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Maurice and me, by Geoff Chapple: part 2
George Orwell says in one of his essays that a writer's best years lie between the ages of 30 and 45. Maurice Gee has read those essays – what writer doesn't? – and at 44, in 1975, it's late in the day maybe, but for the first time his inchoate life is aligning. He resigns from his library position. Margareta and Moss sell their Mt Eden house, and by November 1975, have settled in Nelson. The house overhangs the Maitai River and has a dirt-floored basement where Maurice separates off a two-metre square room with one small window onto the outside world. He needs to concentrate like never before, and he and Margareta establish a Foot Stamp Chart – one stamp from the floor above signals a phone call, two a visitor, three a cup of tea, four important mail, five an emergency. In December 1975, there's a final affirming flourish to the decision to relocate. Moss is told confidentially that he's won the Literary Fund grant of $6,000. In mid-February 1976, he descends to the basement room and is now alone with the memory of his grandfather at Peacehaven, in the study where a fat and shiny brass Buddha sits on the desk and the library goes up to the ceiling. He'll wander first of all through to the kitchen of the Peacehaven bungalow on Lincoln Road. Later he'll wander at length over the five-acre Peacehaven on Millbrook Road, to the creek, and the eels, and the shadows within the orchard. He begins to write Plumb. Memory is a Maurice Gee strong suit. He's written about his remembering in Blind Road. His youngest childhood memories, as he describes them, seem almost to resemble paintings by old masters, where the light falls on certain prominent features, but the backgrounds are dulled out. Later, as he grows up, the memories are more self-aware, his positional skills increase and the shadowy backgrounds are usually gone. Everything is sharply defined 'as if the sun strikes down from straight overhead'. Yet occasionally as the eidetic explorer moves through these brighter frames the shadows become important, and yes, he'll see which way they fall, and he'll see that they have sharp edges. Memories make up about two thirds the length of Plumb. Throughout the majority of the novel, the Reverend George Plumb is remembering his past life, and at one point suggests his remembering is a skill: 'Memory with me is an active thing, not an undisciplined dreaming. It can be, and was now, an acceptable substitute for reading and writing. I get a hold on acts, words, gestures, worry them out of the corners they've got themselves lost in, and brush the dust away. And yet, because they come from far away, from lost realms and because their shapes are refined and mysterious, they have visionary force.' That's Moss himself laying out, I'd say, his own professional method. His manner was often mild, his face almost bland, but the inside of his head was a vault with a thousand chambers. The beginning of the novel Plumb is brilliant in every way. The Reverend, deaf to the world but not sufficiently worried about the deafness to deploy his big black bakelite hearing trumpet more than occasionally, is suddenly aware of an excited and gesticulating daughter, Meg. She beckons him through to the Peacehaven kitchen, and once there he's further invited to be amazed at the brand-new Atlas electric stove. Meg opens the oven door and there – look Dad –the polished interior. So to the stove top – look Dad – three elements. Meg holds up three fingers, and in a near-theatrical display of the stove's excellence, shifts a pot of boiling porridge off one of the elements and turns the knob below – just so Dad! – cutting off the electricity. The Reverend sees a further sign of approval is needed and, assuming the thing turns cold once the electricity is gone, places his hand firmly onto the element. Turmoil. Family bursting into the kitchen from all over the house. At a stroke we see an old man's isolation from the modern – that is the 1940s – world. In the rush to the kitchen we also see the main family members who'll be important as the novel unfolds. But better yet – a structural point – that for ease of reader reference, the burned hand, immediately treated with Vaseline then heavily bandaged, can serve as a signal. The book's mainstay is Plumb's remembrance reaching across the decades from the 1880s to the 1940s. Those passages run parallel to a month-long present-day narrative, and at each return to that present, the bandaged hand welcomes the reader back, either by direct sight of the bulky white bandage, or Plumb's own comment upon the healing that's under way, or by a concerned enquiry from someone in the 12-strong Plumb family – How's your hand Dad? By the end of March Maurice has written 40,000 words. Ah, at 40,000 words or thereabouts is the passage I first read when I was flying over China in 1979. Moss had inscribed a copy of Plumb for my mother, and she'd passed it on to me as I left New Zealand, part of a four-man team documenting the life, in China, of the kiwi farmer, Rewi Alley. The old DC3 carrying our documentary film team towards Inner Mongolia seemed to move crabwise in a side wind over the dunes of the Gobi Desert, for hours – a good bland background perhaps to be teleported in an instant back to the most vivid New Zealand scene I've ever read. The Night Limited Express of the late 1940s plunges on across the Central Plateau. In one of the sleeping carriages, the 80 year-old Plumb is on his way to visit his three adult children in Wellington. Blistered hand and all, he lies awake: 'The small hours. A moon-rayed closet full of dead air and burnt coal. A swaying circular motion that set my stomach floating as though on oil. . . . Close at hand Mount Ruapehu was shining in the moonlight.' So quick. So tight. Maybe it's just me. This is set in the late 1940s when steam trains travelled the main trunk line and maybe I'm just sentimental for having known those steam trains as a youth. No. I'd rather see it as writing doing the thing it does best, holding something important back from the void, forever. The atmosphere of the Night Limited Express which was once and never will be again is ageless here. Is Moss Gee magic, is one of the gifts that are given by a terrific writer, and one of the gratitudes you may feel. The Faber original, 1979, of Maurice Gee's classic book By mid-May he's written 70,000 words, by July 90,000, and his projected final total of 110,000 will roughly coincide with his 45th birthday. Amidst the Chapple's family's rich history, and his own extensive research, each day's work has felt like the work he's been born to do. He writes to Robin Dudding that the Plumb stuff flows each day 'like dipping into a barrel.' When he'd first begun seriously shaping up the novel he'd reassured his mother that the more he brooded on it, the more distant the Reverend George Plumb was becoming from the Reverend James Chapple. Later though, the Barrowman biography speculates that Moss has begun emphasizing to his mother that the book is fiction, for the very reason that the further in he got, the more the characters came to resemble the Chapples. In the 'Author's note' that concludes Plumb Moss says his aunts and uncles are not to accuse him of putting them in a novel. Despite that, many within the family could pick precisely who was who. Moss Gee's further note though is correct: that the early part of the novel is based on the facts of James Chapple's life, but from 1918 onwards including details of the relationship between Plumb and his wife Edie, it is not. So we approach the novel's climax – set around the early 1920s when Plumb is in his 60s and has just conducted a Unitarian Service for the Peacehaven wedding of his daughter Esther. Guests promenade about, and 'the bowl of the lawn' – part of the original 5-acre Peacehaven – 'is brimful of sunshine.' One of the guests is John Willis, the lawyer who defended Plumb in the 1917 sedition trial. John meets Plumb's 19 year-old son Alfred, at this wedding, and takes an interest in the youth's poetry. A month or two later, Plumb crests a rise in the Peacehaven orchard, sees Alfred and John Willis in flagrante in the grasses below, and is momentarily overwhelmed by darkness. He's clutching the branch of a tree to stay himself as he comes out of the darkness cursing the two of them with Old Testament bloodiness, watching their faces turn 'white and bestial', hearing the male voices that 'croaked like toads'. He flees to his study, grabs a handful of the gold sovereigns stashed there and is back in time to find the lovers crossing the creek bridge that exits the orchard. He flings sovereigns at their feet: 'You are dead. You are dead to me Alfred. Never come here again. Your name isn't Plumb. There's money to change your name.' In the aftermath, Plumb's wife Edie is calm. Plumb tells her he's banished Alfred. Pressed as to why, he speaks of the sin of Sodom, and she remains calm. He guesses she's known Alfred's nature all along and long ago forgiven. The banishment of Alfred becomes an estrangement in some small degree from his adult children who simply laugh at him, but in no small degree from Edie. In the first hours of the crisis it's Plumb the patriarch who forbids anyone ever again mentioning Alfred's name to him, but in that same hour of crisis it's Edie, with the dignity and soft power of motherhood, who insists that he, Plumb, should never speak of Alfred to her again. And it's she who, despite his command, departs often within the years ahead for what he knows are visits to Alfred. Hat and gloves. Departing Peacehaven, and returning, in silence. Eight years on, as a storm shakes Peacehaven, Edie lies dying, and the Reverend Plumb has a vivid and terrifying glimpse of his wife's immortal soul, sees Light and Love, and backs away, knowing suddenly he's thrown away any right to look upon it. She reaches for his hand – 'George ' and their life together rests in the strength of that grasp, but again 'George' her last word that he knows is also a last wish – to take Alfred as his son again. Still, he cannot. Back now to the novel's present-day narrative, Plumb arrives home by car from the Wellington visit. Peacehaven shines for him with Edie's presence. She's the one who chose that name. Her brush painted the nameplate. She's dead now. Eight years lay between Alfred's banishment and her death. Now a further 12 years have passed. Forgiveness. Love. Why has he not? He rests in the summerhouse and the change comes, finally, easily. That he can love Alfred. That too, he can forgive himself. He is a man. Nothing human is alien to him. The reconciliation is arranged to take place in the house of one of the Plumb children. Alfred arrives, ignores his father and kisses the two sisters who are looking on. Plumb seeks to talk with Alfred alone, and the atmosphere turns spiteful – 'Who is this man?' Alf asks – then begins a verbal assault that's brought finally to a climax as Plumb counters with a suggestion that Robert, Alfred's older brother, has a healing touch, has in fact during the recent visit to Wellington, helped Plumb's burned hand to heal, and could help Alfred too. It's an ambiguous suggestion. To help assuage Alfred's entrenched bitterness perhaps, but Alfred takes it differently. 'To stop me being a homosexual?' he asks. ' I did not say that' replies Plumb, but Alfred has begun to frenzy. The big black bakelite hearing trumpet has been tilted to catch his replies once too often, and he batters it away, picks it up and smashes it against the wall. Reflecting later on the impossibility of this or any other possible reconciliation with his son, Plumb says: 'His hatred of me was so great I did not believe he would survive me long.' The last 56 pages of the original Faber and Faber hardback edition are the pages that hold these stark descriptions of love's flip side – Plumb's black curses, and 20 years on, the bitter harvest. Hatred, cold, hard, and ferocious. Yet even as the novel comes up to its end, love is gathering again in bits and pieces, his other adult children support his needs, and look after each other too during any personal distress. And why not? The whole book is an intermittent soliloquy on love – Edie's intimate attendance and understanding of both the children and of Plumb. And the contrast – Plumb's spiritual yearning for Divine love. The book explores both the tragedy and the humour of those two loves, one to another, a separation that's at its most clear as the Reverend sits in his study, writing the ascent of Man, and requests yet another cup of tea by tinkling his teaspoon within the empty cup, a sound faintly heard and drawing a prompt response from the loyal household beyond. But in the course of the novel he will see also, that Edie's love is complete, and that he has fallen short. The novel ends at the summerhouse. Plumb, alone now, talks to his dead wife, tells her the hearing trumpet is smashed and he can't hear whether her thrush is singing, or not. Raymond the favoured grandson arrives to play draughts, and presently Plumb jumps his grandson's last man, and wins. He's ready to die, or love, or whatever it is. He's glad of the good he's done, sorry about the bad. Daughter Meg comes, takes him by the hand and leads him in to tea. Aside from its memorable characters, Plumb is beloved by New Zealanders for its depiction of what Moss Gee has called New Zealandy things. Its trains, its motorcars, its lawns, its language, its pragmatism, its attitude to Catholics perhaps, its idealism. Yet I'd say it was bigger than that too. Plumb won the 1978 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, one of the oldest British literary awards, for the work of fiction judged the best novel published by a British imprint that year, regardless of the author's nationality. With that one proviso of a British imprint, the Tait Black was open to the whole English-speaking world. To put the award into a longer perspective, the other winners in that same decade included Nadine Gordimer, Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell, John Banville, John Le Carré, and William Golding. Portrait of author Maurice Gee, 1990s, photographed by Reg Graham. Ref: PAColl-6458-1-08 Alexander Turnbull Library. The book sold internationally, and when Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005 for her novel Gilead, which detailed the life and family ties of an aging Congregationalist Minister in Iowa USA, Plumb was the novel that various literary critics reached for in their comparisons. I'd suggest also that the novel made an international impact because it gave voice to the hopeful vocabulary humanity has erected to cope with infinity. Plumb is a flawed man, but he's studied religion, the poetry canon, also the literature of enlightenment, and he's unafraid of the big words. Let's hear it for the Salvation Army's blessing upon the newly dead – they're Risen to Glory. Let's proceed further with Heaven on Earth 'where I, the imperfect, can adore my own Perfect', or where 'man comes in sight of Man'. Or, let's catch sight of the eternal in the vivid glimpse of Edie's immortal soul. Or sight some ineffable Light that earthly mortals can glimpse, but cannot, on this earth, live within. On the day of Esther's wedding, after the Unitarian Service, the 60-year-old Plumb is pierced by such a light, and to describe the vision will reach for the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:51: 'Behold I show you a mystery.' Plumb tells us that on this day he beheld just that mystery –'Which was made plain – a great light, a bliss, a splendour, a white radiance streamed through me.' You don't have to believe any of it, but these are words you've heard before, not often, perhaps but nonetheless, embedded, and in Plumb out they spill and on we go – it's terrific. Lastly let me recall a few of the more memorable meetings with Moss Gee over the years. In 1983 the Listener had agreed to a proposal that I write and photograph a regular fortnightly column as, with Miriam and my three children aboard, I manoeuvred a housebus anti-clockwise around the South Island. I knew already that when I reached Timaru one of the episodes would centre on the Reverend James Chapple. Moss was the man to talk that through with, and after we rolled off the inter-island ferry, we drove straight to his Nelson house. Moss brought out the Reverend's Bible, and we leafed through it together, the first time I'd seen the extensively inked monument. I told Moss about a recent visit to the United States to look up my Uncle Aynsley there and a few of my cousins. Aunt Dora, the local poet at Carmel California was the oldest of the Chapple children, and was now dead, but her son, David Hagermeyer still lived in Carmel and David suggested I talk to the last of my living American aunts. He called her up, and soon enough an American voice purred down the line – – Hello, it's your Aunt Mercy here – and who are you again? – Geoff Chapple – – Ah Geoff – Son of Geoffrey? Yes, I remember him well. And what do you do Geoff? – I'm a writer. – Oh that'd be right. That's the Chapples. Teachers, writers, or neurotics. I looked at Moss and refused to pass judgement. Moss looked at me, and, I hope, did the same. Under the Mountain was by now flying off the shelves. Plumb was doing edition after edition and the family trilogy with Meg (Faber and Faber 1981) and Sole Survivor (Faber and Faber 1983) was now complete. A little later those three novels, all inspired by the Chapple / Gee intergenerational line of Reverend James, Lyndahl, and Moss Gee would be gathered together by Penguin, published under the title The Plumb Trilogy, and reviewed by Michael King as 'One of the finest achievements in New Zealand literature.' It would feature on its cover a photo of the Reverend James Chapple – Moss's grandfather and mine. A meeting in Menton April 1992. I'd been the ideas guy for the main film the New Zealand pavilion showed at the Seville Expo 92, in Spain. This is New Zealand had separate images projected on three screens showcasing the country's landscape and culture including perhaps some wacky stuff like chooks pecking away at the country's NZ initials, laid out in wheat. I can't now remember if that one made the final cut, a lot of my ideas went west, but the pay was good, and so Miriam and I set out to catch the opening of the Expo on April 20. That same year Moss had won the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, and once we'd landed in Paris, Miriam and I diverted to Nice then took a local train to Menton, walked up to the enormous pastel frontage of the Palais Lutetia, up one floor, and knocked on Moss's door. He hadn't known we were coming. The door opened and Moss stepped back and threw up his arms – 'Geoff! Rachel Barrowman's masterful 2015 biography of Maurice Gee After leaning awhile on the balcony with a glass of wine and contemplating the mighty Mediterranean, the three of us walked down to the nearby Katherine Mansfield writer's room. In 1920 Katherine Mansfield did her actual writing in the Villa Isola Bella which stood above us, locked, and we were down in a basement room that would have been, in 1920, a gardener's hangout, or perhaps a lapinière for raising rabbits. White concrete walls, a bed, a chair, a desk, an exercise book where Moss had been hard at work hand-writing his novel, main text on the right of each opened page, and revisions on the left. Crime Story (1994) was under way. I had something to tell him – I'd known that his research for the Plumb novel, years back, had turned up a former pupil of the Reverend James Chapple who'd said the Reverend had told her that he, Maurice Gee, of all the Reverend's grandchildren, was the one who'd have the most trouble finding himself, but was also the one most likely to carry forward the Reverend Chapple's life's work. Wrong. At the time of the Reverend's death in 1947, the one who'd come closest to doing that was running around somewhere in Mt Roskill as an energetic 7-year-old. He was the son of the 12th Chapple child, Joyce, who'd married Phil Reanney, a trucking contractor. In due course their son, Darryl Reanney, would gain PhD level qualifications in bio-chemistry and molecular biology. He lectured at Canterbury University, then La Trobe University in Melbourne and in 1982 became an Australian media figure as presenter for the ABC-TV's 7-part science programme Genesis. Early in 1992, Darryl had come across from Australia for a conference in Auckland, and I'd sat with him over a beer on his side of the harbour bridge. To cross that span, he told me, he'd need a whisky to settle his fear of heights. It was 36 years since I'd seen him last, and he was keen to talk. He'd recently published a book called The Death of Forever – A New Future for Human Consciousness (Longman Cheshire 1991) and he laid out the book's central thesis – that the insights of science now validated the insights of the sacred tradition. That every atom of the human body was generated first in the heat of a star. That the star-child, humanity, was a conscious entity, self-aware and part then, either a large or small part, of a cosmos awakening to understand what it was, so it could understand what it is, so it could understand what it may be. This tripped off Darryl's tongue with a practised ease, but became speculative with the proposal that as part of that forward momentum consciousness survives death. Not the individual ego, but a joining of some sort with a greater power. After that, Darryl lost me in subtle arguments about wave / particle dualities at the quantum level – except I remember him saying the wave part of the duality was 'very like a thought.' But yup, Moss agreed, as we leaned on the balcony again later and looked out over the Mediterranean, that certainly sounded like something the Reverend James Chapple would approve. Moss must have gone on to research Darryl further, for in the essay, Double Unit, he notes Darryl was 'a brilliant boy' who'd gone on to write two books on human consciousness and the interface between science and mysticism, the second published in 1994. Moss noted 'Of all James Chapple's grandchildren, he would have pleased the old man the most.' In August 1998 I was just coming to the end of route testing Te Araroa's proposed North Island trail, Miriam was walking with me, and we dropped down off the Mt Kaukau walkway straight into the Ngaio suburb and the Gee house in Chelmsford Street. I unslung my pack on the front porch, then knocked and delivered a prepared greeting as the door opened – – Moss, I've walked 1700 kilometres to your door. – Then please, theatrically with a sweeping arm, do come in. We had a good night of reminiscing the various Chapple foibles and scandals. Moss had just won that year's top fiction award, the Deutz medal, for his novel Live Bodies (1998), at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, passed it across, and Miriam and I got to weigh it in our hands. He was by then finishing the young adult novel Hostel Girl (1999) and about to start on another adult novel – Ellie and the Shadow Man (2001). His industry was always, to me, sobering. In the morning as we walked down Chelmsford Street towards Trelissick Park and the Tinakori Hill track into Wellington central, Miriam turned to me – – Did you see that your cuzzie had one of his slippers done up with a plastic clothes peg? We called in again in January 2014, Moss had relocated to Nelson by then, and, with an occasional eye-roll at his own stupidity, recounted how he and Margareta had sold up their Nile Street house there and opted for a cottage in a retirement village. They'd been in the village just two weeks when they knew they'd made a terrible mistake. They contacted the Nile Steet purchaser, who'd bought the house for his daughter – would he consider selling the house back? Luckily the purchaser was having misgivings about his purchase. So yes, he would. Maurice and Margareta then lost their deposit on the retirement cottage, but got back the Nile Street house and its high enclosing hedge. I'd been hosted to Wellington for a panel discussion at the Wellington Art Gallery and Miriam and I then popped across to Nelson, for a chat with Moss. I'd just read his second-to-last book, a junior fiction novel, The Severed Land (Penguin 2017). The land is Galb, and the indigenees have erected an invisible but effective temporal seal between the aristocratic colonisers at one end, and themselves at the other. But the invisible wall, held in place by the Old One's will, is starting to decay. The novel, I said to Moss, seemed set up for as sequel. He agreed, and offered that I wanted to take that on, he'd to pass it over. I re-read the book, but declined, and Moss subsequently gave the sequel rights to Tony Chapelle, son of my Uncle Hollis, but who'd changed the spelling of his name after a dispute with his father. Tony's sequel was endorsed by Moss Gee before publication, Truthmaker (Penguin 2021). In 2018, a Unitarian Group in Canada had discovered an unpublished hand-written manuscript by the Reverend James Chapple that Moss himself had donated to the Turnbull Library. The Canadians wanted to published it online, and after some family discussion, David Chapple, son of Leonard Chapple, the second of the 14 Chapple children, volunteered to type out a soft copy to send to the Canadians. Moss and I discussed copyright and decided that was irrelevant, Moss then withdrew from the project commenting that he was 'all Chappled out', but did think the Reverend's title on this one – The Growing Point of Truth – was a good one. The book was duly published on the aptly named website. In Late November 2023 he came to the door of his Nile Street house and welcomed us in, then returned to the sitting room to settle into his big chair. The sun was coming in through window. We talked and came up to the point – – I've lost the urge to write. I challenged that statement but he replied – It's the words Geoff, I'm losing the words. We noticed also that he was keeping a sharp eye on Margareta as she pottered about in the kitchen. When we got up to leave, he rose too quickly from the big chair, momentarily lost balance and stood swaying. I stepped forward to steady him, but he'd righted himself quickly, saw us to the door, and gave us the usual cheery farewell. We'd felt, though, an obvious change within the Nile Street house. In the course of testing the North Island Te Araroa route in 1998, Geoff Chapple drops in on his cousin Maurice Gee. (Note plastic clothes peg on Gee's slipper.) Photo: Miriam Beatson On February 12 this year I sent an email to Moss asking him to identify one of my Chapple cousins in an old photograph that shows my mother Dawn , his mother Lyndahl, then Florence and the Reverend James all in a line and my sister Bronwen being held by my father. I can date it easily, February or March 1944 because my mother is obviously pregnant, and I'm not yet there. I wrote to Moss that I needed the identity of the unknown cousin because I was thinking of including the photo in a memoir of my own and might need a caption. His answer came three days later – Deorwyn the 10th Chapple had a couple of sons and the cousin in the picture was one of them, Malcolm Fergus. Good luck with the memoir Geoff, he wrote. I'll hang on in the hope of reading it. It wasn't to be. Moss had talked to me more than once about seeing death as the last great experience. When the news came, I didn't know at first it was an end of life choice, but in the following days his family forwarded his final letter, and that made it clear. The family also sent me the note, hand-written on lined notepaper, that listed what should happen when he was found. Each separate item was given its own space upon the page, with the first two words at the top of the list encircled to indicate priority: no service – – family and friends – cremation – river or hill or burial. I learned also that he'd last visited Margareta on June 3, nine days before his own death on 12 June 2025. Margareta was then in a Nelson Hospital ward. She was no longer recognising him, and was about to be shifted to a full-time care unit at Stillwater Gardens, so loyalty to her was no longer a consideration. I thought then – so of course, my beloved cousin, you wanted to experience death and to do it before you were too wrecked to appreciate the last great experience. So how was it? I've seen it written that some perfectly crafted airtight door opens. Death's door, and with the slightest of sounds – tk! – through you go. And maybe this side of the divide, a slight suction at its closing. A thing of minimalist beauty. I hope there's something in there –maybe the tk! – that you might place, thrillingly, in your own minimalist, hard-edged prose. # The timelines and many of the details in this remembrance are taken from Rachel Barrowman's meticulous Maurice Gee: Life and Work (VUP 2015), and Maurice Gee's Memory Pieces (VUP 2018). Peter Beatson, the Associate Professor in Sociology at Massey University, now retired, was helpful in suggesting that the so-called evil in Gee's novels is not theological, and usually pertains to human cruelty of whatever kind. Helpful also in pointing out the structural similarity between Plumb and In My Father's Den. The 'Death's door' description leans on an episode in David James Duncan's Sun House (Little Brown and Company 2023). The opinions on how Maurice's life unfolded and the conclusions reached are my own. Part 1 of Geoff Chapple's memoir of Maurice Gee (August 22, 1931-June 22, 2025) appeared in ReadingRoom on Tuesday.
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Maurice Gee obituary
Maurice Gee, who has died aged 93, was one of New Zealand's most respected writers. For over 50 years, in more than 30 novels and stories, Gee mapped what he saw as the violent and sordid character of New Zealand society in psychologically complex narratives marked by unsatisfactory relationships and the rigid expectations of a conformist era. His narratives about New Zealand's darker side tell of frustrated sexual desires, unhappy families and redemptive love. These values coincide in his best loved novel, Plumb (1978), about a Presbyterian turned Unitarian minister (based on Gee's grandfather, the controversial James Chapple), whose integrity and concern for public wellbeing come at the expense of those nearest to him. They are played out in later novels: the social injustice underlying Live Bodies (1998), about an anti-fascist Austrian man interred during the second world war on Somes Island in Wellington harbour; fractured family or community relations in The Burning Boy (1994) and Blindsight (2005); criminality and violent impulses motivating the small town characters of Crime Story (1994; filmed as Fracture, 2004). Gee began by mining the seam of secular puritanism and its ethic of sexual denial, hard work and utilitarianism that shaped early settler society. His first novel, The Big Season (1962), struck a nerve in questioning the social ethos associated with rugby, the nation's sporting obsession. Written at a time when sport was considered de rigueur, for fiction it ploughed a rich furrow. His second, a crime mystery, In My Father's Den (1972; filmed in 2004) drew on the legacy of puritanism in the ambiguous attitudes of its protagonist, a social outsider, while Games of Choice (1978), about an unhappy family, introduced what became a familiar trope, a cultural alien, in this case a German family. Although Gee's frontal assault on conventional morality, through stories of violence and repression, was controversial, his craftmanship commanded admiration and acceptance. In the middle years of the 1980s and 90s came what has been regarded as one of New Zealand's greatest fictional achievements: the Plumb trilogy of novels, spanning three generations: Plumb, Meg (1981) and Sole Survivor (1983). Like his contemporaries Maurice Shadbolt and CK Stead, Gee continued to expand the reach of realist fiction, through greater historical coverage, social range and psychological exploration, in novels such as Prowlers (1987), about an anti-German riot during the first world war, and Going West (1992), which explores the personalities of two characters – one creative, one scholarly – who may be seen as the two halves of Gee himself. Sympathetic portraits of women appear in the protagonists of Meg, and of Ellie and the Shadow Man (2001), about a woman who eventually discovers herself as an artist. During these decades, Gee turned to writing for children and young adults, showing a rare ability to move between different readerships without privileging one over the other. He translated his preoccupation with oppressive and totalitarian regimes into fantasy and science fiction in ways comparable to New Zealand's most acclaimed children's writer, Margaret Mahy. His first, Under the Mountain (1979), inspired by Auckland's many volcanoes, about a world overcome by slug-like aliens and saved by children, was made into both a TV miniseries (1981) and film (2009), while his science fiction O trilogy, consisting of Halfmen of O (1982), The Priests of Ferris (1984), and Motherstone (1985), has been celebrated as an adventurous and accomplished work. A dystopian trilogy, Salt (2007), Gool (2008) and The Limping Man (2010) was praised for its sharp, unsparing depictions. Gee wrote historic fiction for children including The Fat Man (1994), Hostel Girl (1999) and The Fire-Raiser (1986). His last fiction was Severed Land (2017), the quest of a girl who escapes slavery and an avenging drummer boy. In 2018 he published a memoir in three parts, Memory Pieces. Gee made New Zealand small towns and suburbia his territory for fictional excavations of dysfunction, violence and cruelty: Wadestown and Karori (suburbs of Wellington), Henderson, Napier and Nelson, all places where he lived. He was born in Whakatāne, North Island: his father, Leonard Gee, was a carpenter and boxer, his mother, Lyndahl (nee Chapple), a socialist and accomplished storyteller. Maurice grew up in Henderson in West Auckland, was educated at Henderson primary school, Avondale college and the University of Auckland, where he took a master's degree in English (1954). After gaining certification from Auckland Teachers' College (1954), he taught for a decade while publishing short stories (his key collection was A Glorious Morning, Comrade, 1975). Then, having trained at the New Zealand Library School, he worked as a librarian from 1966 onwards, becoming a full-time writer in 1978. Gee received New Zealand's highest honours for literature: the Icon award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand in 2003 and the prime minister's award for literary achievement in 2004. His adult fiction and writing for children and young adults were recognised in nearly equal measure in numerous prizes, while the award of the UK's James Tait Black memorial prize for Plumb in 1978 confirmed early on his international reach. Assessing Gee's work in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Nelson Wattie comments: 'There is always an awareness of living at the edge of an abyss: one false move and we shall leave this abundance for nothingness.' This implies that his narratives of turmoil might also include New Zealand's precarious sense of being a nation at the end of the world, afflicted by geographical distance and remoteness. Certainly they point to a problematic occupation. Yet, although written on the cusp of an era in which New Zealand/Aotearoa has become increasingly immersed in a Maori/Pasifika world view, they are more than stories about his times: Gee's vision of New Zealanders goes beyond history, geography and politics to apprehend universal concerns about human vulnerability, social stability, danger and salvation. He is survived by his wife, Margareta Garden, whom he married in 1970, their daughters Emily and Abigail, and his son, Nigel, from an earlier relationship. Maurice Gough Gee, writer, born 22 August 1931; died 12 June 2025
Otago Daily Times
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
'An intergenerational legacy': Tributes flow for Maurice Gee
By Victor Waters of RNZ The death of Maurice Gee has prompted many New Zealanders to pay tribute to the late novelist. Considered one of New Zealand's greatest novelists, his work extended over 50 years. The author, who died recently aged 93, wrote about ordinary people and ordinary lives, often with the narrator looking back at events that caused damage and unhappiness. Publisher and literary commentator Fergus Barrowman said Gee's work hugely influenced his life. "I read Plumb when it came out in paperback in 1979, and I was 18, and it was the first New Zealand book I read that really sort of fired my imagination and gave me a sense of how sort of diverse and interesting and challenging this country was. "I read everything else, and he's really shaped my view. "I know that his books have stayed in print and been widely read, and the fact that he was at that point turning to write children's books as well meant that there have always been new generations coming on, so people are still reading him as a contemporary," he said. Barrowman said he knew Gee for more than 40 years and had worked with him from time to time. That included Gee's 2015 biography - written by his sister Rachel Barrowman - Maurice Gee: Life and Work. "He was dedicated from early on, but he didn't strike gold quickly," said Barrowman. "He took some time to learn to write and was in dialogue with Charles Brasch, the stern editor of Landfall, with his early stories. "At a certain point when he really felt that he had come of age as a writer, he left secure employment and lived by his writing, his adult novels, his children's books, and writing for TV thereafter, so that dedication has been an inspiration for a lot of writers. "I think he had an inner core of steel and grasped his own significance, but he was also a very humble and modest man who didn't like being the centre of attention. "I think it was interesting that when he did publish a memoir, it was three memoirs, three shorter pieces, which had been written about his family, and for his family he wasn't trying to foreground himself. "It was really his books that he wanted to see recognised and out in the world, and the books are known internationally as well as locally." "Though I haven't seen a lot of him recently, he does leave a hole in my life," said Barrowman. The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi said we they were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Gee, describing him as "one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most celebrated novelists, a literary giant, and a quiet revolutionary". General manager Jessica Palalagi said this was cemented by Gee earning the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1992 and being among the inaugural Icon Whakamana Hiranga recipients in 2003, among numerous other awards. "He has left a strong intergenerational legacy for us all through his work," said Palalagi. "To me, that's what becoming an icon is really. It's that ability to make work and to be an artist that lasts across generations. "I think his writing for children also meant that a lot of us grew up with his literature and then they were turned into sort of like motion pictures and TV shows. "It was world building, he created worlds through his words," she said. Palalagi said The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi had been trying to organise a rare interview with Gee, which unfortunately was not able to materialise. She said even in his final years, he still shied away from the limelight. "I had been actually trying to reach out to him since last year. So we've been talking to him via his daughter because we were trying to organise a sort of a profile piece on him. "He was kind of like, 'oh, why is everyone making a fuss about this work that I did?'. So I think he was just incredibly humble. "He was actually very generous in saying that he doesn't actually do a lot of interviews, but he was happy to sit down and have a chat so I felt very humbled in that way to be able to have that time, but we just couldn't quite get there. "It's quite sad in a way to think that we could have had one sort of last conversation," she said. Gee was born in Whakatāne in 1931 and educated at Auckland's Avondale College in Auckland and at Auckland University where he took a Masters degree in English. He worked as a teacher and librarian, before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. He spent much of his later life in Nelson, where he became a loved consituent. Nelson MP Rachel Boyack said the late novelist made a big contribution to the South Island city. "He was involved in groups like 'Friends of the Maitai', who have done a huge amount of work to protect out river that runs through inner city Nelson. "In a recent interview he spoke of the important of the Maitai river, in terms of teaching his daughters how to swim and so while he didn't grow up here he spent his later years of his life here. "It's really sad, wonderful that he was able to live such a full life into his early 90s but it's always so sad when we've lost someone who made such a significant contribution to our nation." "Nelson people are very proud that he decided to live and retire here in Nelson," said Boyack. Those sentiments were shared by another politician, Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage Paul Goldsmith. "It's a very sad day, Maurice Gee has been a greatly loved writer and novelist for many decades. "People of my generation grew up on Under the Mountain being a great local story, some of his other great novels like Plumb have had international acclaim but also being part of our literary cannon as it used to be known as," said the minister. Goldsmith said Plumb was his favourite novel written by Gee. He said parliament could look to pay tribute in some way to the late writer in the coming days, but said there had been no discussions yet.
Otago Daily Times
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
'He's left an intergenerational legacy': Tributes for author Maurice Gee
By Victor Waters of RNZ The death of Maurice Gee has prompted many New Zealanders to pay tribute to the late novelist. Considered one of New Zealand's greatest novelists, his work extended over 50 years. The author, who died recently aged 93, wrote about ordinary people and ordinary lives, often with the narrator looking back at events that caused damage and unhappiness. Publisher and literary commentator Fergus Barrowman said Gee's work hugely influenced his life. "I read Plumb when it came out in paperback in 1979, and I was 18, and it was the first New Zealand book I read that really sort of fired my imagination and gave me a sense of how sort of diverse and interesting and challenging this country was. "I read everything else, and he's really shaped my view. "I know that his books have stayed in print and been widely read, and the fact that he was at that point turning to write children's books as well meant that there have always been new generations coming on, so people are still reading him as a contemporary," he said. Barrowman said he knew Gee for more than 40 years and had worked with him from time to time. That included Gee's 2015 biography - written by his sister Rachel Barrowman - Maurice Gee: Life and Work. "He was dedicated from early on, but he didn't strike gold quickly," said Barrowman. "He took some time to learn to write and was in dialogue with Charles Brasch, the stern editor of Landfall, with his early stories. "At a certain point when he really felt that he had come of age as a writer, he left secure employment and lived by his writing, his adult novels, his children's books, and writing for TV thereafter, so that dedication has been an inspiration for a lot of writers. "I think he had an inner core of steel and grasped his own significance, but he was also a very humble and modest man who didn't like being the centre of attention. "I think it was interesting that when he did publish a memoir, it was three memoirs, three shorter pieces, which had been written about his family, and for his family he wasn't trying to foreground himself. "It was really his books that he wanted to see recognised and out in the world, and the books are known internationally as well as locally." "Though I haven't seen a lot of him recently, he does leave a hole in my life," said Barrowman. The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi said we they were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Gee, describing him as "one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most celebrated novelists, a literary giant, and a quiet revolutionary". General manager Jessica Palalagi said this was cemented by Gee earning the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1992 and being among the inaugural Icon Whakamana Hiranga recipients in 2003, among numerous other awards. "He has left a strong intergenerational legacy for us all through his work," said Palalagi. "To me, that's what becoming an icon is really. It's that ability to make work and to be an artist that lasts across generations. "I think his writing for children also meant that a lot of us grew up with his literature and then they were turned into sort of like motion pictures and TV shows. "It was world building, he created worlds through his words," she said. Palalagi said The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi had been trying to organise a rare interview with Gee, which unfortunately was not able to materialise. She said even in his final years, he still shied away from the limelight. "I had been actually trying to reach out to him since last year. So we've been talking to him via his daughter because we were trying to organise a sort of a profile piece on him. "He was kind of like, 'oh, why is everyone making a fuss about this work that I did?'. So I think he was just incredibly humble. "He was actually very generous in saying that he doesn't actually do a lot of interviews, but he was happy to sit down and have a chat so I felt very humbled in that way to be able to have that time, but we just couldn't quite get there. "It's quite sad in a way to think that we could have had one sort of last conversation," she said. Gee was born in Whakatāne in 1931 and educated at Auckland's Avondale College in Auckland and at Auckland University where he took a Masters degree in English. He worked as a teacher and librarian, before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. He spent much of his later life in Nelson, where he became a loved consituent. Nelson MP Rachel Boyack said the late novelist made a big contribution to the South Island city. "He was involved in groups like 'Friends of the Maitai', who have done a huge amount of work to protect out river that runs through inner city Nelson. "In a recent interview he spoke of the important of the Maitai river, in terms of teaching his daughters how to swim and so while he didn't grow up here he spent his later years of his life here. "It's really sad, wonderful that he was able to live such a full life into his early 90s but it's always so sad when we've lost someone who made such a significant contribution to our nation." "Nelson people are very proud that he decided to live and retire here in Nelson," said Boyack. Those sentiments were shared by another politician, Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage Paul Goldsmith. "It's a very sad day, Maurice Gee has been a greatly loved writer and novelist for many decades. "People of my generation grew up on Under the Mountain being a great local story, some of his other great novels like Plumb have had international acclaim but also being part of our literary cannon as it used to be known as," said the minister. Goldsmith said Plumb was his favourite novel written by Gee. He said parliament could look to pay tribute in some way to the late writer in the coming days, but said there had been no discussions yet.
Scoop
15-06-2025
- General
- Scoop
Respected Kiwi Writer Maurice Gee Has Died, Aged 93
Respected Kiwi writer Maurice Gee - author of 'Plumb' and 'Under the Mountain' - has died, aged 93. Considered one of New Zealand's greatest novelists, his work extended over 50 years. He wrote about ordinary people and ordinary lives, often with the narrator looking back at events that caused damage and unhappiness. "I don't deliberately set out to do this, but the stories turn in that direction following their own logic," he said. "All I can do about it is make the narrative as interesting as I can and give those people lively minds." Maurice Gee was born in Whakatāne in 1931 and educated at Auckland's Avondale College in Auckland and at Auckland University where he took a Masters degree in English. He worked as a teacher and librarian, before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. He passed much of his childhood in what was then the country town of Henderson. The town, disguised as Loomis, and its creek are featured in many of his books. "I grew up alongside that creek in Henderson, and it seemed all sorts of exciting and dangerous things happened down there," he said. "You know, that creek I could plot its whole length pool by pool for a couple of miles even today." His reputation took an enormous leap in 1978 with the publication of 'Plumb', the first of a trilogy about three generations of a family. The novel won the British James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1979. The character of Plumb was based on maternal grandfather Jim Chapple - a Presbyterian minister, who was ejected from the church, because of his rationalist beliefs and jailed for preaching pacifism during World War I. Gee inherited strong left-wing views from that side of his family and a burden of sexual puritanism, which he said caused him a tortured adolescence, although he denied claims of a strong authorial voice in his work. "I can't look at my books the way I read other books," he said. "I look at them quite differently. "I'm intimately connected with them and probably wouldn't be able to indentify my voice in them, if someone asked me to." He said his novel 'Crime Story' stemmed from his anger over the changes made in New Zealand by the Lange Labour Government in the 1980s, and politicians and businessmen are seldom portrayed favourably in his books. Gee's output included short stories and television scripts, and his children's fiction was highly regarded, although it was not his preferred genre. "Children's writing seems to be easier than adult writing, because it's coming off a different level," he said. "There's still some pleasure to be got from both and I try to do each as professionally as I possibly can, but the thing that really engages me fully is adult fiction." Written in 1979, 'Under the Mountain' was probably his best-known children's work, and was later converted into a film and TV series. He received many awards for his work, including the Burns and Katherine Mansfield Fellowships, honorary degrees from Victoria and Auckland universities, and the Prime Minister's Award for literary merit. He won the the Deutz Medal for fiction in 1998 for his novel 'Live Bodies' and the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Award for 'Blindsight'. "Sad to hear of Maurice Gee's passing," Arts, Culture & Heritage Minister Paul Goldsmith said. "Our thoughts are with his family. "He was a prolific and graceful author. 'Plumb' is my favorite, although thousands of Kiwis will have their own." "Maurice Gee was a real giant of New Zealand literature and so many people grew up reading his stories, including me," Nelson MP and Labour arts, culture & heritage spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. "Really sad that one of our beloved constituents has passed away. He was a private person - I didn't know him well - but he made a big contribution to Nelson, not just through his writing. "He was involved in groups like Friends of the Maitai, who do a huge amount of work to protect our river that runs through inner city Nelson. "Wonderful that he was able to live such a full life, but sad when we lose someone that has made such a significant contribution to our nation." Gee is survived by wife Margareta, their two daughters, and a son from an early relationship.
