KEY POINTS:
At the risk of giving Gordon McLauchlan, Hamish Keith, et al, even more to complain about, this blog is being written from Wellington. Writer, reviewer and columnist McLauchlan, for those who don't follow such things - and Lord knows, why should you? - had a right old go
at the capital and its "stranglehold on New Zealand culture" at the monthly meeting of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors in February. Arts commentator Keith - whose Cultural Curmudgeon column appears fortnightly in the Listener - came to his support in the comments section when McLauchlan's "little rant" (as he himself described it) was posted on Beattie's Book Blog .
"We really need to ask why every New Zealand cultural lever or button has a Wellington hand or finger on it," reckoned Keith, - and why ever major cultural resource is Wellington based."
McLauchlan certainly fired off some good one-liners: "Let me make the point that Wellington would be a fishing village based in Island Bay were it not for Government and its bureaucrats"; referring to one of the two Wellington runners-up in the fiction category at last year's Montana New Zealand Book Awards as "unreadable" and going on: "Who lost? Well, most obviously CK Stead, whose novel [My Name Was] Judas has been published since last year into Polish, French, Croatian, Hungarian, and Spanish. The unreadable Wellington novelist hasn't, to my knowledge, been published in any other language, perhaps because they haven't yet found a translator to stay awake to do the job."
McLauchlan's stone-hearted and crassly casual description of the unnamed other fiction runner-up - Nigel Cox - as "A dead Wellingtonian" didn't do much for his cause, but that cause is not without substance, whether you agree with it or not. I won't go into that here, though, as I plan to write about it in the Listener.
I only bring the subject up to demonstrate, in introducing myself and Culture Vulture, that I am acutely aware of the suspicions that fall upon a Wellington-based arts and books editor of the Listener and blogger for the New Zealand Herald.
What can I say? The last time I looked, I wasn't part of the IIML/VUP/CNZ-Industrial Complex (if such a thing exists), but others may beg to differ. I have, after all, supped with the "unreadable" Wellington novelist - or at least been in the same room as him when supping. I have also - more damningly? - been a fellow shortlist selector for the International Institute of Modern Letters' Prize in Modern Letters for an emerging New Zealand writer (to be announced on Saturday as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival .
Does that taint me irrevocably? A cynic's careful scrutiny of the finalists might suggest it does, but I plead innocence on both my own and my colleagues' parts. These were the best writers. Regardless of provenance.
Perhaps, as Auckland Writers and Readers Festival director Jill Rawnsley suggested to me the other day, I am extended a Get Out of Jail Free Card because I am a Briton. Perhaps that is an offence in its own right. (Having worked for the Hampstead & Highgate Express newspaper in North London for five years, I know all too well what it's like to be the object of literary loathing. At least no one yet speaks of "the Wellington novel" as they do of "the Hampstead novel" - the acme of artistic complacency, with the suburb's postcode, NW3, shorthand for middle-class liberal smugness.)
Culture Vulture is a continuation of former longtime Listener journalist Denis Welch's column of the same name in the magazine and a variation on the Shelf Life book blog I used to write for a certain other New Zealand media organisation's website. The variation being principally that this blog will encompass all the arts.
As to content, well, asking me to define that is like asking how long a piece of string is. The joy of blogging is that it can be anything and everything. (Or nothing much at all, but let's not go there.)
There will be one constant: an exhaustive Monday (or sometimes Tuesday!) wrap of the weekend book pages around the world.
Other than that, there will be snippets of news and gossip (though we're not talking Popbitch here), argument, provocations, commentary - reasoned and otherwise. There will be pointers to other arts-related blogs and websites (the standard ruse of a blogger who has nothing to say himself that day). There will be the occasional flight of fancy.
Your comments will always be gratefully received. Let's get a conversation going here. The arts are ripe for discussion, so let's discuss them.
(This posting was written to the following soundtrack: Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6 and Auckland band The Broken Heartbreakers' self-titled debut album.)*
* Each posting will be accompanied by this shamelessly self-indulgent information, for no other reason than . . . well, for no reason at all, really. Personally, I am always interested in what people are listening to or reading. Is Nick Hornby ever more compelling than in his regular Stuff I've Been Reading/Watching for The Believer? Who can resist the New York Times book blog Paper Cuts - Living with Music playlists of authors' listening habits? I know I?m not Hornby, or one of Paper Cuts? notables, but even those vox-pops you see of commuters? iPod contents are fascinating. (Once you get past the grim realisation of how many people own Coldplay?s X&Y.) You can be sure I am a man of impeccable taste, and, unless I say anything to the contrary, my CD choices would be a boon to any record collection. Google them and discover more.