Rod Fee ID:0826790 Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’: A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Creative Writing (MCW) 2008 School of Communication Studies Primary Supervisor: John Cranna Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. b/j CONTENTS: ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS 5 CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL 6 ABSTRACT 7 APPENDICES 9 THESIS 10 Part 1: ‘Sandcastles’ 10 Part 2: ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ 10 Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. c/j Attestation of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. R H Fee Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. d/j Acknowledgements I acknowledge the assistance of: 1. My classmates in this Masters course and the Masters course director, John Cranna, who gave editing and structural comments in feedback workshops on early notes for two chapters of ‘The Post Modern Rules For Family Living’ 2. My university provided mentor, Sue Reidy, who gave editing and structural comments in feedback workshops on early notes for two chapters of ‘The Post Modern Rules For Family Living’ 3. Kate Williams of Type It Solutions Limited who assisted with some final copy typing of minor revisions for ‘Sandcastles’ on a fee basis Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. e/j Intellectual Property Rights 1. All intellectual property including copyright, is retained by the candidate in the content of the candidate’s thesis. For the removal of doubt, publication by the candidate of this or any derivative work does not change the intellectual property rights of the candidate in relation to the thesis. 2. I confirm that my thesis does not contain plagiarised material or material for which the copyright or other intellectual property belongs to a third party. Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. f/j Confidential material 1. The content of the candidate’s thesis is confidential for commercial reasons, that is, the possible publication by the candidate of the thesis, or a derivative of it, as a work of creative fiction for sale. 2. This confidentiality remains until after any commercial publication. 3. For the removal of doubt, publication does not change the intellectual property rights of the candidate of this or any derivative work. Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. g/j Abstract The portfolio of work submitted as the candidate’s thesis consists of two parts, each being a competed first draft of a novel written during the Masters of Creative Writing course: ‘Sandcastles’ is a novel which explores the basics of the creative process of story with a concentration on the traditional rules of craft. It is written in a naturalistic ‘closed text’ style obeying the unities of time place action and voice as well as climatic scene construction. It is set in the current financial problems in world markets and sub-prime lending in order to touch upon the themes of displacement from home and family, the meaning of material legacy over generations, and the ethical blindness that can occur in otherwise conservative individuals when financial security is threatened. As the situation deteriorates, the false values and money churn that is propping up the financial position is washed out and the castles of apparent wealth crumble like sandcastles in the water. The second novel ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ is more experimental ‘open text’ work than the first and deliberately departs from the unities by containing nested stories within stories. It takes the form of a blog, in the form of a series of letters from a woman to her former lover, responses from him, the narrative of the blog and stories within the story told as histories or as dreams to a child within the story and the blog readers. The author is interested in the fantasies, embellishments and lies that people often weave about their personal histories. In New Zealand Europeans this is especially interesting because of the common lack of knowledge of their pre-New Zealand past, particularly in comparison to the Maori and to what is often portrayed in fiction about current European citizens who have apparently long and rich histories. Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. h/j This is taken this in the novel to an extreme by enhancing that with a psychosis in the unreliable narrator. It includes familial fantasies, loneliness, abuse and mental illness, the idea of intelligence, rationality and irrationality can all be wrapped up in one sympathetic though essentially ‘bad’ character. Techniques include magical realism, lies represented as truths, the use of a fantastical history represented as truths believed by the unreliable narrator, and truths represented as dreams. The second novel is also on one level a commentary in itself on literary theory. An adjunct to the second novel is a website referred to in the novel which can be found at http://viviennesblog.org and appears as an appendix to this document. Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. i/j APPENDICES 1. Printout of the home page of http://viviennesblog.org Thesis: 1. ‘Sandcastles’ & 2. ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ by Rod Fee p. j/j THESIS The portfolio of work submitted as the candidate’s thesis follows. It consists of two parts, each being a competed first draft of a novel written during the Masters of Creative Writing course: Part 1: ‘Sandcastles’ Part 2: ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ These two works are separately bound and numbered. Rod Fee / Sandcastles /1 Word count: 112587 Rod Fee 25 Hinemoa Street Birkenhead Point North Shore City 0626 Auckland New Zealand Home phone: +64-9-480-6507 Work phone: +64-9-480-8507 Work fax: +64-9-419-8507 Home email: [email protected] Sandcastles by Rod Fee Rod Fee / Sandcastles /2 We build our houses on the sand Comely withoutside and within; But, when the winds and rains begin To beat on them; they cannot stand: They perish, quickly overthrown, Loose from the very basement stone. From „A Testimony‟ Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894 Rod Fee / Sandcastles /3 Chapter One # Ysabel lay on the polished wood, her shallow breath bringing a musty smell of wood and dust to her. She felt only the chill of morning on her pale skin. She could see the green tops of her tallest trees, cut by a white window frame. But she was too low see James's farm rolling into the deep blue distance towards the porcelain Remarkables. Green-tinged golden fields cosseted by the sparkling lake. She longed to see it. What had happened? One moment she was at her desk and the next she was here on the floor unable to move, dark hair spilling over her face. Was it a stroke? Why was there blood? Cool morning air wafted over her from a hole in the window. Was that there before? The air held a bird’s call ringing in the cold and the slow tattoo of someone's breath. The usual background of the chorus in the forest a few hundred yards away was missing. Or was it usual? Perhaps it was always quiet at this time of the day. She couldn't remember, her thoughts were muggy. She could remember the bone white light on the rock- strewn landscape that awed. Long dead artists as much as she. Glorious, unearthly light. Heavenly. Heaven. Dark blackness in the Light. She was looking through a window to paradise. And she could only see the mundane tops of her trees as still as a painting against the deep blue. # Her life was far from heavenly. Returning to the farm after years away, a return to drudgery as well as home. Her brother was frustrating, able it seemed only to play at farming. Their parents' life work slowly leaking away. Life-blood. # She felt but could not express panic Rod Fee / Sandcastles /4 # She unearthed friends who were as awkward with her as she with them. Despite the vision that greeted her each day, the chance she alone of all her fellow students back in London had to see and trap this Arcadia in layers of coloured paints, she was never able quite to do so. The only thing she had ever truly wanted to accomplish. Her coughing, yellow father left her a life interest in Roslyn, its Malthusian gardens, exalted isolation, and crippling maintenance. James got its farm, with its potential, its business headaches, and its unending ties. And the little rough shepherd's cottage to live in. James or his children if he ever had any would eventually get Roslyn whenever she died so that the whole station remained in the family. # Stations of the Cross. Remain, lie there, pain screaming over the wooden horizon, wet warmth in her skirt, spreading. Her best skirt. Help. James. James. # When she came home James insisted on moving to his cottage. Though he refused to discuss it, waved it off lightly, she suspected that the last few months in the old cottage had been a rude shock for him.