"THAT SUMMER"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 17

"THAT SUMMER"

»ir,-Mr. Bettrams review of i inat Summer seemed to me intelligent and perceptive, In my opinion it was an excellent job marred only by the father provincial localisation which it suggested im many places and proclaimed directly in others. I would define the provincial localisation of which I have spoken as being, in the review, the suggestion that only Australasians . . .. can appreicaté its full virtuosity. Mr. Bertram is speaking of That Summer: He is speaking as though works of art may be turned up for all who read to see the trade mark on the base-made in New Zealand, Anyway, virtuosity is a danger-word in criticism. Whenever I read it I think of Louis Armstrong, sometimes too I think of Harry James. Would Mr, Bertram say that only a mid-west American can appreciate the full virtuosity of, say, William Carlos Williams. here is a similar sensitive use of what is probably a localised and hybrid idiom. This is not, unfortunately, the only instance where Mr, Bertram draws the geographical and provincial blanket over the very acute ears of Mr, Sargeson. My main grouch is that a temporary service in matters like these can readily betéome a dangerous disservice. A tag can easily grow into a millstone: if you allow me a platitude, stranger things happen in literary criticism than ever happened in Lewis Carroll, Finally, Mr. Bertram makes his point by saying: (The language, by the way, belongs to Auckland . . .) Language? Language beléngs nowhere. It is, in the hands of the serious creative artist, a purposive and non-restric-tive instrument. In the case of That Summer it is an instrument used finally to uncover-and doing it scrupulously, surely, and finally, obliquely-the universal type, the Spiv. There are no pre-ordained conditions necessary to the experience (in the reader) of serious literature. Ultimately there is only sensitivity. Sensitivity: the word is. overworked: in my sense it approaches nearer to a disease than to a state of mind. But I would say again that Mr, Bertram’s review is an intelligent and perceptive Se The sad fact was its necessary revity. However, I do agree with his remark: . . . . whatever the outside may be, inside is New Zealand.

NOEL

HARBRON

(Auckland).