Memories of Don Smith

D. I. B. Smith (1934-2023)
[photograph courtesy of Caitlin Smith]

i. m. Emeritus Professor Donal Ian Brice Smith
(4/2/1934 - 27/9/2023)

I don't think I ever had a conversation with Don Smith which didn't end in some interesting book recommendation - or else a new insight into a long-beloved classic. He was the first Academic I ever met who seemed to be driven solely by a love for books and reading in general. "Great stuff!" he would intone, as he leafed through another shabby-looking prize from the second-hand bookshops downtown.

I was somewhat in awe of him to start with - and for quite a long time after that. I had, for some unaccountable reason, decided in the early 1980s that it was up to me to reclaim from oblivion the long-neglected novels of British Poet Laureate John Masefield by composing a Master's thesis about them.

Constance Babington Smith: John Masefield: A Life (1978)

"How many novels did he actually write?" asked one of the prospective supervisors I approached. "Twenty-three," I replied. "And how many of them have you read?" "Twenty-three." [1] Strangely enough, that particular prospect discovered he had urgent duties elsewhere and could not accept a new research student at that time ...

Don - or 'Professor Smith', as I continued to address him till long after I had ceased to be his student - actually was far too busy to take me on. He was, after all, Head of Department at the time. But when I went to see him about it, he said that he would do it - but only if nobody else was able to.

Which left me with the somewhat invidious task of visiting each and every one of the Academics in the of the University of Auckland English Department who might conceivably be interested in such a project. It was certainly very educational to sample the variety of excuses they came up with - from the straight 'no' to the 'maybe some other time' to the 'perhaps if you changed it to ... [something quite unrelated].'

But no, I was - no doubt foolishly - quite determined, so I eventually made my way back to Don's door, and to his somewhat reluctant oversight ...

How did he approach it? He sat there and talked, while I took notes. His talk ranged over many subjects, some relevant and others perhaps not quite so relevant. At the time I recall he was reading the work of Anglo-Irish writer Shane Leslie - who was pretty obscure even by my standards - as well as working on some of the lesser known novels of Ezra Pound's early mentor (and Joseph Conrad's collaborator) Ford Madox Ford.

Was any of this relevant to Masefield? Well, in a curious way, as it turned out, yes. The interface between the 'commercial' and the 'literary' faces of Edwardian literature fitted rather nicely into studying the work of a poet, Masefield, who was publishing at the same time as Eliot and Pound, but inhabited a world almost literally invisible to their admirers. Ford was a good example of the same phenomenon, though in a rather different way.

Andrew Marvell: The Rehearsal Transpros'd, ed. D. I. B. Smith (1971)

Don's original field of specialisation had been seventeenth century literature. He'd published an edition of Andrew Marvell's satirical prose work The Rehearsal Transpros'd in the Oxford English Texts series. When I asked him about this, he said, "Well, it got me this job." What he seemed to like most, though, was exploring the more offbeat byways of Anglo-Irish literature - not to mention New Zealand writers such as Robin Hyde: far less well-known then than she is now.

Robin Hyde: Passport to Hell, ed. D. I. B. Smith (1986)

The more I heard from him, the more I liked it. I'd been trained in my undergraduate career to admire such extreme Modernists as Eliot and Joyce, and this (still) makes perfect sense to me. On the other hand, there was a rich penumbra of weirdos such as Chesterton and de la Mare, whom I liked just as much, but whom I'd been encouraged to dismiss as dead ends in the grand obstacle race of literary innovation.

Don wasn't interested in any of that survival-of-the-fittest nonsense. Is it enjoyable? was his central criterion for a book. Yes, he was certainly interested in the finesse and skill behind particular pieces of writing, but he still seemed to steer instinctively towards the anecdotal and - above all - towards enthusiasm in his approach to what he read.

I resolved to do likewise, and so, much later, when I in my turn became an English Academic with my own graduate students, I tried to give them as much as possible of the same formula: Read the book, not - till much later - the secondary literature about it. If you don't like it, acknowledge the fact - but then try and work out why.

It is, I suppose, an approach designed to produce readers, not students or teachers of literature. But then, if you don't actually get a kick out of the stuff you read, you probably shouldn't be teaching the subject in the first place.

That was the first - and probably the most important - of my many, many debts to Don.

Most prominent among the others would have to be the innumerable letters of recommendation he wrote for me while I was undertaking my long and arduous quest for an actual job in the fields of Academia. Once again, I've tried to follow his good example when asked to do the same thing for my ex-students.

But then I could never have got that far in the first place if I hadn't got a scholarship to study overseas, and I doubt very much that that would have happened without his powerful advocacy.

Roger Elwood, ed.: The Many Worlds of Andre Norton (1974)

What else? Well, after he retired, I visited him a few times at his wonderful house in Mission Bay, and admired the cupboard where he kept his very extensive collection of Sci-fi and Fantasy literature. That was another subject on which we saw eye to eye (for the most part). He had what seemed to me an inexplicable enthusiasm for Andre Norton, whereas I was more attuned to Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany, but there was generally some new fantasy epic he'd been reading which I ended up making a mental note to get hold of as soon as I could.

He made all them sound like so much fun - though he did stray into heresy on one occasion, I recall, by claiming to prefer Tad Williams to J. R. R. Tolkien as a writer of epic fantasy. This was, as I solemnly informed him, a little like preferring some latter-day SF luminary to Arthur C. Clarke - if they're able to see further, it's because they're standing on giant shoulders ...

Kendrick Smithyman: Campana to Montale, ed. Jack Ross (2004)

He knew I was passionate about the poetry of our Auckland University colleague Kendrick Smithyman, and since Don and I could both read Italian, he lent me the typescript of some versions the monolingual Smithyman had concocted of certain modern Italian poets through the medium of other people's translations.

That, too, was a precious gift. I ended up editing and publishing the entire collection, which still seems to me - like Pound's Cathay - to prove that the end result of a process of translation counts for far more than the way that a writer actually gets there. Kendrick's versions from Italian have a supple ease and charm which far better linguists than he have tried in vain to achieve - and, in the process, he found in the poet Salvatore Quasimodo a virtual alter ego.

Kendrick Smithyman: Campana to Montale, ed. Jack Ross & Marco Sonzogni (2010)

I was also presumptuous enough to ask Don to launch my first novel, Nights with Giordano Bruno, which he did with great style and panache. I remember he compared it to Mario Praz's famous critical book The Romantic Agony, which is, I'm sure, far more credit than it deserved. It was characteristic of his ready wit as well as his charity, though.

Another of my favourite memories of him is the time he hunted me down at my student lodgings in Edinburgh and took me out to dinner at a local tratteria called Pinocchio's. It was wonderful to see him en famille, with his wife Jill and daughter Caitlin, and - as I recall - a great deal of red wine was drunk and pasta eaten in the course of the evening!

As Stephen King's writer hero says of his friend in the movie Stand by Me: "I'll miss him forever." That's certainly true. I'd love to have another of those wonderful, unexpected conversations where Don Smith turned all my prejudices and presuppositions on their heads. But in another, realer sense he's not dead - he'll never be dead.

I can hear him now saying "Great stuff" and reading out another passage from his latest essay, where he juxtaposes a quote from Ford Madox Ford about his latest drivelly historical romance The Young Lovell with another precisely contemporary set of Fordian instructions on how to be absolutely modern to his errant young protégé Ezra Pound ... [2]

---

Notes:

1. You can find them all listed here, at https://madbookcollection.blogspot.com/2009/04/acquisitions-86-john-masefield.html - if you're curious.

2. Arthur Rimbaud, "Il faut être absolument moderne." Une Saison en enfer (1873). Pound said of Ford Madox Ford in his 1939 obituary:

[H]e felt the errors of contemporary style to the point of rolling (physically, and if you look at it as mere snob, ridiculously) on the floor of his temporary quarters in Giessen when my third volume displayed me trapped, fly-papered, gummed and strapped down in a jejune provincial effort to learn ... the stilted language that then passed for 'good English' ...
And that roll saved me two years, perhaps more. It sent me back to my own proper effort, namely, toward using the living tongue ... though none of us has found a more natural language than Ford did.

Don, Caitlin, & Jill Smith
[photograph courtesy of Caitlin Smith]

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Mike Johnson Triple Booklaunch (5/10/23)

Mike Johnson: Selected Poems, ed. Jack Ross (2023)

Mike Johnson & Leila Lees: Sketches (2023)

Mike Johnson: Afterworld (2023)

Mike Johnson:
Afterworld / Sketches / Selected Poems

Celebrated New Zealand novelist and poet Mike Johnson is having a triple booklaunch on Waiheke Island, where he lives, on Thursday next week. This biblioblitz of material includes a new novella, a new book of poems, and a substantial Selected Poems (edited by yours truly), sampling from his work in that medium over the last four decades.

Unfortunately I'm unable to be there, but I'm sure it will be a riproaring event - Murray Edmond will be launching the novella, and there will be discussion and readings from Mike and his collaborator Leila Lees, as well.

The details are as follows:

Afterworld, a novella, will be launched on Oct 5th, 6.30 – 7.30 pm, Waiheke Library, 133/131 Ocean View Road, Oneroa, part of our triple book launch which also includes Sketches, with Leila Lees, and Selected Poems edited by Jack Ross.

Afterworld is a novella length work of magical realism with a whodunit element. The plot follows a ghost who ends up in a hut on a New Zealand mountain. As the ghost seeks to understand their life and death, fragments of their past are remembered. Contending identities, times and events emerge.

Sketches contains lines caught on the fly. Poems which capture and celebrate the momentary, provisional nature of existence. Here we find the natural world, and matters of the heart, caught as they happen in language both natural and precise. They are beautifully complemented by the drawing and sketches of Leila Lees.

‘The immense complexity of human relationships, social, sexual and everyday are at the heart of much of Mike’s best poetry. However, there’s an almost equal pull towards the empyrean: the cosmic mysteries of nature and the visible world.' - Jack Ross, editor of Mike Johnson's Selected Poems (1983-2023).

Where: Waiheke Library, 133/131 Ocean View Road, Oneroa

When: Thursday 5 October, 6.30 to 7:30 pm

Mike Johnson: Three Books (21/8/23)

Mike himself comments:

I'm excited to have three new books to launch. These projects came together at the same time.

Sketches – Facebook readers might remember the Wednesday Poems that ran from June 2019 to June 2021, accompanied by Leila Lees' illustrations.

Afterworld – A novella which was also posted on Facebook, over 21 posts and finishing on Oct 19th 2022. Here it is thoroughly revised.

Selected Poems – Edited by Jack Ross, a selection of my poems since 1983, including Sketches.

NB: For further information, please go here

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Katy Soljak: Mike Johnson (27/9/23)

PhD Days

John Ashbery: Houseboat Days (1977)

Despite all he did and wrote subsequently, I'm still probably most fond of John Ashbery's rather dreamy poetry collection Houseboat Days, published shortly after his Pulitzer-prize winning Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror:

The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated

In this case, as my last PhD student completes her oral examination, it's interesting (for me, at least) to look back over more than thirty years of involvement with the institution - or the qualification - or whatever exactly it is ...

At times it feels more like a lifestyle choice than anything else.

•

Matt Groening: Life in Hell (1987)

The cartoon above - by Simpsons-creator Matt Groening - may strike you as a little cynical, but it does seem like a good place to start when discussing my own engagement with the degree we call the "Doctorate in Philosophy": both the one I did myself (University of Edinburgh - 4 years: 1986-1990), and my subsequent experiences as supervisor / co-supervisor of dozen-odd more (Massey University - 15 years: 2008-2023).

Not only that, but I also acted as the examiner of another ten or so (Australia & NZ - 13 years: 2008-2021), which entailed reading and annotating each thesis, writing a comprehensive report on it, and - in most cases - attending an oral exam (what used to be called a "viva voce" [with the living voice], but is now usually shortened to a viva).

Rather than Groening's "life in hell", though, I'd prefer to see it as something more akin to Ashbery's poetry collection: a strange, kaleidoscopic drift through the bazaar of world culture, albeit with an at times disproportionate emphasis on gamesmanship and the arbitrariness of academic conventions - rather like the rules of metre and rhyme, I suppose: there to be broken.

Houseboat Days


In my dream I was talking
to a group of students
about the genesis

of Poetry NZ
back in the day
in Palmerston North

I asked them to write me 
a haiku 
– making sure they knew

what that was –
then collected all their emails
for next time

so loud was the din
of the next class
invading

I could hardly hear myself think
let alone make out 
the crabbed scrawl

on the notes they gave me
I suppose it’s a reaction
to hearing of Bronwyn’s workmate

who
when told we were going to see Emily
asked 

who’s Emily Brontë?
have I started teaching again
in my dreams?

a relief then to be woken 
by clattering dishes
this morning

the old life done

•

Illusion and Reality

Doctoral Catechism:

• What exactly is a PhD?
  
  Well, Wikipedia, as ever, provides a wealth of information on the subject:

  A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: philosophiae doctor or doctor philosophiae) is the most common degree at the highest academic level, awarded following a course of study and research. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields.

• How do you get one?
  

  Because it is an earned research degree, those studying for a PhD are required to produce original research that expands the boundaries of knowledge, normally in the form of a dissertation, and defend their work before a panel of other experts in the field.

  That point about an "original contribution to knowledge" is the crucial factor here. A Masters degree in any subject also - often - requires a thesis, but this can be a summary of other people's work in the field: it doesn't have to (though it certainly can) make an original contribution to the field.


• Why do people do them?
  

  The completion of a PhD is typically required for employment as a university professor, researcher, or scientist in many fields. Individuals who have earned the Doctor of Philosophy degree use the title Doctor (often abbreviated "Dr" or "Dr."), although the etiquette associated with this usage may be subject to the professional ethics of the particular scholarly field, culture, or society.

  In my experience, insisting on the title "Doctor" in casual conversation generally causes more trouble than it's worth. Most people - quite rightly - associate the term solely with a medical qualification, so explaining that your expertise in (say) literary criticism doesn't really extend to offering them health advice is a bit of a waste of everyone's time.


• How long does it take?
  
  In the New Zealand Academic system, still mostly based on the British model, it will probably - depending on your field and the topic you've chosen - take you at least three or four years. It's extremely rare to finish under three years. It's pretty common to go over four years, in fact, though these days institutions are trying very hard to discourage indefinitely protracted Doctoral research projects.
  
  In the American system, which harks back more to the Germanic paradigm, I gather it can take from five to seven years to achieve much the same end (I myself did mine in the UK, so that's not something I can testify to personally). In the USA a substantial amount of course work needs to be completed, over a period of years, before you can even start on your dissertation. In the UK, NZ and other Commonwealth countries, by contrast, the initial preparation and the composition of the thesis are all one journey.


• Is it expensive?
  
  Doctoral scholarships are increasingly difficult to get. There's a good deal of competition in virtually every field, and very few of them will fund you completely for the entire length of your degree. Even getting admitted to a Doctoral programme can be hard sometimes. Unless you got Honours in your Masters degree, or have a very strong professional background in your area of study which can be regarded as equivalent, you may not be allowed to enrol at some institutions. It simply isn't true that tertiary institutions are only interested in the fees students pay them. They're far more interested in results: which in this case means successful completions.
  
  I've successfully supervised (or co-supervised) six PhDs now. But I've started on at least six other supervisions which were unsuccessful for one reason or another. For the most part people drop out of their Doctoral programmes for personal reasons. It can take a heavy toll on your personal life, as well as your finances. Sometimes, too, there are clashes of personality or expectations, which can entail the student switching to another supervisor or even another institution. But all that really matters is that holy grail of successful completion.


• Should I do one myself?
  
  Not until you've thought through all the pros and cons associated. Do you have a research project in mind which can only really be accomplished with institutional support and advice? If so, then yes indeed, it could be a good fit for you.
  
  Or, if you have a strong desire to work as a university teacher, Academic institutions increasingly require a PhD as a minimum qualification for appointment. So in that case, again, yes - it's your best way forward, and you can probably pick up some tutoring along the way which will increase your professional experience and thus your eventual job prospects.
  
  If, however, there's a subject which really interests you, and which you are already researching already on your own time, with your own resources (online sources, the public library, etc.), it's worth asking yourself whether it might not be better simply to write an article - or even a book - on the subject and eliminate the middleman?
  
  The university will certainly charge you for any professional advice they offer. And if you don't really need that for this particular project, why not just try approaching some publishers yourself? It's where you'll probably end up at the culmination of your degree, so you have to be very sure that that end result is a lot better than it would have been if you'd simply followed your own star.



•





PhD = Time Served


My God, these cartoonists! It may seem at times as if everyone's trying to talk the qualification down, but I don't think that's really the case. As with any obsession, you have to try to see the dark and light of it when you're trying to convey what it's actually like.

The theses I read as an examiner included topics as various as Jorge Luis Borges' relationship to the Pragmatism of William James, Children’s Fantasy Fiction, Indonesian Postcolonial Politics, Contemporary Scottish Writing, the Semiotics of Modern Poetry, Australian Settler Fiction, the Poetics of Joan Retallack, Pasifikafuturism, New Zealand Local History, and the Poetics of Photographic Ekphrasis.

Do I know much about any of those subjects? Well, some of them, yes. I wrote my own thesis, back in the 1980s, on South American literature, so Borges was pretty familiar to me - as (by extension) was the question of Postcolonial representation in general. Some of the others I learnt about just by reading the dissertations. My job was to judge how effectively they communicated the specialised information each of them contained - and the cogency of the writer's overall argument.

It's a bit different from just reading a book on some subject you'd like to more about - different even from writing a book review. Examining a thesis involves grappling with a topic to which someone has devoted years and years of careful and painstaking labour. You have to treat that with respect, but not to the extent of refusing to identify flaws in the work as it stands.

What about the ones I supervised myself? Again, not all of them were on subjects I knew well going in - though of course they did have to be in the general field of creative writing and literary criticism which were my professional area of teaching and study. I won't go through them all, but suffice it to say that each one of them was an education in some very precise field of research.


•

Matt Groening: The Grad School Dropout (1987)




I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

- Isaac Newton

Perhaps this quote from Newton is a better way to think about it than the mordant sarcasms of Matt Groening et al. I know it's absurd to compare myself to the founder of Modern Physics, but no matter where you're starting from, you can always improve on your own state of ignorance. My own blindness before what he calls "the great ocean of truth" may be far greater than his, but that doesn't mean that I'm not just as keen to learn.

So, no, true though it undoubtedly is in some cases, the above is definitely not the whole picture. It's a useful warning to keep in mind - but, as the saying has it, verbum sapienti sat est [a word to the wise is sufficient].



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University of Edinburgh: PhD Graduands (2022)