NEW BOOKS

Southland Times, Issue 24832, 26 August 1942, Page 3

NEW BOOKS

PROFESSOR SINCLAIRE’S ESSAYS Several of the essays published in FSinclaire’s new book, Lend Me Your Ears (The Caxton Press, Christchurch, 7/6) were first printed in The Southland Times. Readers will remember them, for they are of exceptional quality. Professor Sinclaire sounds the positive note which comes only from the true essayist. He has his opinions, and will utter them roundly. There is no delicate balancing of possibilities, no dissection that ends in suspended judgment. In the literary pieces the method is most successful when the writer can be enthusiastic. The paper on Samuel Butler is brisk and entertaining; but it is based on too narrow a selection of the man’s work. An appraisal of Butler which ignores Life and Habit” (a remarkable book that pointed to the principle of creative evolution long before Bergson came to it, and that discovered the unconscious before the appearance of modern psychology) cannot be fair or satisfying. But if Professor Sinclaire is uncomfortable with Butler he is very much at home with Hazlitt. In Music, Morals and Moonshine” he reopens an old Shakespearean controversy, adds something new to it, and leaves the reader chuckling as well as thoughtful. Indeed, there is humour in most of these essays. It moves from wit to ridicule, and can be used (as in. “Blonsky and Blonskyism”) to expose shallow and perverted thinkers, and the ideas they are foisting upon a decaying civilization. But mostly it is a pervading good humour which makes it easy to overlook the knowledge, the play of ideas and the sanity of attitude in the background. It should be added that the essays are written in a firm and beautifully balanced prose. In these days of paper shortage and forced quiescence of the arts it is pleasant to be able to welcome a book that will be read with delight long after the darkness has lifted. TAHU HOLE’S BOOK

Tahu Hole is well known to New Zealand listeners as a commentator for the 8.8. C. His new book, Anzac Into Battle (Hodder & Stoughton, London, through W. S. Smart, Sydney, 15/6) is not confined in theme as the title su |=“ gests, to the campaigns fought in the present war by the Australian and NewZealand expeditionary forces... The fighting is described in detail, with dramatic emphasis. But when Mr Hole has reconstructed the great events of Greece, Crete, Libya and Syria, he turns to the war efforts of the Pacific Dominions. He answers, without much difficulty, ..the ..question ..which ..has puzzled Axis propagandists: why, at the beginning of what promised at first to be a war on remote fronts, Australia and New Zealand ranged themselves without hesitation at the side of Britain. There are chapters on defence expansion, industrial mobilization, and political developments, Mr Hole has carried out extensive research, and has assembled a mass of information. Unfortunately, however, the theme is overweighted with detail. Facts which are available in official publications, and which are not of great interest to the general reader, slow up the narrative and give it a hybrid character. It is odd, for instance, to find in a war history a section devoted to such items of information as the lack of snakes in New Zealand, the existence in Whangarei of a unique collection of Dumas manuscripts, and the size of the gold dredge at Kanieri. In a book of 471 pages a firmer revision would have lessened the impression of undigested materials which grows upon the reader after he has enjoyed the vigorous early chapters.