Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

ON THE END OF “NEW ZEALAND BOOKS” 

            Like most of New Zealand’s literary community, I was saddened by the defunding and demise of New Zealand Books. Like many other commentators, I was also puzzled that Creative New Zealand withdrew funding without giving a reason. Was it decided that New Zealand Books had too few subscribers, or did not make some sort of profit? I don’t know. A petition was launched to save it but, at time of writing, it has attracted signatures only in the hundreds. Could this indicate lack of concern for the quarterly? Again I don’t know. I heard both the co-editor Harry Ricketts and the pop-satirist Steve Braunias give, in different interviews on Radio New Zealand, their views on the end of New Zealand Books, but neither was able to explain exactly why it was de-funded. Ricketts also wrote a satirical poem about the de-funding.

            I subscribed to New Zealand Books from its very beginning in 1991, so I have read it regularly for all its 28 years and I still have the whole archive in hard copy. Beginning in 1994, I was also an occasional contributor. Checking the publication’s on-line archive, I see that I made 30 contributions over 25 years, so a little more than one a year. Three or four of these were poems, but the rest were the type of detailed book reviews that were the raison d’etre of New Zealand Books. It aspired to be the New Zealand equivalent of the Times Lit.Sup. or the London Review of Books, although it was only in the last few issues that it attempted to rebrand itself as the New Zealand Review of Books.

            The long-form review or critique is indispensible for what claims to be a literary culture. Some New Zealand publications are good at publicising books and producing pithy short-form reviews – particularly the New Zealand Listener. But as I know, being a regular contributor to the Listener, the average book review there is only 500 words, unlike the 1500 or 2000 or even (very occasionally) 3000-word reviews in New Zealand Books. Without New Zealand Books, and apart from a handful of academic journals that are read only by other academics, the only place New Zealand’s general readers will now regularly find long-form reviews is in Landfall and its necessary adjunt Landfall-Review-on-Line. And perhaps on the blog you are now reading. A few other platforms (like The Spinoff) occasionally have long-form reviews of books, as does the somewhat eclectic Pantograph Punch, but book-reviewing is not their focus. You will note that all but one of these surviving practioners of long-form reviews are on-line, and not on paper.

            New Zealand Books wasn’t perfect. I can’t think of a publication that is. Of course contributors were paid very little – you had to want to write detailed reviews, but you certainly wouldn’t make a living doing so. Once – and once only – I was rapped over the knuckles by the editor for filing a tongue-in-cheek review as my way of expressing contempt for a very bad collection of short stories. And I remember that nearly four years ago, my good friend Iain Sharp wrote a (justifiable) article for The Spinoff entitled “Why are so many New Zealand book reviewers so gutless?”calling out the culture of strained politeness in local reviewing. He was aware that, New Zealand being a small literary community, many reviewers were unwilling to pass forthright judgements on writers who might well be their colleagues or people they would meet in social gatherings.  I should have been flattered that Sharp wrote: “The only local blogger I know of who posts book reviews online with any frequency or any attempt at honesty is my revered friend Nicholas Reid … I marvel at his masochism.” Unfortunately this comment aroused a storm of angry on-line comments from people who didn’t like my honest reviews which, perforce, must sometimes be negative ones. One publicist labelled me “ultra-toxic” and others joined in to denounce my wickedness. Writing honest reviews does not always win friends.

            However, on the whole Sharp did give a clean bill of health to New Zealand Books for its detailed reviews, carping only that there seemed to be a “preponderance of professors”. Well, yes, there did often seem to be an awful lot of academics on the reviewing roster, such as it was.

            For all these garbled comments of mine, the loss of New Zealand Books is still a great blow. It is at least possible that it will be revived some day. I hope so. I will otherwise miss the pleasure of turning real pages to read detailed and informed reviews of New Zealand books, even if I don’t always agree with conclusions reached.