Sadly, Gisborne artist, teacher, scholar and writer Norman Maclean passed away before the release of his young adult read, Gobby — but it is hard not to see something of the author in the novel’s main character, Sam.
Sam is a talented, aspiring schoolboy artist forever shown up by his droop-lipped, owl-eyed, filter-free, seemingly clueless, but high-achiever, brother Gobby. Maclean’s novel centres on how schoolboy Sam navigates life events, the choppy waters of burgeoning romance, and how he and his younger brother come to terms with each other.
“The book is probably a little autobiographical,” says Maclean’s sister, Coralie Hunter. “Norman hated high school. He hated science and maths. All he wanted to do is draw.”
Sam seems to feel the same way. “Just then the bell rang so we had to head off for an hour of brain damage in maths”, he says.
Gobby, on the other hand, loves school and seems to excel with ease.
Art was generally not seen as a serious subject at the time Maclean attended high school, but like Sam and his art teacher in Gobby, Maclean was encouraged to follow his vocation by the late Graeme Mudge. Mudge’s Gisborne Hospital, Planet Sunshine children’s ward mural even gets a passing mention in the book.
“I became that weird, floppy-haired, arty, Year Ten kid,” says Sam. “I had an even weirder brother.”
Sam has a philosophical, even spiritual, bent that sometimes seems beyond his years. But the 1970s, the era in which Norman Maclean as a young man taught at Gisborne Boys’ High School, was also the era of UFO sightings over Waimatā Valley, and of alternative spiritual paths as explored in fiction by authors popular at the time such as Carlos Castaneda and Herman Hesse.
Maclean encouraged his students to be inquisitive, said advertising creative Philip Andrew at Maclean’s funeral service last year.
“We talked about history, the classics, the Greeks, the Romans, ancient civilisations, politics, theatre, books, films, religion, comedy, spirituality, the universe and other dimensions, UFOs, the supernatural, the paranormal – always he talked of possibilities.”
Gobby is cast more in the figure of the Jungian archetype, the Trickster, an apparent simpleton, an “ape of God”, with a fondness for sly jokes and mean pranks. (Sam even muses on psychoanalytic theory pioneer Carl Jung’s philosophy in one turbulent scene in the book.)
Sam’s “even weirder brother” though catalyses Sam’s belief in himself as an artist and the two siblings are ultimately reconciled.
“I keep thinking how strange it is that so much good stuff comes out of things turning bad,” muses Sam and Gobby’s dad towards the end of the story.
“Amazing how things work out.”