Books
The days of mortal man
by Nelson Wattie
He’s made excursions into novels and poetry, but here Owen Marshall does what Owen Marshall does best.
A book of new stories by Owen Marshall is a notable event. His excursions into longer fiction and poetry have been read with fascination, but also with niggling doubts. His talent for short fiction is, however, undoubted. Many believe him to be the best teller of tales currently living in New Zealand.
The newness of the stories in Living As a Moon is of a particular kind. In form, they adhere to the traditions of New Zealand realism, while subtly varying their tones and structures so that our expectations are both satisfied and pleasantly diverted.
Performers of classical music are not expected to be “original” or “innovative” but rather to do the job to the best of their ability. Changes in style are usually made to move closer to the ideal, the ur-type; reverting to old instruments, ensemble sizes or tempi. The newness in these stories is a bit like that – their virtue is in their excellence and the beauty of their craft.
Early in the book is a tale, Manhunt, that might have been written by OE Middleton, Roderick Finlayson or another of our nationalist realists. The hunt for a serial killer goes through the bush of the Kaimanawas, and the setting becomes one of the characters. The others are mainly policemen, and the narrator is slightly off-centre, a junior officer with relatively little experience who is close to the events without being a protagonist in them, an observer. He is honest about his weaknesses: “I made a bit of a fool of myself … My reading was never my strong point.” There is, of course, not a woman in sight. Even the hills, rocks and trees seem masculine. The ending is a moral with a gently ironic twist.
New Zealanders have been enjoying yarns of this sort for decades and followers of the style will enjoy this one as well.
Manhunt could be thought of as a tribute from the modern writer to his predecessors. It might also be seen as the “default mode” for his own stories. It is followed by a piece set in the future with its central character, another serial killer – though this time of plants and animals – nostalgic for the past, our own days, and the story’s “message” is for us as well. The protagonist is a man close to nature in a world that has left it behind, so that he is not far removed from the bushmen in Manhunt.
The settings vary, sometimes France or Italy, often in schools and universities, and yet their characters seem to be cousins and their dilemmas not unalike. Certain features, such as a love of cars and their various models, come repeatedly in different stories.
A quotation from Boswell’s diary, used here as the epitaph for one story, is a leitmotif of them all: “I remember nothing that happened worth relating this day. How many such days does mortal man pass?” Several stories deal with a day in the life of a person or a couple, and it tends to be exemplary rather than unique. They are the sort of day that person might have lived yesterday and may do tomorrow. Even stories that arch over months have something of this sense of the day – a unity of time and place. But, clearly, Marshall thinks they are worth relating, and readers will agree. Consider the billions who inhabit the world, and that each of them has a story to tell every day; it is clear that there will never be a lack of material for realist writers.
The secret is close observation of detail and the sharpness to choose the significant elements that make a person or event vivid in a few economical words. It is not the exotic but the familiar that makes these stories come alive.
