Grant McDougall is on a literary mission
Over the past 11 years, the first thing I’ve thought upon walking into a bookshop, op shop, or school fair is “Are there any orange Penguins here?” I am on a mission, which I am so near to, yet so far, from finally fulfilling. About 15 years ago, Penguin republished a large number of their orange paperback classics. They include 20 New Zealand classics such as Ronald Hugh Morrieson's The Scarecrow, and Smith's Dream by CK Stead. My collection stands at 219 down, three to go: there are only three more orange Penguins that I need to complete the entire set – one each from a New Zealand, British and Australian author.
I got into this muddle in 2012 when I moved into a new flat in Dunedin. It had a long mantlepiece running down the hallway. I put all my books up on it. A friend said all the orange Penguins looked really cool together. At that point there was only about 15 of them. I started buying more and more of them because they did indeed look cool, but they were also cheap and in my book collection it was like having a library within a library.
I imposed a rule upon myself that I was only to buy secondhand copies. I also photocopied a list of titles from inside the back of one and put it in my wallet. Every time I bought one I’d gleefully and assiduously cross it off an increasingly ragged and dog-eared piece of paper.
They were pretty easy and common to score. Over the years, I’ve scored at least one from every op shop in central and North Dunedin. I frequently paid $2 for the likes of Thomas DeQuincey’s Confessions Of An English Opium Eater or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The avuncular Richard West, who looked after the books at the Hospice Shop and a nameless secondhand bookshop on Stafford St, was typical of the staff who’d give me a heads-up on any oranges that were in stock.
Two annual secondhand book bunfights were also a godsend – the 24 Hour Regent Theatre sale and the Mosgiel Rotary sale. At the Regent there was often several oranges together, so I’d mercilessly swoop on those. At Mosgiel, my friend Craig, inbetween trying to find anything about or by Ian Fleming, would sidle up to me and say “there’s three oranges on that table over there” and I’d hare off to it.
I really hit the jackpot at the St John’s Roslyn church fair, when I scored nine of the 20 New Zealand titles for $2 each
The late, great secondhand bookshop Scribes was also a happy hunting ground. “Mate! There’s a few more oranges on the shelves”, its genial shop assistant, Bill Kean, would enthuse, as I entered. The asking price was $6 each, just fantastic.
Church and school fairs were always worth going to. I’d get one or two each from the likes of the Opoho School fair, or the John McGlashan fete. I really hit the jackpot at the St John’s Roslyn church fair, when I scored nine of the 20 New Zealand titles for $2 each.
But towards the end of the last decade, my quest became notably tougher. Orange Penguins were showing up in secondhand shops, op shops and fairs far less often. If anything did, it was a title I already had.
If I was to carry on with my quest, I needed to be realistic. So in late 2018 I broke my vow to buy only secondhand copies and over a few Saturdays trudged around the University Bookshop, Paper Plus and Whitcoulls, forking out $12 or $13 each for about seven or eight oranges at each.
I went to my hometown, Gisborne, for Christmas 2018 and immediately repaired to Muir’s bookshop. I bought about 12 there and the staff also gave me $20 discount for bulk purchase. (While there, I also splashed out $5 on a signed, secondhand hardback first edition of Marlon James’ 2015 Booker Prize winner, A Brief History Of Seven Killings, much to my amusement – and the chagrin, of a certain Dunedin lawyer.)
In mid-2019 I visited friends and family in Australia. I didn’t have any luck in Melbourne or Sydney, but grabbed about six in Dymocks, Brisbane.
By then, I’d pretty much broken the back of getting ever single orange Penguin, bar three. The collection sits in a humungous conglomeration on my bookshelf. There’s 151 of the 154 fiction titles published and all 48 of the non-fiction titles. There’s also a few extras in there, too, such as five pink titles, which are part of a handful published in that colour in Australia to raise money for the McGrath Foundation, a breast cancer charity. I’ve also got seven that deal with World War I, which are in khaki green, of course. Two unofficial oranges have also been published, Twitterature in 2009, which sums up assorted classics as tweets and Thanks Mum, a Mothers Day novelty in 2016, in which random New Zealanders say generous, kind things about their Mum. A reproduction boxset of the first 10 Penguins ever published, which I got for $10 at the Mosgiel bunfight, sits on top of the pile.
Over the years it’s been immensely rewarding to read many of these books. There’s several that I already had read in other formats, but it was neat to get them cheaply in this one, too. Of the umpteen I’ve read in this format, I especially loved John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men and Cannery Row, Muriel Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon Of Crowthorne, a classic of the “you cannot make this sh-t up” genre.
Collecting orange Popular Penguins has filled in my gaps of knowledge on New Zealand literature and I loved reading Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s The Scarecrow and Came A Hot Friday, Patricia Grace’s Potiki and Mutuwhenua, Vincent O’Sullivan’s Let The River Stand and Lloyd Jones’ The Book Of Fame.
There’s only three more orange Popular Penguins I need, to complete my quest. They are:
* Hang On A Minute, Mate by Barry Crump (although it's listed as one of 20 New Zealand classics republished as a Penguin orange, a bookseller at Artie Bees secondhand bookshop in Wellington, who says he's seen copies of the entire Penguin series, bar the Crump, claims it might not actually have been published.)
* Postcards From Surfers by Helen Garner
* A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines.
If you have a copy, or have a tip, feel free to contact me at grantkmcdougall@gmail.com or on Twitter (@grantkmcdougall) or Instagram (@gmcdisme).
In the meantime, I'm starting another book: Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, which cost me $1 at the Hospice Shop.
