Like the podcast, but a book! While that sounds boring and pointless, Duncan Greive controversially argues that it’s actually good.
I found the 9th Floor “urgent and revelatory” upon its release in April and May, writing somewhat pompously that it “strips our recent political history of much of the distracting rancour which accompanied it in real time, and allows the key participants to speak with precision and hindsight about what drove their decision-making.”
Not everyone feels that way. The Pantograph Punch’s Joe Nunweek yesterday beautifully articulated the counter-argument – that it was an artfully constructed opportunity for our leaders to gloss the real consequences of what they oversaw, “full of dozens of infuriating and tone-deaf moments on the part of its subjects”.
That the same object – five interviews with five former New Zealand prime ministers – could drive such wildly different responses speaks to its power and importance: we live in…
