Who says that modern life is rubbish? This morning on Facebook came the news that the Close Readers’ album Group Hug, previewed here in March, has at last been released. You can buy a download for $US5, or the CD which comes with a free FLAC or 320k MP3 download for $US15. In our money that’s a shade over $18. No-brainer. So five minutes later I was listening to the download while waiting for the postie.
I like it. It has twang, loadsa twang, and also a whole song called “Iris DeMent”, after one of my favourite country singers. All songs were written by Wellington novelist Damien Wilkins, whom I assume is the singer and twanger. Until the postie comes with the CD I won’t know who else is playing on it, but whoever it is they make a nice noise.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
What I’m reading
Chad Taylor is back blogging at Chad Taylor Marginalia. He is also available as an e-book of three short stories, Here She Comes Now, which I recommend. Not because it’s dazzlingly cheap ($US1.99) but because it’s dazzlingly good. I don’t have an e-book reader either but you can read these things on your computer. It took me not much more than a minute to figure out what to do, download the tiny Kindle for PC software from Amazon and the tiny e-book file and start reading.
So now I have Chad’s book, Chris Bell’s The Vale of Health and the freebies of Pride and Prejudice, Treasure Island and Aesop’s Fables, all of which are nice to have. It’s a start in this brave new e-book world.
Al Brown blogs about his an hour and a half of terror with AA Gill at the Auckland Writers’ and Reader’s Festival. Sounds worse than my measly hour of terror with Vincent O’Sullivan.
I’m often rude about innumeracy in the MSM so all hail Listener columnist Toby Manhire who is properly sceptical about the alleged figure of two billion viewers for the royal wedding – not in the magazine itself but on its vastly improved website. He concludes:
I’ve just learned that RNZ’s Mediawatch programme ran an item on a similar theme, including an amusing snippet from the TV3 coverage of the wedding, in which the global viewership is estimated to be “heaps, mate”.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Bob Dylan sentence of the day
The great Martin Carthy on what to buy Bob Dylan for a 70th birthday present:
I’d get him a piano and a samurai sword to keep him warm in the winter – when he came to London in 1962 he used a samurai sword to help me chop up a piano to keep us warm while we had a cup of tea after a gig.Come to think of it, isn’t Martin the perfect name for a folk guitarist.
Everything but the kitchen sink
This is our kitchen bench in the morning. Special effects are provided by the sun and a row of beautiful Garry Nash water glasses, a wedding present from Kevin and Caroline Ireland, lined up on the windowsill.
We make our own fun here in the Waikato.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
An hour of terror with Vincent O’Sullivan
As promised, a report on what I saw at this year’s Auckland Writers’ and Readers’ Festival 2011. Or, as I call it, the Auckland Writhers’ and Reelers’ Festival.
Where to start? With me, obviously. I arrived late Friday morning and barely had time for a four-hour lunch with Vincent O’Sullivan, Peter Bland, Graeme Lay, Bernard Brown (my old law professor), Mike Mitchell (a visitor from Rarotonga) and AUP poet Sonja Yelich before retiring to my hotel room (the Langham – totally excellent) to finish preparing for my hour-long session with Vincent the next day. I’d already spent most of the week on this, which entailed me interviewing the Greatest Living NZ Writer on stage for an hour, so there was a bit of pressure. He didn’t want to talk about his novels, short stories, plays, libretti, biographies, essays, editing Mansfield’s letters – just the poetry. Ri-ight. So there was a lot of pressure.
Finished prepping. Then at 9:30 after the big AA Gill event in the big room at the Aotea Centre there was a small party – hardly any writers but there were some friends, some acquaintances and the Mega-Rich Major Sponsor of the festival I like a lot because he swears even more than I do.
Saturday morning at 11:30 began the hour of terror with Vincent. He wasn’t nervous at all but Christ I was. Still, we got through it, with me asking random impertinent questions and him batting them away magisterially. A friend had suggested I should ask him why his poems don’t rhyme – but they do, surprisingly often. Apart from all the internal rhymes everywhere, one poem in the new poetry collection, The Movie May Be Slightly Different (VUP, highly recommended), has a strict abba rhyme scheme in every stanza. Well, you can’t go wrong with Abba, can you? So we got talking about his collaborations with the great Wellington composer Ross Harris who is, like me, an Abba fan.
The rest of it is a blur, apart from the bit where I revealed that Vincent is a goth icon because of a song he wrote in his student years called “Graveyard Rock”, which a female goth wants to re-record. I’d buy that.
Then lunch – when in Auckland, do as the Aucklanders do – with Vincent, Geoff Walker, who published Vincent’s novels Let the River Stand and Believers to the Bright Coast (I forgot to say this in the session, but for my money these are two of the greatest NZ novels ever), and festival board chair Sarah Sandley, who must be the only magazine publisher in the world to have a PhD in NZ literature.
That afternoon was a bloggers’ drinks with the old NZBC crew plus Paul Litterick from the Fundy Post, while my wife attended serious literary sessions, followed by dinner at Hanoi with my BFF (best foodie friend).
And then at a bar in Karangahape Road there was the real party for just the writers. It was great. Loads of people from Wellington and elsewhere I only get to see at the festival, more than I could manage to talk to. I also met a nice Dutch publisher who is interested in our crime writers with a view to translation and I was able to tell him that one of my favourite crime writers is Dutch. Janwillem van der Wetering, since you ask.
Sunday was coffee in Mt Albert with Dunedin crime writer Paddy Richardson, whose last three novels I edited (which means I got to read them before anyone else – I’m a huge fan so this was a real treat). Paddy currently has the residency at Monte Cecilia, the beautiful old former nunnery that houses much of James Wallace’s art collection. She showed us through the fellow’s flat which is spectacular, flasher even than the Sargeson flat, with fabulous views in all directions. Over the writing desk is a James Ross painting from his 1977 series of self-portraits. Spookily, I have another from that series (Hand to Mouth No 1) over my writing desk.
Then back into town lunch with Madhur Jaffrey, Lauraine Jacobs and a couple of hundred others. The English-born chap on my left turned out to be best friends with the vicar who ran our latest family funeral here in Cambridge. The Australian-born couple to my wife’s right live in Fiji when not in NZ and are best friends with her Fijian friend who lives in north Yorkshire. There are only ever two degrees of separation.
Later, IIML tweeted:
UPDATE
Graeme Lay adds:
Where to start? With me, obviously. I arrived late Friday morning and barely had time for a four-hour lunch with Vincent O’Sullivan, Peter Bland, Graeme Lay, Bernard Brown (my old law professor), Mike Mitchell (a visitor from Rarotonga) and AUP poet Sonja Yelich before retiring to my hotel room (the Langham – totally excellent) to finish preparing for my hour-long session with Vincent the next day. I’d already spent most of the week on this, which entailed me interviewing the Greatest Living NZ Writer on stage for an hour, so there was a bit of pressure. He didn’t want to talk about his novels, short stories, plays, libretti, biographies, essays, editing Mansfield’s letters – just the poetry. Ri-ight. So there was a lot of pressure.
Finished prepping. Then at 9:30 after the big AA Gill event in the big room at the Aotea Centre there was a small party – hardly any writers but there were some friends, some acquaintances and the Mega-Rich Major Sponsor of the festival I like a lot because he swears even more than I do.
Saturday morning at 11:30 began the hour of terror with Vincent. He wasn’t nervous at all but Christ I was. Still, we got through it, with me asking random impertinent questions and him batting them away magisterially. A friend had suggested I should ask him why his poems don’t rhyme – but they do, surprisingly often. Apart from all the internal rhymes everywhere, one poem in the new poetry collection, The Movie May Be Slightly Different (VUP, highly recommended), has a strict abba rhyme scheme in every stanza. Well, you can’t go wrong with Abba, can you? So we got talking about his collaborations with the great Wellington composer Ross Harris who is, like me, an Abba fan.
The rest of it is a blur, apart from the bit where I revealed that Vincent is a goth icon because of a song he wrote in his student years called “Graveyard Rock”, which a female goth wants to re-record. I’d buy that.
Then lunch – when in Auckland, do as the Aucklanders do – with Vincent, Geoff Walker, who published Vincent’s novels Let the River Stand and Believers to the Bright Coast (I forgot to say this in the session, but for my money these are two of the greatest NZ novels ever), and festival board chair Sarah Sandley, who must be the only magazine publisher in the world to have a PhD in NZ literature.
That afternoon was a bloggers’ drinks with the old NZBC crew plus Paul Litterick from the Fundy Post, while my wife attended serious literary sessions, followed by dinner at Hanoi with my BFF (best foodie friend).
And then at a bar in Karangahape Road there was the real party for just the writers. It was great. Loads of people from Wellington and elsewhere I only get to see at the festival, more than I could manage to talk to. I also met a nice Dutch publisher who is interested in our crime writers with a view to translation and I was able to tell him that one of my favourite crime writers is Dutch. Janwillem van der Wetering, since you ask.
Sunday was coffee in Mt Albert with Dunedin crime writer Paddy Richardson, whose last three novels I edited (which means I got to read them before anyone else – I’m a huge fan so this was a real treat). Paddy currently has the residency at Monte Cecilia, the beautiful old former nunnery that houses much of James Wallace’s art collection. She showed us through the fellow’s flat which is spectacular, flasher even than the Sargeson flat, with fabulous views in all directions. Over the writing desk is a James Ross painting from his 1977 series of self-portraits. Spookily, I have another from that series (Hand to Mouth No 1) over my writing desk.
Then back into town lunch with Madhur Jaffrey, Lauraine Jacobs and a couple of hundred others. The English-born chap on my left turned out to be best friends with the vicar who ran our latest family funeral here in Cambridge. The Australian-born couple to my wife’s right live in Fiji when not in NZ and are best friends with her Fijian friend who lives in north Yorkshire. There are only ever two degrees of separation.
Later, IIML tweeted:
Great Vincent O’Sullivan session – full of fine & sometimes wicked aphorisms.After the session there was a long queue of people who had bought Vincent’s new poetry collection, The Movie May Be Slightly Different (VUP, highly recommended), wanting him to sign it. Job done.
UPDATE
Graeme Lay adds:
A close friend of Vincent’s, poet and academic Ken Arvidson of Hamilton, attended the session. This was to be Ken’s last public appearance, as he died one week later. A respected poet and teacher at the Universities of Auckland and the Waikato, Ken was 72.More on Ken Arvidson here. If the Waikato Times runs an obituary, I’ll link to it when it does.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Unfortunate phrasing
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on Philip Roth winning the Man Booker International award:
Callil says:
I can’t quickly find an online reference to prove it but my memory is that when Peter Jackson’s Braindead won best film, best director and best screenplay in the NZ Film and Television Awards in 1993, two judges – step forward, Albert Wendt and John Cranna – went public with their objections to Jackson winning. Again from memory this was on the grounds that Jackson’s film didn’t show New Zealand culture in a good light and he wasn’t the sort of artist they could support. An unkind person might ask, where are they now and where is Jackson?
The 78-year-old author of “Portnoy’s Complaint” beat off competition from 12 other writers — including two from China — for the 60,000 pound ($97,500) award.There is a fuller report in the Daily Telegraph. The judges were Rick Gekoski, who was one of the big hits of last year’s Auckland Readers’ and Writers’ Festival and is a top bloke (he is married to my old friend Belinda Kitchin who runs Kiwifruits, the shop in the Royal Opera Arcade behind NZ House in London); novelist Justin Cartwright; and Virago publisher Carmen Callil, who resigned from the panel rather than have her name associated with the decision.
Callil says:
I’ve judged many prizes before and I’ve rarely had my own favourite. We should have discussed everything more but Philip Roth came out like a thunderbolt, and I was too surprised. We took a couple of days to brood, and then I spoke to Justin and said I thought I should give in, if I didn’t have to have anything to do with the winner. So I said I didn’t want my name attached to it, and retired. You can’t be asked to judge, and then not judge.I’ve judged many prizes too and I think her behaviour is appalling (Toby Young comments here). You win some, you lose some, but it’s like being in the Cabinet – you publicly support the decision whatever your private thoughts. If you couldn’t do that, you shouldn’t have agreed to be a judge in the first place.
I can’t quickly find an online reference to prove it but my memory is that when Peter Jackson’s Braindead won best film, best director and best screenplay in the NZ Film and Television Awards in 1993, two judges – step forward, Albert Wendt and John Cranna – went public with their objections to Jackson winning. Again from memory this was on the grounds that Jackson’s film didn’t show New Zealand culture in a good light and he wasn’t the sort of artist they could support. An unkind person might ask, where are they now and where is Jackson?
In praise of: Hilary Barry
She is one of the funniest people I know. Yesterday on Facebook:
So, Mr Schwarzenegger fathered a child with a member of his household staff. Most of us just call that having kids.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sentence of the day
When the battery of his hearing aid failed during our lunch, he yanked the earpiece from his ear, looked at it sternly, and said: “F— you.”From a great piece in the Weekly Standard about playwright David Mamet’s shift from left to right.
Absent without leave
Still recovering from the Auckland Writers’ and Readers’ Festival at the weekend. Full report soonest.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
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