Graham Billing (1936–2001)

A contrived spy thriller about possible covert American communications with nuclear submarines.
It's special to read a novel which takes place in one's own home city, Wellington and environs. Envisaging place and the contemporary environment is all the more vivid.
I like Graham Billing's writing - he's an action man who is technically knowledgeable about navigation, the outdoors, the sciences, civil service protocols, cars etc., but he was was also a politically aware broadcaster who did his best, I remember, to get politicians to come out from behind the cloak of confidentiality that was prevalent in the 1960's in New Zealand.
Anyway, the plot is implausible enough, especially the introduction of a children's film set as a decoy operation to carry out the spying, but, I suppose, it is necessary.
The spies are communist sympathisers, but our hero Strachan is not. He is motivated to expose the probable presence of a communication facility through his loathing for politicians who will neither confirm or deny its existence.
Some fascinating technical exotica turn up in the book. Our hero, Strachan drives a Hillman Imp Stilletto. This was an Australian designed two seater (convertible or hard top) built in Australia and limited in production numbers. (And yes, I have spelled "stilletto" incorrectly - but so did the designer of the maker's badge that went on the vehicle). One of the conspiratorial women caught up in this mission drives an imported white Renault Caravelle (left -hand drive), a rarity for 1968.
Lots of typos through sloppy editing.… (altro)

An exceptional New Zealand novel, but alas neglected. The Auckland University Press' "Anthology of New Zealand Literature" doesn't even give Billing a mention, which tells you something's wrong.
This then is a complex story written by a historian (Dowser), married to a Maori woman (Mareikura, or Marei for short), who was previously the wife of a boyhood friend, Brickell. Dowser is writing a fiction about whaling in Port Puissance (Otago Harbour) from the years 1830-41, using Brickell's collection of writings as a source.
Two other boyhood colleagues, John Mark Vodanovich and Richard John Travis feature in this novel and notably so in an episode which takes place in Antarctica, where Travis saves the other, when Vodanovich falls into a crevasse during a surveying expedition, an incident which reveals a deep rivalry and distrust between the pair.
The Maori woman, Marei believes herself to be the eleventh of the twelve Guardians of the Overworld of Io. She considers Vodanovich the ninth such Guardian because he understands the secret of the "chambered nautilus", with its three-dimensional spiral shell. The nautilus is able to descend or rise huge sea depths because it has a tube which it fills or empties in the chambered spiral shell.This ability is little understood to science. Thus Marei believes Vodanovich understands how the Guardians (the mereikura and whatukura) move between Earth and the Twelfth Heaven of Maori spiritual religion.
This then is the basis of our country's most ambitious and, I think, most considered novel about what it meant to be spiritually alive as a Maori when Europeans made first contact. This part of the novel centres on the experience of the first Wesleyan missionary at the whaling station (Windseer). He suffers physically in the primitive outpost, and becomes chronically depressed because of the depravity of Maori and European interaction at the settlement. He inevitably seeks female respite with a Maori woman in a neighbouring village, and in doing so understands the crushing, debilitating nature of his Christian vocation in these circumstance; and as well comes to appreciate the devastating effects this new religion is having on the tapu (sacred) and the spiritual world view of the natives.
I have read one other Billing novel, "The Slipway", set in my home town of Dunedin. It is an aching and stunning revelation of what it is to be an alcoholic. I considered Billing a superb intelligent writer on this one reading.
"The Chambered Nautilus" takes effort, patience while the grand scheme unfolds, an appreciation that Billing knows his stuff, and that he is muscular in his presentation. Coastal navigation, Greek and Maori mythology. our native flora, polar exploration, history (local and world-wide), marine biology - they are all there. You, dear reader, must be prepared for concentration. You will be rewarded.… (altro)

The best novel I've read from a New Zealander. A day in the life of Geoffrey Targett, a man who is succumbing to personal disaster. Graham Billing has managed to transcribe the internal battle of the alcoholic into a perfect little novel. The pathos, terror and desperate hard work to appear as normal as one can, are rendered as authentically as I can imagine.
Graham Billing knows his material thoroughly. The alcoholic is prey to a never-ending self-dialogue, where the need to appear and act competently is at war with the desire for a respite from the pain of deep hurts incurred long ago.
That the novel is set in my home town, albeit with some licence about location, makes it all the more wonderful.
The excursion to reclaim the family's lost dog "Fog" in the Valley of Leith is full of allegory, where Targett experiences an other-worldly distortion of what is happening, this time in the company of his wife, Rose, a woman who loves him still, but cannot access the man.
I wonder if "The Slipway" is an outcome of having read "Under the Volcano' (Malcolm Lowry) - another novel of a day in the life of an alcoholic. The Slipway, to my mind is the better, because the hero is not quite the self pitying case that Geoffrey Firmin proved to be in Lowry's novel.… (altro)