Ventiak - an island somewhere in the brain

Aftermath

4 February 2007

Janice is upset. She thinks I’ve made a terrible mistake with my last blog.

‘You shouldn’t go slagging off important people like that,’ she said. ‘It’s bad for your career.’

‘I’m not sure I have a career,’ I answered.

‘Of course you do.’

‘And I think a little satire’s healthy now and again.’

‘Quite right,’ Amanda said, ‘although you can’t deny what the present government’s done for literature. There’s that extra million dollars a year.’

‘That was down to the Green Party, wasn’t it?’ Felix asked.

‘It’s still the government. Or it was then.’

‘But it’s a bit rich when the Labour Party goes on about it as if it was all their idea.’

'Absolutely,' I said. I was relieved at the change of subject. Any topic would have been better than the previous one.

Janice, though, was not about to be put off. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I mean it. These people have influence, they can do bad things to you. And, you know, your new book’s coming out this week. It’ll be in the shops already.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry,’ Amanda said. ‘The blog only gets ten visitors a month, I doubt that anything he says is going to worry a government minister or anybody else for that matter.’

‘Actually, the ten was only for December,’ I answered. ‘I got 33 for January. If it goes on growing at that rate, I’ll have 13,000 by the end of July.’

'Wow!' Janice said. 'That's fantastic.'

'Post hoc, propter hoc,' Trevor said, of nothing in particular.

Everyone ignored him.

‘Okay.' Amanda suddenly had that awful determination in her voice. 'Given that we're being serious all of a sudden, then, much as it pains me to say it, I think Janice is right. If you’re going to take any significant part in the creative economy you’ve got to be more circumspect about what you say, especially this week.’

‘Good God,’ I answered. ‘You’ll be censoring my blog next!’

‘I think we'll do more than that. I think we'll take you off the air. For the next week, you’re not allowed to post anything. We’ll do it. I’ll do tomorrow and then Rupert can have a go and then Janice and then… We’ll work it out.’

‘But…’ I was speechless.

‘No buts. This is for your own good. We can’t have you shooting your mouth off about whatever comes into your head at a time like this. You have to concentrate on the launch and whatever promotional opportunities come along.’

‘Go for it!’ Janice said. ‘Impossible is nothing!’

‘Quite.’ Amanda looked at me. I knew I was done for. ‘This is entirely for your own good,’ she repeated. ‘Believe me. You’ll thank us later.’

I am not at all sure of that.       

A Launch Speech

3 February 2007

My book launch is only four days away. Am I excited? Well, I probably will be eventually. Modest strivers like me need to keep our feet on the ground, however. Not for us the big occasion in the Great Hall of Parliament with the pelicans rubbing shoulders with the alligators. I do wonder, though, what it might have been like if things were otherwise. Suppose I had the kind of fame that made me a National Treasure (or a war memorial). How would my launch go then?

Well, for a start, I would probably have had the Round Minister eager to do the honours and, given my experience of some of her previous officiations, this would have resulted in a speech like this:

'Hello, it's wonderful to be here. This is a most fabulous occasion and I have to say it's absolutely a privilege to have the opportunity to launch this amazing new book by Chris Else.

It's called... well, you know what it's called. I don't need to tell you that, do I? But, I have to say, it's absolutely wonderful, a fabulous piece of work about a Pacific Island nation and it covers many deep and important issues for our time or, if it comes to that, any other time. It's got a beautiful cover with these amazing ants on it and a wonderful main character called Kit Wallace and there are a whole lot of other utterly convincing characters, too. I mean there's one on the very first page called Fatufu. And there are absoultely riveting descriptions as well. Like the description of the ants on page two. It's a very important and supremely interesting book, in other words. About ants.

Ants are important. They put me in mind of the government, which has been working terribly hard for all artists and in particular writers (or maybe that's the other way around). Our commitment to the Arts (and to literature) is astonishing (even I'm astonished). We have poured millions and millions of dollars into the Arts in this country and we're happy to do that. Because we think it's important. Which it is. Terribly, fabulously important. The Arts (and literature) make a huge contribution to our economy and our culture. To see the benefits I only have to look around this room today and see so many of our wonderful writers standing alongside fabuloulsy important people from the business world in what is such a terrific example of partnership. It's just fantastic to realise that writers aren't sniping at the government anymore. And why would they seeing that we've given them an extra million dollars a year? And I think we've done enough or we are doing enough or we will, I promise, when we become the next government in 2008, do enough to ensure that from now and henceforth and forevermore the Arts in New Zealand will always be spelled with a capital A. And that goes for literature, too.

And that's what this book is about, really. Capital letters. It's a capital book, a fabulous book. It's truly wonderful. And I hope you'll all buy hundreds of copies and if Chris doesn't want to sign them, then don't worry because I'll be happy to do it. Thank you.'

A Horticultural Ambition

31 January 2007

An interview this afternoon with the lovely Kate Blackhurst from City Life. Among many intelligent questions, she asked me one that, despite its seeming innocuousness, has developed into a nasty moral itch:

'What do you do for relaxation?'

'Gardening,' I said, with all the confidence of the unwary.

And indeed that's true but, as I have come to realise since our conversation, it is not quite enough. I don't want to be someone who gardens. I want to be a gardener.

And, of course, to lay claim to being a gardener requires adherence to some kind of standard or measure. What's mine? The number of dandelions on our lawn? The blackspot on the roses? The cabbage white butterfly (caterpillars) feasting on the brassica? A miserable result on all these counts.

I do, however, have one claim to horticultural competence, which might possibly do. We are self-sufficient in garlic.

Well, we usually are, almost, and there's been only one year in the last ten when we haven't made a decent fist of it and anyway absolute statements are asking for trouble and I know that garlic is incredibly easy to grow but I also believe you have to start somewhere and critics who lay claim to superior accomplishments ought to make allowances and although I realise that I haven't necessarily followed that precept as a literary reviewer, possibly because as a young writer I got smashed or condescended to by people who were far too confident that they knew which side was up but who (and I have to keep reminding myself of this to escape their judgement) are (some of them) now dead and buried (which I suppose translates into no belief at all except in a general downwards tendency) and leads to a point at which I have lost all control of this sentence so who the puce cares, if you'll pardon my French.

I am a gardener. I proclaim it. There is no other way.

An Affront to Integrity

30 January 2007

A person has written to me questioning the veracity of this blog, claiming that, among other things, the names of people mentioned here are clearly invented.

'Augie McEgg,' he says, about my entry of 27th January, 'who could believe in such a person?'

Well, let me say this unequivocally, the McEggs are of an impeccable lineage. Augie is, in fact, named after the English side of the family.

Augustus Leopold Egg was an important artist of the first half of the nineteenth century and a man with strong literary connections. He was, for example, a friend of Dickens and once acted the lead role in a play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

The English Eggs, however, were a renegade bunch, descended from Callum McEgg who abandoned his Scots compatriots (along with the incriminatory nominal suffix) even before the fateful battle of Culloden in 1746 and sided with the Hanoverians. For over fifty years the two sides of the family had nothing to do with one another and it was only in the early nineteenth century when the Stuart cause became romanticised among the English aristocracy that a rapprochement was achieved. McDonald McNickett McEgg a painter who specialised in the depiction of Scottish tartans discovered that he had a long lost relative in Augustus Leopold. The two became firm friends and ever since the McEggs have been part of the mainstream of English culture (or at least fellow-travellers in some of the more significant eddies).

My friend Augie is not a painter (although his wife has recently done a very fine rendition of the comet) but he is a photographer of some little note and a scholar of distinction. He takes a keen interest in technology and has made some ingenious suggestions about the improvement of this website (more of which anon). For anyone to question his existence merely on the basis of his name is very puzzling, especially when the questioner signs himself Mickey Swash.

However, questions are the stuff (or the staff) of life. Without them we would be in a state of ignorance and despair, although quite what distinguishes ignorance and despair from the state we are actually in I am not entirely sure.

All things are relative, as they say, and, as they also say, you are stuck with your relative but you can choose your friends.

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