Living Marxism

Review of Vincent O’Sullivan’s

Long Journey to the Border: A Life of John Mulgan

Penguin Books 2003

Introduction

John Mulgan has a big name in New Zealand. He is portrayed in the literary culture and even the popular culture as a national hero. His reputation is larger than life because of the ‘mystery’ of his death, an irony given that he must have viewed his suicide without sentimentality.

His only novel ‘Man Alone’ has been a set text in schools and universities for decades. Its hero, Johnson, stands for basic values such as toughness, self-reliance, and the independence of the ‘common man’ of action and few words. That title is taken from Hemingway’s To Have and To Have Not: “a man alone ain’t got no fucking chance”. For Mulgan it means that human freedom and democracy has to be grounded in the individual self-reliance and resilience of agricultural communities…