It is a painful duty to be obliged to poke the borax at a Southlander, but Act MP Todd Stephenson was that man and his inability to name a New Zealand writer was something of a Shock! Horror! headline, and he’s already had a roasting from the media.
Mr Stephenson was educated in Invercargill — the home town of Dan Davin, one of our best writers, but seemed unaware of Davin’s work. He studied law at the University of Otago, but Dunedin’s status as a Unesco-designated City of Literature has not ignited a love of books in Act’s spokesman. Many law students leaven the drudgery of their subject by slipping in a paper from the English syllabus, but that option may have also passed him by.
While Mr Stephenson is merely the Act spokesman on the arts and can thus never have any real input into government policy, his ignorance on literary matters is of wider concern. Can it be that MPs in general are philistines who read only order papers, the race results and recipe books?
Some would say that it is asking too much of a busy politician to spend time reading novels, but some of our politicians from an earlier age actually wrote some very passable fiction. Sir Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000 is regarded as among the better utopian novels and Vincent Pyke churned out a couple of good books including Wild Will Enderby, which is not a bad read. Even two-term Otago MP William Baldwin (of steepest street fame) produced a novel of some merit. It’s called Tom Hungerford, and was republished not long ago in the New Zealand Colonial Texts series by the University of Otago English Department. In later times, John A. Lee added greatly to our literature, some of his best-known works being actually produced during his time as an MP.
Some would say that parts of the procession of biographical works by Robert Muldoon smacked of fiction in places, but then how many autobiographies tell the whole truth? Mention must be made of another lover of good literature, prime minister Keith Holyoake, who once told an interviewer that one of his favourite books was On the Origin of the Species by Charles Dickens (sic). It would be unfair not to include ex-MP Michael Laws who now graces the table at Otago Regional Council meetings and is no literary slouch. He wrote a novel called Dancing With Beelzebub which is described by one reviewer as a sleazy crime novel set in Whanganui, of which city Mr Laws was once the mayor. Perhaps of even greater literary merit is Mr Laws’ biography of a hooker — Gladiator: the Norm Hewitt Story.
Today’s politicians do produce some top-rate fiction in the form of election manifestos and Budgets, but these efforts tend to fly under the radar of serious reviewers.
The minister is enthusiastic about the proposal — although she doubts if her colleagues will ever handle the language requirement — and she has suggested the programme be handled by a "Kiwi Kulture Kommittee" which she has offered to chair. Ms Stanford reminded me that she has a first class honours degree in political studies with a minor in Maori studies and has been involved in export sales roles for local manufacturers. I was loath to point out that such an impressive resume may well have left some gaps in her knowledge of New Zealand writers, artists and film-makers, but it seemed churlish to quiz her on the subject and there is always the chance I’d be left with egg on my face if she canvassed my opinion on the works of New Zealand author Eleanor Catton, who is world-famous but whom I’ve never read.
I’ll send Mr Stephenson a couple of books to start him on the road of remedial reading. Lynley Dodd’s Hairy Maclary From Donaldson’s Dairy and Barry Crump’s A Good Keen Man are both excellent examples of their genres and ideal for a politician trying to come to grips with our country’s literary heritage.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
