Writers

 First published in Column 8 on the 10^th April 1991.

 This being New Zealand Writers’ Week, I can’t let it pass by without a comment or two from this New Zealand writer. Though you realise that people who write in newspapers aren’t really writers – especially since they use word processors.

I remember watching P D James, the crime writer, interviewing her opposite number, Ruth Rendell, on television. Ms James, in her maiden aunt floral dress and blue rinse and sensible shoes was quite astonished to hear that Ruth had dumped her typewriter in favour of a word-processor.

Ruth’s down-to-earth comment was that it was a great boon except when you went to see what was smelling on the stove and a power surge wiped out your morning’s work.

All that aside (especially since those are English writers) I’m actually waiting for my invitation to appear at the Writers’ Week, and can’t quite understand why I didn’t receive one. Not even a free pass. (Us under-rated newspaper columnists with umpteen kids can’t afford to turn up otherwise.)

Roger Hall, playwright
courtesy Playmarket NZ

I’ve lain awake at night pondering this matter – this is after I’ve burnt the midnight oil meeting the Midweek deadline. Was it because I already live here [in Dunedin, where the event took place], or was it because Roger Hall and Co were unsure about being able to cover the cost of inviting me, they being under the misapprehension that columnists are used to receiving large sums of money?

Perhaps it was some sense of insecurity on Roger’s part? I notice he doesn’t speak to me in the street when I pass him – it’s almost as though he doesn’t recognise me. (I mean to say, even the man from whom I buy my toffee milk bars on a regular basis recognises me. And my picture is in the paper, though my own cat wouldn’t know me from that.)

I dread to think that there might be a certain snobbery in my lack of invitation. No! that couldn’t be the reason. Probably it’s as Roger says: ‘Many others would have liked to come, and I would have liked to have invited them, but it simply isn’t possible to have everyone who is worthy of inclusion.’

There you are, that lets him off the hook.

I was interested to read what Jack Lasenby has to say in the Writers’ Week programme: ‘My greatest ambition is to write an autobiographical Post-Hole-Digger’s thesis on The Significance of the Humbug in New Zealand Literature.’

I’m glad Mr Lasenby has such ambitions: New Zealand literature needs a bit of debunking. Maybe because we’re still in our short trousers when it comes to culture we feel we have to be terribly serous about it all.

Deep seriousness has a place – life is no laugh for many, as the media inform us so relentlessly. But perhaps we mistake deep seriousness for great literature: when we get on our high horse we weigh the poor thing down.

Is this why many people don’t read New Zealand fiction and writing, because so many gloomtone artists and hope destroyers are at work?

Craig Harrison has been reported recently as saying we’re a nation which takes our literature too seriously.

Being funny, however, is not regarded seriously enough.

I think there will come a time when, like Jack Lasenby, I will set aside all my small ambitions and complete a large-scale work on the need for laughter – and hope – in New Zealand fiction.

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 I’m not sure if there is still an NZ (national) Writers’ Week – I think it’s been replaced by more localised events in different parts of the country, such as the Dunedin Writers and Readers’ Festival..