Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“HOME THEATRE” by Anthony Lapwood (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $NZ30) ; “ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS AND POLICY IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND” Edited by Maria Bargh and Julie MacArthur (Auckland University Press, $NZ89:99)

 

There’s a major problem when it comes to reviewing collections of short stories – the reviewer is often tempted to give a string of synopses covering every story, but without making it clear what the overall tone and worth of the collection is. As you may know from some earlier postings on this blog, I’ve often been guilty of doing this.

I can easily avoid the problem by telling you straight away that Anthony Lapwood’s debut collection is at once outstandingly good and often tinged with a sense of melancholy. Rather than dragging you title by title through the whole collection, I’ll begin by looking in detail at what I think is Lapwood’s very finest and most accomplished tale.

The longest story in Home Theatre, “Provided with Eyes, Thou Departest” comes in at just under 50 pages, approaching the length of a novella. It has at once the broad perspective of a novel and the tightness of a short story. Bryce, an unhappy and disillusioned high-school teacher of Biology, is in a state of prolonged grief after the death of his wife. Lapwood does not simply state this fact, but dramatizes Bryce’s grief in terms of the disturbing dreams he has. Not quite nightmarish but deeply upsetting, they convey sheer desolation and the sense of loss; and Lapwood has the skill to weave them seamlessly in and out of the narrative. “Provided with Eyes, Thou Departest” gives a very vivid sense of the high-school, its staffroom gossip and pecking order, and all the irritations of both staff and schoolboys that exacerbate Bryce’s condition. The tale does not leave Bryce in isolation – the physical education teacher, the woman who seems to take a concerned interest in Bryce, the music teacher and the peremptory principal are all clearly characterised. The physical tattiness of both the school environment and Bryce’s urban apartment weigh us down like a bad conscience. Above all this, there is the psychological trauma – almost a nervous breakdown – brought on by Bryce’s awareness that he is gradually forgetting who and what his wife was; and with such thoughts come a crushing sense of loneliness, guilt and alienation from the world. With its fine attention to detail (clearly the fruit of close observation) this story really is a story, a narrative that moves on to unexpected events which are there for the reader to find. I do not think this is merely a good story. With its empathy, precision, tight structure and rich characterisation, it is a great story.

On the strength of “Provided with Eyes, Thou Departest” alone, Lapwood establishes himself as one of our best storytellers. But in saying this, I am not dismissing the other twelve stories that make up Home Theatre. There is much to savour and ponder in them too.

The whole collection has specifically Wellington settings. Most stories are linked in one way or another to a run-down Wellington apartment block  - the “home theatre” of the title - where at least some characters live. Most of them are people in straitened circumstances, people who have come down in the world, people who are desperate and can support themselves only in such a seedy low-rent building. You will note that there are some recurring characters who have a greater or lesser role in some stories. An astronomer from the Carter Observatory, called Ashton, appears a number of times. Some of the shorter stories are more-or-less realistic accounts of people in the apartment – the slacker who wants to work so long as it doesn’t require effort (“Jobs for Dreamers”); the single mother battling with an infestation of ants (“They Always Come for the Sweet Things”); the woman stuck in the apartment building’s clunky old lift (“It’s Been a Long Time”); the nagging that can go on between tenants in an apartment block (“Being Neighbourly”). But, as part of the blurb says, this is a “genre-bending collection”. Lapwood jumps into fantasy as often as he offers hard realism – but his fantasy is not gratuitous. These stories say as much about the human condition as the realist ones do.

Time travel is one element of fantasy, thrust at us in the opening story “The Source of Lightning” in which a time-traveller from the future (self-styled “chrononaut”) is stuck in a time loop in present day Wellington, having to play the same day over and over. This is not a mere riff on Groundhog Day. In fact its ethos is more like the classic film version of Frankenstein, in which repeated images of lightning suggest an energising, vivifying force. Lightning gives light as in the beginning of all things… and this train of thought links the story to another, “The Universe for Beginners”, a non-fantasy story in which a broken family visits an observatory where an exhibition on the Big Bang and Black Holes suggests a symbolic connection with the beginning and outcome of this broken family. Pushing further into fantasy, Lapwood’s eeriest story “The Ether of 1939” is set in a 1930s radio factory which is in what will one day become the tatty apartment block we have already visited. Lapwood is clearly aware of popular pseudo-scientific theories some people still held in the 1930s about radio waves interfering with the “ether”, or even being a medium connecting us with ghosts or the afterlife. That was how miraculous radio seemed to some at the time. But as in “The Source of Lightning” and “The Universe for Beginners”, this is not frivolous. In depicting a man and his environment in 1939, then connecting him with the first story in this collection, Lapwood is making implicit commentary on how mores have changed over more than 80 years.

One element in a number of stories is the homosexual condition. It is suggested in the opening story “The Source of Lightning”. It is understated in the not-quite-fully gay relationship of two young men in “Journey to the Edge”. There is a minor sub-plot about homosexual schoolteachers in “Provided with Eyes, Thou Departest”. But most importantly there is “The Ether of 1939” where a homosexual man in 1939 hears magically, through his radio, voices from the 21^st century suggesting how different attitudes towards gay men will be in the future.

And then there are even more perplexing ideas on how we communicate, or don’t communicate, with each other; and how uncertain our perception is. “The Difficult Art of Bargaining” has a deeply-unreliable narrator and suggests a degree of self-deception as much as deception practised on others. “A Spare Room”, one of Lapwood’s most-carefully-structured stories, really shows the total lack of communication between two people who think they are discussing the same issue – on the one side of the desk, the woman asking if she can have a larger apartment; and on the other side of the desk the bureaucrat whose mind is on other things.  As for the story which closes this collection, “Blue Horse Overdrive”, it brings us to territory where the  physical touches upon the psychological. Has the narrator, a rock singer, experienced some sort of hallucination, or has he simply seen objective reality? There is a fruitful ambiguity to this story, where the might of state-of-the-art medical practices (MRI brain scans) are pitted against subjective experience.

Despite my best efforts, I see I’ve lapsed into marching you through every title in the book. Sorry. Pensive, thoughtful and often melancholy as many of these stories are, Anthony Lapwood has created a whole world in this collection, with credible and believable characters even when presented in fantasy, with much room for thought, with close observation of human nature and with a fine sense of structure. An outstanding collection in every respect.

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It sounds like something out of Monty Python to say “and now for something completely different”, but it’s quite a leap to move from a collection of short stories to a textbook for undergraduates on a specialised subject. But here I am moving from Anthony Lapwood’s Home Theatre to Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Maria Bargh and Julie MacArthur. Why did I read this academic work? Because I am interested in environmental matters in terms of sustainability, conservation and the preservation of endangered species. I’m very grateful to Auckland University Press for sending me a copy.

 Environmental Politics and Policy is a symposium of 18 detailed and referenced essays. Some of the essays are by single authors; some are co-written. There are 26 contributors in all, and it is interesting to note that women dominate – to be precise there are 19 women contributors and 7 men. Most of the authors are academics in the fields of law, Maori studies, ecological studies and politics, but some are journalists and activists in the field of conservation. Activism is encouraged. Between essays there a notes on “How to draft a submission”, “How to write a brief policy”, “How to write a press release” and of course “How to organise a protest”.

Without criticising the contents of this book, I do have to admit that reading my way through it over some weeks was a bit of a chore. It wasn’t the style in which it was written – there is not too much academic-speak, though inevitably some specialised vocabulary has to be explained. The trouble was the repetition. The same keys keep getting struck. In essay after essay we are told about the difference between Maori law and customs, and the law as set out by the government and governmental agencies. Repeatedly, too, we are told of the evils of colonialism, which brought the degradation of waterways, quality of land and habitats for indigenous species. Perhaps undergraduates, moving through the text over a whole semester, would not so readily notice the repetition. I, reading it over a few weeks, did notice.

In their introductory essay, the editors Bargh and MacArthur condemn neoliberalism, question “liberal capitalist states”, declare that the text “takes a systemic and holistic view” of the environment [that vague word “holistic” is always a problem for me] and, bowing to the Treaty of Waitangi, tell us that “biculturalism is a foundational aspect of Aotearoa, even while we recognise the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural composition of New Zealand society”. Well and good, except that there is a real tension between a bicultural concept and a multi-cultural reality. Their mode of thinking is reinforced by Professor Margaret Mutu’s essay “Environmental Ideas in Aotearoa” which is basically a primer on Maori words pertaining to legality and power, and which then becomes a polemic about the primacy of Te Tiriti o Waitangi – the Maori language version of the treaty – as the only legitimate version, and that therefore the concept of Maori sovereignty is still valid.

Continuing on the more polemical side of things, Elisabeth Ellis’s “Theorising Environmental Politics” argues that  European traditions – mainly beginning with that villain John Locke – separated nature from humanity and prioritised human needs over the whole environment. Nature itself was undervalued, and viewed as a commodity rather than a Ding an sich. Hence we should return to an indigenous way of being part of nature, and not exploiters of nature. Similar polemical arguments are found in Rod Oram’s essay “Regenerative Economics” which condemns market-driven economics and classic capitalism for ruining the environment; and in Maria Bargh and Tame Malcolm’s “Te Taiao and ‘Biodiversity’ ” which tells us that conservation and protection of species should be based on Maori criteria; and in the co-authored “Social Movements and the Environment”, where capitalism and colonialism are once again the villains and a “masculinist ideology” has driven much of the physical exploitation and degradation of the New Zealand environment. I could quote more essays in this vein, but I think you get the drift.

I’m afraid that at a certain point I find myself asking such questions as – if forms of capitalism, neoliberalism and colonialism are the great polluters, then how do you account for the huge and unchallenged environmental degradation wrought by Marxist states like the old Soviet Union and Mao’s China? I admit at once that this is the sort of Tu Quoque (or Whataboutery) argument which I have condemned before on this blog; and it may well be true that both capitalism and socialism or Marxism have an equally horrendous record in environmental matters. But at the very least I am pointing out that fingering only capitalism and neoliberalism makes for a very lop-sided critique.

And here is a further (and probably more contentious) objection. Repeatedly Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand tells us that the environment should be managed in a more pre-colonial and dominantly Maori way. Isn’t this simply an appeal to Arcadianism? Too much history has happened to rescind all the systems we now have relating to the environment. By all means clean the waterways [NB Jacinta Ruru’s essay on freshwater was apparently written before the controversy over “Three Waters” began], restore and de-pollute the wetlands, protect and ensure the proliferation of endemic species – but can you cancel that awful colonialist phenomenon of electricity (and all its generation) that lights and heats our homes? Approximately 5,000,000 people now live in New Zealand. In his essay “Farming and the Environment: The Long Legacy of Colonialism”, Hugh Campbell makes some valid points about the disappearance of forests and the polluting bovine run-off caused by farming. But when he sneers at the old “pastoral hegemony”, is he envisaging another nation-wide system to feed 5,000,000 people? To be curt, pre-colonial methods, catering for a much, much smaller population with distribution limited to small localities, wouldn’t do the trick.

In sum, Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand is an enlightening work when it deals with historical and environmental realities, but becomes strident when it pushes an ideology. Janine Hayward’s “Toitu te Whenua: Land, Peoples and Environmental Policies 1840 to 1980” is an excellent and orderly account of the impact of human beings on New Zealand since the 13^th century. It looks in detail at the loss of Maori land since the beginning of Pakeha settlement and takes the story up to the foundation of the Waitangi Tribunal. Valentina Dinica’s “Theorising Environmental Policy” is a very methodical work, categorising attributes of environmental problems and categorising the “actors” (interested parties) in framing environmental policies. Dory Reeves’ “Cities and Urban Planning” discusses crisply how urban planning can be harnessed to an environmentally sustainable future. And I don’t think anyone could plausibly refute the essays I haven’t mentioned concerning climate change, the impact of fossil fuels, and the oceanic pollution of plastics.

Long story short? Given that it is aimed at undergraduates, Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand will generate much discussion. But I also hope it will generate some challenges and arguments.