Jesse Mulligan will talk reviewing at the Escape! festival on Saturday, June 4. Photo/supplied
In an age when anyone with an internet connection can share their thoughts with the world, two outstanding writers are coming to the Escape! festival to discuss the art of reviewing.
American author and reviewer Jane Ciabattari claims the "democratisation" of reviewing is synonymous with the decay of reviewing and
Steve Braunias, books editor at The Spinoff website, doesn't disagree.
"Book reviewing is one of the most difficult and delicate of the literary arts," he says. "Giving a plot summary and some bland opinion about the merits of it isn't quite good enough, and neither are a few pithy words in some boring Book in Brief review column. I prefer a Books at Enormously Great Length review column. "There have always been wonderful and astute reviewers in New Zealand. Michael King comes immediately to mind. I think he may have been our very best non-fiction reviewer, which makes sense, because he may have been our very best historian. Writers are critics too."
Joining Steve at Escape! is Jesse Mulligan, restaurant reviewer for Viva (NZ Herald), who was so keen to work as a food writer that he started a food blog as an "audition" for a paid job. A former law student who abandoned his studies after winning a stand-up comedy contest, Jesse's no stranger to bad reviews. Within 14 months all three of the original presenters of TVNZ's Seven Sharp had left, with "funny man" Jesse being the last. He now hosts a weekday afternoon show on Radio NZ.
Coincidentally, Steve is also a food reviewer, of a sort, filing a regular column for the NZ Herald, The Man who Ate Lincoln Road, a collection of reviews of the Auckland street's fast-food joints.
