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Gigi) Fenster View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington FEVERISH SELF-INDUCED FEVER AND THE CREATIVE MIND BY GIOVANNA (GIGI) FENSTER A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington (2016) ABSTRACT This thesis is a hybrid work that combines the critical and creative components of the Creative Writing PhD in a novel, Feverish. It includes notes, an afterword, and a full bibliography. Feverish is a novel narrated by Gigi, a writer who wishes to induce a fever in herself. The thesis aims to present more than a fictional account of a quest for fever. It aims, rather to travel with the mind of the protagonist. Gigi is not exclusively engaged in quest-related transactions in her present. Her interest in fever moves her to consider events from her past and her upbringing in Apartheid South Africa. It reminds her of a teenaged fascination with brain fever in Wuthering Heights. It prompts her to research fever-related aspects of psychiatric history and Jewish history. It drives her to research the law on consent to self-harm. As Gigi’s interest in fever leads her to these and other topics, so the thesis follows her, so the form adapts. In both its form and its content, Feverish presents a view into a mind. It provides glimpses of the events that shaped the mind. It describes where the mind goes when in the single-minded grip of a quasi-fever. The novel contains strands of theory, memoir, creative non-fiction, ficto-criticism. These different forms are layered upon each other. At times they make way for each other. At times they assert themselves over each other. In the notes at the end of the novel, the theoretical strand is at its most assertive. The notes present Gigi’s mind at its most critical, when it is directed at supporting the theoretical aspects of her quest. They support Gigi’s accounts of her research by providing additional information and citations. The narrative arc is provided by a chronological account of the days Gigi devotes to her fever quest. What follows here is a skeleton account of the novel. Feverish opens with a conversation between Gigi and a friend. This conversation spurs Gigi to explore brave artistic acts, and to the decision to induce a fever in herself. She remembers childhood holidays. Books, and in particular the nineteenth-century children’s literature that featured fever, are the focal point of these memories. Gigi recalls one particular holiday, taken at a time when a friend of hers, Simon, was just starting to show signs of mental illness. 1 Gigi starts planning her fever. She writes a ‘fever manifesto’. But she worries her siblings will think her insane. She remembers Alberto, a schizophrenic patient of her father’s for whom recovery had, according to his parents, been foretold. Gigi’s husband, son and daughter are introduced. The family has a dinnertime discussion on bravery, anti-Semitism and terrorist attacks. Gigi starts researching fever. She imagines a conversation between her deceased father and Simon about Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist who induced malaria in patients suffering from neurosyphilis. Gigi’s father and Simon discuss an historic ‘showdown’ between Wagner-Jauregg and Freud. Gigi remembers Steve Biko’s death and her father’s aggressive response to a guest who supported Biko’s doctors. Gigi is distracted from her research into fever by her son, who is vacuuming his room. She tells him a friend of hers is thinking of inducing a fever in herself. He explains the difference between fever and hyperthermia. Gigi realises that, to induce true fever, she will have to become ill. This prompts memories of the meningitis her brother suffered from as a child. Gigi uses Fildes’s famous painting, The Doctor as the starting point in an argument for a universal desire to be watched over in illness. Gigi imagines a conversation she feels she ought to have had with her father, about (mental) illness in Wuthering Heights. They test the characters against each one’s ability to empathise with Catherine’s ‘brain fever’. Their discussion of Nelly’s status as servant prompts in Gigi the memory of a shameful childhood act. A visit from a friend from law school prompts Gigi to research the law that could impact on her quest. She reviews case law relating to consent to self- harm, personal autonomy, and the boundaries of criminal law. Her research is interrupted by domestic concerns: her cat kills an endangered bird; her son writes a fever-related essay for school; she accompanies a friend in looking for her errant daughter. At the end of the novel Gigi and her family confront a crisis. It becomes clear that Gigi is not the only family member unsettled by fever. 2 CONTENTS ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………………………….…... 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 FEVERISH ……………………………………………………………………………………………….……. 5 NOTES………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 176 AFTERWORD ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 208 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………….………………………………………..…. 214 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In completing this PhD I had the honour of working with two brilliant supervisors: Prof Damien Wilkins and Prof Kathryn Walls, thank you. Thank you, too to Clare Moleta and Katie Hardwick-Smith. Members of the IIML PhD programme: Angela Andrews, Airini Beautrais, Peter Cox, Allan Drew, Kate Duignan, David Fleming, Helen Heath, Therese Lloyd, Monica Macansantos, Hannah McKie, Alison McLachlan, Sue Orr, Anna Sanderson, Steve Toussaint, Madjuri Vijay and Amy Leigh Wicks. Thank you to Holly Hunter for copy-editing guidance and to Paul Geraghty for assisting with referencing. Thank you to my family for taking me seriously when I raised the possibility of inducing a fever in myself. 4 FEVERISH by Giovanna (Gigi) Fenster 5 Chapter One I have a friend who thinks a lot about velcro. Not in a sexual way. I feel I must state this, though I cannot imagine how velcro could possibly be used in a sexual way—it’s so clingy. But then, I cannot imagine how many things could possibly be used in a sexual way. My tastes, it seems, are vanilla. And that, said my friend, was part of the problem. We were sitting in a café. She was telling me about velcro. I was struggling to get on her wavelength. My vanilla tastes were holding me back. My vanilla tastes were preventing me from seeing the joyful potential of velcro. Just imagine, said my friend. For once, open your mind and imagine. I said, okay, okay. Right, said my friend. I want you to imagine a long thin room. Completely papered in velcro. Walls, ceilings. Not the floors. Not the floors, she said again, not the floors. That’s when I knew she’d really thought the velcro through. She’d imagined what would happen if the floors were velcroed. She’d seen the problems this could present. I found this comforting. I told her so and she said, You bet I’ve thought it through. So, she continued, on one end of this long, thin velcro room there’s a giant catapult type thing—big enough to catapult an adult. Not so comforting. There’s also a trampoline, a ramp, balls of various shapes and sizes. Think of the possibilities, she said. Think of the possibilities. And I did. I did start to see the possibilities. My friend was talking about hanging off the ceiling, swinging from a velcroed swing by her head, leaping off the trampoline. She was rolling down walls on velcroed balls. Catapulting herself from one end of the room onto the velcroed wall on the other end. She was Spiderman. Catwoman. I listened for a while and it sounded like fun for her. But then I said, What if you got stuck? 6 Huh? What if you got stuck? What if you were right up near the top of the wall— you’ve catapulted yourself there, you hit the wall kind of hard and your body is aching. You’ve got bruises and you’re stuck to the wall and you can’t get down. What if that happened, I asked. Why would I get stuck? she wanted to know. This is a fantasy, remember. I could hear she was irritated that I’d raised this possibility. She looked a bit sad. So I said, Forget it, forget it, you wouldn’t get stuck. And if you did, you could always call Zoe. Zoe is my friend’s teenage daughter. They’d been fighting. Earlier my friend told me how her daughter was never home and, if she were, it was just to fight with her mother. Zoe was seeking some bloke—some 18-year-old with a concave chest. Some kid who didn’t even finish school, my friend had said. Mike, I said quickly, to distract us from Zoe. You could call Mike. Mike? She gave a bit of a squawk. Mike would be outside in his studio. He wouldn’t hear me. I’d be stuck up there and no one would help me. We worried, my friend and I. For a moment we sat quietly and worried. Maybe you could free a hand, I said at last. Velcro-hair by velcro-hair. You could free a hand. But then what? she asked. What do I do then? If I use my hand to pull the rest of myself free I’ll fall. I’ll fall and it’s quite a drop. No, she said, all freeing a hand would accomplish is give me something to wave with.
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