3 A lot of the characters in this book are Kiwi writers living alone overseas, separated or estranged from their families. Has that been your experience?
I have spent part of every year abroad since becoming a full-time writer in 1986 but the characters are not based on me. It's a compliment when people read your fiction and think, "this must have happened" but although every writer draws from their own experience, trying to work out whether something actually happened or didn't is sheer guess work and you might as well forget about it. Some of my characters have been very close to real people, like Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame in All Visitors Ashore, but even then there are strong elements of fiction.
4 Your first autobiography covered your life till the age of 23. Do you plan to write the rest?
It is my intention. I've written a couple of hundred pages but I keep getting diverted. I spent the last few months completely rewriting a novel I wrote two years ago. I thought, "It's rubbish but I mustn't waste it" so I extracted a short story that appears in this book. I'd no sooner done that when I thought, "My God, I've killed off the best character quite needlessly and there's already a very good narrative thread which I didn't use. I can now see how to make this into a good novel."
5 You have been both a writer and a critic. Do you find it hard to have your own work critiqued?
When you're young you tend to be hyper-sensitive but as I've got older I've become more detached and confident. What I think about the work is primary. I can't pretend that I'm immune to sensitivities, particularly when people write inaccurate or untrue things about me. Individual reviews count so much more in New Zealand because there are so few of them.
6 Why bother having reviews if you're happy to ignore them?
Newspaper reviews are meant to be read and forgotten. They're just an impression. Literary criticism, like in the London Review of Books, is a much more serious and considered attempt to understand and expound on what the writer has done and how well they've succeeded. I'm from the same era as Martin Amis where you felt it was incumbent on you to be absolutely honest and brave about your opinions without worrying about making enemies. You just bloody did it.
7 Have you encountered backlash for negative reviews you've written?
People expressed quite strong disapproval for what I wrote about Keri Hulme's book The Bone People. I raised the question of whether she should have won a prize for Maori writers because she had seven pakeha great-grandparents and one Maori. That still seems a rational question but I understand that isn't acceptable any longer and you have to accept the ethos of the time. I actually thought the book was a work of genius and Keri was a brilliant writer with a rare kind of immediacy but there was a degree of violence against the child that I thought went beyond representation to the point the author was participating in it.
8 What about your review of Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize winner in the Financial Times?
I thought [The Luminaries] was extraordinarily clever and I'm sure she has a great future but it was not for me. It was over-elaborate costume drama - essentially a pastiche of a Victorian novel. That was an absolutely genuine and legitimate [personal] reaction. We met once afterwards at a festival in Canada and had quite a friendly exchange. I said to her, "Well I did say that your novel was equal to Australia's two-time Booker Prize winner, Peter Carey's."
9 Are prizes like the Booker worthwhile?
Literary prizes are wonderful if you win them, otherwise they're a distraction and a nuisance because they skew the market. When Eleanor won, thousands of people bought her book who thought they ought to but subsequently admitted they didn't finish it. On the other hand these prizes create a lot of publicity for books which is good for the trade. I do think they've gone crazy by including Americans. I can't believe the judges read every word of the 120-odd books in just a few months as it is.
10 Do you have an early memory of writing?
I discovered poetry while I was at Mt Albert Grammar. I began with Rupert Brook - not the best poet ever but not a bad one to begin with. I began to try writing it but very much in secret. It was not something you'd talk about to your fellows. It seemed such an un-masculine thing to do, which sounds idiotic now. It was my secret vice until I got to university and found other young poets and we formed a group.
11 You became a Professor at the University of Auckland at the young age of 34. Are you a competitive person?
I am. Universities are very competitive. I discovered after my colleague Bill Pearson died that he'd deeply resented my being promoted above him and Allen Curnow but everyone was applying for promotions all the time. I got it because I published an internationally successful critical book, The New Poetic, which sold over 100,000 copies and influenced the way modern poetry is looked at.
12 You're now an 84-year old grandfather-of-seven. How did fatherhood change you?
It's very good for you because you can't ever again be so egotistical. I was a rather shy and insecure young man but ego-centred in the way the young are. Once you have children your anxieties and concerns are focused outside yourself and that's something that you're better for.
• C.K. Stead, The Name on the Door is Not Mine, Allen & Unwin, RRP $36.99
