What is wrong with this picture?

I can’t quite put my finger on it. But the concept of Four-Footed Lovers seems a bit – how can one put it? – Taranaki.

The book was written by Frank Albertsen, illustrated by Lizbeth Bullock Humphrey and published in 1875 by Lee & Shepard, among whose other authors was the magnificently monikered Levina Buoncuore Urbino. The publisher was based in Boston and the imprint survives as part of HarperCollins. After that, you are on your own.

Ralph Hotere i.m.

Anyone with even the faintest interest in NZ art should see the Listener’s tribute page to the late Ralph Hotere. It is a wonderful thing in itself, and also a stunning example of how old media can use the internet to do something of value so quickly and so well. No one other than the Listener would or could have done this. Congratulations to editor Pamela Stirling and arts editor Guy Somerset.

Adventures in the book trade #5

Today in Wellington the board of Booksellers NZ is meeting to discuss the future, or at least as much of it as they may be able to discern, maybe three or four years’ worth. While some publishers and booksellers are doing well, overall it is a gloomy time for the industry.  So I bought a book today – Donna Malane’s NZ crime novel My Brother’s Keeper, because I liked her Pindar Publishing Prize-winning debut Surrender – but not many other people are doing the same.  

A straw in the wind is a story by Jenna Lynch in yesterday’s Waikato Times, headlined “Bennetts Books given heave-ho”. It begins:

After 20 years of providing Wintec students with textbooks, Bennetts bookstore has been given the shove to make way for an administration area for staff.

But while Wintec bosses say more students buying books online means they don’t need a bookstore on cam­pus, the shop’s owner says students still need the shop and Wintec is making a big mistake and students will have to cross town to the uni­versity branch to buy texts.

After Bennetts was moved from their permanent site in November last year, Wintec offered them a pop-­up shop to be run in the library until March 15.

Wintec spokeswoman Erin Ander­sen said more students were flock­ing online to buy their textbooks, and this was considered when deter­mining if an on-campus textbook supplier was needed.

“We believe the temporary store at the peak times at the start of each semester was an arrangement which best suited our students’ needs,” she said.

But Bennetts’ Wintec store man­ager Joy Leet said running the pop-­up store with very little resources, including a lack of communication facilities, was not feasible.

Ms Leet said without access to computers or phones, they could not adequately help students in the pop­up shop, so last week they packed up and left.

What will replace the bookshop? A Wintec spokesman said, “At this stage, the most likely option is for it to be fitted out as a café.”

So here is Leonard Cohen in the 90s with “The Future”:

Mourning

Today is the second anniversary of my father’s death. My friends Gary Verberne and Jane West gave me a bottle of very good whisky for my last birthday and later tonight I will pour a glass and toast my father. He was a good man. Born in Piopio on 29 August 1923, died in Tauranga on 26 February 2011. He went at the right time for him but it’s still a bugger.

Traveller’s tales

I spent last Thursday in Auckland with the five other members of the board of Copyright Licensing New Zealand, our CEO and a guy called Henri who spent seven and a half hours trying to teach us how a board should work, what our responsibilities were to the organisation and what to the shareholders, a whole bunch of other stuff. He was fantastic. Always good to learn new things, and governance is something that I have never really understood before – I wish I had known all this at Quote Unquote and the Auckland Writers’ Festival, and also when I was involved with the NZ Society of Authors and the Sargeson Trust. Those days are over, happily. But seven and half hours in a small room with no open windows and seven other people is an introvert’s nightmare.

Afterwards I went for dinner with Vanda Symon, my author friend on the board, to Hanoi, the Vietnamese restaurant in the Britomart precinct. When I was editor of Architecture NZ we published the masterplan of the precinct when it was just a gleam in Jasmax’s eye, so it’s a real pleasure to go there and see the place humming. I’d been to Hanoi once before with a friend who helped set it up, and Vietnamese food was exactly what I needed. Upstairs was as buzzy as my favourite Auckland diner, Coco’s Cantina (the Les Deux Magots of K Road), and on another day that buzziness is what I would have wanted but – traveller’s tip! – there is a smaller room downstairs, maybe two tables for four and four tables for two, where one can have a quieter time and gossip. So we did.  

Another traveller’s tip: we stayed at the Mercure hotel, corner of Queen and Customs Streets, which used to be all sorts of other names. I remember it as the South Pacific in the 70s. It was great then – there was a very louche bar in the basement – but it’s better now. I had a large room with a harbour view, there were helpful staff (we’re talking Russian babes) on the desk, there is still that bar on the top floor – they don’t call it the 13th floor, though it is – with glorious views out over city and harbour, and Unity Books is a five-minute walk away. Totally recommend it for business travellers.

An actor writes

A friend has a role in a TV programme being shot in Australia.  Excellent. On the other hand, he emails:

It should be fun but most of it I think will involve sitting on a horse looking concerned.

Every time I sit on a horse I look concerned When the horse moves, I look terrified. And I am not acting.

Cheese of the year

Blessed be the cheesemakers. This cheese, “Tilly”, bought this morning at the Cambridge farmers’ market, is from Cloudy Mountain, aka Cathy and Pete who live and work in Pirongia. Best-before date is 11 March. There is no show it will last that long. 

When Ten was a baby we went down to Wellington for a friend’s 50th dinner party, which involved, among other delights, a lot of Burgundy and some Chateau d’Yquem. Sunday morning, slightly sore-headed, we went into Unity Books in Willis Street. As I had hoped, the adorable Tilly Lloyd was on duty so I introduced her to wife and baby, who was clad in a purple jumpsuit. 

Tilly said, “Ah! You’ve dressed her as a lesbian.” And I had. That is how thoughtful I am.

Grant Smithies on the Close Readers

For those who missed it in the Sunday Star-Times of 17 February, here – flagrant breach of copyright alert! – is Grant Smithies’ selection of Album of the Week:

 NEW SPIRIT

The Close Readers (Austin Records)

****

The Close Readers is a musical project of acclaimed Wellington writer Damien Wilkins (guitar/ vocals), ably assisted by Cassette drummer Craig Terris and assorted guest players. As with “Lake Alice” and “Okay”, the highlights of this band’s 2011 debut Group Hug, the best tracks here resemble truncated short stories: rich with detail, populated by damaged souls and delivered over a frazzled country-rock sound that recalls Neil Young. “Kathleen” overcomes an early resemblance to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” to evoke prime Go-Betweens; “Troubled Water” is a witty tale of a stereo given away by a newly converted Christian, and the title track is the greatest disaffected urban fable REM never wrote, with Wilkins channelling Michael Stipe as he considers family dysfunction from the point of view of an alienated son. Terris’ drumming is an understated delight — check his recasting of Phil Spector’s classic “girl group” beat on Whisper — but Wilkins’ words shine brightest as he ponders the ways distress may be generated, amplified or healed by family.

You read about the album here back in October. And yes, it really is that good.

Happy birthday, Yoko Ono

The Japanese avant-gardeist (Grapefruit, Wish Tree and so much more) was born on 18 February 1933, which makes her 80 today. Golly. 

So here she is with her then husband John Lennon in June 1971 performing the old R&B song “Well”. It’s a remarkable performance – the band don’t know the song and Lennon hadn’t played it for years, not since the Cavern. They kick off with Zappa announcing the song: “For those of you in the band who have no idea what’s about to happen, this is in A minor and it’s not standard blues changes – but it’s close”. Certainly it isn’t when Yoko starts singing. Lennon plays great rhythm guitar, there’s a terrific Zappa solo, and you just have to admire the musicianship of the band. Ian Underwood and Bob Harris on keyboards, Aynsley Dunbar on drums, plus Jim Pons (bass) and Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (vocals) from the Turtles. Yes, the Turtles. (Volman and Kaylan  did the backing vocals on T Rex’s Electric Warrior. Has there ever been a better pop album?)

Yoko is, as always, interesting.

Trainspotter alert: these performances appear on Lennon’s album Sometime in New York City  and Zappa’s Playground Psychotics though the mixes are different. Fancy that. Some of the titles of the improvisations are different too. “A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono” appears on one but not the other. Can you guess which? 

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Rob Oakeshott and Richard III

This is Rob Oakeshott, federal MP for Lyne in New South Wales. No one who followed the last Austalian election will forget his interminable speech revealing which major party he would support. Not interminable, it was only 17 minutes, but it felt longer watching it.

And this is a reconstruction of Richard III, who has been under a Leicester car park for the last few centuries. He was the last Plantagenet king; the Tudors who followed wrote the history which made him out to be a villain. It ain’t necessarily so: the Economist obituary is here.

I wonder if they could possibly be related.