Auckland Writers & Readers Festival
May 24 | By Amy Brown, Catherine Bisley & Sam Bradford

Catherine Bisley, Sam Bradford and Lumičre Books Editor, Amy Brown, are in Auckland for the Writers and Readers Festival. Their journey to Auckland was packed with eye-spy, a brief foray into car cricket and “guess this animal,” a new and exciting game involving animal impersonation. Sam surprised them all when he guessed Catherine’s Friesian cow on first go. Well done Sam! Bulls was their first stop, where they were bombarded with Bull puns. Incompara-Bull cultural cringe. A multi-coloured, fake rusted gumboot sculpture in Taihape was a hit. The Desert Road was dark and wet and long. At De Brett’s the weary travellers paused for the night and were comforted by the hot pools. The following day they stopped in Tirau for great coffee but too much corrugated iron and a castle called Pamela. Why Pamela? If you know, please enlighten us. They did not linger in Hamilton. The seafood pies in Huntly were middling. And then they arrived in Auckland, just in time for An Hour with C.K. Stead.


CB: Well I’d always realised that C.K. Stead was prolific, but not quite to the extent that Terry Sturm revealed to me. 14 volumes of poetry, 11 novels and on top of that criticism - a lot of it. Having read only one of his novels, The Death of Her Body (which I liked), I’d really just known of Stead as an academic, and as the man who shot down The Bone People, which I always respected because our literary climate seems to lack negative criticism of New Zealand writing.

SB: I was expecting a dislikeable stuffy old man, but instead I found a likeable stuffy old man.

AB: Here, here.

CB: I thought he was charming and sharp. Stuffy… not really.

AB: I agree, but do you think that we should mention the books that he discussed. Perhaps we should say he was as charismatic as the Jesus in his latest novel, My Name Was Judas.

CB: Yes. And then we should mention his poetry collection The Black River, which he also discussed and read from.

SB: Bollocks, he’s nothing like Jesus.

AB: For our readers who haven’t read My Name Was Judas...

SB: It’s the life of Jesus from Judas’s point of view. They’re old school chums.

CB: The skeptic (Judas) versus the Prophet (Jesus). Nothing like Alien vs. Predator.

SB: Sadly.

CB: Speaking of movies, he did make a nice jibe at Mel Gibson.

AB: He thought The Passion of Christ sounded “distasteful”.

CB: Anyway, back to Stead’s book. Judas narrates as a 70-year-old man. He has changed his identity, hence the “was” in the title. Stead outlined how the story came about in detail. I found this somewhat laborious, but I guess necessary when you are writing the pre- and post-history of such a well-known betrayer. The two excerpts he read were very enjoyable I thought. What did you guys think of his prose style?

SB: It seemed very clear.

CB: I really liked the passage where Jesus and Judas locate themselves in Jerusalem, between the two gates.

AB: I liked the bit with the pigeon. Stead’s little pun that made the older female members in the audience titter: “Let my pigeon go” If this sounds a bit obscure, it’s a passage in which Judas’s uncle buys little Judas and little Jesus each a pigeon to be sacrificed. Jesus is compared to the sacrificial bird quite cleverly, and of course he lets it fly away.

CB: I liked the way he likened the sound of its wing-beats to applause. The structure of the novel shows Judas coming to be disillusioned with Christ’s claim to divinity. Stead talked about the way he took the somewhat episodic gospels and put them in a sequence which showed Jesus moving from the child who lets the pigeon go, to Jesus, the man who claims to be divine. Stead said readers were only likely to take offence if they insisted on the divinity of Jesus. I take this to be one of the central tenets of Christianity… quite a few people to offend then, no?

AB: Indeed. The most interesting aspect of Stead’s book, for me, is his humanist approach to describing Jesus. Stead’s Jesus is brilliant and beautiful, but also prone to violence and anger. In comparison, Judas is merely the observer. By taking the supernatural elements of the gospels – the loaves and fishes for example – and providing a rational basis, Stead provides a secular explanation to Jesus’ seemingly divine acts. Although reviewers have said that Stead leaves the question of Jesus’ divinity open to reader interpretation, Stead disagrees, claiming that his answer is in the final poem of the novel.

CB: I liked his anecdote about the dinner party in Wellington when he was pitching his idea to the assembled guests, including Paul Morris, the head of the Religious Studies department at Victoria University. Morris commented that “These are our stories; they must constantly be retold.” I have no problem with this, all the best stories are retold – Homer, Oedipus so why not the bible, which is a great and powerful narrative? I did wonder about his insistence on sticking to the known facts of Jesus’s life. Surely if you are retelling a story, and debunking certain elements, such as the loaves and fishes, you are able to also reinterpret the more mundane elements of the history. Here I’m thinking of Jose Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Saramago takes Jesus even further into humanity. While I read this many years ago, I’m pretty sure he has sex. I also recall it was very dramatic: Joseph is crucified, Mary is not a virgin. Just from the excerpts that Stead read, I did wonder about the lack of drama in the story.

AB: I think the lack of drama in the excerpts Stead read was more to do with Judas’ calmly observant mediation of Jesus’ story. Going back to Mary, I was also interested in Stead’s decision to accentuate the fact that in the gospels, her relationship with Jesus is hardly smooth. Stead’s discussion of this, and his awareness that it’s perhaps the most controversial element of his book, also revealed the attention Stead pays to reviews. He clearly reads and engages with public responses to his writing.

CB: Yes. So many pretend they don’t care. I’m sure they do. Then again, I might be wrong and Stead may only pay so much attention to reviews because he himself is a critic. Anyhow, getting on to The Black River, there was one poem that Stead read, which really stood out for me: “The Rower.” It begins with a woman wanting to write a biography of Stead, and quibbling over a detail about whether Stead’s grandfather rowed for Oxford or Cambridge. There is a pewter mug that proves her point, she thinks. Though my description is clunky, Stead’s poem has a marvellous fluidity and elegance. No superfluous detail. The fondness for his grandfather is evident. He concluded the poem with style and weight: “I think he’s rowing still on the black river.”

AB: Yeah, I enjoyed that one too. Throughout the poetry that he read there seemed to be an admirable sincerity, and an awareness of mortality. The recurring image of the “Black River” and the inclusion of the fragments he wrote while dyslexic and recovering from a stroke were poignant without lacking control. Although I’ll definitely read My Name was Judas, I think I enjoyed the poetry that he read more than the prose. It was a shame he left only five minutes to discuss his latest collection.

CB: Yeah, it was a shame we only got a really short glimpse of the poems. I also liked his poetic fragments. He talked of the words he rapidly wrote down as being “access to the inside of the inside of the mind.” There was a nice immediacy to them. What was said was essential and the images were organically associated. And I liked the sincerity too. There was no self aggrandisement. It was modest and personal without pushing the “I’m a poet and I feel the world in a way that is more special that the rest of you, look at my literary awareness etc.”

AB: A comment like, “this really is the essence of poetry”, is bound to sound conceited, but somehow – probably because it was true – Stead’s proud description of his fragments didn’t grate. Any last words on our hour with Mr Stead, Catherine?

CB: Yes! I liked the donkey that was ashamed of its large ears. I liked the man too. His biting but intelligent sense of humour went down well. When asked how he coped with letting go of his work, in the Q & A session, he made a jibe at Maurice Shadbolt for his method of coping – getting a new wife when the novel went to publication. And his Lord Archer comment had me giggling.

AB: Note to readers: Jeffrey Archer happened to release a novel about Judas six months after Stead’s My Name was Judas came out in the UK. Apparently the press had a field day, mocking Lord Archer for stealing a kiwi’s idea.