By Matt Johnson
Longacre Press, NZ$30 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

Overdue New Releases is the debut novel from Matt Johnson, a former freelance film critic for the Evening Post and Dominion.

Johnson has a flair for writing very natural dialogue – and the book cracks along at a decent pace (many readers will find it easy to read in a single sitting, or two – and that’s not the fault of the book at all; that is to say this is not a slight read, just an enjoyable one). But as good as Johnson can be, he is guilty of that classic crime of over-reaching, something that happens so often in first novels by New Zealand writers; particularly when favouring the first-person – essentially autobiographical – narrative voice.

Johnson’s protagonist/alter-ego is neither a hero nor an anti-hero; Mark Penny is a wage-slave at a Wellington video store. He can recall scene-by-scene breakdowns of almost any movie (from action to art house) and is obsessed with 1980s television. That’s a fine start for a character, but although Penny is too old to be living at home and getting turned down for every “real” job he tries for, that’s about it as far as character development goes – and frankly it’s not enough to elevate this simple tale from being an enjoyable, quick- read.

This type of novel is both most obvious and the hardest to pull off. Johnson doesn’t attempt the hedonism of Hunter S Thompson or Bukowski (wisely). But he doesn’t have the existential philosophy inherent within his text of say, Douglas Coupland or Dave Eggers. And he doesn’t have the literary skill of a Tom Moody or David Foster Wallace. This is also fine – and I’m not at all suggesting that any pretensions are suggested, but – sadly for Johnson – this ends up planting him next to Nick Hornby. And let’s face facts; just as no one will rush to remake Lord Of The Rings after Peter Jackson’s efforts, the pop-culture-referencing brand of literature isn’t ready to accept a new High Fidelity. Occasionally, Overdue New Releases comes close to being the video-store version of Hornby’s most successful work of fiction; and Johnson’s skill at recreating his own behind-the-counter scenarios is spot-on, keen observation and some wry humour. As someone who has worked in a video store (and indeed the very one in Kilbirnie that Johnson describes, remade for ONR as “Hysterio Video”) I thoroughly enjoyed the world that was evoked; the over-the-counter chat, the random phone-calls for crossword solutions, the hierarchy that exists within a fairly mindless, pedestrian job.

It’s also possibly a tad unfair of me to suggest that Matt Johnson was even trying to vie for space alongside the likes of Bukowski, Eggers, Moody or Hornby. I don’t see a lot of other fiction writers in his influences; I feel the pull, fittingly, of screenwriters. I would say that Clerks was an obvious antecedent of this project – particularly the Star Wars and L.O.T.R-mocking dialogue. But still, as I said, High Fidelity is the cultural touchstone most associated with this type of writing these days. There is still plenty of fun to be had reading Overdue New Releases.

And I got the references to films, television and recent history. But where Johnson displays an acerbic wit from time to time, he fills his pages with far too much fluff. Peel the skin from this onion and there are not enough layers, instead there are just far too many references (both obscure and obvious) to television and film trivia. There’s pretty much one pop-culture reference for every page turned, it all amounts to an over-booked episode of The Family Guy, when it clearly wants to be a vintage (1993-1999) episode of The Simpsons. A twin staircase is described as being the kind that Linda Evans and Joan Collins would battle on, referencing the epic dust-up that occurred on the 1980s TV soap, Dynasty.

By the end of the book, despite it being an easy page-turner, and something that anyone with an interest in films (especially anyone who has ever worked in a video store or movie theatre) will enjoy a flick through, I found myself wanting to speak directly to the writer; wanting to say, “yeah Matt, I get it! Ease up on the references and give me more plot!”