'Everything she did just oozes greatness': Craig Cliff on Janet Frame and the case for a UBI

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: author of Offshore Service and Other Stories, Craig Cliff.

The book I wish I'd written

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann. It’s a mix of short stories and a novella, and it starts you on one path with apparently connected stories, and then the novella turns everything on its head. It’s the most visceral reaction I’ve ever had when reading a book – gut-punched as a son and a human being; in awe as a writer.

Vann’s career since has been weird – rehashing the same territory and publishing his last three books only in French. But there’s a new novel in English promised next year, so we’ll see if he breaks new ground.

The book everyone should read

The Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith because it's one of the great achievements in 21st century literature. Smith was essentially writing and responding to Brexit, climate breakdown and later the pandemic in real time, publishing one instalment a year. Each season contains multitudes, Smith zigs and zigs, but it all coheres. Incredible.

The book I want to be buried with

Cremation is the norm in my family and I don’t believe in burning books, lol. I’d much prefer it if my loved ones created a little shrine along a bush walk somewhere and included some books in it. They could start with Moby Dick, which has sustained me intellectually and imaginatively thus far in life. (It plays a huge part of the opening story in my new collection, too.)

The first book I remember reading by myself

It would have been a Little Golden Book, possibly The Poky Little Puppy? My mum gave me the whole stash from my childhood when I became a parent and the one I can still recite by heart is Donald Duck and the One Bear. On the one hand it’s a troubling portent for the current legacy IP-obsessed state of mainstream media, but it also tickles my writer brain the way it takes a familiar story (Goldilocks and the Three Bears) and subverts it at every turn. And it has plenty of scope for silly voices.

It’s a crime against language to…

It’s gotta be the construction “like so many X”. 

“The stars sparkled like so many diamonds.” “The men scrambled across the cliff like so many spiders.” Ugh. No one talks like that. It just screams Creative Writing.

The book that made me laugh

It’s at least 20 years since I first read Pastoralia by George Saunders but just thinking about it still makes me smile. I have to admit that Saunders’ novels don’t do it for me, but his short stories are frequently hilarious in an awkward-on-purpose way that is just so hard to pull off.

The book I never admit I’ve read

The good thing about being a writer is that you can read anything and claim it was research. I listened to the audiobook of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (not wanting to be caught on the bus reading the physical book) when I was trying to write a young male character falling under the sway of right wing manosphere nonsense. There’s certainly an ick factor with Peterson, but my prevailing memory is how reedy and facile it was.

If I could only read three books for the rest of my life they would be

I’d choose short story collections to get the most variety. I wouldn’t choose big “Collected Stories” either, no matter how great Cheever, Chekhov and Flannery O’Connor are, because that feels like cheating. And there’s something magical about a well-constructed single collection that captures a writer in a particular phase of their career. So let’s go for: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore, Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard, and The Lynx Hunter by Owen Marshall.

The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV

I’d love to see a feature film adaptation of Walter M. Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), which is about civilisation rebuilding itself, and literacy re-emerging, after a nuclear apocalypse. I feel like it would have fresh resonance given how large AI looms over us and the environment.

And while we’re talking Sci-Fi epics, it’s crazy to me we haven’t yet had a TV series adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves or Termination Shock. They’re both great examples of hard science fiction. A bit like Andy Weir (The Martian, Project Hail Mary), but with way more going on. You’d need at least 10 hours to do one justice.

The most underrated book

Jujitsu for Christ by Jack Butler (1986) is a book not enough people have heard of, let alone read. According to WorldCat, there are only six copies in libraries in Aotearoa (all of them tertiary institutions; none in Te Waipounamu). It’s set in Mississippi during the civil rights era and manages to balance humour, humanity and experimentation.

Greatest New Zealand writer

Everything Janet Frame did just oozes greatness. There are a lot of contemporary writers who have greatness in them, but it can be hard to keep a career in orbit, let alone achieve escape velocity like Frame did, with the level of support artists and writers receive currently in Aotearoa. Money’s important (UBI, anyone?), but so is encouragement. If only all those AI-generated emails targeting writers’ vanity were genuine.

Best place to read

Nothing can beat reading poetry collections in the window seat of my wife’s cousin’s crib in Aparima. But I’m also a big fan of pairing audiobooks and gardening.

What I'm reading right now

I’m about to start Meg Mason’s latest, Sophie, Standing There. I loved Sorrow and Bliss. It’s probably one of the best three New Zealand books I’ve read in the last 10 years (shout outs also to She’s A Killer by Kirsten McDougall and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton). 

I’m also reading an advanced copy of Laurence Fearnley’s new novel, Dedication, which is fab so far.

Offshore Service and Other Stories by Craig Cliff (Otago University Press) is available to purchase at Unity Books.