MACKENZIE’S PROGRESS

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33804, 29 March 1975, Page 10

MACKENZIE’S PROGRESS

Mackenzie. By James McNeish. Penguin Books. 384 pp. N.Z. price $2.95. History, legend, myth or imagination? These are the questions that crowd in on any consideration of McNeish’s remarkable novel of James Mackenzie, the legendary figure of the South Canterbury hinterland which bears his name. First published in 1970 amid a welter of publicity, the novel proved to be something of an enigma: and on second reading in this paperback edition it remains equally baffling. Yet it demands attention. Perhaps it was for this reason that Penguin chose it as the first of a number of New Zealand titles it clans to publish, a policy that will be widely appreciated. McNeish did not really succeed with “Mackenzie.” Those who expected an elucidation of the legend of Mackenzie, the Scottish drover, whose sheepstealing with his equally legendary dog. led to the discovery of the Mackenzie country in 1855, felt cheated. They should not have. For McNeish carfully explained that of the legend of Mackenzie, whose fate has never been satisfactorily explained, he had kept only the name. The other people in the story were fictitious. Fictitious it certainly is. Yet in widening the canvas, McNeish was compelled to sketch in the historical background; and the first section, “The Station,” is of absorbing interest. Even readers with only a superficial knowlege of Canterbury history are drawn into the tensions' between the squatters and the townspeople of early Christchurch, the hunger for land, life on the stations, the squalor of the town, and the greed of some of its citizens. “Fear God, lend at 12 per cent, and disinherit the natives” was the advice of one of their leaders.

The section is peopled with !• ; characters — Superintendent Matt . r a Whitehouse (should this r ad “Moorhouse”?). Stoddart, editor of the “Gazette” (“Lyttelton Times’’?). Donald Hay, carving a vast sheep station in the back country, and Amos Polson, generous and liberal-minded, and his daughter. Frances, a sort of spiritual intermediary between these people and Mackenzie. Polson needs additional land for his Merinos, but his real purpose in sending Mackenzie to seek out the plateau in the mountains is to provide a permanent enclave for he Maoris as they are dispossessed of their land It is ironic that his discovery should lead only to the spread of the sheep stations. ‘The Journey.” the second part of the book, is quite different. Mackenzie’s journey becomes a sort of symbolic quest, even a Pilgrim's Progress, to the tree of life on the vast plateau. Whether it is symbolic of nature, God or the universe is not clear, but Mackenzie finds in it a spiritual renewal. No one will believe his story and he returns to find the tree dying. Like a lover, Mackenzie offers himself to the tree, is drawn into its final embrace and taken without trace into the primal source Clearly this strange and puzzling book is not for the faint-hearted. It demands close attention and a free reign to the imagination and even then conceals as much as it reveals. But if. like the legend of Mackenzie, the end remains wrapped in mystery, there is much to injoy and appreciate along the way. Featured on the front of this edition is a detail from the painting “Mackenzie and the Judge” by the Canterbury artist, Trevor Moffitt.