The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman (re.press Melbourne, 2011)

Review By Vaughan Rapatahana

Publisher: http://re-press.org/

Wow!

This is not a book for the ‘average’ reader. It’s difficult enough for the mythical ‘trained academic’ to digest some of the somersaulting phrases and dense terminology sprinkled throughout its over 400 e-book only pages (downloadable for free, by the way) – more so in some chapters than in others, for this is a collection of policy statements and concomitant rebuttals by over 20 very distinctive and quite idiosyncratic writers. Take – purely as random – this sentence from Reza Negarestani:
 

The exclusive stance of the organism in regard to its path to death is the very expression of the insurmountable truth of death within the organic horizon as a dissipative tendency which is supposed to mobilize the conservative condition of the organism toward death

My overall feelings – at times – after reading some such sections was best summarized by: ‘how can these guys write like this and stand there straight-faced’?

Now to be fair to the contributors also, there is a tremendous amount of clever and radical and worthwhile thought throughout this tome too and it is because of this I will attempt to summarize the overall tenor of this book, for there is no way whatsoever in which one can delineate the details of each and every piece involved, in a book review such as this. Rather it is a dip-into book, methinks: one delves here and there as much guided by the author involved as by the topic pertaining. Read more »

Waiheathens: Voices From a Mining Town by Mark Derby, with Paintings by Bob Kerr (Atuanui Press, $30)

Reviewed by Alison McCulloch

As the year of the Waihi gold miners strike centenary drew to a close, Waihi was still a town divided over mining. And while the times and issues have certainly changed, the wounds often run just as deep.

Waihi’s 21st century struggle bears little resemblance to the labour versus capital clashes of 1912. For one thing, this time the union is firmly on the company’s side. “We have a well-established respectful Union/Employer relationship with the Waihi Gold Company Ltd,” the EPMU said in a submission on Newmont Waihi Gold’s latest expansion plan, “and have considerable confidence that they will deliver what they say they will.” Read more »

Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of an Innocent Man on Death Row by Damien Echols (Text Publishing, $40)

Reviewed by Kelly Bold

It’s hard not to bristle with impotent ire at the injustices meted out to Damien Echols. As the so-called ringleader of the “West Memphis Three”, he withered in an Arkansas Death Row cell for 18 years for the supposedly satanic killings of three eight-year-old boys: a crime he did not commit, of which there was not a scrap of evidence linking him or his two co-accused to, and for which he was blatantly set up by corrupt police.

What happened next almost reads like a soap-opera storyline, but it was real life – Damien’s real life. A determined woman named Lorri Davis became his pen pal, then tireless freedom crusader, then wife. She gave up her New York life to move near to him for visits of just three hours a week – all the while working relentlessly to clear his name, pulling in global superstars like our own Sir Peter Jackson, Johnny Deep and Eddie Vedder to her campaign, and in August 2011, securing his release.
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Pleng’s Song by Patrick Maher

Reviewed by Sophie Robinson, age 10 (with a bit of a hand from her dad Jim)

Pleng’s Song is set in Thailand. Pleng is the 11-year-old daughter of an alcoholic mum and a father who is often away. Her adventures start when she finds out that floods threaten where she lives and her parents leave her at home alone.

(Dad adds: In 2011, schoolteacher Patrick Maher was trapped in Thai floods. Afterwards, back to teaching, he realized his students had their own flood adventures to tell. They began writing a story, which led to this easy-to-read children’s novel. The book was initially printed with Maher’s students in mind, but it was picked up in media and is now being enjoyed far beyond Thailand.) Read more »

Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age

by Rebecca Priestley. Auckland University Press, 2012, 284 pp. $45

Reviewed by Simon Nathan

New Zealanders are proud of their nuclear-free stance and our green, “100% pure” image. So it comes as a surprise for many people to realise that only a generation ago there was widespread enthusiasm for New Zealand to be part of the nuclear club. In 1966 I was delighted to get my first job as a young geologist with the DSIR, looking for uranium on the West Coast. Within my working life, attitudes have changed so much that prospecting and mining uranium are now banned in this country.

The publisher’s blurb rather misleadingly labels this book an alternative history of nuclear New Zealand. Not so – to date this is the only comprehensive account of New Zealand’s nuclear story, documenting the way public attitudes have changed over the years. It is a work of considerable scholarship, based on a PhD study, but is easily accessible. As a popular columnist, Rebecca Priestley has the gift of making complex issues understandable, and the story she tells is fascinating.

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Erewhon Calling – Experimental Sound in New Zealand

Edited by Bruce Russell. In association with Richard Francis and the (CMR and Audio Foundation, 2012)

Reviewed by Sarah Jane Parton
In Erewhon Calling – Experimental Sound in New Zealand, editor Bruce Russell repeatedly states that the aim for this book was not to create a comprehensive survey of sound art and experimental music in New Zealand. I can’t help but wonder if he is being intentionally self-deprecating, as a reflection the national cultural tendency that he so accurately identifies: “we regard boasting about (or even referring to) one’s own achievements as the height of ill-breeding.” Is he scared of offending those he has neglected to mention? Is he fending off anticipated criticism? I can’t quite figure it out because, as far as I can tell, this is the most comprehensive survey anyone could hope to achieve. This is the Bible of sound art and experimental music in New Zealand. Read more »

English Language As Hydra: Its Impacts on Non-English Language Cultures ed. Vaughan Rapatahana and Pauline Bunce (Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters, 2012)

Reviewed by Mark P. Williams

The English language is a monster bent on devouring weaker language cultures, this is the thesis of the editors of English Language As Hydra.

Rapatahana and Bunce’s book offers a trenchant critique through wide-ranging analyses, drawing on a mixture of years of experience and detailed case study. The writers collected here are a mixture of language teachers, writers and theorists from diverse cultural backgrounds including notable figures such as Malaysian National Laureate Muhammad Haji Salleh, and world-renowned Kenyan playwright, novelist and academic Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Read more »

The wonderful, incomparable, Margaret Mahy is no longer with us. Here are just some of the tributes to have appeared so far.

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The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years by Greil Marcus (Faber and Faber 2011)

AND

Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its own Past by Simon Reynolds (Faber and Faber 2011)

Reviewed by Bill Nelson

“…there’s a lift in Jim Morrison’s voice for the first two times he reaches for the word fire…always he communicates that as an idea that word is new to him…You’ve heard the word in the song, but you haven’t begun to follow the fire as far as it goes – that’s the feeling.”

The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years by Greil Marcus

As teenager in the 1990s I can testify to the enduring relevance of The Doors. Even if now I hardly give them a second thought, for a few mean years of my own they were everything to me – moody, complicated (so I thought) and subversive. Looking back now it must have been the release of the Oliver Stone film a few years before that brought them to the cultural attention of pimply teens like myself, but at the time it seemed like every generation must have been into The Doors, that was how awesome and eternal they were.
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“Black Tide: The Story Behind the Rena Disaster”

By John Julian. Hodder Moa. (2012.) $40

Review by Alison McCulloch

Oil is still washing up along the Bay of Plenty’s beaches. Head out near my place at low tide without jandals and you’re likely to come back with black splotches decorating the soles of your feet. Sure, they’re not the big stinking oil patties of last October, but these freckles of tar make it clear that although it’s been more than six months since the Rena hit the rocks on 5 October 2011, the oil is still out there. And no one really wants to know about it anymore.

As a Tauranga resident who took an active role in the Rena clean-up, I was eager to read “Black Tide”, John Julian’s new book about the wreck. According to its subtitle, the book tells “The story behind the Rena disaster”. But actually, it only tells part of that story. The focus of “Black Tide” is primarily off shore, on shipwrecks and salvage operations and the men of the sea – the mariners and salvors – for whom Julian clearly has both close connections and the highest regard. Read more »