it could well have been called Lust & Money), a
significant work, substantial,(350+ pages),in length and in content. At times
it made me laugh out loud while at other times it provided serious commentary
on the 1980’s. Set in Auckland in1987, with flashes back to earlier parts of that decade; these
were the days of the demise of the Muldoon government, the arrival of the Lange
government, the privatisation of state assets,the Rugby World Cup, the days of communes and lessened
moral values, the sharemarket's crazy boom and spectacular bust.
Out of work actor Mike, a middle-aged romantic lead with a clapped out VW and three kids to different mothers is our protagonist. He is both likeable, hopeless and hapless and McGee uses him well to tell the story. In his introduction Simon Wilson suggested the book could well be made into a movie,I think he is right and in the right hands it could be a cracker, the book certainly is.
About the author:
Greg McGee is a free-lance writer living in Auckland, currently working on a telefeature of the Pitcairn Island sexual abuse trials (which is due to be shot later this year) and as Richie McCaw’s ghostwriter.
Greg is perhaps best known for the play Foreskins’ Lament (1980).
His television credits, for which he has won several awards, include Erebus: The Aftermath, Fallout, Street Legal, and Doves of War. Under the pseudonym Alix Bosco, he won the 2010 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel with Cut & Run (2009) and was a finalist in 2011 with Slaughter Falls.
His television credits, for which he has won several awards, include Erebus: The Aftermath, Fallout, Street Legal, and Doves of War. Under the pseudonym Alix Bosco, he won the 2010 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel with Cut & Run (2009) and was a finalist in 2011 with Slaughter Falls.
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