FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 476, 6 August 1948, Page 20

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

BOOKIE No. 1. A New Miscellany from the | Nag’s Head Press. ERHAPS only once in the life of any reviewer does he feel like some watcher in the skies when a new planet

swims into his ken. Such a planet (or perhaps comet, since, like its almostnamesake, it is to appear at irregular intervals) is Bookie, the new Miscellany from the Nag’s Head Press. Admittedly Bookie bears on the surface a striking likeness to previous New Zealand miscellanies, so much so that I was surprised to find no note on the flyleaf pointing out that any resemblance, etc., was entirely coincidental. For wherever one browses in Bookie one is teased by similarities, possibly due to the fact that contributors have drunk too deep and too exclusively of Caxtonian springs. In this respect one cannot help comparing the Short Story from Punters’ Paradise, by Tussock Lands, with the very similar effort by Maurice Duggan in a rival miscellany. In form and layout too Bookie owes an immense debt to its slimmer forerunners. There are the same discreet advertisements for the Press’s forthcoming attractions, the same tendency to recapitulate past triumphs." Its art varies from the stark realism (every inch a foot) of W. H. G. van Galsh’s frontispiece "Les Orteils" to the equally stark symbolism of E.. Raphael Gully’s Tailpiece. The publishers have striven to \give additional interest and variety to the book as a whole not only by ringing changes in the type-faces but also by employing paper of different tones and surfaces. Even cheque-paper has been pressed into service, but more could have been done to establish a relationship between the kind of paper used and the subject matter. The use of cheque-paper lent weight to the impressive list of Nag’s Head subscribers, but why permit the only other page of it available to be used for the relatively unimportant notice of Professor Entwhistle’s Grand Tour of North Island

Racecourses?

M.

B.