No Fretful Sleeper

No Fretful Sleeper PDF Author: Paul Millar
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 1775581314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
Outlining the career of one of New Zealand's most distinguished fiction writers and sharpest critics, this fascinating narrative details the life and work of Bill Pearson. Beginning with his difficult childhood in a society dominated by the New Zealand working man, this gripping biography follows Pearson through his long and distinguished academic career, the penning of his one major and celebrated novel, and his momentous decision to trade a dental career for World War II combat. Touching on his time in London and the native &“fretful sleepers,&” this engrossing account is emblematic of the intellectual culture, left-wing politics, and growing acceptance of both homosexual identity and Maori and Pacific Island culture in 20th-century New Zealand.

No Fretful Sleeper

No Fretful Sleeper PDF Author: Paul Millar
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 1775581314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
Outlining the career of one of New Zealand's most distinguished fiction writers and sharpest critics, this fascinating narrative details the life and work of Bill Pearson. Beginning with his difficult childhood in a society dominated by the New Zealand working man, this gripping biography follows Pearson through his long and distinguished academic career, the penning of his one major and celebrated novel, and his momentous decision to trade a dental career for World War II combat. Touching on his time in London and the native &“fretful sleepers,&” this engrossing account is emblematic of the intellectual culture, left-wing politics, and growing acceptance of both homosexual identity and Maori and Pacific Island culture in 20th-century New Zealand.

No Fretful Sleeper

No Fretful Sleeper PDF Author: Paul Millar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, New Zealand / 20th century / Biography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description


Queer 1950s

Queer 1950s PDF Author: H. Bauer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137264713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
Leading sexuality scholars explore queer lives and cultures in the first full post-war decade through an array of sources and a range of perspectives. Drawing out the particularities of queer cultures from the Finland and New Zealand to the UK and the USA, this collection rethinks preconceptions of the 1950s and pinpoints some of its legacies.

No Fretful Sleeper

No Fretful Sleeper PDF Author: Paul Millar
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 1869405412
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is no place in normal New Zealand society for the man who is different', wrote William Harrison (Bill) Pearson. One of New Zealand's most distinguished fiction writers and sharpest critics, Pearson's life was also fraught with contradiction and secrecy, largely because of his homosexuality. Born in Greymouth in 1922, he grew up in a society dominated by a rugged ideal of New Zealand manhood; not an easy childhood or adolescence for an unusually sensitive boy who preferred intellectual pursuits to sports. He went to university and Dunedin Training College, then taught at Blackball School - a period from which he drew the material for his celebrated novel, Coal Flat. After serving in the Second World War he received his PhD from the University of London - where distance gave him a clear critical perspective on this country of 'fretful sleepers' - then returned to New Zealand as a scholar and lecturer, writer and editor. Bill Pearson's life is emblematic of vital elements in twentieth-century New Zealand society: intellectual culture, left-wing politics and the growing acceptance of homosexual identity and Maori and Pacific Island culture. Drawing on Pearson's own unpublished writing and extensive research, Millar has written an extraordinary biography of a courageous non-conformist, a man fully awake to the vulnerability of his society's freedoms.

Fretful Sleepers and Other Essays

Fretful Sleepers and Other Essays PDF Author: Bill Pearson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : it
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description


New Zealand As It Might Have Been 2

New Zealand As It Might Have Been 2 PDF Author: Stephen Levine
Publisher: Victoria University Press
ISBN: 0864736827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book Here

Book Description
A mix of short stories and commentaries—some whimsical, some grim—this work of creative conjecture offers a perceptive and positive new slant on significant New Zealand events and personalities. With a modest degree of adjustment, this compilation examines “what if” scenarios ranging from the historical and literary to the athletic and offers alternative conclusions. Altering the lives of Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand’s most famous writer, and national hero Sir Edmund Hillary as well as revisiting New Zealand’s avoidable choice to fight alongside the Americans in Vietnam and the possible effects of a postwar visit by Winston Churchill, this second volume presents a variety of visions of a country that nearly was.

People and Place

People and Place PDF Author: Len Richardson
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760463450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book traces the enduring relationship between history, people and place that has shaped the character of a single region in a manner perhaps unique within the New Zealand experience. It explores the evolution of a distinctive regional literature that both shaped and was shaped by the physical and historical environment that inspired it. Looking westwards towards Australia and long shut off within New Zealand by the South Island’s rugged Southern Alps, the West Coast was a land of gold, coal and timber. In the 1950s and 1960s, it nurtured a literature that embodied a sense of belonging to an Australasian world and captured the aspirations of New Zealand’s emergent radical nationalism. More recent West Coast writers, observing the hollowing out of their communities, saw in miniature and in advance the growing gulf between city and regional economies aligned to an older economic order losing its relevance. Were they chronicling the last hurrah of a retreating age or crafting a literature of regional resistance?

A History of New Zealand Literature

A History of New Zealand Literature PDF Author: Mark Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316546195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 660

Get Book Here

Book Description
A History of New Zealand Literature traces the genealogy of New Zealand literature from its first imaginings by Europeans in the eighteenth century. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction that charts the growth of, and challenges to, a nationalist literary tradition, the essays in this History illuminate the cultural and political intricacies of New Zealand literature, surveying the multilayered verse, fiction and drama of such diverse writers as Katherine Mansfield, Allen Curnow, Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame, Keri Hulme, Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History devotes special attention to the lasting significance of colonialism, biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand literature. A History of New Zealand Literature is of pivotal importance to the development of New Zealand writing and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike.

Encounters: The Creation of New Zealand

Encounters: The Creation of New Zealand PDF Author: Paul Moon
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 1742539181
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 763

Get Book Here

Book Description
'Throughout its human history, New Zealand has been interpreted and experienced in often radically different ways. Each wave of arrivals to its shores has left its own set of views of New Zealand on the country – applying a new coat of mythology and understanding to the landscape, usually without fully removing the one that lies beneath it.' Encounters is the wide-ranging, audacious and gripping story of New Zealand's changing national identity, how it has emerged and evolved through generations. In this genre-busting book, historian Paul Moon delves into how the many and conflicting ideas about New Zealand came into being. Along the way, he explores forgotten crevices of the nation's character, and exposes some of the mythology of its past and present. These include, for example, the earliest Maori myths and the 'mock sacredness' of the All Blacks in the twenty-first century; the role of nostalgia in our national character, both Maori and Pakeha; whether the explorer Kupe existed; the appeal of the Speight's 'Southern Man'; and ruminations on New Zealand art and landscape. What results is an absorbing piece of scholarship, an imaginative and exuberant epic that will challenge preconceptions about what it means to be a New Zealander, and how our country is understood. Lyrical, breathtaking and provocative, and illustrated with artworks throughout, Encounters offers an extraordinary insight into the beginnings of our country.

Letters of Frank Sargeson

Letters of Frank Sargeson PDF Author: Sarah Shieff
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 186979334X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Get Book Here

Book Description
A rich and riveting record of both literary and social value. Frank Sargeson is one of New Zealand's best-loved and most important writers. Besides the ground-breaking short stories, he wrote memoirs, novels, and plays. He encouraged at least three generations of younger writers and, for most of his adult life, the famous bach behind the hedge at 14 Esmonde Road was at the heart of New Zealand's artistic and literary world. Sargeson was also a prolific letter writer, and this selection of 500 of the most fascinating ranges over half a century, from 1927 to 1981. The letters are immensely readable, vividly capturing his life and times, his milieu and his personality. Frank loved gossip, could be bitchy and peevish, but also kind, affectionate, funny, ribald, astute. This collection, selected, edited and annotated by Sarah Shieff, is a document of extraordinary significance for all those interested in New Zealand's literary and social history.