Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. Metafiction in New Zealand from the 1960s to the present day A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Massey University, Albany, New Zealand Matthew Harris 2011 Metafiction in New Zealand from the 1960s to the present day (2011) by Matthew Harris (for Massey University) is licensed under a Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.matthewjamesharris.com. LL ABSTRACT While studies of metafiction have proliferated across America and Europe, the present thesis is the first full-length assessment of its place in the literature of New Zealand. Taking as its point of reference a selection of works from authors Janet Frame, C.K. Stead, Russell Haley, Michael Jackson and Charlotte Randall, this thesis employs a synthesis of contextual and performative frameworks to examine how the internationally- prevalent mode of metafiction has influenced New Zealand fiction since the middle of the 20th century. While metafictional texts have conventionally been thought to undermine notions of realism and sever illusions of representation, this thesis explores ways in which the metafictional mode in New Zealand since the 1960s might be seen to expand and augment realism by depicting individual modes of thought and naturalising unique forms of self-reflection, during what some commentators have seen as a period of cultural ‘inwardness’ following various socio-political shifts in the latter part of 20th century New Zealand. LLL TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: Methodology 24 1 Narratology and performativity 24 1.2 Performativity in narrative 30 1.3 Metafictional performativity in a narratological framework 39 1.4 Description of Terms 47 1.5 Reflexive narrative in the New Zealand context 53 CHAPTER II: The elusive humour of Janet Frame’s metafictions 68 2.1 Derivations: the quizzical and the implausible 68 2.2 Pretenses of language and place in The Carpathians 86 2.3 Out of the frame: metanarration on metanarration 94 CHAPTER III: C.K. Stead: the provenance of narrative 98 3.1 The author, the reader, the text 98 3.2 Foregrounding the authorial mind in criticism 107 3.3 Realist metafiction and the autobiographical 109 CHAPTER IV: Epistemic dubiety in the work of Russell Haley 129 4.1 Freed? the shift from provincialism to internationalism 129 4.2 Exiled to the mind: Russell Haley’s epistemic dubiety 139 4.4 Extradiegetic dubiety in The Settlement 146 4.5 The thin envelope of skin in Beside Myself 151 CHAPTER V: Michael Jackson: intersubjectivity and the individual 159 LY 5.1 Illeism in Barawa 159 5.2 Rainshadow: Intersubjectivity and the individual 165 5.3 Individualism in Pieces of Music 172 CHAPTER VI: Albert Wendt’s citationality and resistance 180 6.1 Māori and Pacific metafiction in the 20th century 180 6.2 Biography is fiction: Ola’s manifold realities 185 6.3 A tale about other tales: citationality and authorial performance in Black Rainbow 192 CHAPTER VII: Charlotte Randall: anthropomorphized narrative 203 7.1 The prison-house of plot in The Curative 203 7.2 Keep it Simple, Stupid? 214 7.3 Fractalian iterations 222 CHAPTER VIII: Findings and discussion 226 REFERENCES 245 APPENDIX A: Statement of contribution to doctoral thesis containing publications 267 APPENDIX B: Low risk notification for interviews 269 APPENDIX C: Interview with C.K. Stead 271 APPENDIX D: Interview with Russell Haley 278 APPENDIX E: Interview with Michael Jackson 286 APPENDIX F: Interview with Albert Wendt 296 APPENDIX G: Interview with Charlotte Randall 301 BIOGRAPHY 312 Y LIST OF FIGURES Number Page 1.Edition. (2004). Richard Frizzell. Ferner Galleries 13 2. Art for Sale. (1980). Billy Apple. Peter Webb Gallery 14 3. Summary of Genette’s categories with emendations 41 4. Masterpiece. (2003). Richard Frizzell. Ferner Galleries 48 5. Author/reader/text in The Death of the Body 121 6. Black Rainbow. (1988). Ralph Hotere. Nadene Milne Gallery 194 YL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am especially indebted to Dr Mary Paul and Dr Jack Ross for the help they have provided over the past four years of researching and writing - their comments, question- marks, stylistic advice, editing notes, and suggestions on content have been indispensable; to others within the late School of Social and Cultural Studies who also contributed very useful comments and counter-arguments, especially Dr Jenny Lawn and Prof Peter Lineham; to Dr Sarah Shieff for her comments on my introduction; to my examiners, for their astute critiques; to Massey University for the support of a doctoral scholarship; thanks also to Russell Haley, Michael Jackson, Charlotte Randall, Karl Stead and Albert Wendt who have been extremely helpful in making themselves available to answer my questions; to Landfall and The Literary Encyclopedia for publishing parts of this thesis; to my fellow inmates in the PhD room at Albany; to Sheryl Harris, Ian and Linda Cook for financial support; to the friends that I’ve seen less of than I would have liked, especially Cam and Pete; and much love to Emma and the kids. YLL INTRODUCTION Although the mode of writing most commonly referred to as “metafiction” has become a well-established area of study internationally, particularly since its rise to prominence in American literature since the 1960s, this is the first attempt at a full-length study of its place in the literature of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Key studies of the mode in the latter part of the twentieth century by theorists Robert Scholes (1979), Linda Hutcheon (1980), Patricia Waugh (1984, 1992) and Robert Stam (1992) have focussed predominantly on American writing – and, to a lesser extent, British, South American, and European work - while the proliferation of metafictional writing in New Zealand remains largely undocumented. Indeed, the only book-length studies produced in New Zealand on metafiction have been theses on Hispanic literature and French film: Nicola Gilmour’s A “Passing” Interest: Reading Transvestite Narratives, Gender and Metafiction in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Hispanic Writers (2000) and Deborah Walker’s Self- reflexivity and the Construction of Subjectivity in Contemporary French Cinema (2001). Aside from critical works on Janet Frame, C.K. Stead’s personal essays, articles by Cherry Hankin, and Patrick Evans’ brief comments in his conclusion to the Penguin History of New Zealand Literature (1990), there are only two substantial sources for criticism on the mode. Lawrence Jones’ overview of metafiction and reflexivity in his chapter “Other Modes” in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature (1998) 1 and Michael Morrissey’s entertaining if unorthodox introduction to The New Fiction (1985), provide the most comprehensive notes on metafiction in New Zealand: the only further sources for Jones provides a similar, though smaller, overview in Part II of Barbed Wire and Mirrors (1987). commentary can be found in the occasional journal article or book review. Broadly speaking then, the goal of this research is to fill this gap in our criticism with a book- length study which will draw on a selection of authors to trace the international mode of metafiction, its key concerns and characteristics, across the last fifty years of New Zealand’s literary history. The question this thesis asks could then be formulated as: How has the international field of metafiction manifested itself in New Zealand fiction since the 1960s? Clearly, metafictions have grown to occupy prime space in the country’s literary landscape. For authors such as Janet Frame and C.K. Stead reflexivity has been, at one time or another in their careers, the single most important modal feature of their novels. One might be inclined to agree with Lawrence Jones who in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature writes that metafiction “had become by 1991 the most important new development in mode in the New Zealand novel…” (1998, p. 230). And even if it was not the most important development - mythological-realism in Māori and Pacific writing is surely a strong contender - metafiction seems to have been the most ubiquitous. Beginning here in the late 1960s with Frank Sargeson’s protégés Maurice Duggan, Janet Frame, and C.K. Stead, the mode continues in various guises through the 1970s, 80s and 90s in the work of Michael Jackson, Albert Wendt, Russell Haley, Bill Manhire, Nigel Cox, Michael Morrissey, Craig Harrison, Maurice Shadbolt, Maurice Gee and others, and continues into the twenty-first century in novels such as Charlotte Randall’s Within the Kiss (2002), Paul Thomas’ Work in Progress (2006), and Jack Ross’ Kingdom of Alt (2010). What, according to various reviews of these writers, seems to set their work apart is that they directly and self-consciously address their own procedures and techniques. These meta texts, to note the Greek, move with, above or across themselves: editing themselves as they go, exploring the structure which gives them shape, self-consciously revealing their own linguistic elements, questioning the conditions of their authorship, and often parodying the literary conventions and clichés of the genre of which they still remain a part. The origin of the term metafiction is generally traced back to American novelist and critic William Gass in 1970, who in Fiction and the Figures of Life, defines metafiction as works “in which the forms of fiction serve as the material upon which further forms can be imposed” (p. 25) or which “instruct us in the art of narration, the myth-making imagination” (p.