ROOSTERS I HAVE KNOWN

Steve Braunias - Awa Press - $30

Braunias is one of those journalists who has the knack of getting right up your nose. Readers tend to either admire him or revile him. I suppose I fall somewhere in between. He often riled me with his columns but then last year along came his superb How to watch a bird and I felt nothing but admiration.

This new book just released, and due for launching at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival later this week, is not another How to watch a bird rather it is a collection of the 27 interviews that he conducted during 2007 for his weekly column in the Sunday Star Times.

I have to confess I largely enjoyed reading them again and I found his introduction, The Purpose of Roosters, both entertaining and interesting, particularly with some of the confessions he makes about how he treated the interviewees.

Here is how his introduction starts:

Autumn was Ruth Richardson, winter was a rather sad private detective. Spring was Colin Meads, summer was a likeable twit from Shortland Street. Throughout, I held on to a souvenir of the strange experience of profiling a New Zealand identity every week for the past seven months: a worn, creaking 90-minute TDK cassette tape. It's standard practice for journalists to use a fresh cassette when they record interviews, then file it away for safekeeping; it may be required to settle grave matters of libel, or vexatious complaints about being misquoted. But I couldn't be bothered. I used the same old tape week in, week out. One noose fits all.
Helen Clark's confident honk was swallowed up by John Key's vacuous chatter, in turn replaced by the sound of Louise Nicholas's incessant complaints, then concreted over by the vain hopes of poor, doomed Dick Hubbard in all, 27 voices came and went, their words destined for oblivion. Whatever they said would be taken down and, later, taken out, buried beneath the next guest. I was destroying the evidence. I was trying to erase the strange experience of profiling a New Zealand identity every week for the past seven months. I was working my way towards the sweetest sound of all: silence.

It is in the end great fun and, typical of Awa Press' publishing, it is both small and perfectly formed.

An Hour with Steve Braunias, Chair, Finlay Macdonald, ASB Theatre, 4.30pm Wednesday 14 May. This is the first event at this years Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.