Show me the way to get to Milford Sound
1
16 —THE NELSON MAIL Saturday, February 23, 2013 Honour your loved Honour your loved ones in print ones in print and online... and online... Celebrate and honour the legacy of your loved one’s life and inspire family and friends to do the same. Death Notices published in the Nelson Mail are now available on our website. is service allows people, living outside the region or overseas, to view your notice. An online guestbook is also attached to your online death notice which gives friends and family members the opportunity to share thoughts, feelings and offer condolences. ese memories will help preserve your loved one’s story and create a sense of community while offering comfort during a difficult time. For more information on the Nelson Mail death notices online service contact: Nelson Mail on (03) 548 0119 or 0800 800 515 or classifi[email protected] or your Funeral Director can answer any questions you may have on the Nelson Mail death notices online service. www.nelsonmail.co.nz /deathnotices 5172971AA OPINION Show me the way to get to Milford Sound Naomi Arnold ‘‘Oh my gaaard’’: Could there be a nicer place on a summer day than the Pelorus River? Photo: FAIRFAX NZ H e had to buy his first passport to get to New Zealand. He was 28, from a Minnesota town of 600 souls, and my friend Lauren picked him up on Raupara Rd at midday last Sunday. She pulled over when she saw the lone bloke, assessing him as harmless – and then, as they always do, another hitchhiker materialised from the undergrowth. The boy, Mike, had flown into Auckland four days before, and somehow made it overland down the North Island and across Cook Strait. He’d met the girl, 19-year- old German Nadine, in a bakery, and agreed to hitch together to keep her safe. They had been waiting for an hour and a half when Lauren pulled over, and when she did, Mike looked surprised. He said: ‘‘I’ve never done this before.’’ In the car, he explained that his mother had made him vow not to hitchhike in New Zealand. ‘‘I told her, ‘I can’t promise that, Mom’. I didn’t want to have to lie to her,’’ he said. His friends back home in Minnesota said ‘‘What do you want to go there for?’’ when he announced his plans for New Zealand. But he was determined to see Milford Sound: the Mecca of the Pacific, the best place in Aotearoa. He’d almost been to another country before; once, when he was fly fishing back home, he’d seen the Canadian border across the lake. On the way home to Nelson, Lauren stopped at Pelorus Bridge for a swim. She led the hitchhikers down the path to the place where the green river slices the rocks in half and the sun warms them, and Mike gasped at its sudden beauty. ‘‘Oh my Gaard,’’ he said. She jumped into the water, and he stood on the rocks, shocked. ‘‘Oh my Gaaaard,’’ he said, gaping at her audacity. ‘‘I have never done anything like this before.’’ That night, the hitchhikers camped out in the spare room at Lauren’s flat, and the next day Nadine left for Motueka. Mike got up early to catch the NBus, hoping it would take him somewhere interesting, but it took him to Richmond. He got off and asked at a shop where the West Coast was, then walked to the roundabout at the foot of Gladstone Rd and stood there, thumb out, hoping some kindly soul would pick him up and get him closer to Milford Sound. After four hours, he shouldered his pack and returned to Richmond, where he caught the NBus back to Nelson for a look around town. Later, his heel rubbed raw by a blood blister from all that hot, lonely walking, he flagged down a taxi driver. They fell into conversation, and the driver said he’d show him a good time for $100. The pair spent the afternoon driving around the region together, the driver showing him old childhood haunts and Tasman School, and pointing out the golden sands, blue water, green bush and yellow sea kayaks of Tasman Bay. They visited a craft shop, where Mike bought a ring for a girl back home. But he avoided visiting Abel Tasman National Park. No time. He had to get to Milford Sound. The taxi driver dropped him home at 8pm, just in time for Lauren to dish him up some lentil bolognese for dinner. He ate it, bravely, just as he’d eaten the spicy jambalaya the previous night. He’d never had that sort of food before, he explained. Back home, he ate mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, turkey breast, steak, and Kool-Aid, to which he’d add a cup of sugar for the taste. But when he decided to go travelling in a foreign country, he told himself he’d stay really open to new experiences, including the food. The next day, Nadine returned from her trip and asked how she could get a job here. When she left, she wrote a note that’s now posted on a pinboard in Lauren’s flat. ‘‘Hi, thank you very much for picking us up, showing us that amazing river and hosting us so friendly,’’ it said. Mike, having visited the iSite and finally figuring out his passage to the West Coast, left a note, too. ‘‘Thank you so much for your hospitality and generosity,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I’ll never forget an experience like this. If you’re ever in Minnesota, I’ll be more than happy to show y’all around.’’ By now, he should have made it to Milford Sound. ❚ [email protected] A mug’s view Russell Harding Floundering in a godless and lost world I n an effort to write informed columns that make sense of our complex world, I stay close to the news. I listen to the radio and watch television. I read widely on the internet. I’ve even dabbled with social media. As a result, nothing makes sense, and I’m beginning to worry about my mental health. I worry for my health because to swim in the sea of current events is to swim in a sea of effluent. These past couple of weeks, I almost drowned in the stuff. Kicking off the headlines over the past fortnight was NZ First MP Richard Prosser’s Middle-earth writings about troglodytes from Wogistan. According to Mr Prosser, a ‘‘Wog’’ is a Western Oriental Gentleman, and a term not to be offended by. I learned from Google that, amongst other things, a troglodyte is one of a race of humanoid monsters from the game Dungeons and Dragons. This was all I was going to learn from Mr Prosser’s writings. His wisdom born out of pocketknife rage swept local news before launching itself on the eagerly waiting wider world. Much was written and spoken, but nowhere did it state that New Zealand’s standing in the world had increased, or that international travel had become safer or more efficient, because of the wisdom Mr Prosser shared with us all. So what other items were floating out there in the current events sea? Well, we learned that Coca-Cola kills. A coroner’s report says so. Which set Bob Jones off. ‘‘What absolute tosh!’’ he wrote. He threw in a ‘‘totally absurd’’ with a ‘‘damn silly suggestion’’, and topped it off with a ‘‘not content to simply do their job’’. Coroners ‘‘suffer from Gareth- morganitus’’, according to Sir Bob, ‘‘namely, an obsession with seeing their name in print’’. The following night, Sir Bob could be seen on Seven Sharp talking about women. Apparently, he employs a few and is well qualified to speak on their behalf. This was on the back of his previous week’s column in New Zealand’s largest newspaper, where he talked of ‘‘hogwash’’ and ‘‘unadulterated world-class nonsense’’, followed by more ‘‘infantile nonsense’’ and a ‘‘capacity to spout garbage . . . familiar to us all’’. He seemed to have covered it all. Was there any subject left untouched for a columnist like me to get outraged about? Perhaps not. I continued my forlorn search for subject matter in the 24-hour news cycle sea. Unfortunately, Richard Prosser kept floating back to the surface. Political commentator Matthew Hooton said: ‘‘I feel sorry for poor old Prosser; all he was doing was articulating the beliefs of his political party. If you’re a greenie, you spread the green message; if you’re in NZ First, your job is to promote hatred.’’ All this ‘‘news’’ was making me feel unwell. My doctor did say I should try more greens. I turned from the writings of one shock jock politician to another. Not Michael Laws, but former ACT leader Rodney Hide. Perhaps he could guide me on this week’s subject matter. Rodney didn’t muck about. He gracefully danced his way into the current education debate. ‘‘The teacher unions? They’re the baddest and the maddest.’’ Teacher unions ‘‘dictate education policy, destabilise duly elected ministers of education, and present themselves as the arbiters of right and proper schooling’’. Nothing about Hekia’s own righteous high heels destabilising her, Rodney? He finished with another charitable thought on unionised teachers. ‘‘They’re rich, powerful and unassailable . . . their driving concern is their own power and their own budget.’’ Rodney gave me an ice cream headache to go with my current events heartache. I bravely continued my voyage into what Colin Hogg calls the ‘‘godless and lost world of New Zealand current affairs’’. And there it was again. Richard Prosser’s bobbing head – this time handed in on a plate, in a quote from a NZ First board member. According to the board member, Mr Prosser is ‘‘prone to hyperbolistic feats of expression’’. The quote exploded on my computer screen before I went searching for meatier subjects. Meteors in Russia, I hear you say? I reckon they were a Russian tourism publicity stunt. Horse meat in Britain? That’ll teach them for joining the European Union. Oscar Pistorius? A story with legs, but too sad for words. What about Telecom’s email security? How about writing about the Living Wage? What about the Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report released last week? What about the release of long- delayed semi-legal auditor- general’s reports into issues that are mostly moral? Followed by a neat policy release on beneficiary fraud to divert the media’s gaze. The truth is, I’ve waded through so much news effluent it’s got into my brain. I may have to wait for Seven Sharp to give these subjects a go before I can understand them. Their graphics always help. With any luck, someone will tweet about it to further enhance clarity. Sustenance f or writers Appendix 1.1 Sarah Dunn Inspiring: Happiness is the right mug at work. R ecently, my working life has been improved by a new mug. It’s one of the orange-striped Popular Penguin mugs, with ‘‘Nineteen Eighty- Four’’ and ‘‘George Orwell’’ written on it. The Virginia Woolf model featuring ‘‘A Room of One’s Own’’ would have suited me better, really, but they only come in lilac. This mug is significant because it’s the first mug I’ve purchased specifically for use at my desk. It’s the perfect size, shape and colour combination, and the rescue orange makes it stand out nicely against the mess of discarded papers and bits of writing. The embarrassing amount of satisfaction I get from the Orwell mug got me thinking about the ways famous writers behave in their day jobs. Perhaps Orwell had a Work Mug of his own? In fact, George Orwell, or Eric Blair by his real name, was a policeman before he was a writer. As he was born in India, Orwell’s family sent him to train for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma when his marks at school failed to impress. By all accounts he was an unorthodox but good policeman, learning Burmese very quickly and getting on well with the locals. There’s even a rumour that he got blue circle-amulets tattooed on his knuckles to guard against bullets and snakebites. In 1927, he returned to England after a bout of dengue fever and quit the force to concentrate on writing. His first full-length novel, Down and Out in Paris and London roughly describes how that turned out, but he also had a more comfortable time teaching at a private prep school in West London. Just a few years earlier in 1917, Woolf and her husband Leonard founded the Hogarth Press. A moneyed member of the aristocracy with ongoing nervous problems, Woolf was not expected to work for her living and would have had a lot of trouble doing so, but she and Leonard ran their small letter-press with great success. She found that the process of typesetting and printing helped her think about writing in a different way: ‘‘Try to understand what a writer is doing. Think of a book as a very dangerous and exciting game, which it takes two to play at. Books are not turned out of moulds like bricks. Books are made of tiny little words, which a writer shapes, often with great difficulty, into sentences of different lengths, placing one on top of another, never taking his eye off them, sometimes building them quite quickly, at other times knocking them down in despair, and beginning all over again.’’ After the Woolfs printed a co- written collection, Two Stories, and other work by Virginia, they took on work from other writers within their group of friends, such as T S Eliot. Eliot is a bit special within this list of writers who had to take other jobs to pay the bills. His most famous poem is about the breakdown of a boring and repressive society, but in real life Eliot was a very content employee at Lloyd’s Bank of London for a long time after his work became famous. Maybe this is where the unassuming, kindly J Alfred Prufrock of his famous poem came from, with his ‘‘rich and modest’’ necktie and rolled trousers. Interestingly, poet Ezra Pound set up what could have been one of the first- ever attempts at crowdfunding in order to try and free Eliot from the bank. He named it Bel Esprit or ‘‘a fine wit’’. Through Bel Esprit, Pound and other writers tried to find 30 people to promise Eliot £10 per year for a modest £300 annual salary. Unfortunately, evidence implies Eliot probably pulled in more like £500 each year from his work at the bank by the time Bel Esprit was attempted in 1922, and he rejected the offer on the grounds that it was too uncertain. Eliot made a graceful exit from the bank in 1925 to work for the publishing firm that became Faber and Faber. He stayed there for the rest of his career and eventually became a director. The lesson here seems to be that writing is a side project for just about everybody except those who can afford not to work. Poet William Carlos Williams and the Russian short-story writer Chekhov were both well-respected doctors in their time, and even the wild and furious poet Charles Bukowski worked for the American Postal Service for more than a decade. Bukowski once said he was ‘‘horrified at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed.’’ I wonder if he would have been happier if he had a Work Mug. ❚ Sarah Dunn’s blog, The Baby Seal’s Book Club, is published on nelsonmail.co.nz Steve Braunias has taken a break and returns next week. CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS ACROSS: 1 Coach, 4 Take a second look, 14 Suave, 15 Stops, 16 Harbouring, 17 Crest, 19 End, 20 Handgun, 21 Traveller, 22 Felled, 25 Put on show, 27 Saturn, 28 Notion, 33 Balloonist, 35 Tea, 36 Assign, 37 Beer, 39 Rib, 41 Biscuit, 42 Tablet, 43 Consulted, 44 Upset, 45 Bad dream, 50 Up, 51 Tabulate, 55 Scrim, 58 Blackmail, 59 Biased, 60 Allowed, 61 War, 63 Ergo, 64 Sermon, 65 Apt, 66 Skateboard, 68 Caddie, 69 Rescue, 71 Out of date, 76 Seller, 77 Stopwatch, 79 Ostrich, 81 Tot, 84 Nests, 85 Arithmetic, 86 Goods, 87 Egypt, 88 By hook or by crook, 89 Stack. DOWN: 2 Outlaw, 3 Cupid, 5 Afar, 6 Embargo, 7 Scurvy, 8 Chill, 9 Neglect, 10 Lack, 11 Obeyed, 12 Dazed, 13 Deadpan, 14 Stilton, 18 Automobile, 23 Astir, 24 Trisect, 26 Unlaced, 27 Start-up, 29 Inertia, 30 Marina, 31 Still, 32 Agenda, 34 Team, 36 Abyss, 38 Ridge, 40 Guru, 45 Bible, 46 Dragged, 47 Rake, 48 Abates, 49 Crown, 50 Umbrage, 52 Balderdash, 53 Lookout, 54 Theory, 55 Slimmed, 56 Paste, 57 Sees, 62 Canon, 67 Violent, 68 Clutter, 70 Catwalk, 72 Unclear, 73 Measly, 74 Cathay, 75 Acidic, 76 Stays, 78 Prior, 80 Roost, 82 Oslo, 83 Silo.
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A young American visits New Zealand and never wants to leave.
Transcript of Show me the way to get to Milford Sound
16 — THE NELSON MAIL Saturday, February 23, 2013
Honour your lovedHonour your loved ones in print ones in print
and online... and online...
Celebrate and honour the legacy of your loved one’s life and inspire family and friends to do the same.Death Notices published in the Nelson Mail are now available on our website. Th is service allows people, living outside the region or overseas, to view your notice. An online guestbook is also attached to your online death notice which gives friends and family members the opportunity to share thoughts, feelings and off ercondolences. These memories will help preserve your loved one’s story and create a sense of community while offering comfort during a diffi cult time.
For more information on the Nelson Mail death notices online service contact:Nelson Mail on (03) 548 0119 or 0800 800 515 or classifi [email protected] your Funeral Director can answer any questions you may have on the Nelson Mail death notices online service.
www.nelsonmail.co.nz/deathnotices
5172971AA
OPINION
Show me the way toget to Milford Sound
Naomi Arnold
‘‘Oh my gaaard’’: Could there be a nicer place on a summer day than thePelorus River? Photo: FAIRFAX NZ
He had to buy his firstpassport to get to NewZealand. He was 28, froma Minnesota town of 600
souls, and my friend Laurenpicked him up on Raupara Rd atmidday last Sunday. She pulledover when she saw the lone bloke,assessing him as harmless – andthen, as they always do, anotherhitchhiker materialised from theundergrowth.
The boy, Mike, had flown intoAuckland four days before, andsomehow made it overland downthe North Island and across CookStrait. He’d met the girl, 19-year-old German Nadine, in a bakery,and agreed to hitch together tokeep her safe. They had beenwaiting for an hour and a halfwhen Lauren pulled over, andwhen she did, Mike lookedsurprised. He said: ‘‘I’ve neverdone this before.’’
In the car, he explained that hismother had made him vow not tohitchhike in New Zealand. ‘‘I toldher, ‘I can’t promise that, Mom’. Ididn’t want to have to lie to her,’’he said.
His friends back home inMinnesota said ‘‘What do youwant to go there for?’’ when heannounced his plans for NewZealand. But he was determined tosee Milford Sound: the Mecca ofthe Pacific, the best place inAotearoa. He’d almost been toanother country before; once,when he was fly fishing backhome, he’d seen the Canadianborder across the lake.
On the way home to Nelson,Lauren stopped at Pelorus Bridgefor a swim. She led the hitchhikersdown the path to the place wherethe green river slices the rocks inhalf and the sun warms them, andMike gasped at its sudden beauty.
‘‘Oh my Gaard,’’ he said. Shejumped into the water, and hestood on the rocks, shocked.
‘‘Oh my Gaaaard,’’ he said,gaping at her audacity. ‘‘I havenever done anything like thisbefore.’’
That night, the hitchhikerscamped out in the spare room atLauren’s flat, and the next dayNadine left for Motueka. Mike gotup early to catch the NBus, hopingit would take him somewhere
interesting, but it took him toRichmond.
He got off and asked at a shopwhere the West Coast was, thenwalked to the roundabout at thefoot of Gladstone Rd and stoodthere, thumb out, hoping somekindly soul would pick him up andget him closer to Milford Sound.
After four hours, he shoulderedhis pack and returned toRichmond, where he caught theNBus back to Nelson for a look
around town. Later, his heelrubbed raw by a blood blister fromall that hot, lonely walking, heflagged down a taxi driver.
They fell into conversation, andthe driver said he’d show him agood time for $100. The pair spentthe afternoon driving around theregion together, the drivershowing him old childhood hauntsand Tasman School, and pointingout the golden sands, blue water,green bush and yellow sea kayaksof Tasman Bay.
They visited a craft shop, whereMike bought a ring for a girl backhome. But he avoided visitingAbel Tasman National Park. Notime. He had to get to MilfordSound.
The taxi driver dropped himhome at 8pm, just in time forLauren to dish him up some lentilbolognese for dinner. He ate it,bravely, just as he’d eaten thespicy jambalaya the previousnight. He’d never had that sort offood before, he explained. Backhome, he ate mostly peanut butterand jelly sandwiches, turkeybreast, steak, and Kool-Aid, towhich he’d add a cup of sugar forthe taste. But when he decided togo travelling in a foreign country,he told himself he’d stay reallyopen to new experiences,including the food.
The next day, Nadine returnedfrom her trip and asked how shecould get a job here. When she left,she wrote a note that’s now postedon a pinboard in Lauren’s flat.
‘‘Hi, thank you very much forpicking us up, showing us thatamazing river and hosting us sofriendly,’’ it said.
Mike, having visited the iSiteand finally figuring out hispassage to the West Coast, left anote, too. ‘‘Thank you so much foryour hospitality and generosity,’’he wrote. ‘‘I’ll never forget anexperience like this. If you’re everin Minnesota, I’ll be more thanhappy to show y’all around.’’
By now, he should have made itto Milford Sound.❚ [email protected]
A mug’s viewRussell Harding
Floundering in a godless and lost world
In an effort to write informedcolumns that make sense ofour complex world, I stayclose to the news. I listen to
the radio and watch television. Iread widely on the internet. I’veeven dabbled with social media.As a result, nothing makes sense,and I’m beginning to worry aboutmy mental health.
I worry for my health because toswim in the sea of current eventsis to swim in a sea of effluent.These past couple of weeks, Ialmost drowned in the stuff.
Kicking off the headlines overthe past fortnight was NZ First MPRichard Prosser’s Middle-earthwritings about troglodytes fromWogistan. According to MrProsser, a ‘‘Wog’’ is a WesternOriental Gentleman, and a termnot to be offended by.
I learned from Google that,amongst other things, a troglodyteis one of a race of humanoidmonsters from the game Dungeonsand Dragons. This was all I wasgoing to learn from Mr Prosser’swritings.
His wisdom born out ofpocketknife rage swept local newsbefore launching itself on theeagerly waiting wider world.Much was written and spoken, butnowhere did it state that NewZealand’s standing in the worldhad increased, or thatinternational travel had becomesafer or more efficient, because ofthe wisdom Mr Prosser sharedwith us all.
So what other items werefloating out there in the currentevents sea? Well, we learned thatCoca-Cola kills. A coroner’s reportsays so.
Which set Bob Jones off. ‘‘Whatabsolute tosh!’’ he wrote. He threwin a ‘‘totally absurd’’ with a ‘‘damnsilly suggestion’’, and topped it offwith a ‘‘not content to simply dotheir job’’.
Coroners ‘‘suffer from Gareth-
morganitus’’, according to Sir Bob,‘‘namely, an obsession with seeingtheir name in print’’.
The following night, Sir Bobcould be seen on Seven Sharptalking about women. Apparently,he employs a few and is wellqualified to speak on their behalf.
This was on the back of hisprevious week’s column in NewZealand’s largest newspaper,where he talked of ‘‘hogwash’’ and‘‘unadulterated world-classnonsense’’, followed by more‘‘infantile nonsense’’ and a‘‘capacity to spout garbage . . .familiar to us all’’.
He seemed to havecovered it all. Was there anysubject left untouched for acolumnist like me to getoutraged about? Perhapsnot.
I continued my forlornsearch for subject matter inthe 24-hour news cycle sea.Unfortunately, RichardProsser kept floating back tothe surface.
Political commentatorMatthew Hooton said: ‘‘I feel
sorry for poor old Prosser; all hewas doing was articulating thebeliefs of his political party. Ifyou’re a greenie, you spread thegreen message; if you’re in NZFirst, your job is to promotehatred.’’
All this ‘‘news’’ was making mefeel unwell. My doctor did say Ishould try more greens.
I turned from the writings of oneshock jock politician to another.Not Michael Laws, but formerACT leader Rodney Hide. Perhapshe could guide me on this week’ssubject matter.
Rodney didn’t muck about. He
gracefully danced his way into thecurrent education debate. ‘‘Theteacher unions? They’re thebaddest and the maddest.’’
Teacher unions ‘‘dictateeducation policy, destabilise dulyelected ministers of education, andpresent themselves as the arbitersof right and proper schooling’’.Nothing about Hekia’s ownrighteous high heels destabilisingher, Rodney?
He finished with anothercharitable thought on unionisedteachers. ‘‘They’re rich, powerfuland unassailable . . . their drivingconcern is their own power andtheir own budget.’’
Rodney gave me an ice creamheadache to go with my currentevents heartache.
I bravely continued my voyageinto what Colin Hogg calls the‘‘godless and lost world of NewZealand current affairs’’. Andthere it was again. RichardProsser’s bobbing head – this timehanded in on a plate, in a quotefrom a NZ First board member.
According to the board member,Mr Prosser is ‘‘prone to
hyperbolistic feats of expression’’.The quote exploded on mycomputer screen before I wentsearching for meatier subjects.
Meteors in Russia, I hear yousay? I reckon they were a Russiantourism publicity stunt. Horsemeat in Britain? That’ll teachthem for joining the EuropeanUnion. Oscar Pistorius? A storywith legs, but too sad for words.
What about Telecom’s emailsecurity? How about writing aboutthe Living Wage? What about theSalvation Army’s State of theNation report released last week?What about the release of long-delayed semi-legal auditor-general’s reports into issues thatare mostly moral? Followed by aneat policy release on beneficiaryfraud to divert the media’s gaze.
The truth is, I’ve waded throughso much news effluent it’s got intomy brain.
I may have to wait for SevenSharp to give these subjects a gobefore I can understand them.Their graphics always help. Withany luck, someone will tweetabout it to further enhance clarity.
Sustenance for writers
Appendix 1.1Sarah Dunn
Inspiring: Happiness is the right mug at work.
Recently, myworking life hasbeen improved bya new mug. It’s one
of the orange-stripedPopular Penguin mugs,with ‘‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’’ and ‘‘George Orwell’’written on it. The VirginiaWoolf model featuring ‘‘ARoom of One’s Own’’ wouldhave suited me better,really, but they only comein lilac.
This mug is significantbecause it’s the first mugI’ve purchased specificallyfor use at my desk. It’s theperfect size, shape andcolour combination, andthe rescue orange makes itstand out nicely against themess of discarded papersand bits of writing. Theembarrassing amount ofsatisfaction I get from the Orwellmug got me thinking about theways famous writers behave intheir day jobs. Perhaps Orwell hada Work Mug of his own?
In fact, George Orwell, or EricBlair by his real name, was apoliceman before he was a writer.As he was born in India, Orwell’sfamily sent him to train for theIndian Imperial Police in Burmawhen his marks at school failed toimpress.
By all accounts he was anunorthodox but good policeman,learning Burmese very quicklyand getting on well with the locals.There’s even a rumour that he gotblue circle-amulets tattooed on hisknuckles to guard against bulletsand snakebites.
In 1927, he returned to Englandafter a bout of dengue fever andquit the force to concentrate onwriting. His first full-length novel,Down and Out in Paris andLondon roughly describes howthat turned out, but he also had amore comfortable time teaching ata private prep school in WestLondon.
Just a few years earlier in 1917,Woolf and her husband Leonardfounded the Hogarth Press. A
moneyed member of thearistocracy with ongoing nervousproblems, Woolf was not expectedto work for her living and wouldhave had a lot of trouble doing so,but she and Leonard ran theirsmall letter-press with greatsuccess.
She found that the process oftypesetting and printing helpedher think about writing in adifferent way: ‘‘Try to understandwhat a writer is doing. Think of abook as a very dangerous andexciting game, which it takes twoto play at. Books are not turnedout of moulds like bricks. Booksare made of tiny little words,which a writer shapes, often withgreat difficulty, into sentences ofdifferent lengths, placing one ontop of another, never taking hiseye off them, sometimes buildingthem quite quickly, at other timesknocking them down in despair,and beginning all over again.’’
After the Woolfs printed a co-written collection, Two Stories,and other work by Virginia, theytook on work from other writerswithin their group of friends, suchas T S Eliot.
Eliot is a bit special within thislist of writers who had to take
other jobs to pay the bills.His most famous poem isabout the breakdown of aboring and repressivesociety, but in real life Eliotwas a very contentemployee at Lloyd’s Bankof London for a long timeafter his work becamefamous.
Maybe this is where theunassuming, kindly JAlfred Prufrock of hisfamous poem came from,with his ‘‘rich and modest’’necktie and rolled trousers.Interestingly, poet EzraPound set up what couldhave been one of the first-ever attempts atcrowdfunding in order totry and free Eliot from thebank. He named it BelEsprit or ‘‘a fine wit’’.
Through Bel Esprit,Pound and other writerstried to find 30 people topromise Eliot £10 per yearfor a modest £300 annualsalary. Unfortunately,evidence implies Eliotprobably pulled in more
like £500 each year from his workat the bank by the time Bel Espritwas attempted in 1922, and herejected the offer on the groundsthat it was too uncertain.
Eliot made a graceful exit fromthe bank in 1925 to work for thepublishing firm that became Faberand Faber. He stayed there for therest of his career and eventuallybecame a director.
The lesson here seems to be thatwriting is a side project for justabout everybody except those whocan afford not to work. PoetWilliam Carlos Williams and theRussian short-story writerChekhov were both well-respecteddoctors in their time, and even thewild and furious poet CharlesBukowski worked for theAmerican Postal Service for morethan a decade.
Bukowski once said he was‘‘horrified at what a man had to dosimply in order to eat, sleep, andkeep himself clothed.’’ I wonder ifhe would have been happier if hehad a Work Mug.❚ Sarah Dunn’s blog, The BabySeal’s Book Club, is published onnelsonmail.co.nzSteve Braunias has taken a breakand returns next week.
CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS
ACROSS: 1 Coach, 4 Take a secondlook, 14 Suave, 15 Stops, 16Harbouring, 17 Crest, 19 End,
20 Handgun, 21 Traveller, 22 Felled,25 Put on show, 27 Saturn, 28Notion, 33 Balloonist, 35 Tea,
36 Assign, 37 Beer, 39 Rib, 41Biscuit, 42 Tablet, 43 Consulted, 44Upset, 45 Bad dream, 50 Up,
51 Tabulate, 55 Scrim, 58Blackmail, 59 Biased, 60 Allowed,61 War, 63 Ergo, 64 Sermon, 65Apt, 66 Skateboard, 68 Caddie, 69Rescue, 71 Out of date, 76 Seller, 77Stopwatch, 79 Ostrich, 81 Tot,
84 Nests, 85 Arithmetic, 86 Goods,87 Egypt, 88 By hook or by crook,89 Stack.
DOWN: 2 Outlaw, 3 Cupid, 5 Afar, 6Embargo, 7 Scurvy, 8 Chill, 9Neglect, 10 Lack, 11 Obeyed,
12 Dazed, 13 Deadpan, 14 Stilton, 18Automobile, 23 Astir, 24 Trisect, 26Unlaced, 27 Start-up, 29 Inertia, 30Marina, 31 Still, 32 Agenda, 34Team, 36 Abyss, 38 Ridge, 40 Guru,45 Bible, 46 Dragged, 47 Rake, 48Abates, 49 Crown, 50 Umbrage, 52Balderdash, 53 Lookout, 54 Theory,
55 Slimmed, 56 Paste, 57 Sees, 62Canon, 67 Violent, 68 Clutter, 70Catwalk, 72 Unclear, 73 Measly, 74Cathay, 75 Acidic, 76 Stays, 78Prior, 80 Roost, 82 Oslo, 83 Silo.
