"WHEN THE WIND BLOWS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 5

"WHEN THE WIND BLOWS"

Sir,-The wind blows up again at Wallace Gaitland’s staggering remark that Frank Sargeson nourishes himself on modern American authors as against English traditional ones. After his first collection of stories was published---Conversations with My Uncle (about ten years. ago, I think)I remember that Frank Sargeson acknowledged, in the pages of 7o-morrow the influence of Sherwood Anderson. This was in answer to critics who called him "Ernest Hemingway’s younger brother." Only the other day I heard this comparison drawn again. I can’t imagine two writers much further apart in style and. attitude. The only point of resemblance is the ear both authors share with Mark Twain for precise local idiom applied to revelation of character. Surely a most significant thing about When the Wind Blows is that a New Zealand author like Frank Sargeson, whose development obviously demands from him most careful selection and discrimination, has abandoned the American influence for the European--even if he still keeps to the small town of Sherwood Anderson tradition, The book cries out to be compared and contrasted with James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and in its -episodal character, if in nothing else, shows the influence of Ulysses, with a very interesting adaptation-or development, however slight-of the stream-of-consciousness method. And I'd pick from this novel that the author is pretty well read in E. M. Forster. I’d also be willing to take Wallace Gaitland on that for one modern American author that Frank Sargeson reads, he reads ten English plus some five’ other European ones, past arid present. y I agree with him, though, that M. Holcroft’s review in The Listener of When the Wind Blows inspires respect. It is admittedly tentative and if he missed a good deal at this first time of reading he at least gives us a study that is of value, whereas Ian Hamilton uses the review, e novel, and the character of "Henry" in it, to abuse New Zealand society in a loose prose style that suggests that he himself has not the creative ability-or stability--to adjust himself to its demands. It’s because Henry does not abuse, but gets

on with the difficult but effective job of making his own place for himself in it -we realise in the final episode-that we see a decadent society so clearly and are so grateful for the book. And so eager for a sequel,

E. P.

DAWSON

(Mt. Maunganui).

Sir-In my letter concerning Mr. Holcroft’s review of When the Wind Blows, published in The Listener of April 12, you have printed the following "... for its study of the growth of , a boy against the setting of a certain environment, rather than the growth of character, and with such a method the characters are ancillary... ."’ Checking this passage with that of my carbon copy, I find it should read, ".... for

its study of the growth of a boy against the setting of a certain environment. Actually, I believe, the novel is intended to express an environment, the growth of environment rather than the growth of character; and with such a method the characters are ancillary. . . ." Would you be good enough to publish this correction?

WALLACE

GAITLAND

(Invercargill)