It was seventeen years ago, almost to the day, that Paula, then my wife of not even two months, told me that she had been accepted into Bill Manhire’s masters course, and that we would be leaving New York, where I had already lived for over twenty years – my entire adult life – to move to Wellington, New Zealand.
It was a big change for both of us, but I had no idea that it was just the beginning
Since that move, we’ve lived in Iowa
City; New Orleans; Glasgow; Sheffield; and now here.
We weren’t just racing from country to
country, across borders and oceans, one step ahead of the authorities. Along
the way, Paula, in her university guise, reenergised or created writing
programmes at Tulane University, Stirling University, Sheffield University,
and, starting three years ago, Paula returned the University of Auckland’s masters
programme to its rightful position among New Zealand universities.
Many of you know she’s also been
involved in quite a few initiatives and committees and trusts, with special
attention to programmes benefitting students in south Auckland schools, and,
her own initiative, the Academy of New Zealand Literature.
During those years, Paula’s also written
and published a few things – four novels for adults, a collection of short
stories, three young adult novels. Her books have received awards and notable
reviews, and have placed her in what I think of as the Donald Trump-sized
handful of preeminent New Zealand literary fiction writers.
We’re here today, of course, to
celebrate another publication, short stories and essays collected from the time
that spans nearly Paula’s entire writing life. I’m sure Harriet will talk about
the book in a little more detail, but I’m not spoiling anything by saying that
the writing captures — in fictional or essay form — many of the obsessions, thoughts,
emotions, and events that have occurred in the last seventeen years. There’s
been lots of travel, a hurricane, celebrations, and too many deaths in the family.
False River is often profound, moving, funny, disturbing. It’s like the best short
film festival, or the best masterclass you could ever hope for: there’s a
generosity throughout; as readers, we’re privileged to share these finely drawn
moments and scenes, of a particular time and place and of every time and place,
revealed to us through the most acute
eyes and ears and voice. It’s a book Paula is very proud of, and I’m very proud
that she’s asked me to speak at her launch.
I’m looking forward to the next
seventeen years and beyond, and all the adventures, hopefully fewer moves, and
all the books to come. Until then, we have False River to keep us all going.
It is now my pleasure to introduce Harriet Allen, Fiction Publisher at Penguin Random House New Zealand.
————————
"Our reps write a weekly report on what
they’ve been selling, and in it one recently commented on reading False River: ‘I loved this, what a cool
writer (and person it seems from her essays).’ So, it’s official, Paula is the
height of cool!
I was going to start by setting the
scene and reading a river poem because, well, there’s never enough poetry in
our lives.
But that was before I Googled ‘poems of
rivers’ and realised just how wrong I was. Within seconds I had more than
enough of babbling brooks, cold gliding and bright clear flows, crystal
wandering water, rushes racing over rocks and tumbling on to the sea.
Which all goes to show just how
difficult writing is. Put pen to paper and clichés gush out, or your writing is
as flat as a millpond or goes stagnant with too many metaphors.
Not so with Paula. Her words ripple
through this book with insight, provocation, clarity, beauty and honesty.
Yes, honesty, despite the title,
despite the under-riding themes of lies, fiction riffing on fact and fact
riffing on fiction, she reveals that by exploring our falsehoods we come to
understand our truths. Paula comes at this from multiple angles. In the nonfiction piece about Billy the Kidd, for instance, we learn about him but also about us, through the myths and industry that we have let grow up around this young delinquent lad. His story is about the past, now and the future.
As in the best fiction, Paula’s
stories become real by being relatable to our own lives while also working in
the opposite direction, taking us beyond ourselves, beyond our here and now.
There’s a hilarious and revealing
story about premises for a movie, which explores originality, present-day populism,
the plots of certain Georgian and Victorian novels and making a million dollars;
it’s fiction but all too real.
Paula leads us to unexpected places, eras
and subjects from witch-burning in Denmark to rocky relationships, from mortality
to bee stings, from haggling over bags in Shanghai to murder, both historical
and contemporary.
A reproduction painting in a modern Estonian
hotel lobby takes us right back to a medieval part-fairy story and some
revealing comments about beauty and preconceptions.
Another story begins in a bed in 1867,
but despite the infidelity that occurs later on, the activity homed in on here
is writing. And we come out of this book thinking a lot about writing. We learn
about writers as diverse as Brecht and Laura Wilder, the author of the Little
House on the Prairie books, as well as many more besides.
Paula opens up her own life as a
writer schooled in telling lies at school — to get away from it — and by her
mother, whose meandering and unrelated anecdotes were interminable and a lesson
in how not to tell a story.
The false river of the title comes
from the first piece, in which among other things fictional characters debate
the possible fakeries of real people.
False River is actually a place in
Louisiana, the oxbow of water is now a lake but was once part of the Mississippi
that was cut off in a flood almost 300 years ago.
The effects of Hurricane Katrina are
explored brilliantly in fictional form in this story and in the final
nonfiction essay about Paula and Tom’s own experiences of it. By bookending the
collection with these two pieces, fact and fiction talk to each other in yet
another way, as well as to us.
Which brings me to another falsehood.
I lied about not finding a river poem to read. Among the toe-curling offerings,
there was one discovery that I not only liked but to my delight I realised it was
actually relevant.
I may be showing up my ignorance by
saying I had not heard of Lucille Clifton before, but on reading and admiring
her poem, Google again came in handy with details about Clifton having been
poet laureate for Maryland and twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for
poetry.
Her poem ‘The Mississippi River Empties into the Gulf’ is
of course immediately relevant to Paula’s work because of place, but also
because of how Lucille emphasises the importance of the past to the present,
something Paula does constantly in her book, discussing the present with
reference to her own childhood or historical events, previous writers or
imaginary once-upon-a-times.
So I will end with Lucille Clifton, because,
well, we could all do with more poetry in our lives. The poem echoes and
pinpoints the special quality of Paula’s writing so much more eloquently than I
can, and, like Paula, Lucille writes about a river while not really writing
about a river" :
October 30, 2017
Penguin - NZ RRP $35.00
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