Posts by Rob Hosking
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So ... can someone tell me why the Booker Prize is considered the pinnacle of world literary achievement, when it's only open to work in English and excludes three-quarters of the World's population (including American novelists)?
THE MONEY
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Pretty sure that when he started Tamihere did his own stuff.
The reason for that is his comments on when Helen Clark was visiting the Pope, and there was some comment about whether or not she would, like when she met the Queen, wear a trouser suit.
Tamihere reckoned Clark should avoid a mini-skirt, especially if she planned to kiss the ground at any point. He was still a minister at the time.
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The pukeko are doing disturbingly well.
Grew up in an area with a lot of them - on the edge of the swamplands near the mouth of the Waikato - and I can't stand them.
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If the characters don't ring true that's a fault with the author's writing, not their ethno-gend-uality.
Otherwise its like saying Lord of the Rings is crap cause Tolkein wasn't a hobbit.Good summary.
I think one of the reasons this sort of thing becomes an issue - apart from feminism and gay/lesbian rights activism - is the 20th Century notion, implicit and explicit, that fiction is what someone called Higher Autobiography.
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Craig wrote:
Ouch. I'm going to steal that, and don't expect attribution or actual money. :) Still, you've got to love a country where when it comes to dealing with disappointment: Arty-Farties 1; Rugby-Heads nil.
Thanks Craig.
That will really add to my bitterness.
No Single Malt prizes for good smart-arsed comments about the Booker I note.
Plenty for the rugby, oh yes.
And they say we've become a more diverse and sophisticated society, well I say, BOLLOCKS!
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Always thought the kea were real characters: had two very cheeky ones wake myself and three others sleeping under a fly near Salisbury Hut by swooping down and flying through the fly.
They're funny - until its your tramping sock they nick.
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Craig wrote:
Now I have to go construct an elegantly paranoid three minute rave about how the Booker Prize judges are incompetent to judge graffiti on a toilet wall. A black day for New Zealand literature, I'm depressed and gutted wah wah...
You didn't expect anything else, did you?
They gave a Booker to The Bone People.
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Andrew,
SNAP!
You beat me to that one. Was followed by a couple of Kaka in the Kaimanawas once, had a soft spot for them ever since.
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I'd throw the gun away, and put on track two of The Lion and the Cobra and turn the lift into a disco, and hope that Sinead O'Connor's college radio hit "Mandinka" would get Banksie grooving.
Banks grooving?
My brain just broke.
I am not an enthusiast for, umm, the less-than-legal recreational substances, (I can count the times I have used them on both hands, and, OK probably some of my toes, but thats about it) ... where was I...Oh yes...
...but if ever there was a guy who needed a feed of hash cookies or something similar, its Banks.
If only to see what would happen.
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Craig:
British Tory PMs seem to have been rather good on this subject.
Harold Macmillan put it more pithily than Salisbury (and as a journalist, this is a comment I have taken to heart):
"We did not abolish the divine right of kings to replace it with the divine right of experts."