The 2020 New Year’s honours did not recognise a single writer (or visual artist).
Just before Christmas the National Library announced it was disposing of 600,000 books – 'old’ books, and non-NZ/Pacific material, they say. (Are we cutting ourselves off from the world?) The intention is to make way for a similar number of new books. Sounds sensible, but I was struck that hardly anyone who spoke to me about it trusts the decision. Not trust the National Librarian? (Perhaps because he is far down the Department of Internal Affairs hierarchy and they don’t trust anyone above him.)
Then there was Creative New Zealand’s decision to end the funding of the New Zealand Review of Books. This is not just disrupting the ecology of literary activities by closing down a unique institution, but it was given at very short notice. Imagine New Zealand Ballet being told a week before a current production there would be no more future funding. CNZ’s reaction implies they have no feel for, nor administrative skill with, literary activities.
Meanwhile, the hours of the National Library and Archives New Zealand are being reduced. It is easy to say that there is a lack of funding but why is there? (There have been other funding failures. Why no increase in the Public Lending Right which compensates authors for their books in public libraries? Most authors would be delighted to receive the minimum wage, even at the old rate.)
Other libraries are under threat. The NZ Defence Force seem to have done away with their library, putting the collection in storage. Once upon a time any aspiring officer in the military read widely and closely military history. No longer?
Those involved with the production of books are up in arms over the MBIE paper considering the revision of the Copyright Act. I do not think the paper has clearly expounded the issues which are about some complicated economics involving delicate tradeoffs. (To get an idea of how difficult the subject of intellectual property is observe that the law applying to software development is quite different from the law applying to pharmaceuticals.) The gripe seems to be that the paper is at such a level of generality it reflects little appreciation of its practical application to books (or anything else).At issue then, is that decisions seem to be being made without practical understanding of literary production nor with reference to those who will be affected.
An older, ongoing story is the fate of Archives New Zealand and the National Library. Labour’s 2017 election manifesto has as clear a statement as there can be that they were to be separated out from the Department of Internal Affairs whose stewardship of the two institutions has been extremely unsatisfactory. Two years on and there is no public indication that the promise is to be implemented.
The problem seems to be at the officials’ level. For some reason the task was delegated to a group led by the DIA, which was like inviting Donald Trump to prepare the articles of impeachment of the president.
Departments are always reluctant to give up agencies they run, even when they have a poor record of stewardship. An additional problem may be that, according to Don Gilling, the DIA has been raiding the archives and library votes to fund other departmental activities. Any separation would leave the DIA in financial difficulties.
So what is going on? It is not as if the ministers responsible – Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Carmel Sepoloni and Tracey Martin – are cabinet lightweights. Is it that they don’t really care, or is it that they are not in control of their officials?
One possibility is that we are entering a post-literacy world where the significance of the text is downgraded. Sure, everyone still needs to be able to read in order to respond to advertising and take instructions from above. But engagement with the text is no longer a requirement – except in a democracy.
I was struck by the role of engagement when seeing Knives Out, which is as good a mystery films as it gets Its trick is to go at a cracking pace so you don’t get a chance to gather together the clues scattered through it. Were it a book, you would read at your own pace, engaging with the text, checking back things which were puzzling you, an exercise which would reveal that what was going on was, well, rather obvious.
Such engagement has been critical for the development of modern civilisation. Luther succeeded because people could read the texts of his sermons; thankyou, Johannes Gutenberg. The English civil war was fought, in part, over the meaning of the texts in the Bible. By the nineteenth century, industrial society required universal literacy which, inconveniently for the Establishment, led to the masses thinking about society differently; a long social and political revolution followed.
So we need to keep engaging, but in another sense it is better, although not for us, if we turn off. Perhaps by default the government is favouring the post-literacy world because it is more convenient for it.
Not all politicians and officials though. Barack Obama said that reading kept him sane while he was president. I dont think his successor reads much. (Do we have an explanation as to why so many politicians do not seem entirely sane?) Here is a list of his 19 favourite books for 2019. Ask your local MP for theirs.
Perhaps in a post-literacy world I am a pre-post-literacy fossil. If I am not, should we be taking measures to postpone the extinction of engaged reading? What I would do is make the National Library an Autonomous Crown Entity in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage – fulfilling the Labour manifesto commitment – and charge it with two further tasks.
First, it should promote active engaged reading in New Zealand. Librarians already do, but let us make it a conscious nationwide strategy for both children and adults. Second, we should transfer the functions which once constituted the Literary Fund from Creative New Zealand, which appears unsympathetic to the promotion of literature, to the National Library, which must be.
(I also reaffirm that the Chief Archivist should be an Officer of Parliament. It makes no sense for the Ombudsman, responsible for the Official Information Act, to be one, while the Chief Archivist, on whom the OIA depends, is left in the bowels of an unsympathetic government department.)
Thankyou for reading and engaging with this.