Christmas Presents - & Happy New Year for 2026!

Lutz Seiler: Star 111 (2020)

Mostly, in the past, we've asked each other for contributions towards particularly desirable Christmas presents in my family. It takes out the element of serendipity, but it does mean that nobody ends up with anything they don't want.

Given that both Bronwyn and I have a tendency to buy the things we want throughout the year, though, this year I asked her to surprise me with something I hadn't asked for. I was expecting a few pairs of socks or a t-shirt, so when I saw she'd got me a pair of new books instead, I was definitely surprised.

Lamplight Books (Parnell, Auckland)

She bought both of them from Lamplight Books in Parnell. Art-lovers tend to gravitate towards this shop, as it stocks some really remarkable illustrated books and graphic novels from all over the world. They also have a good selection of literature, and are always ready to advise on appropriate presents for those pesky "people who have everything" in our lives.

Lutz Seiler: In Case of Loss (2020)

I must admit that I'd never heard of Lutz Seiler before encountering these two books: his novel Star 111, about the reunification of Germany in 1990, is apparently considered one of the best fictional recreations of those times to date. But it comes as the culmination of a lifetime of work as a poet, fiction-writer and essayist. The best of his essays are collected in the volume above.

I can already tell that I'm going to like him. I've looked through of the essays, and his matter-of-fact, pared-back style appeals to me greatly. There's something very concrete and exact about his writing. And to someone who's spent so much time reading Böll and Celan and Grass and other post-war German writers, I guess I understand just a little about the terrain he's working in.

The Peter Huchel Museum (2020)

In writing, there are always those moments when you cannot make progress. Days when you pace round the room endlessly, around the material, when in actual fact you are circling yourself, repeatedly mouthing something aloud, to your ear, only to hear the same thing over and over again: it's not right.

- 'In the Anchor Jar' [p.113]

Seiler is the curator of the Peter Huchel Museum in Wilhelmshorst, on the outskirts of Berlin. He gives a fascinating account in the first essay in In Case of Loss of having to gain entry by breaking into the house - at the instigation of Huchel's widow - when the local council refused him permission to live there. Poet as man of action! I like it.

I may not be able to match him there, but (as it turns out), he's almost exactly my contemporary. I was born in November 1962 in Auckland, New Zealand; he in June 1963 in Gera, East Germany.

I remember in November 1989, when I was studying in the UK, watching the Berlin wall being demolished on TV as Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" blared out. It was undeniably moving: history as spectacle - but perhaps just a little too cinematic for comfort. As if we could only understand such things now in terms of Hollywood blockbusters, with the appropriate background music.

Seiler instinctively resists such grand gestures: his material is, of course, the past, as it is for all of us, but his past is a skein of particulars: the underground uranium deposits which made Gera one of the 'tired villages' of Thuringia, and gradually irradiated everyone who worked there; the careful way his father taught him to repair machinery, tools and brushes in perfect alignment, the two working silently together in the cramped workshed.

Art Deco in Mairangi Bay, Auckland (2023)

I, too, live in a kind of museum - but it's one that's consecrated to my family's relentless, acquisitive hoarding. No matter how much you throw out, there's always more left behind: my father's guns and militaria, my mother's bags of all our childhood clothes, Bronwyn's pictures and pottery, and books, books, books from everyone. Disconcertingly, it looks quite a lot like the Huchel House.

Perhaps his past isn't so different from mine, after all. In any case, he seems like a writer after my own heart.

Peter Horvath: Fall of the Berlin Wall (10/11/1989)

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Michelle Porte: The Places of Marguerite Duras (2025)

This is the front cover of the book Bronwyn's friends at the Objectspace gallery in Ponsonby gave her as a Christmas present this year. I guess they'd noticed her passion for decoding and interpreting spaces in both her critical and creative work.

I was pleased to see that they'd chosen something by (and about) Marguerite Duras, who's one of my favourite twentieth-century French writers. Not that I've read - or seen - all her work by any means. For me, until the mid-1980s she was just another name in the honour roll of the Nouveau roman, alongside such luminaries as Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. But there was so much fuss over her Prix Goncourt-winning novel L'Amant (1984) when it first appeared in English that it would have been hard to ignore it.

The laconic, matter-of-fact way in which she wrote greatly attracted me. The book took place in a Conradian setting, but the events were outlined as dryly as only a Cartesian French writer could have achieved. The lush external landscapes of Duras' native Indochina were taken for granted - the outrageousness of the actions she recorded, again, described as brutally and directly as in a police dossier.

Jean-Jacques Annaud, dir.: The Lover (1992)

But all that was lost in the movie, I'm afraid. I enjoyed that, too, but unfortunately it's almost impossible to avoid evoking Emmanuelle and its sequels when filming an explicit French love story in the steamy Far East.

Duras, though - she was clearly something else. I decided to try reading her next novel in French to see if it had the same effect on me. That novel - for want of a better word: it's really more of an episodic series of mini-novellas and notebook entries - was called La Douleur.

Marguerite Duras: La Douleur (1985)

How do you translate that? In French, it just means pain. Barbara Bray, Duras's most faithful and assiduous English translator, retitled it The War A Memoir. Not a bad choice, as it's an intensely painful chronicle of the heroine (virtually indistinguishable from Duras herself) and her mostly futile attempts to find out what had happened to her husband, recently arrested by the Gestapo, near the end of the war.

Paris has just been liberated. Everything is in chaos. The narrator lurches from office to office, official to official, trying to get any scraps of information she can. Virtually all of this actually happened - only the names have been changed. The book, however, ends with her still in suspense, whereas in actuality Robert Antelme survived his imprisonment by the Gestapo, and even the forced death march towards Dachau in late 1945.

I'd never read anything quite like it. It was experimental, yes: the multiplicity of levels and narrative styles; the constantly shifting viewpoints. But all of that served simply to convey the intensity of the experience. There are aspects of that, too, in George Perec's earlier, rather more oblique masterpiece W ou le souvenir d'enfance [W, or the Memory of Childhood], which also hinges on the war: in that case, growing up without ever knowing that his mother died in Auschwitz.

George Perec: W ou le souvenir d'enfance (1975)

I'm not sure if I've actually seen the documentary The Places of Marguerite Duras is based on. Possibly not, because the documentary I remember watching had a number of scenes in it from her film Le Camion (1977), which came out after 1976, when Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras was shown on French TV.

The documentary I saw was extremely detailed, though - ranging from her childhood in what is now Vietnam, to the various regions of France she's also associated with. It gave at least as much attention to her work as a director as to her novels and other writing. She was always immensely prolific, and (dare I say it?) somewhat repetitive in the way she recycled situations and themes from her life and elswhere.

Marguerite Duras, dir. & writ.: India Song (1975)

One of the best examples is her film India Song, with its slightly time-lagged dialogue, never quite in synch with the actors' lips. A year later she released a film called Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert [Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta], which uses precisely the same sound-track, only this time juxtaposed against pictures of headstones and graves.

Marguerite Duras, dir. & writ.: Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)

It's not true to say, then, that when you've read one novel by Duras you've read them all. Even when they traverse much the same territory - as The North China Lover (1991) does The Lover (1984) - the new text seems designed to question and even undermine the previous version.

Since the publication of La Douleur, for instance, Duras's original wartime journals have been found and published. The multiple layers of her reinventions still continue to unfold some thirty years after her death.

Marguerite Duras: Cahiers de la guerre et autres textes (2006)

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Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu
[Marguerite Duras]
(1914-1996)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Fiction:


1. Les Impudents (1943)
   • The Impudent Ones. Trans. Kelsey L. Haskett (2021)
2. La Vie tranquille (1944)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • The Easy Life. Trans. Olivia Baes & Emma Ramadan (2022)
3. Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • The Sea Wall. 1950. Trans. Herma Briffault. 1952. London: Faber, 1986.
   • A Sea of Troubles. Trans. Antonia White (1953)
4. Le Marin de Gibraltar (1952)
   • The Sailor from Gibraltar. 1952. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1966. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., n.d.
5. Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia (1953)
   • The Little Horses of Tarquinia,. Trans. Peter DuBerg (1960)
6. Des journées entières dans les arbres: Le Boa, Madame Dodin, Les Chantiers (1954)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • Whole Days in the Trees: Le Boa, Madame Dodin, Les Chantiers. Trans. Anita Barrows (1984)
7. Le Square (1955)
   • The Square,. Trans. Sonia Pitt-Rivers and Irina Morduch (1959)
8. Moderato cantabile (1958)
   • Moderato Cantabile. Trans. Richard Seaver (1960)
9. Dix heures et demie du soir en été (1960)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • 10:30 on a Summer Night. Trans. Anne Borchardt (1961)
10. L'Après-midi de M. Andesmas (1962)
    • The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas. Trans. Anne Borchardt and Barbara Bray (1964)
11. Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The Ravishing of Lol Stein. Trans. Richard Seaver (1964)
    • The Rapture of Lol V. Stein. Trans. Eileen Ellenbogen (1967)
12. Le Vice-Consul (1965)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The Vice-Consul. Trans. Eileen Ellenborgener (1968)
13. L'Amante anglaise (1967)
    • L'Amante anglaise. Trans. Barbara Bray (1968)
14. Détruire, dit-elle (1969)
    • Destroy, She Said. Trans. Barbara Bray (1970)
15. Abahn Sabana David (1970)
    • Abahn Sabana David. Trans. Kazim Ali (2016)
16. Ah! Ernesto (1971)
17. L'Amour (1972)
    • L'Amour. Trans. Kazim Ali and Libby Murphy (2013)
18. Vera Baxter ou les Plages de l'Atlantique (1980)
19. L'Homme assis dans le couloir (1980)
    • The Man Sitting in the Corridor. Trans. Barbara Bray (1991)
20. L'Homme atlantique (1982)
    • The Atlantic Man. Trans. Alberto Manguel (1993)
21. La Maladie de la mort (1982)
    • The Malady of Death. Trans. Barbara Bray (1986)
22. L'Amant (1984)
    • The Lover. 1984. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1985. Flamingo. London: Fontana Paperbacks / Collins Publishing Group, 1986.
23. La Douleur (1985)
    • La Douleur. 1985. Collection Folio, 2469. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1997.
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The War. Trans. Barbara Bray (1986)
24. Les Yeux bleus, Cheveux noirs (1986)
    • Blue Eyes, Black Hair. Trans. Barbara Bray (1987)
25. La Pute de la côte normande (1986)
    • The Slut of the Normandy Coast. Trans. Alberto Manguel (1993)
26. Emily L. (1987)
    • Emily L. 1987. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1989. Flamingo. London: Fontana Paperbacks / Collins Publishing Group, 1990.
27. La Pluie d'été (1990)
    • Summer Rain. Trans. Barbara Bray (1992)
28. L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (1991)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The North China Lover (L’Amant de la Chine du nord). 1991. Trans. Leigh Hafrey. 1992. Flamingo Original. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
29. Yann Andréa Steiner (1992)
    • Yann Andrea Steiner. Trans. Barbara Bray (1993)
30. Écrire (1993)
    • Writing. Trans. Mark Polizzotti (2011)

Non-fiction:


31. L'Été 80 (1980)
32. Outside (1981)
    • Outside. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1986)
33. La Vie matérielle (1987)
    • Practicalities: Marguerite Duras Speaks to Jérôme Beaujour. 1987. Trans. Barbara Bray. Flamingo Original. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1990.
34. Les Yeux verts (1980 / 1987)
    • Green Eyes. Trans. Carol Barko (1990)
35. C'est tout (1995)
    • No More. Trans. Richard Howard (1998)
36. Cahiers de la guerre et autres textes: 1943-1949 (2006)
    • Wartime Notebooks and Other Texts. Ed. Sophie Bogaert & Olivier Corpet. 2006. Trans. Linda Coverdale. MacLehose Press. London: Quercus, 2008.

Plays:


37. Les Viaducs de la Seine et Oise (1959)
    • "The Viaducts of Seine-et-Oise". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Three Plays (1967)
38. Théâtre I: Les Eaux et Forêts; Le Square; La Musica (1965)
    • "Les Eaux et Forêts" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "The Square". Trans. Barbara Bray and Sonia Orwell, in Three Plays (1967)
    • "La Musica" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "La Musica". Trans. Barbara Bray (1975) [in Four Plays (1992)]
39. L'Amante anglaise (1968)
    • L'Amante anglaise. Trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
40. Théâtre II: Suzanna Andler; Des journées entières dans les arbres; Yes, peut-être; Le Shaga; Un homme est venu me voir (1968)
    • Suzanna Andler. Trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
    • "Des journées entières dans les arbres" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "Days in the Trees". Trans. Barbara Bray and Sonia Orwell, in Three Plays (1967)
41. India Song (1973)
    • "India Song" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "India Song". Trans. Barbara Bray (1976) [in Four Plays (1992)]
42. L'Eden Cinéma (1977)
    • "Eden Cinema". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)
43. Agatha (1981)
    • Agatha. Trans. Howard Limoli, in Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays (1992)
44. Savannah Bay (1982 / 1983)
    • "Savannah Bay". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)
    • "Savannah Bay". Trans. Howard Limoli, in Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays (1992)
45. Théâtre III: La Bête dans la jungle; Les Papiers d'Aspern; La Danse de mort (1984)
46. La Musica deuxième (1985)
    • "La Musica deuxième". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)

Cinema

Screenplays:

47. Hiroshima mon amour (1960)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • Hiroshima mon amour. Trans. Richard Seaver (1961)
48. Une aussi longue absence (with Gérard Jarlot) (1961)
    • Une aussi longue absence. Trans. Barbara Wright (1961)
49. Nathalie Granger, suivi de La Femme du Gange (1973)
50. Le Camion, suivi de Entretien avec Michelle Porte (1977)
    • The Darkroom. Trans. Alta Ifland and Eireene Nealand (2021)
51. Le Navire Night, suivi de Cesarée, les Mains négatives, Aurélia Steiner (1979)
    • "Le Navire Night: Cesarée, les Mains négatives" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The Ship "Night". Trans. Susan Dwyer

Director:

52. La Musica (1967)
53. Destroy, She Said (1969)
54. Jaune le soleil (1972)
55. Nathalie Granger (1972)
56. La Femme du Gange (1974)
57. India Song (1975)
58. Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)
59. Des journées entières dans les arbres (1977)
60. Le Camion (1977)
61. Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
62. Les Mains négatives (1978)
63. Césarée (1978)
64. Le Navire Night (1979)
65. Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne) (1979)
66. Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) (1979)
67. Agatha et les lectures illimitées (1981)
68. L'Homme atlantique (1981)
69. Il dialogo di Roma (1983)
70. Les Enfants (1985)

Actor:

71. Jean-Luc Godard, dir. Every Man for Himself (1980)

Collections:


72. Four Novels: The Square, Moderato Cantabile, 10:30 on a Summer Night, The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas (1966)
73. Three Plays: The Square, Days in the Trees, The Viaducts of Seine-et-Oise (1967)
74. Three Novels: The Square, Ten-thirty on a Summer Night, The Afternoon of Monsieur Andesmas (1977)
75. Four Plays: La Musica (La Musica Deuxième), Eden Cinema, Savannah Bay, India Song. Trans. Barbara Bray (1992)
76. Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays. Trans. Howard Limoli (1992)
77. Two by Duras: The Slut of the Normandy Coast / The Atlantic Man. Trans. Alberto Manguel (1993)
78. Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993 (1997)
    • Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993: La Vie tranquille; Un Barrage contre le Pacifique; Des journées entières dans les arbres: Le Boa, Madame Dodin, Les Chantiers; Le Square; Hiroshima mon amour; Dix heures et demie du soir en été; Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein; Le Vice-Consul; Les Eaux et Forêts; La Musica; Des journées entières dans les arbres; India Song; Le Navire Night: Cesarée, les Mains négatives; La Douleur; L'Amant de la Chine du Nord. 1944, 1950, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1973, 1979, 1985 & 1991. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.

Interviews:


79. [with Xavière Gauthier] Les Parleuses (1974)
    • Woman to Woman. Trans. Katharine A. Jensen (1987)
80. [with Michelle Porte] Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras: Entretiens et photos (1977)
    • The Places of Marguerite Duras. Trans. Alison L. Strayer. Introduction by Durga Chew-Bose. Montreal & New York: Magic Hour Press, 2025.
81. [with Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre] La Passion suspendue (2013)
    • Suspended Passion. Trans. Chris Turner (2016)

Secondary:


82. Adler, Laure. Marguerite Duras: A Life. 1998. Trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen. 2000. A Phoenix Paperback. London: Orion Books Ltd., 2001.

Jean-Jacques Annaud, dir.: The Lover (1992)

•

Lutz Seiler (1963- )

Lutz Seiler
(1963- )

Poetry:


1. Berührt – geführt (1995)
2. Pech & Blende (2000)
   • Pitch & Glint. Poems. Trans. Stefan Tobler (2023)
3. Hubertusweg (2001)
4. Vierzig Kilometer Nacht (2003)
5. Poems. Trans. Andrew Duncan (2005)
6. im felderlatein (2010)
   • in field latin. Poems. Trans. Alexander Booth (2016)
7. schrift für blinde riesen (2021)

Non-fiction:


8. [with Anne Duden & Farhad Showghi] Heimaten (2001)
9. Sonntags dachte ich an Gott (2004)
10. Die Anrufung. Essay und vier Gedichte (2005)
11. Die Römische Saison. Zwei Essays Mit Zeichnungen von Max P. Hering (2016)
12. Laubsäge und Scheinbrücke. Aus der Vorgeschichte des Schreibens. Heidelberger Poetikvorlesung, ed. Friederike Renes (2020)
13. In Case of Loss. Essays. Trans. Martyn Crucefix. Sheffield, London & New York: And Other Stories, 2023.

Fiction:


14. Turksib. Zwei Erzählungen (2008)
15. Die Zeitwaage. Erzählungen (2009)
16. Kruso. Novel (2014)
    • Kruso. Novel. Trans. Tess Lewis. (2017)
17. Am Kap des guten Abends. Acht Bildergeschichten (2018)
18. Stern 111. Roman (2020)
    • Star 111, Novel. Trans. Tess Lewis. Sheffield, London & New York: And Other Stories, 2023.

Lutz Seiler: Star 111 (2020)

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HAUNTS Launch / Emma Smith Exhibition - 5-6/10/24

Emma Smith: "The second sun" (The Municipal Gardens, 2024)
[images courtesy of the artist]

Bronwyn Lloyd will be hosting an exhibition
of recent paintings
by Emma Smith
at 6 Hastings Road
Mairangi Bay, Auckland
Saturday-Sunday 5-6 October
from 11am-4pm

Jack Ross's new collection of stories
Haunts (Lasavia Publishing)
will be launched on the Saturday at 2pm
$30 cash or bank deposit (no EFTPOS)

ALL WELCOME

Refreshments provided

updates on Instagram: @lloyd.bronwyn

Emma Smith: "Living with caves" (The Municipal Gardens, 2024)

•

Haunts (Lasavia Publishing, 2024)
Image: Graham Fletcher (by courtesy of the artist) / Design: Daniela Gast

Back cover blurb:

What do we actually mean by the word haunt? In this new set of stories inspired by the term, Jack Ross invokes a series of his favourite haunts via voices from the past, beginning with Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and concluding with Emanuel Swedenborg.
In between he visits with Irish ghost-story maestro Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, along with others ranging from James Joyce to H. P. Lovecraft – not to mention Scheherazade herself, creator / narrator of The 1001 Nights.
Most importantly of all, perhaps, he tries to settle accounts with his own father, the architect of a vast entangled empire of native bush and weeds at the back of their suburban quarter-acre section in Mairangi Bay.
The book ends with the novella Cartographies of the Afterlife, an exploration of the penumbra between life and death, based on accounts from recent visitors.
In the immortal words of Bette Davis: ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.’

Jack Ross is the author of six poetry collections, four novels, and four books of short fiction. His previous collection, Ghost Stories (Lasavia, 2019), has been prescribed for writing courses at three local universities. He’s also edited numerous books, anthologies, and literary journals, including (most recently) Mike Johnson’s Selected Poems (2023).

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Emma Smith: "The second to last" (The Municipal Gardens, 2024)

Artist's statement:

'Years ago, I lived in a downstairs flat with wide windows that let the night right into the room. There were white datura flowers with pink throats on the fence line. They hummed at dusk. For a long time I tried to paint them as they seemed utterly their own thing. The blooms became sails, became tents, ripped tarps, ropes whipping, planes noses, thick smoke, drones, white flags, stadium lights, search lights, anxious lanterns, distant fires, phosphorescence from below. These shapes still resist a final form and so too do the conditions about them. They are in scorched fields, floating in the dead air of space and falling in fiery plumes.’

Emma Smith was born in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa/ New Zealand in 1975. Smith currently teaches Contemporary Arts at Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland. Further information can be found at her website https://emmasmithtingrew.wordpress.com/.

•

Graham Fletcher: Ceramic Head
[photo: Bronwyn Lloyd (4-10-24)

Jack & Bronwyn at the Haunts / Municipal Gardens launch
[photo: Viv Stone (5-10-24)

•

My new book Haunts is available today!

Unpacking Copies of Haunts (27/6/24)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd

The official publication date for my new collection of short stories, Haunts, is today, Monday 1st July, 2024.

Cover image: Graham Fletcher (by courtesy of the artist) /
Cover design: Daniela Gast (2024)

As you can see, it does bear a certain resemblance to my previous collection, Ghost Stories, also published by Lasavia Publishing five years ago.

Cover image: Graham Fletcher (by courtesy of the artist) /
Cover design: Daniela Gast (2019)

Once again, it's been a great pleasure to work on the book with the Lasavia team: editor Mike Johnson, and designers Daniela Gast & Rowan Johnson. Again, just like last time, I owe a big thank you to Graham Fletcher for the use of his cover image, and (as ever) to my brilliant wife Bronwyn Lloyd for invaluable advice at every stage. Thanks, too, to Tracey Slaughter for her comments on the typescript at a crucial point of the process.

•

So what is the book about? The easiest thing might just be to quote from the blurb:

'As Jack Ross stated in his latest collection Ghost Stories, ‘We’re most haunted by that which we’ve worked hardest to deny and eradicate from our lives.'

- Brooke Georgia, Aubade (2022)

What do we actually mean by the word haunt? In this new set of stories inspired by the term, Jack Ross invokes a series of his favourite haunts via voices from the past, beginning with Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and concluding with Emanuel Swedenborg.
In between he visits with Irish ghost-story maestro Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, along with others ranging from James Joyce to H. P. Lovecraft – not to mention Scheherazade herself, creator / narrator of The 1001 Nights.
Most importantly of all, perhaps, he tries to settle accounts with his own father, the architect of a vast entangled empire of native bush and weeds at the back of their suburban quarter-acre section in Mairangi Bay.
The book ends with the novella Cartographies of the Afterlife, an exploration of the penumbra between life and death, based on accounts from recent visitors.
In the immortal words of Bette Davis: ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.’

Jack Ross is the author of six poetry collections, four novels, and four books of short fiction. His previous collection, Ghost Stories (Lasavia, 2019), has been prescribed for writing courses at three local universities. He’s also edited numerous books, anthologies, and literary journals, including (most recently) Mike Johnson’s Selected Poems (2023).
He blogs at http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/.

Brooke Georgia: Aubade (26/3-17/4/2022)

The quote featured above comes from the catalogue for Brooke Georgia's solo exhibition Aubade, at Public Record in Ponsonby.

•


Lasavia Publishing

Another vital question is how you can obtain a copy of the book? We're planning a booklaunch a bit later in the year, but in the meantime, if you'd like to order one online, it's available from the following websites:

• Google Books
• Amazon.com
• Amazon.com.au
• Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus
• Fishpond
• Foyles
• Hatchards
• Mighty Ape
• The Nile
• Thrift Books
• Wheelers
  
  
• Lasavia Publishing
37 Crescent Rd West
Ostend
Waiheke Island
Auckland 1081
https://www.lasaviapublishing.com/

RRP: $NZ 30.00 (+ postage)

Should you buy a copy? Well, obviously, that's between you and your conscience, but I'll conclude by quoting a few extracts from the Lasavia manifesto, written by Waiheke poet and novelist Mike Johnson:

‘When Leila Lees and I first considered establishing Lasavia Publishing, less than one in a hundred manuscripts submitted to publishers reached publication. ... Manuscripts submitted to publishers were, and still are, routinely returned unopened. ‘Mechanisms of exclusion’ as Foucault called them, are rife in the present publishing climate, particularly in New Zealand.

... Publishers distrust the wild card, that which might put readers too far out of their comfort zones, as if comfort was somehow the purpose of literature. Both writers and readers lose out. Real grass roots work is lost or supplanted by celebrity culture. Only indy publishers, who don’t have to carry the overheads of big publishers, will be light enough on their feet to thrive in the new publishing environment."

Recent books issued by Lasavia include Max Gunn's Paybook, a novel by Graham Lindsay; Aucklanders, a collection of stories by Murray Edmond; and Mike Johnson's own Selected Poems, fruit of five decades' work in the medium.

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Isabel Michell: Luigi checks it out (1/7/24)

My Favourite Vintage Bookshops: North Shore

Bronwyn Lloyd: Book Nook 1 (3-1-23)

They are an endangered species: there's little doubt of that. It's not that the second-hand booktrade is going to wither up and disappear; it's just that increasingly it's shifting online, and turning exclusively to mail-order instead.

Bronwyn Lloyd: Book Nook 2 (3-1-23)

And yet, we each have in our mind's eye an image of the perfect antiquarian bookshop: perhaps a bit like this one Bronwyn and I - well, mostly Bronwyn - painstakingly assembled from the kitset she gave me for Christmas ...

Bronwyn Lloyd: Book Nook 3 (3-1-23)

Look at those cute little miniature books! You wouldn't guess that each one had to be made up separately, along with all the pieces of furniture, windows, wall-hangings, and so on.

Bronwyn Lloyd: Book Nook 4 (3-1-23)

But wouldn't you like to walk in there, sit down in that armchair, and stare up at that big boookcase with its shelves weighed down with stock? There'd be bound to be some treasures there, some gems that you'd heard of or read about, but never seen in the flesh. There they'd be, waiting for you ...

A few years ago I wrote a similarly elegiac post called Lost Bookshops of Auckland where I tried to list some of those I remembered from forty-odd years of haunting the backstreets of the city.

In it I tried to give a sense of how real they remain to me. This time round, though, I thought it might be better to concentrate on all the lovely shops that are still with us, open for business, and dependent on our patronage to survive.

Of course I'm in two minds about revealing some of my secret haunts like this: but then if I don't, and nobody visits them, then they'll end up disappearing anyway, so it turns out that the best and most practical (as well as the kindest) solution is to share.

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Bookmark

Bookmark
[15 Victoria Road, Devonport]

I've bought a lot of books at Bookmark over the years, both in its previous location just off Hurstmere Rd in Takapuna, and at its present home on the main street of Devonport.

What were a few of the highlights?

Eugène Vinaver, ed.: The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (1947)

Eugène Vinaver, ed. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. 1947. 3 vols. Oxford English Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948.

Well, first on the list would undoubtedly be the magnificent 3-volume set of the complete works of Malory which I picked up there some six or seven years back (as I recorded in this post at the time).

Since then there have been finds too numerous to count. I suppose the most spectacular might be the two Folio Society sets of George Orwell bought there at different times (one was my Christmas present from my mother last year):

George Orwell: Reportage / Novels (1998 / 2001)

George Orwell. Novels. Ed. Peter Davison. 1998. 5 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2001.

1. Burmese Days (1934)
2. A Clergyman's Daughter (1935)
3. Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
4. Coming Up for Air (1939)
5. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

George Orwell. Reportage. Ed. Peter Davison. 1987. 5 vols. London: The Folio Society, 1998.

1. Down and Out in Paris and London. Introduced by Michael Foot (1933)
2. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
3. Homage to Catalonia (1938)
4. My Country Right or Left, and Other Selected Essays and Journalism (1986)
5. Funny, But Not Vulgar, and Other Selected Essays and Journalism (1986)

It's always been a friendly, relaxing place to browse in - though a perilous one from my point of view!

Mark Owen of Bookmark

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Anne of Never Ending Books

Never Ending Books
[Shop 4/1 Moenui Avenue, Orewa]

Here's a rather less well-known shop, well worth a look if you happen to be driving north up the Hibiscus Coast rather than just barrelling along the motorway.

It started its life as a book exchange rather than a bookshop proper, but that doesn't alter the fact that the retirees of Orewa have provided it with a good deal of interesting stock: medieval and military history in particular.

Mari Sandoz: Crazy Horse (1942)

Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, A Biography. Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. 1942. Introduction by Stephen B. Oates. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

I've made some nice discoveries there, particularly in the field of Native American studies: a nice paperback edition of Mari Sandoz's classic biography of Crazy Horse prominent among them.

A. L. Rowse, ed.: The Annotated Shakespeare (1978)

William Shakespeare. The Annotated Shakespeare: The Comedies, Histories, Sonnets and Other Poems, Tragedies and Romances Complete. Ed. A. L. Rowse. 3 vols. London: Orbis Publishing Limited, 1978.

1. Comedies
2. Histories and Poems
3. Tragedies and Romances

Another rather more oddball find was the elaborately annotated edition of Shakespeare pictured above, edited by eccentric Cornish scholar A. L. Rowse.

I'm told by Shakespeare experts that I should be ashamed to offer such a fundamentally unreliable tome shelfroom, but I'm afraid I'm unrepentant. Rowse may be a little prone to exaggerating the merits of his latest theories, but he's always entertaining and even, on occasion, distinctly thought-provoking.

Never Ending Books

So there you go. Hopefully there'll be further instalments in the series if you find it useful.

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Down for the Count

The World of Dracula
[photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd (2022)]

You may (or may not) recall that at the end of last year I posted a piece about completing a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle called The World of Charles Dickens. It was maniacally difficult! So this year we decided to go easy on ourselves by trying to put together, instead, The World of Dracula:

Little did we know that it'd be even worse. Where the Dickens puzzle confounded us with endless little people wandering around mysterious streets with not much to distinguish them from one another, Dracula, by contrast, was all big strokes - lots of versions of the Count, in different poses, in different parts of his castle, surrounded by a seemingly limitless expanse of sky.

If it hadn't been for the bats and the clouds, I doubt if I could ever have pieced that sky together. It was rather canny of Bronwyn to concentrate on the interiors and the action scenes instead.

Adam Simpson: The World of Dracula (2021)

But why Dracula? What is it that attracts me, in particular, to this great repository of folklore and the collective cultural unconscious? It is, of course, by now, far more than a novel: it's been adapted and enacted so many forms in every conceivable medium: comics, film, games, radio, stage, television - you name it, there'll be a version of Dracula there.

Aidan Hickey: Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

I've written quite a bit on the subject already: a piece called "Marginalising Dracula" on the various annotated editions of the book I've collected over the years, as well as the curious scholarly rivalries they enshrine; another piece called "Dracula's Guest" on the prehistory of the novel - not to mention a bibliography of its author, Bram Stoker himself.

Adam Simpson: The World of Dracula (2021)

Perhaps the easiest way to explain its appeal is to go through some of the great showpiece scenes of his masterpiece - as visualised by the designer of this puzzle, Adam Simpson.

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Here I am at the opening stages of the enterprise (apologies for the less-than-glamorous outfit, but you know how it is with getting to work right away on your things-to-assemble on Christmas morning!)

Arrival: This is a novel that starts strong. Jonathan Harker's picturesque tour of quaint old Transylvania is gradually overshadowed by the mysterious warnings of his fellow-travellers, with their muttered refrain of "the dead travel fast", and finally the spectral coach - driven by Dracula in disguise - that picks him up for the last leg of his journey. You can see it all here: the blue flame that guards the gate, and the need for him to state that he enters freely and of his own will before he is able to set foot in Castle Dracula.

Suspicion: Jonathan Harker's stay in the castle becomes increasingly irksome to him the more he explores its hidden ways. Finally, of course, he discovers the Count himself sleeping in his day-coffin, but by then it's apparent that Jonathan has already prepared his own doom by signing so many legal papers and letters on his arrival.

First blood-letting: This is the wonderful scene where the Count is enflamed by the sight of his guest cutting himself shaving. Dracula manages to restrain himself - just - but even to the matter-of-fact Jonathan it's becoming clear that his host is a little more than just ... odd. Why, for instance, is there no reflection of him in the mirror?

The Three Seductresses: Bram Stoker really lets himself go in this scene where Jonathan is seduced by the Count's three vampire mistresses into accepting their "kisses." Their master is able to save him from them, producing a baby in a bag for them to feast on instead. But from now on he is careful to keep Jonathan weak and on the point of death to prevent any last minute interference with his plans for a new life in London.

The Voyage: Jonathan does, rather implausibly, manage to escape - but the Count has already taken ship across the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to reach final landfall at Whitby in the North of England. By then he's killed most of the crew, with not enough of them left to sail the vessel. It runs aground, and he's forced to take refuge in the town before making his way to London. (You'll note how the multiple co-existing scenes and time-lines of the jigsaw mesh with the novel's collage of letters, journal entries, newspaper items, and even transcripts of gramophone recordings!)

Fighting Back: Here we see Lucy's three suitors proposing to her, one after another. Further down we see the vampire she has become carrying a small child back to her grave to drink its blood. Her death scene is one step down from that, underneath the imprisoned madman Renfield, Dracula's reluctant collaborator.

Van Helsing's Triumph: There's a lot going on in these two scenes. Below we see vampire-hunter extraordinaire Abraham Van Helsing holding aloft the severed heads of the three brides of Dracula, having dared to break into the monster's den. Above we see our heroes - Jonathan, Lucy's remaining suitors, and Van Helsing - putting an end to Dracula himself, just as he's about to be revived by the setting sun.

The Count: And yet - the rumours of his death may, in the end, turn out to be greatly exaggerated. As H. P. Lovecraft once put it:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Dracula continues to preside over the puzzle as he does over the narrative: what can death be actually said to mean to one who's already dead? He's distinctly livelier than any of the other characters in the novel, and his staying-power remains prodigious.

The merits of each new major incarcation - Max Schreck, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman, and now Claes Bang - may continue to be debated, but the plain fact of the matter is that his cultural cachet can only be matched by that of his one true rival, Sherlock Holmes.

Francis Ford Coppola, dir.: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

You can find a good summary of his pop culture appearances on the Wikipedia page here; a filmography here; and a free download of the original 1897 novel here. Enjoy.

For myself, it's time now to turn my attention to another exciting project: the "Book Nook" model which was my Christmas present from Bronwyn this year. I can already foresee a lot of wrestling with bottles of glue and sandpaper in my immediate future!

Cutebee: Eternal Bookstore Book Nook Kitset

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The World of Dracula
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (2022)]

A Happy New Year to All in
2023!