From PublicAddress.net
On Saturday, one day before Frank Sargeson's would-be 100th birthday, I attended the invitation launch of 'An Affair of the Heart', a new anthology that celebrates the New Zealand author and the ongoing work of the Sargeson Trust, a writers' residency programme sponsored by law firm Buddle Findlay. This year's fellows are Auckland author Debra Daley and Wellington playwright Toa Fraser. I haven't met Toa before but Debra seems pleasantly familiar. Her novel The Strange Letter Z is one of my favourites and we hold hands a lot.
The new fellows were "acknowledged" at the book launch which meant they had to stand up at the front of Old Government House while the crowd rhubarbed through progressively blurred speeches. 'An Affair of the Heart' is a collection of writing from authors who have held the Fellowship since it was created in 1987 and looks pretty good. The only mistake it makes is in my story 'Unpublished Japan', which is now called 'Japan' - a small change, just not one I actually made. I was annoyed at first but I'm trying to be philosophical about it. As one of the book's editors pointed out, hardly anyone noticed.
The title 'Unpublished Japan' is a play on titles like 'Hidden Japan' and 'Shocking Asia': the Western concept of touring Asian countries to sample their secret and forbidden pleasures. Or rather, the title was about that. Now it's changed, the story in turn has become about something else. Calling it, blandly, 'Japan' gives it the feel of a snapshot - an oblique excerpt from a travelogue. I guess I'll have to live with it.
Shun Akiba is a Japanese reporter who claims to have uncovered evidence of mysterious structures, if not an entire shadow-city buried underneath modern Tokyo. His book 'Imperial City Tokyo: Secret of a Hidden Underground Network' is into its fifth edition. 'Why am I ignored?' Shun asks. 'Is there a conspiracy to silence me?'