South West of Eden

'I said many times I would not write autobiography - partly because it might signal, either to my inner self, or to others, a "signing off" as a writer; and partly because I did not want to mark off areas that were fact in my life from those that might yet be invented. Fiction likes to move, disguised and without a passport, back and forth across that border, and prefers it should be unmarked and without check-points.' - C K Stead. Happily for the many readers of his novels, poems, criticism and essays, C K Stead has changed his mind. In South-West of Eden, a coming-of-age memoir by New Zealand's leading poet, novelist and critic writes of a life 'lived by history' -running wild in Cornwall Park, joining the Labour Party aged seven, discovering poetry in a third-form English class and enjoying a newly married annus mirabilis in a flat on Takapuna Beach down the road from Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame. An Aucklander to the core - 'Most things of real significance in my life and the life of my family had happened somewhere in sight from the summit of Mt Eden' - Stead here turns his home town into a land of myth and symbol: Tamaki of many lovers, portage for ancient waka, wasp-waist of the fish of Maui, site of a Pakeha-planned and never built coast-to-coast canal and of the harbour-to-harbour ghost-tram, no longer running except in the head of an elderly writer, late in the night, remembering at his laptop. In a virtuoso performance, C K Stead wonderfully illuminates 23 years of his time and his place.

ISBN 1869404548   Pages 360 ISBN13 9781869404543 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 525 Publisher Auckland University Press   Published in Auckland Imprint Auckland University Press   Height (mm) 218 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 150 Publication date 01 May 2010   Spine width (mm) 28 DEWEY 823.914   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC23

		Foreword
I		CLOSE TO THE SKY
1		Tamaki of Many Lovers, and Jack		3
2		Digging for Victory		17
3		Tusitala to Standard Two		29
4		Two and Two Halves to Town		47
5		With the Tongues of Men and of Angels		62
6		Karlson the Recorder		75
7		A Real Pig Islander		85
8		A Short History of Things that Didn't Happen		105
II		Their Secret Ways
9		Lived by History		127
10		Two Ducks on a Pond and a Life Inscription		143
11		The New Affluence, and Poetry		158
12		Les, Herbie and Hedgie, Barry, Jean and Vida		169
13		Goodbye Labour and Goodbye Jean		187
14		A Marriage, a Death, a Birth, and the Hall of Distinction		203
III		From Far Dark Worlds
15		151 Days and a Generic for Hemlock		223
16		Pains of Love and War		244
17		The Queen and Some Other Young Women		260
18		The Purple Tie, the Wee Narcissus, and the Wedding		280
19		Annus Mirabilis ... and so on		292
20		Frank and Janet and Karl and Kay		309
21		All Visitors Ashore		327

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