Blog Archives
Letters – Issue 49
Not letting the facts interfere Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s review of Southern Capital was the most spiteful, vindictive and unprofessional review I have seen for a very long time. We learn that Eldred-Grigg actively dislikes the University of Canterbury’s History Department, and…
“Life in one’s mouth”, Peter Bland
Louis Johnson: Selected Poems ed Terry Sturm Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 086473350X There’s a short poem by Louis Johnson which I’ve always admired. It’s called “Intemperance” and it tells us a lot in a very short space, both about…
Tagged with: August 2001, Autumn 2001, Issue 49, Peter Bland, Terry Sturm, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Keyboard practice, C K Stead
C K Stead takes a new look at Janet Frame’s The Pocket Mirror. Janet Frame’s The Pocket Mirror (published by Braziller in New York in 1967 and here by Pegasus in 1968) has the appearance, not of a nervous first…
The federation game, Colin James
Waltzing with Matilda: Should New Zealand join Australia? Bob Catley Dark Horse Publishing, $29.95, ISBN 0958214611 A chilling graph presented to Auckland business leaders on 14 May undermines Bob Catley’s thesis. Auckland, the graph showed, lost 3.4% in GDP per…
Tagged with: August 2001, Autumn 2001, Bob Catley, Colin James, Dark Horse Publishing, Issue 49
Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review
Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review
Variations on the familiar, Lawrence Jones
Ellie and the Shadow Man Maurice Gee Penguin Books, $34.95, ISBN 0141004177 Responses to Maurice Gee’s Ellie and the Shadow Man, his fourteenth adult novel and his twenty-sixth book, will probably vary between the extremes marked by two of my…
Tagged with: August 2001, Autumn 2001, Issue 49, Lawrence Jones, Maurice Gee, Penguin Books
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Odds on, Joseph Romanos
Two Over Three on Goodtime Sugar: The New Zealand TAB turns 50 David Grant Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864734018 David Grant’s history of the Totalisator Agency Board should come with a warning: it is not to be approached by…
Tagged with: August 2001, Autumn 2001, David Grant, Issue 49, Joseph Romanos, Victoria University Press
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
Editorial – Issue 49
Two cheers for biography Biography doesn’t always get a good press. It has been Said to have “added a new terror to death”, while Oscar Wilde remarked that “[e]very great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas…
More epic than lyric, Mary Macpherson
Earth Colours: Selected Poems L E Scott HeadworX, $24.95, ISBN 0473068036 Declamatory and full of urgent desire to thrust the reader into different realities, L E Scott’s poems stride across big subjects. Earth Colours reflects 30 years of Scott’s poems…
Tagged with: August 2001, Autumn 2001, HeadworX, Issue 49, L E Scott, Mary Macpherson
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Elsie Locke, Hugh Laracy
Posted in Comment