SOUTH-WEST OF EDEN: A MEMOIR 1932-1956

C.K. Stead

(Auckland University Press, $45)

“I said many times I would not write autobiography – partly because it might signal, either to my inner self, or to others, a ‘signing off’ as a writer…” Obviously, the existence of South-West of Eden resulted from a change of heart on the part of C.K. Stead; in the foreword, Stead self-deprecatingly puts this down to age, and the generally good reception of his 2008 collection of writing, Book Self. Perhaps also the advent of the enormous Collected Poems AUP released last year – a career-spanning volume, but not one generally taken as the endpoint of Stead’s life’s work – helped to put aside such concerns and help ease this memoir into print.

In any event, after a solid half-century of work with words, Stead certainly remains active and visible as writer, poet and critic, a well-recognized and often polarizing presence in New Zealand literature. South-West of Eden presents his memories of the first few decades of his life, up until his first departure from New Zealand in the mid-1950s. The foreword nods toward other literary ‘grand precedents’ (Goethe and others) for such a coming-of-age tale, but “with or without the back-up of big guns, I wanted to do it this way because I felt that whatever has followed, whether in the way of achievement or misdemeanor… was inherent in what I had been, and had done, in [my] first 23 years”.

They’re certainly eventful years as Stead remembers them – growing up in suburban Mount Eden (hence the title, punning on John Steinbeck’s classic novel), in the midst of a family somehow ‘invisibly ruled’ by his long-dead grandfather and namesake, a Swedish master-mariner. The formative years of Stead’s youth included the routine trials of childhood and school, and the added troubles of the Depression years and then the Second World War, with its blackouts, gardens for victory and bomb shelters in subterranean lava caves. Throughout, of course, runs the story of Stead’s formation as a writer, through primary and secondary school and then at university, before his departure with wife Kay for further education overseas, ‘sailing into another life’.

The finely honed skills Stead wields in his fiction, poetry and literary criticism makes for a thoroughly lucid memoir where countless similar works have collapsed into meandering strings of rose-tinted memories. It’s not until you’re some way into the book that it becomes apparent how the preceding chapters you’ve read in a seamless string could stand convincingly as self-contained essays, such is the control of narrative on display. Moments of reflection that might have in other hands wound up as self-indulgence are handled with the finesse of a master poet, and the countless details of Depression- and war-era Auckland that Stead recalls are rendered with an eye for the telling detail, rather than just for the personal pleasure of detailed recall. His memories of other literary figures – James K. Baxter, Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame (the newlywed Steads’ neighbours on the North Shore), Allen Curnow, and Bill Pearson, amongst others – also make for interesting reading, as do his insights into the poetry and writing that shaped his work and career.

Overall, the results here are hard to fault: Stead’s skills of structure, narration and description are on fine display here, and the book is an engaging read throughout, rich in detail and humour; the vivid depiction of life in Auckland in the 1940s and 1950s is fascinating in itself. Committed admirers of Stead’s writing, or followers of local literature in general, won’t be disappointed; diehard detractors won’t be up for this in the first place, but whatever your views on Stead’s works and public statements (and they have attracted their share of controversy), the book deserves the attention of anyone interested in the making of one of New Zealand’s most significant writers.

~ Sam Finnemore

OVERALL: Impeccably written memoir from a major New Zealand writer, loaded with a wealth of social detail and reflections on family, memory, identity, and the art of writing.

Star rating 4.5/5