Review: The Commercial Hotel

I will read anything that John Summers writes. He is one of those writers who I reckon could write beautifully about anything, even the most seemingly mundane of topics, heck, even sport. He also has this uncanny knack of writing about some of the fairly niche things that often turn over in my own inner world.

One of my earliest memories as a child was when my dad once came home and proudly presented mum with a box of 12 Arcoroc mugs, declaring that we could now retire the set of trusty honey glazed Crown Lynn cups in the kitchen because the future was here in the form of these unbreakable, smoky-toned mugs. And I remember noticing over decades how those cups were a recurring motif everywhere: Student flats, staff cafeterias, community halls across the country. “They are part of the scenery,” Summers writes. Teachers would sip their hot staffroom water from them (or in the case of one of my primary school teachers, rum and coke.)

In Smoke and Glass, Summers explores the backstory of these egalitarian, cheap as chips and robust mugs in which the glass is tempered and heat-treated to resist extreme temperatures. Apparently 30,000 Arcoroc mugs are sold in a year. I’ll think of a childhood memory or musing about something as banal as an Arcoroc mug, and then all of a sudden, John Summers will pop up with an amazing essay about it.

In that way, while The Commercial Hotel is a distinctly “New Zealand” book, it feels universally relatable. These 21 essays (several of which have been previously published online and in magazines) are a joy to read and bring together personal histories and social and cultural history. Summers is a deep thinker and always comes to his topics from a unique and thoughtful angle. His writing is about noticing things and it celebrates the ordinary things in life. His observational eye makes even these ordinary things seem extraordinary.

There are very short pieces such as Eeling, about the inky mysteriousness of eels, which are only a page or so long. I love that he doesn’t feel the need to be verbose. Summers just eloquently sets a mood, shares a thought of memory and then moves on. But when he decides to write longer pieces like Temperament, he crafts an immersive personal essay with narrative drive. He tells the story of his grandma Connie Summers who joined both the No More War Movement and the Christian Pacifist Society and while protesting in 1941 was the only woman arrested. Connie, who was also known for refusing to stand at the cinema for God Save the Queen was sentenced to a month’s hard labour. It’s a fascinating piece of history.

Summers writes like an old and sensitive soul. He’s drawn to the past and writes that, “I’ve never been able to think clearly about the future. My neck is cricked, looking back.” Almost 20 years into a new century and here he is, still pondering New Zealand’s past - the six o’ clock swill and freezing works. In one of my favourite essays, The Dehydrated Giant, he explores his grandfather and an uncle’s work at the freezing works. Many have closed down now and Summers writes, “Who mourns that old business of slaughter?” Well, probably the communities and families for whom employment at the freezing works enabled them to put food on the table. Summers writes about our history but he isn’t a historian - he is simply a brilliant storyteller with a finely tuned instinct for what makes a compelling yarn, excavating the interesting facts from hidden stories.

He generously shares embarrassing childhood memories from school and takes us back to that insurmountable feeling of being a child when the little things matter a lot — documenting “a catalogue of worries which came to nothing” in that way specific to sensitive thinkers and feelers. He’s also very funny and knows his way around telling a good anecdote. In Sex Elevator, he recalls seeing a couple pushing a pram and was horrified, it suddenly occurring to him that he knew what they had to have done: “Much of this knowledge came from Usborne Publishing’s How Your Body Works which depicted the act with a pair of wheeled robots,” he writes.

Summers needles down to the delightfully absurd, too. In The Adventures of Bernard Shapiro, he suddenly recounts how opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa had once been sued for backing out of her appearance at a John Farnham show. The reason for her change of heart? She’d watched one of his performances and said she was, “concerned about the knickers or underpants and underwear apparel being thrown at him and him collecting it and obviously holding it in his hands as some sort of trophy.” One can’t really blame her.

Each of these essays is richly compelling and refreshingly unpretentious. I love that The Commercial Hotel is a quiet book, there’s no bluster. It’s warm, enquiring, intelligent and authentic. You could give this book to anyone and they will surely get some pleasure out of it.

Reviewed by Kiran Dass