North and South
January 2002
(publication
date December 10, 2001)
Letters
Page 12
Just Doing Her Job
Your article on
Lynley Hood’s book made interesting reading. The first part, an analysis of the
work of an investigative journalist and the moral and legal issues she tangled
with along the way, was absorbing. I’m afraid, however, I lost sympathy
completely with the second part of the feature, which deals with a world with
which I’m very familiar.
I take extreme
issue with your writer’s description of the role Anna Rogers played.
Looking for an
informed and intelligent appraisal of Lynley Hood’s material – which could
become a major book, as they no doubt appreciated – CUP took it to the best
person they knew: Anna Rogers. Anna’s
understanding of that brief would have been to consider a broad range of
factors that only a person with a real depth of experience in the New Zealand
book trade could have addressed, Implicit in this undertaking was that this was
to be a confidential report between publisher and adviser.
Anna was never “forced
to make unpopular judgements” (nor was she attempting to alter the author’s
conclusions). She was simply giving her straightforward and private opinion of
the work at the publisher’s request.
One must question
the wisdom of the publisher in passing that report on to the author. However,
now that – via the author – this written appraisal has come into the public
domain, someone should have had the integrity not only to treat it in context
but to quote it accurately.
I have read the
report. It’s comments on Hood’s scholarship are hardly “scathing”. In two short
paragraphs, in a six page report, Anna points out some areas of possible
concern (to do with inaccuracies and the range of sources quoted but by no
means demonstrating that she was “offended by Hood’s analysis of the gender
politics”). For example she points out a wrong publication date and that the
author twice calls the theologian Tertullian “Terullian”. She ends this brief
section: “I’m being picky, I know, and probably needlessly so, but there is
occasionally just a suspicion of eclectic, once-over-lightly scholarship.”
It is worth noting
that it is editorial perspicacity like this that saves an author from egg on
her face further down the line.
Lauren Quaintance
suggests that perhaps Anna Rogers is a “hot headed feminist censor”.
Anna’s family and
friends, the hundreds of authors whose books she has edited and the many
publishers who rely on her meticulous editing and total impartial, sensible and
informed judgement must have spluttered over their coffee when they read this
description. It is quite obvious that your writer never spoke to or met Anna.
Had she done so, she would never have indulged in such flights of journalistic
fantasy.
Curiously,
Quaintance offers in support of her “hot-headed feminist” argument the
statement that “others in the publishing industry” (apart from those who
describe Anna as a “consummate professional”) “make a connection” between the
present case and an incident in Australian publishing concerning Random House
and Anna’s sister Juliet. Unfortunately, this argument becomes even more
meaningless than it might already have been when it is pointed out that Juliet
Rogers was not even at Random House Australia, let alone Managing Director,
when Bodyjamming was published.
You have
used/misused a confidential document – written by someone in good faith – and thereby
maligned a very competent professional.
I haven’t read the
book yet, but I note it has been cut from the original length of 300,000 words
to around 230,000 – something Anna recommended in her report. And I am prepared
to bet that in the published version the relevant chap is now called Tertullian
not Terullian.
Shoal Bay Press
Christchurch