OUR SHORT STORIES AND VERSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 33

OUR SHORT STORIES AND VERSE

Sir,-I feel it is time that some complaint was made concerning two recurrent features in The Listener. I refer to the short stories and the verse. At the outset it must be granted that much of good quality has been published, notably A. P. Gaskell’s "One Hell of a Caper," Frank Sargeson’s "Letter to a Friend," J. C. Beaglehole’s poem for John Mulgan, and the poems of J. R. Hervey. But it is some months since work of this quality has appeared. For short stories we have had rather inane and ill-written glimpses of country life, equally poorly-written chunks

of child psychology, and, just recently, a study of the mental processes of a secretary, which, to say the least, lacked both interest and significance. The verse has been singularly shoddy. Neither Hervey nor Beaglehole are great poets, but they are inestimably superior to those who write with little skill and less intelligence upon such subjects as weather reports and alarm-clocks. "Whim-Wham" used the light touch in a much better way; he at least chose subjects of some importance and wrote about them in a way which was serious and sincere. These petty exercises of wit, reminiscent of the slick smartness of lesser Noel Cowards, the uninteresting efforts of a desire to be clever at all costs, are not fit to be printed in a paper which is, after all, the only one with any pretension to "culture" in this country. If-it is the policy of The Listener to give us a change, say from Hervey and "Whim-Wham" to Anton Vogt and Arnold Wall, for the sake of the readers, let it change back again.

W. H.

OLIVER

(Wellington).