Letters and L.S.D.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 110, 1 August 1941, Page 5

Letters and L.S.D.

EARLY novels are often read for their local ' interest, in various ways. For example, many people read novels about Mayfair and the South of France and Miami and Honolulu because the elegance and gaiety of life in these places give them a dream-fulfilment which makes up for the drabness of their everyday lives. Many people in England and America will refuse to read a novel about New Zealand because it does not come near to their own local experiences and is hardly important enough in the world’s affairs to have for them a foreign interest sufficient to attract them. If you write about New Zealand you must expect New Zealanders to be chiefly interested in your writing,

And there simply aren’t enough New Zealanders to make such writing pay. Consequently, the New Zealand writer is starved for a market. Either he doesn’t write at all or else he accommodates himself to English or American tastes and interests and may be in that process untrue to himself and his genuine inspiration. Another point leads on from that. No matter what

highbrow notions we may have of the poet writing solitary in his garret, not caring about his readefs, writing to please himself or for posterity-the fact is that novels and poetry are written to be read. The novelist -or the poet must to some extent estimate the importance of his work, the real seriousness of his business by the mere number of his readers. That may be shocking but I am sure it’s true. So that a New Zealand poet or novelist-uncertain éven of publication, aware of the limited number of réaders to whom he must appeal, must inevitably be to some extent discouraged. It is a notable thing as we shall seé later that some New Zealand writers have mans« aged to triumph over this pafticular difficulty — (" Colonialism in Literature," Professor Sewell, in his tecent series from 1YA.)