Good Stuff

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 472, 9 July 1948, Page 12

Good Stuff

NE good deed does not make a boy scout, though one bad deed may mar him. The same is true of radio talkers, ‘To produce one good talk is relatively ° easy; it is the high level of consistent achievement which marks the radio virtuoso. And such is Alan Mulgan, whose series of talks The Making of a New Zealander (16 to date) adds up to an impressive yet shapely edifice of personal, social, and literary history, The mining of reminiscences is a favourite activity of radio talkers, but (particularly in the Morning Talk) there is a tendency to favour the opencast method, Mr. Mulgan goes much deeper into the field of autobiography, delving into the social and political strata that underlie

the personal, conscious (I hope) that he has many Sunday afternoons ahead of him and can afford to do the job properly, At present he has struck a rich literary vein which I trust will keep him occupied for some time. In his last talk Mr. Mulgan made the point that for the New Zealander English literature, though a rich inheritance, is not sufficient; we need as well a firm foot on our native soil. Probably most of Mr. Mulgan’s listeners are reasonably familiar with the New Zealand soil newly dug by contemporary writers, but few of us bother to go back to those beginnings with which a lifetime of service to New Zealand writing has made Mr. Mulgan so familiar.