It Is No Catalogue

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 5

It Is No Catalogue

NOTHING would have been easier than to make a sort of catalogue history of New Zealand literature and art. It’s the sort of thing that has been done, in another field, in some of the local centennial histories. You go through the records, you tollect all the mayors and borough councillors, the county chairmen and county councillors, from the year dot, and you write a little bit about each; you note all the openings of all the roads, bridges, dairyfactories, post-offices, and railway stations in the district, and who it was that owned the first motorcar; and you have a great‘ bag bursting full of names, big-wigs and nobodies, and the plunder of minute-books and the local paper; but somehow the story of the life and growth and change of the district is not there. Mr. McCormick might have followed this course in writing the history of New Zealand literature and art. He could have made

a catalogue of names and works, brought in somehow all the writers and artists who have worked in New Zealand, all those who have left us, New Zealanders born, to work overseas and give us some pride in their achievement; I think he would have — done this well. It would have been a well-compiled catalogue; we should have had from him neat biographical sketches and wise critical comments. But there would have been no continuity ... no development ... no connection of the stream of prose, poetry @hd paint with the stream of our national history -(J. H. E. Schroder in a discussion of E. H. McCormick’s " Art and Letters in New Zealand," 3YA, February 18.)