PRIZE NOVEL RAISES STORM OF PROTEST

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5330, 17 February 1947, Page 7

PRIZE NOVEL RAISES STORM OF PROTEST

N.Z. AUTHOR HARD HITTING TRUTH STINGS AUSTRALIAN RjEiADERS. . A literary sensation has been caused m 'Sydney by the New Zealand writer, Ruth Par.k (Mrs. Darey Niland, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Park, Mount Albert, Auckland) with her novel "Harp in the South," which won the first prize of £2000 in a competition organised by the Sydney Morning Herald. The novel's publication in serial form in the Sydney Morning Herald has provoked such a storm as has not ben known for years in Australia. The novel, based on faet, deals with the loVes and lives of a poor Irish family iiving in Surrey Hills, one of the sium areas of Sydney. it is nothing if not frankj states A special correspohdent, No sooher Was the iirst insthlment released than the Sydney Morning Heraid began to . receive scores of letters daiiy. As further instalments i'eached the people, these nlounted into hundreds. Those who do not enthusiastically applaud it roiindly cOndemn it. On a typical day, after the serial had been running albout a week, there Were 1102 letters oi Iavish praise and 71 of wholesaie condemnation. ' Some writers of letters took the view that while the hook might be a tru;e picture of s.lum life, while it might be cleverly written, and while it might carry a social message or challenge, it should not have been published in a daily newspaper likely to be read by any members of a family. This provoked a spirited three-qfiar-ters of a column reply by Mr. Warwick Fairfax, managing-editor of the Herald. He emphasised that a novel was not a means of recommending a" digtrict or a country to the good, opinion of the rest of the world, that being the function of tourist bureamx, trade missions and diplomatic corps. He maintained, too, that only in fairy stories or comic strips were characters completely virtuous or completely evil. He declared that the paper's confidence in the judges of the competition had been thoroughly justified. Miss Parlc herself had to go to her own defence and to the resoue of slum residents who found themselves "or their dwellings identified in the novel. Every day the story has been published the Herald's circulation has exceeded its normal by many thousands. No literary work has attracted so much attention for the last quarter of a century in Australia. Social reformers hail the hook as the masterpiece of the century, and they believe that besides producing a novel of firstrate literary quality, the author has written a very moving human document, based on personal experience, which paints a picture of a side of the life of any great city too often forgotten by its more fortunate inhabitants. Miss Parlc plans to visit New Zealand in May to take her two children, who are in Auckland, back to Sydney.