Friday, May 25, 2007















KIWIS FLY



This was the name of the session I attended this morning but alas, these Kiwis did not fly.

In spite of the best efforts of Chair Denis Welch who did an excellent job, loved his description of the three panellists latest titles as being "of different climes and different times", this session showed that when you put a theoretical or philosophical subject under scrutiny then authors are not necessarily the best people to involve.

Not surprisingly authors are at their best when talking about, and reading from their own work. I believe too that this is what the Festival punters want to see and hear.

Instead we had a philosophical debate/discussion on the moot that New Zealand writers should set their novels right here, at home in Aotearoa. Not surprisingly it didn't really get off the ground.

Fortunately Rachael King and Paula Morris brought some marvellous humour and commonsense to the discussion which was a welcome balance to Stevan Eldred-Grigg's somewhat pompous and parochial views.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with your comments re the male author member of this panel. Insufferable!

Anonymous said...

Me too. What about all that crap about there being no such things as a New Zealander, South Is should have been French,Christchurch people not going to Auckland in his young days etc etc.
Give me a break.If he'd mentioned Canterbury one more time I think I would have had to leave. And all that anti-Auckland garbage. Even a died-in-the-wool Wellingtonian like me got sick of that.I was going to go to the "Stick to the facts" session tomorrow morning but not now, I couldn't bear listening to him again.
I hope he was offensive enough to Festival organisers to be taken off the invitation list for future events.