A rebel yell... and a tale of two endings
Adapted into groundbreaking movie Sleeping Dogs, studied by thousands of teenagers, CK Stead’s novel Smith’s Dream holds a special place in New Zealand literature. As Stead publishes the final volume of his memoirs, he looks back 50 years and talks to Mik
It was a slight book, barely 140 pages between hard covers. It had been laboured on during long holidays and breaks snatched between the author’s work as a professor at Auckland University. It was written while war raged in Vietnam and protest spewed across the world. And it asked the question, if an autocrat came to power in New Zealand, and called in foreign forces to support him, where would you stand?
In early 1971, as CK (Karl) Stead held the manuscript of his first novel, Smith’s Dream, it seemed nobody wanted to contemplate the answer.
Already a successful poet and literary critic, 39-year-old Stead had sent Smith’s
Dream to publishers in London, but they were wary of the setting at the other end of the world, cautious of the politics, scared of a financial flop.
So Stead turned to New Zealand and to Auckland publisher Longman Paul.
In those days, it was understood you had to receive a grant from the New Zealand Literary Fund if you hoped to publish a novel. But when Stead applied to the body, he was rejected, later learning one member had objected to subsidising something so “blatantly political”.
At that point, having spent three years trying to publish Smith’s Dream, Stead expected he would have to abandon the idea, and stash the manuscript in a bottom drawer.
But Longman Paul’s publishing director, Phoebe Meikle, was determined to push ahead, regardless of funding.
Without her support, Stead admits Smith’s Dream “probably wouldn’t have survived. And I would just have carried on and thought, ‘Oh well, that was bad luck’’’.
So in October 1971 Smith’s Dream was released, with Stead yearning for plaudits, eager for affirmation.
The response, however, wasn’t entirely what he expected – or desired.
Stead’s novel tells the story of Smith, a man who escapes a disintegrated marriage for a soothing life alone on a Coromandel island – a version of the Kiwi dream.
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s prime minister, Volkner, seizes control of the country and brings in US troops to repress rebellion.
Smith is, unwillingly, dragged into the struggle, ultimately siding with the rebels.
Stead began the novel in 1967, as he became involved in protests against the Vietnam War, which he saw as ‘‘immoral, unlawful and obscene’’.
But he didn’t write with rage, nor was the novel’s plot a prophecy.
Instead, Smith’s Dream was always a political fantasy, Stead insists, an ‘‘exercise in imagination’’.
‘‘It certainly had Vietnam in mind. But it said, ‘If this happened here, where would you stand? Which side would you take?’ It was a ‘what if’ novel, rather than a ‘this will be’ novel.’’ Reaction was largely positive.
Leftists adopted Stead as a poster boy, claiming Smith’s Dream was a capitalist critique.
Student newspaper Salient suggested readers, ‘‘Buy it for your Mum for Christmas, and bring a little bit of Vietnam home to her.’’
It became the first work of fiction to win a prize in the New Zealand book awards, coming third in 1972, behind 200 Years of New Zealand Painting and a biography of anthropologist Sir Peter Buck.
But some of Stead’s literary colleagues were unsure of his approach and subject.
Friend Frank Sargeson wrote it was almost a Boy’s Own Paper adventure story and mused Stead might become New Zealand’s Graham Greene.
Fellow poet Charles Brasch noted loftily in his journal: ‘‘Smith’s Dream is an affront, a stone for bread, fact without value. How can I be interested in Stead after this?’’
Even Stead expressed doubts, worrying the freshness with which he’d written the first few chapters hadn’t been sustained, dulled by the duties of his day job, its sheen dimmed like a snapper that’s been out of the water an hour.
But his greatest doubt concerned the book’s ending. Originally he’d intended Smith would die at the novel’s conclusion. However, when writing the last chapter, Stead weakened, and the final scene saw Smith emerge on to a beach where the surf foams and surges, and a woman sits staring out to sea.
It was Smith ‘‘essentially saying, ‘a plague on both your houses’, because politics is always unsatisfactory, and taking sides doesn’t help, and I’m not having anything to do with it,’’ Stead explains.
But Stead was also swayed by the idea that sometimes you couldn’t opt out and walk away, that you had a social or moral responsibility to take a side, just as he had over the Vietnam War.
‘‘I was very inexperienced and subject to uncertainty,’’ Stead remembers. ‘‘And there was a review that said the ending was sentimental. And I thought, ouch, yes it is sentimental, and it shouldn’t have ended like that.’’
So in 1973, when Longman Paul republished Smith’s Dream in paperback, Stead asked to change the ending, reverting to his initial idea.
And ever since, the novel has ended with Smith getting a bullet in his head.
The book sold well, and became a prescribed text for thousands of college students in the ‘70s, despite its political overtones at a time of Cold War and conservatism. ‘‘That surprised me,’’ says Stead. ‘‘It also delighted me that teachers were so willing to be subversive, in effect. And, you know, it’s not nothing that school teachers found they could give it to boys who wouldn’t read anything else.’’
Stead still speaks with people who encountered it this way.
‘‘The postman was going by in his motorised thing the other day, and he said, ‘Every time I put a letter in your box, I think I should tell you that when
I was at school, I read Smith’s Dream – I loved it’. And he’s probably never read another word I’ve written.’’
The book’s popularity soared in 1977 when it was turned into the movie Sleeping Dogs, directed by Roger Donaldson, and starring Sam Neill in his breakout role.
Donaldson knew Stead a little from drinking together at the Kiwi Tavern near Auckland University, ‘‘a sort of intelligentsia’s watering hole,’’ Donaldson recalls.
But he hadn’t read Smith’s Dream until advertising agency guru Bob Harvey, later to become Waita¯ kere City mayor and Sir Bob, suggested he look at it. ‘‘I read the book, and liked it, and thought, wow, this would make a great movie.’’
It was ambitious for the time, but Donaldson raised finance, got it off the ground, and even convinced the air force to use its Skyhawk fighter jets for some sequences.
‘‘I was trying to get Jack Nicholson to be in the film and I rang Jack’s agent in America and he said, ‘How much have you got in your budget for Jack’s fee?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I think we could probably get $5000.’ And he said, ‘Ah, I don’t think Jack’s going to be coming’.’’
However, the agent knew another American actor who loved fishing and might want to try his luck on New Zealand’s rivers. That was how Warren Oates ended up playing an American colonel.
Sleeping Dogs became the first New Zealand film to be released in America, and sparked a new era in film-making here.
And Donaldson says it still holds a special place in his heart, even though he’s gone on to direct blockbusters such as The Bounty, Cocktail, Thirteen Days, and The World’s Fastest Indian.
‘‘It’s the movie that got me rolling, really. And I think it’s an important part of the history of New Zealand literature and film-making.’’
Donaldson wasn’t aware there were two endings to Smith’s Dream.
‘‘I’m sort of glad I didn’t know that – because it would’ve been a hard choice to make.’’
After Sleeping Dogs’ release, people began suggesting Stead had based the book’s political despot, Volkner, on then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. Stead always denied it, pointing out that when he began writing the book, Muldoon had only just been appointed finance minister, and didn’t become prime minister until 1975.
But the belief became common currency, which even Muldoon accepted.
At a function in 1978, Stead and his wife, Kay, were introduced to Muldoon.
‘‘Oh you’re the one are you?’’ Muldoon growled. ‘‘People have been saying this novel, this movie, is about me. So I thought I’d better see it.’’
Stead instinctively sought the safety of politeness, assuring Muldoon he wasn’t the model for the book’s dictator, given he was a mere government minister when the novel was written.
‘‘But Kay thought I was being much too nice to him,’’ Stead recalls. ‘‘And she said, ‘Yes, you’ve just grown into the role, Mr Muldoon’.
‘‘And he did that sort of mirthless laugh, and there wasn’t much else to say, really.’’
But three years later, it seemed Stead truly was a seer, as protests erupted on New Zealand’s streets over the Springbok rugby tour, and Muldoon assented to them being suppressed, often brutally.
Stead was among those who stormed Hamilton’s Rugby Park in July 1981, forcing the Springboks’ match against Waikato to be abandoned.
As riot police in state-of-the-art livery were mobilised against them, Stead remembers feeling like they’d almost emerged from a frame in Sleeping Dogs.
When Stead was arrested and taken away in a paddy wagon, Tim Shadbolt, now Invercargill’s mayor, turned to him and said, ‘‘Smith’s Dream has come to life’’.
In the police cells, Stead noticed others had scrawled their names, so added his: ‘‘C.K. Stead, author of Smith’s Dream, was here.’’
He was charged with disorderly behaviour and fined $250 plus costs.
‘‘My one conviction,’’ Stead notes. ‘‘I’m very proud of it.’’
And he remains content with Smith’s Dream, 50 years on. He still gets approaches about it, and people wanting movie options on it. But Stead remains conflicted about the ending, knowing there’s a philosophical justification for both versions.
‘‘I think, on reflection, I slightly prefer the first ending.’’
Jack Ross, a senior lecturer in creative writing at Massey University, who has written about the novel and its twin endings, agrees.
The first ending, with the resonant, slightly ambiguous beach scene, seemed to come from Stead’s poetic side, and Ross prefers that to the author’s later choice to coldly kill off Smith. That said, both versions sit on Ross’s bookshelf.
Ross remembers his brother studying Smith’s Dream at school, and copies being passed around boys like a dirty book.
‘‘Because it wasn’t like having to read Great Expectations or all the boring books, they thought this was good stuff – it was just a slam-bang thriller.’’
But it was also a sophisticated book, Ross says, and a really good novel, even though it was Stead’s first.
‘‘There’s nothing immature about it, there’s nothing amateur or stumbling about it. It’s very taut, very tight. Sometimes people do pull it off the first time.’’
Stead, now 88, still lives in the Parnell house where he wrote some of Smith’s Dream.
He and Kay swim daily, driving to Kohimarama Beach to catch high tide, each day’s routine slightly different, each day ordered by the moon.
Writer Stephen Stratford once described Stead as having ‘‘enough brow and jaw for two, and a face that sets naturally in a frown’’.
But Stead insists, despite his notoriety for unsparing reviews of others’ work (for which Stratford dubbed him ‘‘the John McEnroe of New Zealand letters’’), he has a generally optimistic outlook.
This week, he’ll release the third and final volume of his memoirs, What You Made of It.
He’s published 14 novels, three short story collections and 18 poetry collections, been New Zealand’s poet laureate, and is a Member of the Order of New Zealand, the country’s highest honour.
He likes that Smith’s Dream is still relevant after all this time, still fresh, and that people still get great pleasure from it. It’s had a good life, he says.
‘‘And so have I,’’ Stead adds. ‘‘And I hope that if I’m remembered at all, it would be for having written well.’’
‘‘It’s the movie that got me rolling, really. And I think it’s an important part of the history of New Zealand literature and film-making.’’ Roger Donaldson, pictured with CK Stead in the 1980s
What You Made of It: A memoir, 1987–2020 ,byCK Stead, (Auckland University Press, $49.99), is released on May 13.
Stead is appearing at the Auckland Writers Festival on May 16, writersfestival.co.nz