Blog Archives
Issue 31 | December 1997
Volume 7 | Number 5 | Issue 31 | December 1997 Harry Orsman’s NZ English Curnow at the “utmost reach of his power” Mark Williams admires Lloyd Jones’s magic realism Sharon Crosbie storms up on cooks Alan Riach assesses…
Failing at order, Harvey McQueen
Obviously of peasant stock, I enjoy grubbing in my own particular patch of soil, pottering and planting around every home I have occupied in my adult life. I am in Stephanie Parkes’ words “an amateur gardener”, a term she uses…
Letters – Issue 31
Puzzles and solutions In his stimulating study, A Talent to Deceive: An appreciation of Agatha Christie, Robert Barnard argues that, in “approaching Agatha Christie and her fellows … as novelists and by looking for the same sort of qualitites one…
Self-absorbed provincial, Gregory O’Brien
All Our Own Work: New Zealand’s Folk Art Richard Wolfe Penguin, $36.95, ISBN 0 670 87551 1 Charles Brasch wrote in Landfall in December 1950 that Colin McCahon, “hampered at every turn by an inadequate technique… was not well enough…
Tagged with: Gregory O’Brien, Issue 31, Penguin Books, Richard Wolfe, Spring 1997
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review
Editorial – Issue 31
Changing of the guard Independence, Colin James More than Rogernomics, the recovery of the treaty and the other momentous policy changes, the 1980s was the decade of independence. In that decade the people who make up New Zealand found a…
The land as a traceable commodity, Wendy Pond
National Overview: Waitangi Tribunal Rangahaua Whanui Series Alan Ward GP Publications, $154.65 (3 volumes), ISBN 1 86956 209 7 In 1993 I attended the first Pacific island peoples’ science conference in Suva. At that time there were still western scientists…
Tagged with: Alan Ward, GP Publications, Issue 31, Spring 1997, Wendy Pond
Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review
Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review
Summer is over, Nicholas Reid
New Zealand Film 1912-1996 Helen Martin and Sam Edwards Oxford University Press, $49.95, ISBN 019 558336 1 Here are three separate and unrelated personal anecdotes about New Zealand film. Each has a neat and glib “moral” tacked on to it…
Tagged with: Helen Martin, Issue 31, Nicholas Reid, Oxford University Press, Sam Edwards, Spring 1997
Posted in Art, Media, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Media, Non-fiction, Review
Limbering up, Anne French
It could be You Sue McCauley Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1 86962 008 9 The Mathematics of Jane Austen Elizabeth Smither Godwit, $24.95, ISBN 1 86941 317 2 Remember Me Linda Burgess Otago University Press, $21.95, ISBN 1 877 13335 3…
Tagged with: Anne French, Elizabeth Smither, Godwit, Issue 31, Linda Burgess, Otago University Press, Spring 1997, Sue McCauley, Vintage
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Laughter and the force of dreams, Brian Turner
Work in progress Recently I listened to the now former New Zealand cricket representative Danny Morrison saying some uncomplimentary and patronising things about the cast-off captain, Lee Germon. The reason? Danny’s just published his autobiography, written in conjunction with an…
Harissa at home, Sharon Crosbie
Posted in Comment