Talking to no one?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article in the Sunday Star-Times about public intellectuals.
Who are they, and did we need them, the piece asked. It took a deliberately softly-softly approach, as I was keen to tease some debate from this rarely touched subject in the gossamer-thin brainscape of Kiwiland.
Was this a waste of time, on the part of the writer, the publisher, and me? Was this a waste of money, the marketing money, the money given to get this project into print?
I have respect for the editor - he was a tutor. I have respect for a contributor, Roger Horrocks - he supervised my thesis.
But surely the role of public intellectuals is to engage with the public, in a timely fashion, regardless of the forum, regardless of the publication. Public intellectuals in Europe - Umberto Eco, etc - write smartly, amusingly on everyday subjects in the public eye in the papers. That is the point.
If you have something to say, say it. And say it with wit and style and intelligence.
Public intellectuals, if they do exist in NZ, need to say and do more.
Who are they, and did we need them, the piece asked. It took a deliberately softly-softly approach, as I was keen to tease some debate from this rarely touched subject in the gossamer-thin brainscape of Kiwiland.
Was this a waste of time, on the part of the writer, the publisher, and me? Was this a waste of money, the marketing money, the money given to get this project into print?
I have respect for the editor - he was a tutor. I have respect for a contributor, Roger Horrocks - he supervised my thesis.
But surely the role of public intellectuals is to engage with the public, in a timely fashion, regardless of the forum, regardless of the publication. Public intellectuals in Europe - Umberto Eco, etc - write smartly, amusingly on everyday subjects in the public eye in the papers. That is the point.
If you have something to say, say it. And say it with wit and style and intelligence.
Public intellectuals, if they do exist in NZ, need to say and do more.
posted by Mark Broatch at 4:52 PM
11 Comments:
"Public intellectuals in Europe - Umberto Eco, etc - write smartly, amusingly on everyday subjects in the public eye in the papers."
Not in France, though, where it would seem that once you've been canonised as an intellectual you'll be applauded for your incomprehensibility.
Maybe the Italians build them better - like Eco, twice round the clock & still going strong. Wasn't Roland Barthes run over by a laundry van?
He was. Clean bowled.
Hey, Umberto Umberto even reads the internet.
Hi Mark
I was pleased to see your article in the Sunday Star-Times - it gave thoughtful and detailed attention to the book. But if I understand your point here, I think the local situation is a little more complicated than you suggest - and that's what I tried to explain in my essay. That is, I think kiwis are frequently too quick to assume that people who don't write in a punchy, colloquial common-sense style must be woolly-woofters who ought to be ignored. A European writer like Eco doesn't have to write under that pressure. I gave quite a few examples of people being clobbered (some of the abuse happening in the Sunday Star Times). Of course, not everyone who uses big words is necessarily saying something useful, but on the basis of my (lifetime) experience in this country, New Zealanders tend to be too quick to attack 'big words,' too quick to assume that all academics are wankers. Look at the Sunday Star Times (though I buy it each week in preference to the other two Sunday papers)which prints almost no thought-provoking articles in the style of Eco or the writers for the best weekend papers in the UK or other parts of Europe. Mark, your article was an exception and I thank you for it - but I'm puzzled as to you why you now seem to be sounding like Michael Laws, Paul Holmes or the late Frank Haden, and seemingly demanding a return to populism?
With best wishes, Roger Horrocks
Hello Roger, thanks for writing in. Frustration, you could call this post. Despite encouraging - through the publisher - a response to my 1200 wds on a hugely complicated issue, absolutely zero came in. The two responses I heard or saw simply reiterated, with more snideness than I thought was required, my point about the choice of contributors. In my understanding of the term, a public intellectual engages with the public. No one from the book did, at least not through the SST. I appreciate your explicit and implicit reservations about NZ media, but what was the point in the book being produced, if not to start a discussion? I appreciate its argument for a truly high culture and its critical accompaniment, but so little goes on even of the South Bank/Modern Review schools - serious study of the high, middle and low.
Hi Mark
Thanks for your reply. I’m not still not sure whether we agree on this or not. You speak of the need to ‘engage with the public’, and the publication of the book (‘Speaking Truth to Power’) was precisely an act of that kind. The lack of response to your SST piece may reflect not a lack of energy on the part of the contributors but the fact that they no longer read SST or want to go anywhere near it. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of intelligent people feel burnt by television and the newspapers, and would prefer to operate elsewhere (in books, say, or on the Internet). (Nicky Hager’s recent book is a great example.) Personally, I really appreciate the fact that there are still a few writers – such as yourself, Chris Trotter and Iain Sharp – who work to get thoughtful stuff into the SST, but I know that many people have simply given up on the Sunday papers because of their embrace of tabloid culture – celebrities, gossip, smart-ass columnists, sensational pseudo-news stories, etc. I still buy SST and have even written for it myself, but I can understand the reluctance among people I know to buy it any longer, as it has – like other NZ mainstream, commercial media – drifted steadily downmarket. And that’s one of the problems that our book tried to raise – the state of the local media. I know that you, of all people, are well aware of this, and the great name you’ve chosen for your website reminds us that things were much better in the days of the NZBC (or for that matter, the BCNZ). What’s happened since then is the expansion of global corporate ownership, the rise of the bean-counters, the cult of celebrity, the rejection of older readers and viewers, and the new corporate competitiveness that has made our media populist and simply not interested in areas of culture that might (for want of a better term) be called ‘intellectual’. You may say that a policy of shifting all one’s activity elsewhere and no longer engaging with mainstream media is a cop-out. Personally I spend quite a lot of my time still engaging with TV, as you do with the print media. But at the same time I feel it is probably a losing battle. I would, in any case, be interested to hear you talk about these broader issues, not just about the response to your SST piece. What’s your strategy? - Best wishes, Roger
Hi Roger, again, thanks for responding. I suspect we agree on a lot, but your statement -
"You speak of the need to ‘engage with the public’, and the publication of the book (‘Speaking Truth to Power’) was precisely an act of that kind."
- is harder. Books might have engaged more alone at one point, not sure, but like it or not it's the media coverage around books where the real discussion goes on. To simply publish a book on such a topic is a very good thing, but it's not dialogue, it's monologue. Regardless of the contributors' thoughts on the SST, it was the only publication that seriously tackled the book to date.
I am not - can't be - as pessimistic about the NZ print media, though I am pretty down on much of it, as my weekly reviews of the serious mags on sslive.co.nz might suggest. Your area of strongest interest, TV, I have to admit, I am in most despair about. The Charter is a joke in practice, and it seems serious viewers will vote with their mouses to find material of more interest elsewhere.
Hi Mark, I don’t want to prolong this discussion unnecessarily but I really think you are wrong when you say: “Books might have engaged more alone at one point, not sure, but like it or not it's the media coverage around books where the real discussion goes on”. I don’t want to diminish the value of newspapers, magazines, etc., but isn’t there some truth to the old adage that when we write journalism we’re producing tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers? Those media may have a bigger audience but they are read quickly and discarded quickly. Books have very long legs. Nicky Hager’s book, for example, will still be cited and argued about during the next election, and I bet it will still be being read many years into the future. Books get years of use through libraries and second-hand bookshops, and authors continue to receive messages out of the blue from new readers, years after their book has gone out of print. (I have learned this not only by writing a few little books but also through my involvement with book publishing.) A day may come when books are replaced by the internet, but I think you are premature in assuming that this ‘point’ in time has already arrived. Of course, press coverage can help a lot to get a book off to a good start (and many thanks for helping ours in that way), but books are long-distance runners and are likely still to be jogging along when the magazines that reviewed them have expired. I also don’t see that a page of a newspaper is any less of a monologue than a page of a book – in fact, both produce dialogue in many forms, especially in these days of email. (The emails come in more slowly from a book, but they continue for a much longer period.) Mark, I know you appreciate books (and have written books yourself) – I just wanted to challenge your assumption ‘the real discussion’ has ceased to occur in the realm of books.
–Best wishes, Roger
Thanks Roger. Books are of course fantastic things that have legs far longer than news publications, but as media moves online, where so much is around forever, that's where the widest debate is being held and reheld, over and over. (Much of it's nonsense, yes, but I am always surprised at the good stuff.) The Hollow Men story was broken by the SST online and the extracts put up on the site. Arguably the book wouldn't have had anything like the impact without the SST's help, self-interested as it doubtless was. I would love to see Speaking Truth to Power online, a la Lessig's Free Culture, with the interviews on YouTube. I love books, but I suspect that now they are even more just the starting point. I am disappointed the SST and the Indy are the only publications so far that have looked at the book. The subject deserves far more airtime. cheers, Mark
The Listener has reviewed the book this week. Some nice praise for Roger , who has written the best chapter in the book, but the debate is not advanced that much. The choice of public intellectuals in the book is not challenged.
Hi Mark - you may be interested in a debate of sorts, around the book, that John Hurrell triggered off at his website Artbash:
http://www.artbash.co.nz/article.asp?id=981
It's very kind of Roger Horrocks to mention me and Artbash, but the site is actually not a blog, least of all mine. It is a public forum founded by Lee Cunliffe that looks at art related issues. I am a passionate contributor who helps out with the editing.
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