What I’m reading

Gogol. No, really. For both work and pleasure. My copy of “The Overcoat” went in the Great Book Robbery of 1998, so hooray for Project Gutenberg.

Chad Taylor on technology and the curse of “upgrades”. Money quote:

I don’t need the web to find out what I already know. If it’s online I'm grown-up enough to look at it. I want my laptop to work like a typewriter and my phone to work like a phone and my camera to have shutter speed and aperture and focus: if I need to get closer to the subject I can walk there. I would just like things to function. And I would like to not be thinking about this. The only reason I am is that there’s writing I need to get done. Whatever happened to welcome distractions?

 Nicholas Reid has a good go at Frank Sargeson. It’s up close and personal.

Questions we can answer: Are Govt spin doctors writing Stuff’s headlines? No. But how refreshing to see Fairfax newspapers accused of being right-wing and in the thrall of the Nats: roll over Rod Oram and tell Anthony Hubbard the news. Perhaps if those on the right think that Fairfax writers are all lefties, and those on the left think they are all righties, they may be, on balance, balanced. Well, not Michael Laws, obviously.

The little mermouse.

Editor-speak. 

Finally, via Word magazine, proof that Marcel Proust invented air guitar 120 years ago. The photographer is unknown; the caption here reads, “Marcel Proust et ses amis au tennis du boulevard Bineau (au centre Jeanne Pouquet), 1892”:

Fisking NBR on Emily Perkins

In the 4 May issue of National Business Review, David Cohen writes about speculation that Emily Perkins’ new novel The Forrests may be a contender for the 2012 Man Booker prize. The piece is not online, because NBR’s owner Barry Colman is not silly, so here it is:

“Kiwi author in Booker prize buzz” screamed a Fairfax headline the other day. It was referring to the New Zealand author Emily Perkins being tipped to win this year’s Man Booker prize, which along with the Pulitzer prize is considered to be the English-speaking world’s most prestigious literary award, for a new book, The Forrests.

The latest issue of Metro puts the same suggestion more amusingly in its regular 20 Questions, asking if the [sic] tipping Ms Perkins for the prize is the equivalent of having the bone people pointed at you – but then the magazine lets itself down somewhat by a subsequent piece proclaiming that the book should indeed be considered for a Man Booker. [. . .]

The Fairfax piece quotes the New Zealand Book Council’s chief execu­tive Noel Murphy as saying that the organisers of a hitherto unknown festival in Wales had liked the book so much that it was now consid­ered a hot favourite to win the Man Booker.

Both Fairfax and the other media have overlooked a couple of rather important facts: virtually nobody here or abroad had seen or read the book until this past week, and no reputable media outlet outside this country has yet to pick up on the shoo-in-for-the-Booker buzz story.

Ms Perkins is, however, extreme­ly photogenic, and what’s more, she will be appearing at three events at this month’s Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

What odds would Sky City offer on the wager that the talented and well-regarded authoress will almost certainly not win this year’s Man Booker prize, now even make the shortlist, and that this latest blaze of publicity might possibly have nothing more to it than a pitch to sell additional tickets for her com­ing gigs?

Very long odds, I’d say, re the ticket-selling. Let’s look at the source material. The Fairfax story begins:

New Zealand author Emily Perkins has been tipped to win this year’s Man Booker prize.

While the longlist for the Man Booker – considered the world’s most prestigious literary award – is not announced till July, the Welsh-based Hay Festival this week tipped Perkins’ soon-to-be-released book The Forrests to win.

New Zealand Book Council chief executive Noel Murphy said the Hay Festival was a major festival.

 He believed Perkins had a good chance of winning. “People I know have read it and raved about it.”

The Metro review concludes:

Already, influential British types are talking about this as a Booker winner. If there’s justice in the book prize world, which there often isn’t, it will be in the running.

The “British types” must be the people at what Cohen calls the “hitherto-unknown festival in Wales”. I spent only a few days in Wales but that was long enough to learn never to refer to anyone from Wales as British. More to the point, the festival in question, at Hay-on-Wye, is quite famous, as Noel Murphy says above. One could almost call it world-famous, possibly one of the most famous in the world. It has been running for 25 years, is sponsored by the Daily Telegraph, and comedian Bill Bailey had Muriel Spark as his opening act. The programme note for Emily Perkins’ session there on 10 June – next month – reads:

The Forrests is our tip for this year’s Man Booker – a New Zealand novel that sings with colour and memory; that speaks of family and time, dysfunction, ageing and loneliness, about heat, youth, and how life can change if ‘you're lucky enough to be around for it’.

I’m sure the writer of the programme note thought he or she was being nice, like Metro’s reviewer, but it is silly to the max to predict how the judges will respond to any book, especially in this case when the Booker longlist will not be announced until July. (Disclosure: I am on a panel discussing book awards at the Auckland Writers’ and Readers’ Festival next Sunday.) Worse, this building up of expectations is very hard on authors: their lives are hard enough already.

As for “virtually nobody here or abroad had seen or read the book until this past week”, the organisers of the Hay and Auckland festivals will certainly have read it – advance copies of potential best-sellers circulate around the industry long before publication. Even humble provincial types like me see them.

And as for the “this latest blaze of publicity might possibly [be] a pitch to sell additional tickets for her coming gigs” at the Auckland festival – this is highly unlikely. The stories quoted above were published by Fairfax and ACP, which have nothing to do with the festival – it is sponsored by rival media company APN. 

Is one having fun yet?

Or, let’s party like it’s 1999. To illustrate its February round up of books published to mark Queen Elizabeth’s jubilee, the Literary Review published the above photo of the Queen holding hands with Tony Blair who is holding hands with Cherie Blair, plus a cast of thousands, at the Millennium Dome, all singing “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight, 31 December 1999/1 January 2000. 

From the expression on her face (click on the image for a bigger version) this was perhaps not one of the highlights of the Queen’s long reign.

So here is the Divine Comedy with Noël Coward’s “I’ve Been to a Marvellous Party”:

Spy vs spy

I am looking forward to meeting Dame Stella Rimington next weekend. Not often one gets to meet a famous spy. She was the head of MI5 and since resigning has had a successful career as a writer of six spy novels and was a judge of the Man Booker awards last year. She sounds a thoroughly good sort.

In today’s Sunday Star-Times Anthony Hubbard interviews her (not online) and reports that:

her manner is not nearly as severe as Dame Judi Dench’s who portrays her on-screen as M, James Bond’s boss. She admires Dench’s portrayal of her and is looking forward to meeting the actress for the first time at a “Dames’ lunch” this month.

M is the head of MI6, which is overseas skulduggery; MI5 is internal skulduggery. They are two entirely different jobs. Dame Judi does not portray Dame Stella, who was very polite not to point this out to the SST.

So here is Ray Walston with many other shirtless – and, frankly, over-muscled if you ask me – men in the 1958 movie of Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. Also includes Mitzi Gaynor. Pwhoar level for both teams: 11.

Fun fact: Ray Walston went on to star in the 1960s TV series My Favourite Martian. I liked it.

Don’t the moon look good, mama

Shinin’ through the trees?

Today’s perigee moon isn’t that big a deal, really – last year’s on 19 March was bigger because the moon was 400 km closer to the Earth. So tides will be high but not as high as last time. Last night’s moon was pretty spectactular and the moon is only a bit closer this evening. Still, it is worth a look. Until a few minutes ago, viewed from here, it was slightly obscured by clouds but then it slowly rose above them, glowing in the sunset.

So here from the 1968 Super Session album are Al Kooper (keyboards, vocals, concept), Steve Stills (guitar), Eddie Hoh (drums) and Harvey Brooks (bass):

These guys formed the first supergroup but we mustn’t hold that against them. Side One featured Mike Bloomfield on guitar; Side Two featured Stills who was roped in because Bloomfield, a troubled soul, didn’t show for the second day of recording. Yes: the entire album was done in two days with a bit of horn-section overdubbing later; it cost $13,000 to make and went to #12 on Billboard chart. Little rehearsal, results that still sound good. Take that, ProTools.

Fun fact: Harvey Brooks played bass on two Miles Davis albums, 1970’s Bitches Brew and 1974’s Big Fun as well as on Dylan’s original version of this song on 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited.

The importance of algebra

XKCD, of course.

Hipster alert

This story on Stuff is a repeater of something on the Internet, as the MSM is increasingly doing. (How many “journalists” does it take to read Mashable?) It features a hipster and mocks him, quite rightly. But the caption to the photo reads:

THE COMPLETE HIPSTER: The ultimate collection of hipster tropes in one vintage package.

Isn’t “trope” the kind of word a hipster might use?

It can’t happen here: farming edition

Zombie at PJ Media (via David Thompson) has what must be the blogpost of the month, about some idiots “occupying” a research farm run by the University of California and turning it into… well, see for yourself. In order to ruin years of scientific research intended, as the university points out, to help feed the world’s poor and starving, they bought lots of seedlings from the local equivalent of Bunnings or Mitre 10 and planted some of them. And, bafflingly, a lemon tree seedling. As Zombie says, none of the occupiers will be around to care for the tree when it begins to fruit. These are not the gardeners of Eden.

Zombie provides loads of text – much of it informative, observational reporting; the rest is sarcastic, withering comment – and photos that truly do speak louder than words. He/she quotes the idiot occupants:

On Earth Day, the land was liberated; transformed into a living, breathing space for the community to know food and stories.

 This farm embodies what we envision as an alternative to the profit-drivern educational system. With bolt-cutters, shovels, Roto-tillers and thousands of plants: we reclaim our right to shape our communities, our universities + our minds + bodies.

To anyone who has a farm – hell, to anyone who has so much as a vegetable garden – this may look a bunch of self-regarding wankers who don’t really care about farming, plants or growing food. Meanwhile, via Mick Hartley in England:

Scientists working on a new generation of genetically modified crops have sent an open letter to anti-GM protesters pleading with them not to destroy “years of work” by attacking their research plots.

The activist group, Take the Flour Back, has pledged to carry out a “decontamination” at a test site in Hertfordshire, where agricultural researchers are growing the world’s first genetically modified wheat that can repel insect pests by emitting a repellent-smelling substance.

The idea behind this research is that it may reduce the need for pesticides. But Matt Thomson from Take the Flour Back replies:

“The concerns that we have are not addressed in this letter,” he said. “The way that Rothamsted have publicised this trial has been patronising. This wheat contains genes that are not naturally occurring.”

All these First World idealists think there is something wrong with trying to feed poor people in the Third World and reduce the use of pesticides which would be not only a good thing in itself but also makes life better and safer for poor farmers in the Third World.

Are there any people as witless as this in New Zealand? You betcha.  So here again, sarcastically as ever, are Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention:

David Sylvian and Robert Fripp

“Brightness Falls”, live in 1993. Best heard on the live album Damage from David Sylvian and Robert Fripp’s all-too-brief collaboration. This clip is sadly sound only: here is a video of  “Every Colour You Are” from that tour which is probably the most appealing music and lets us watch the musicians, but I like “Brightness Falls” because it is, let’s face it, Robert Fripp from King Crimson playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady”.

The supporting cast includes Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto who would later join Fripp in King Crimson. “Dreaming” from this tour sounds more like KC than KC sometimes did. If you are a KC fan, there are more clips available. You can’t buy the album legally but you can hoover this stuff up on YouTube.

Ordinary speak and write language

Sam Leith reports on  bonkers books including Fish Who Answer The Telephone; Lady Loverley’s Chatter; The History of the Concrete Roofing-Tile and Correctly English in Hundred Days, published in 1934:

This book is prepared for the Chinese young man who wishes to served for the foreign firm. It divided nearly 190 pages. It contains full of ordinary speak and write language.

Joe Hildebrand tries to help the Australian Labor Party. Someone has to. This may sound familiar:

What we are seeing here is a government run by a political class, a team of professional politicians whose life experience is limited almost entirely to working for either the party or a trade union. [. . .] Again, there is nothing wrong with these jobs but they do not expose you to the full spectrum of political views. Indeed, in all of these positions anyone you encounter who disagrees with you is likely to be the enemy you’re fighting in the court or the parliament. This mindset still permeates today, and so the humble swinging voter who’s had enough is seen not as a disenchanted citizen who needs to be wooed back to Labor but either a dirty Lib or a victim of right-wing manipulation.

 Tom Service provides a guide to the music of Elliott Carter, still with us at 103:

If there are any composers writing more profoundly joyful, or youthful, music than the American Elliott Carter, I’ve yet to discover them. He’s the closest any of us will probably ever experience to new music’s Haydn.