Writers & Readers Week
Mar 15 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

THIS PUN on the title of Kate Atkinson’s novel is an apt description of what it’s like to spend an hour listening to novelist Nigel Cox. You get in ‘behind the scenes’ and almost feel as though you are exploring an interesting museum. Old relics of themes and threads are brought into the light, hummed and hared over, and put away again. Musty drafts sit in cases. Narrative devices are gazed upon in their glass display cabinets and crafty flow diagrams made of memories and thoughts link plot to plot. Viewers debate possible relationships between one artifact and the next. Encased, in all their splendor, are the landmark works of Cox’s writing life: Dirty Work, Skylark Lounge, Tarzan Presley and Responsibility.

Not to suggest, in any way, that Nigel Cox is himself a relic. On the contrary, in reading his work I am perpetually surprised by how hip and fresh this man is. Words like “random” and “head-fuck” and scenes that capture the youth-wanderlust freedom of hitch-hiking do not come from the mind of someone out of touch with today. In his work, we get a sense that Nigel Cox’s been there. And when we meet him, we see he still is there.

He’s there when he recounts working in Berlin on, in my mind, Europe’s most exciting contemporary museum, the Jewish Museum Berlin. Architecture and content-wise this museum is a masterpiece to behold, and in its creation has engaged some of the world’s most interesting curators and collaborators. These minds inspired much of Cox’s recent work. The voice for his latest novel Responsibility, for example, was shaped by conversations with Michael Bloomingtime, an 80 year old co-collaborator who, according to Cox, has seen the guts of the earth, and knows how to talk about it.

Cox is also there, in the present, when he describes working at Te Papa as the senior writer. The flashes of inspiration that come when in his office, beholding the beauty of the ‘Warehouse’ across the street, the need to find a style that speaks clearly and directly to the myriad goers of Te Papa; the desire to achieve this style in his own work. Cox wants to write books that everyone can approach – books that run quickly, that pull you in, that, above all, don’t require literary training to understand. In this regard not only is he today, but, when one considers the current literary climate, he is progressive.

Cox hints at his faults, too, and is not ashamed to explore the many difficulties involved in finding the right voice or the ideal shape of a story. He admits that trying to keep his stories convincing is difficult. I would say this is the element of Cox’s writing readers might fumble with the most, particularly in Responsibility. We want to believe him, but, sometimes we just can’t. In Tarzan Presley and Skylark Lounge disbelief is expected – we know the story is a bit, well, far-fetched. That’s why it’s fun. But the voice still needs to sound real. At times though it doesn’t, and in Responsibility, the characters can be hard to buy. Ash-tipping, girl-loving ‘Shake’ is a little too clichéd to be comfortable with.

However my faith in Cox as a self-aware writer is affirmed when he explores this aspect of his work in front of a live audience. This, combined with an air of humility, prove Cox as a genuine person who writes to share good stories and to entertain.

As a female reader there are gender roles in Cox’s work I find difficult to get around. For example, the assumption that the hut in Tarzan’s territory was built by a man. The idea that the ultimate goal of any good rock ‘n roller is to make money and find a nice young woman to be with. The idea that any good rock ‘n roller is male.

Though aware of these stereotypes, Cox sees no need to explain them. He seems, in fact to embrace them; they are part of his persona and though he politely apologises, he makes no excuses. “I like the idea of ‘boys in nature’” he says, “sorry, to the ladies here”. In this way Cox is a bit paradoxical – about to describe him as an ‘old boy’, I see the words ‘hip’ and ‘fresh’ in the opening paragraphs.

Hip with roots in tradition perhaps.

In any case, when, at the end of the behind-the-scenes-museum-tour one finds a Nigel Cox audio-visual display, it is so rich in colour and wit that one doesn’t want to leave. Amidst shiny boxes of worldliness and between the juxtapositions of stereotypes and progressive tendencies, the author reads closing lines. Entertained and captivated, the audience is asking, can’t we stay behind the scenes just a little longer?

» Behind the Scenes at the Museum @ NZ International Arts Festival