While we’re talking about Keri . . .
Elizabeth Alley shares a personal memory of how The Bone People so nearly might not have happened.
When the Literary Fund Advisory Committee existed in the early 1980s, there were only risible sums available for writers’ support – $200 or $300, or occasionally a princely $1000. So yet another pleading letter from one of our regular applicants caused a collective groan. Most of her letters had been a bit weird, but only because they were unusually informal and clearly desperate.
‘‘Enough. No more,’’ said the chairperson. Bruce Mason (a celebrated playwright of his time) and I caught each other’s eye. We liked a good battle on behalf of newer writers and here was another. The result was $500 – ‘‘the absolute last grant’’ – for Keri Hulme. Such a small sum to make a difference. Then along came the Spiral Collective, and the rest is history. Keri told me later that while the money was crucial, it was also that somewhere people believed in her.
Fast forward to 1992. I was travelling with my family on the West Coast. I rang Keri. Could we drop in for half an hour? ‘‘Of course, but come after 11 as someone is coming to collect ‘Bait’. It’s at the front door and it’s not just a doorstop.’’
A pretty big doorstop. You had to step around it. Unfazed that I’d whipped out a tape recorder, she established the family on the deck with Christmas cake. Until today, I’d forgotten that we recorded that conversation – but there it was on an elderly cassette, tucked away among other literary treasures, found on this New Year’s Day of 2022.
In the intervening years there’d been a story collection, ( Te Kaihau 1986), and poetry and other stories. But no new novel. ‘‘I’ve learned so much since The Bone People. Then I had to put everything down on paper and work it back. So much paper! My mother has two other versions and I have three. And there was turmoil and angst as well as celebration and joy. Now it’s not just the semi-informed dreaming that went on – I know how to shape and craft things.’’
Support for that came not from the critics, but from readers’ responses, first from Holland and Scandinavia, then from America. She was hugely encouraged by letters from [writers] Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Eudora Welty who regarded it as seminal work, igniting genuine interest in indigenous culture. ‘‘That was one of the real joys of the overseas reception,’’ she said. She loved being under the dedicated readers’ microscope. ‘‘Your real critics are your readers.’’
For all its success The Bone People polarised its readership. She’s not so generous about ‘‘the white male academic critics’’ here. ‘‘They resented the implication that males can be violent and objected to my daring to claim Māori heritage as only one of my greatgrandparents was Māori.’’
She didn’t harbour bitterness against them, regarding them instead as ‘‘typical of the way many New Zealanders were determined – perhaps apprehensive – that Māori should not become the dominant culture’’. I hope she was quietly pleased that at least some progress has been made, and recognised her own contribution.
My Spiral Collective first edition of The Bone People says, ‘‘She plans to write more novels but doesn’t intend taking so long over the next one.’’ So why we never saw Bait, is a puzzle we might never solve. Was that package ever collected? Did it ever reach the publisher? Is it still in a bottom drawer somewhere? And if it is, would she want it published anyway?
In spite of that Okarito meeting, my enduring memory of Keri is at the Adelaide Festival one year – mid 80s perhaps? She was sitting on the floor in a hotel room, drinking with her friends Oodjeroo Nunnecal (Kath Walker) and Bessie Head, from Botswana. They were smoking (Keri liked the occasional pipe) in a scene of uproarious conviviality. ‘‘Come and join the Mafia,’’ said Keri.
Elizabeth Alley was a broadcaster for more than 40 years, during much of which she specialised in literature.
‘‘They resented the implication that males can be violent and objected to my daring to claim Māori heritage as only one of my greatgrandparents was Māori.’’
Keri Hulme on some critics of her work, The Bone People