Landfall Review Online: NZ Books in Review

Techno-obsessive

June 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Thomas Gough

In the Absence of Heroes, by Anthony McCarten, (Vintage, 2012), 389 pp., $28.99.

A sequel to Death of a Superhero, Anthony McCarten’s new novel In the Absence of Heroes relocates the Delpes from New Zealand to Watford, North London to tell the story of a family playing out their grief in a techno-saturated reality. The novel begins with a list of statistics about contemporary internet usage which, depending on your own online savvy, will strike you as either alarming or taken-for-granted: 50% of the people online lie about their age, weight, job, marital status and gender; 20% of the people going online will experience negative impacts on their life; use of the internet is a contributing factor in nearly 50% of all relationships and family problems; 11% of people going online are becoming compulsive or addicted; women are now online more than men.

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Against Fear of the New

June 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Nick Laird

New Zealand by Design: a History of New Zealand Product Design, by Michael Smythe (Godwit, 2011), 511 pp., $65.

‘Design’ is a mercurial, not to say deceptive, term. Used as a verb to refer to a process, and used as a noun to the product of that process, it has become amongst the most ubiquitous and the most tortured of labels. Often now lumped together with buzzfuzz feel-good notions of expressiveness, and used interchangeably with the tags ‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’, it is constantly and lazily colonised, while the shades of discrimination it originally implied have become hidden or lost. Design only really takes on meaning with the words that surround it, as in types of design — and even then the implied associations can serve to obscure a deeper understanding.

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The Fundamental Thing in Music

June 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Denys Trussell

A Search For Tradition And A Search For Language, by Douglas Lilburn (Lilburn Residence Trust, with Victoria University Press, 2011) 112 pp., $29.

We missed out on a first-class prose writer when Douglas Lilburn decided to devote himself to music instead of literature. His language in these two essays is lucid and elegant, perceptive, and easily carries a huge range of reference without being in the least bit dry or pedantic. He might have developed into a philosophical writer in the vein of Jose Ortega y Gassett (1883–1955) or of the German, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). His writing combines Schopenhauer’s understanding of musical essence with the clear expression of social perspective by the Spanish Gassett.

These are large claims to make about a New Zealand composer, but we must remember that Lilburn’s sheer talent as a musician — one which compares favourably with mid-twentieth century peers such as Samuel Barber (1910–1981) and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) — indicates a major artistic intelligence and a fine grasp, at the very least, of the sound and rhythm of language. Also, he never abandoned literature. It remained at the centre of his life. His direct engagement with it as a composer is significant in our cultural history. His settings of poems by Allen Curnow, Ruth Dallas, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Denis Glover, ARD Fairburn and others make up in themselves a major body of work.

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Particular Tongues

May 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Cliff Fell

Nice Pretty Things and others, by Rachel Bush (VUP, 2011) 80 pp., $28.00; Tongues of Ash, by Keith Westwater (Interactive Press, 2011) 92 pp., $27.99; The Same As Yes, by Joan Fleming (VUP, 2011), 79 pp., $28.00.

Poetry is a beast that talks in many tongues, but always with this singular quality: it can conduct a conversation – between poet and reader, poet and subject, and even subject and poem – on a seemingly one-to-one basis. It’s a quality that ranges across epochs and extends to the conversations poems hold with other poems. With ‘verse’ so obviously embedded in ‘converse’, this observation is neither surprising or new, but three recent collections highlight how it still holds true today.

Rachel Bush’s ear has always been closely tuned to the rhythms and nuances of speech. Sometimes her monologues seem inspired by snatches of overheard language, but more often they rework the remembered and possibly heightened and/or imagined discourse of friends, family and acquaintances. In her latest and most absorbing collection, Nice Pretty Things and Others this aspect of Bush’s work underpins much of the structure – and is effectively announced in the title’s colloquialism and timely rescue of the word ‘nice’ from its spell in the doldrums of language.

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Everthing Merged and Became Whole

May 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Smither

The Kindness of Your Nature, by Linda Olsson (Penguin, 2011), 216 pp., $40

‘If we could see ourselves from above,’ thinks Marion Flint, the narrator of Linda Olsson’s third novel, The Kindness of Your Nature, ‘we would observe an intricate pattern emerging: a chain of minute incidents and developments, seemingly random, but all part of a coherent process with an ultimate goal’. This reflectiveness might exclude a lot of lives: children, for instance, though the seeing-from-above might begin in childhood, or those whose lives are abbreviated by illness or violence before there is time or leisure to reflect. Just recently I was discussing with a friend the idea of ‘the examined life’ which is supposed to be the only kind worth having. I wondered if there was something indulgent or luxurious about it, with its implications of introversion or narcissism. And yet this desire for coherence and comprehension is very strong, whether in seeking out friends from the past or revisiting significant landscapes.

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