Boundary-breaking author reshaped the way New Zealanders saw sexuality
If the ultimate role of the writer is to change perceptions of the world, to tell a new story so well and so effectively that it suddenly becomes as plain as common sense, then there have been few New Zealand authors who have succeeded in doing so.
With his death yesterday at 69, Peter Wells joins Katherine Mansfield, James K Baxter, Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame as literary figures for whom we can claim this ultimate importance. His last work, Hello Darkness, the diary of his dying, is a unique book and takes his readers far into that last experience.
Wells broke through boundaries with regularity. His range across film, TV, short stories, novels and history was unparalleled. No writer excelled in so many ways or wrote so much of New Zealand life into fresh existence.
He reshaped the way New Zealanders saw sexuality. From a country with an unconsidered heterosexuality as a social norm, Wells exposed the true variety of our desires. Then by linking his readers to a neglected colonial history in a series of ground-breaking histories, he uncovered old wounds forensically and sympathetically revealed their consequences to a later time.
If we do not truly know our past in all its unruly rawness, he seemed to ask, then how can we know ourselves?
Wells was born to a father who had fought in Europe in World War II. His mother had an affair with an American serviceman in his absence. It became a marriage of secrets which would permeate the author’s life.
He grew up in Point Chevalier, a peninsula of middle-class life that became a constant locale in both his fiction and memoirs, as distinct and evocative as Katherine Mansfield’s Karori and Thorndon.
He studied at Auckland University and at the University of Warwick in Britain. One of his research projects was the 1876 Boulton and Park Affair, in which two vivacious Victorian cross-dressers were brought to trial. The subject would eventually become the basis of his 2003 novel, Iridescence.
Wells returned to New Zealand, entering the nascent film and TV industry, while writing short stories. Together with his then lover, Stewart Main, he made a number of short movies, including Newest City on the Globe, about art deco Napier.
The TV drama Jewel’s Darl, a day in the life of a transsexual, starring the young Georgina Beyer, established his reputation. The subject matter caused problems with TVNZ’s internal censors, so it remained unscreened for months.
But Wells and Main had already embarked upon A Death in the Family, another controversial subject. It was 1986 and homosexual law reform had just taken a reluctant country into a new era, but HIV was responsible for more than one death a week. The drama dealt with the effects of HIV/Aids on one family and a group of friends. Again, it would face TVNZ problems, though it screened to acclaim overseas.
Meanwhile, Wells had caused an enduring scandal at the Listener Gofta film and TV awards. The live television event was cohosted by John Inman, a very camp British actor from the TV series Are You Being Served? It would be a recipe for disaster.
Jewel’s Darl won nothing. Inman’s sniggering innuendo prompted Wells to shout ‘‘F... off, sexist s...!’’ at the actor. His words were clearly audible to the national TV audience. Wells was dubbed the ‘‘Goftaslob’’ and the scandal consigned him to unemployability for a time.
The full-length feature movie Desperate Remedies would be his response. Starring Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Kevin Smith and Cliff Curtis, it was set in an imaginary colonial New Zealand of high colours, shadows and artifice, owing much to 1940s movies. With a plot centred on lesbian desire, opium addiction and money, it screened at the Cannes Film Festival, gaining international release.
It would be the last movie Wells would make with Main. Their relationship had come to an end. Wells returned to his writing career and began producing the books, including fiction, non-fiction, memoir, anthologies and essays, that would cement his reputation.
His first novel, Boy Overboard, evoked his childhood in Point Chevalier in all its vivid confusion. With Rex Pilgrim, he edited the controversial anthology Best Mates: Gay Writing in Aotearoa New Zealand .He returned to autobiography in Long Loop Home: a memoir and won the Montana NZ prize for biography.
Now living with writer Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Wells also founded (with Stephanie Johnson) the Auckland Writers Festival, followed by Samesame But Different, a festival of New Zealand LGBTQI+ literature.
However, it was with his ‘‘Napier Trilogy’’ that Wells would make a more profound mark. The Hungry Heart in 2012 revealed the various lives of the missionary William Colenso. Wells charted this formative New Zealand life, from a polymath clergyman and printer of the first books published in New Zealand to the land speculator and recluse in Napier, in all its contradictions.
It was followed by Journey to a Hanging,
which focused on the horrific death of the Reverend Carl Sylvius Vo¨ lkner in 1865. He was hanged, decapitated, his eyes eaten and his blood drunk from his church chalice. Kereopa Te Rau was sentenced to death for the crime. It was a book that would go to the heart of New Zealand race relations.
Dear Oliver: Uncovering a Pa¯ keha¯ History
would complete the trilogy. Wells took his own family as his subject, following it back in time through increasingly fragmentary glimpses. It was a masterclass in writing history.
Then came his prostate cancer diagnosis and his last book, Hello Darkness. Told largely through his Facebook posts and his own photographs, it broke new ground – a fresh style for a technological era.
Wells was a man of considerable charm. Polite and measured by nature, he was staunch in his opinions once they were formed. He would fight fiercely against what he perceived as injustice. His legacy will be enduring. – By David Herkt
No writer excelled in so many ways or wrote so much of New Zealand life into fresh existence.