JAMES COURAGE, QUEER SON OF THE CANTERBURY GENTRY

I’ve just begun reading the new book, James Courage Diaries, edited by Chris Brickell and recently published by Otago University Press. I’ll post more about it later, but already I’m deeply involved. Actually I’ve felt deeply involved with James Courage ever since 1973 when I first read Such Separate Creatures, a collection of his short stories edited by Charles Brasch and puI’ve just begun reading the new book, James Courage Diaries, edited by Chris Brickell and recently published by Otago University Press. I’ll post more about it later, but already I’m deeply involved. Actually I’ve felt deeply involved with James Courage ever since 1973 when I first read Such Separate Creatures, a collection of his short stories edited by Charles Brasch and published by Caxton Press. After reading the collection I went out of my way to find his novels and read them one after another. A mixed bag. Yet they all had something to say to me about myself and the world in which I found myself living – and writing – the Canterbury Plains, Christchurch, sheep, straight streets, flat paddocks, straight plantations, inhibition, secrecy, sodomy, snobbery.

​Stevan Eldred-Grigg