FREEDOM FIRST FOR DAN DAVIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 482, 17 September 1948, Page 6

FREEDOM FIRST FOR DAN DAVIN

F. creative writing is the most exhausting exercise an author can give himself, how can a novelist write books in his spare time? How can he do it when his full-time job is exhausting too, and when his days are as disturbed and broken as every thoughtful man’s have beer, during the last 10 years? We put this question to Dan Davin, who left New Zealand 12 years ago on a Rhodes scholarship, and whose record already is three novels and a book of short stories on top of a distinguished career as scholar, soldier, and man of affairs. His answer was brief: the secret is to have a plan and stick to it. "I know what I want to do, and I make myself do it." "Would it be right to say that these four books are week-end efforts?" "Week-end or day-end. Chiefly dayend. I settle down after dinner and write for perhaps an hour and a-half; seldom longer. When that has been repeated five or six times a week, the result one night ‘is a book." "You don’t wait for inspiration?" "The man who waits for inspiration is probably the one who isn’t going to get any at any rate. What happens to me is something like this. I go home every evening about six, tired out, have supper, and then read till about eight. By this time I am feeling very much refreshed. So this is the crucial point. If I don’t sit down and write then I don’t get round to it at all. When I do start I go right ahead as long as the flow continues, and clean up afterwards." "There has been : a good deal of discussion here recently about the position of the artist in society. The argument

usually is that to do his best work he must have leisure. The inference of course is that the rest of us must provide the leisure." "It’s an argument that leaves me a little cold. I don’t think that an artist should necessarily live in squalor, and if the State will help him out of that it is probably a good thing. But nothing short of extinction will stop a man from writing if he wants to. I made up my mind long ago to write, and I’ve done so. I would sooner do my own earning and spending than have to be responsible to a board. Providers usually like to be controllers." "Suppose the State had supported you while you were writing these books. Would they have been better books or in any important way different?" "No. I'd have done what I meant to do just the same. In any case I can’t imagine a literary grant big enough to keep me going."

"You think it better for an artist to accept suffering and experience?" "So far as that goes life might have few experiences more bitter than earning a literary award. I think these things are useful if you have the kind of mind that works like a machine. In fact nothing but good can come of such aid if there are no complaints by the benefactors that they don’t get value for their money." "One of the ideas behind the New Zealand fund is that a man of talent may get a book written .in his spare time and then have difficulty in getting it published. If it is a good book the State literary fund can be used to get it circulated." "That is a different matter altogether. Where the work is known to be good it "seems quite reasonable to help with the costs of production. There will also be cases where the quality of the work is not so easily accepted, and the people who make the award will think they have wasted their money. Yet future generations may say that it’ was spent better than they knew." "Well, here is another .point. After the 1914-18 war and to some extent during the war there was a much bigger spate of books than after this war." "J think, you must remember that after the last war I was approximately five. But my impression is that the best of the war books were written about 10 years after the last war." "Yes, most were written a little after the war. But the. question is, are we wrong in supposing that we are not going to see so many books out of this war?" "Well; most of the people who consider themselves writers made sure this time that they did not put themselves in a position to write novels. There was

such a large organisation in the Ministries of Information and Intelligence that anybody with any brains at all could get himself a job where his skin was safe. So you did not get so much real experience. I think that the people who did have war experiences are not writing books." "But the men who did have dangerous experiences, and who also had , the talent, are surely the men who are going to write the most important books? Would you not say that the 1914-18 war was more of a shock to the public -they were less prepared for it and it was more disturbing emotionally?" ""Well, that presupposes that literature emerges from emotional upheaval. I don’t think I can accept that. I think that a writer in this war was better placed than in the last. He knew it was coming, and he was able to take a more detached attitude." "He was in a better position to write wisely, but he’ would not be quite so likely to write at all?" "Well, who can say? If I'd gone to the last war I would have had much less chance of. surviving." "Do you think we have had any books from this war as good as the best from the last?" "Not yet. But a writer is in a very odd position these days. After the last war he did have a sense of a possible posterity. To-day that has gone. You have only to look at the attitude to art of the Russian civilisation or of the American way of life to see that the terms in which we are writing now will be almost meaningless to future generations." "That is something which greatly concerns us all. It looks as if the free spirit of man in the next 50 years will be crushed from both sides. What do you think about that?" "Your guess is as good as mine. Before the war it was impossible to expect peace because the Germans were still in the ring. Now we can hope for it but can scarcely speed it. And even if we keep the peace it seems doubtful whether we can keep the freedoms that in the past peace meant to us." "Is the young British intellectual as interested in politics as he was just before the war?" "T really don’t know. There simply isn’t time to attend to everything: One skims the papers and gets the general trend of things. There are always people making predictions about things which you are just as competent as they are of judging. I think the world to-day presents a pretty gloomy view. But I’ve seen many gloomy situations work out all right, and I don’t worry particularly. I’m not greatly attached to any particular set of civilised standards, though I think Britain’s are perhaps the best. I dislike the American way of life, and I think as an artist I could not live under the Russian." "Do you think it possible to combine authority and discipline in a nation with the liberty of the people?" "My whole training has been thisthat you don’t talk about things unless you know about them. And to bring one’s whole mind to bear on the problems of authority and discipline would entail devoting one’s whole time to them. One cannot spare that time any more. That is a recession, I know. I don’t think I would have taken up the

same attitude 10 years ago. But 10 years ago I had 10 years to spare." "Is it a typical attitude? Are the men of your age philosophical about things or not? Are they unhappy about the world?" "One can be worried about things but still get along quite nicely." "Well let us go back on our tracks. There is a movement away from languages in our secondary schools and emphasis on science and social studies. What do you think about that?" "First that social studies may be worthwhile but not if they are to be followed at the expense of severer and more fundamental systems of training. My feeling is that the student should be given the key to languages." "Are languages worth the effort unless you go on with them? Do we ever do that in New Zealand?" "We were taught languages badly when I went to school. We were provided with a key only. But we could go on and read the classics if we wanted to." "You think that the classics are a good discipline?" "Yes, in general. What struck me during the war was that men in the British Army who had had the advantages of a classical training were the best on the jobs which demanded analytical and deliberate thinking. Intelligence work is an" obvious example. The classical training taught you how to tackle almost anything." "Wasn't it a matter of approach-just the fact that they had a trained mind, which they could have got from our own literature?" "IT think there was more in it than that. But I don’t think that everyone should learn Greek. I should say it was a complete waste of time in eight out of 10 cases." "Are we doing enough for the remaining two?" "No. I arrived at Oxford with two New Zealand M.A.’s, and I found I had to start all over again and alter my whole approach in order to get a B.A. And yet New Zealand sends its best. They certainly do well, but it is largely because of a certain pig-headedness. We're not taught here how to work hard and take it for granted. We consider ourselves flat out on an honours course, but we don’t know how to work. Our fhinds are too much on the degree and too little on the subject." "Did you work longer hours in Oxford or was it a case of better direction?" _ "Chiefly better direction. We covered an incredibly bigger field, but it didn’t take us any longer." "We are covering a lot of ground in this discussion too. Far too much. But there are still more questions we want to ask you. The mood of the people in Britain. Is there anxiety?" "That is a much miore difficult question to answer. After all I move mostly between Oxford and London. What: do we ever know about the English? My impression is that they take things as stolidly as ever they did and hope that they will get through as they always have done." "There is no special ‘situation? No feeling of a crisis?" "None at all. The people in the pubs are as quiet as ever. But I repeat-the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) English are a completely mysterious people. It is very difficult to get inside their heads." "You are quite sure that there’s no trace of panic there, and none of despair? Those who are emigrating are not running away?" "Oh Lord, no. You can’t stampede the English. There is a certain strength, even if itis based at least partly in complacency, there which nothing will shift." "Visitors call us complacent in New Zealand. No doubt we are. But we're getting worked up about Communism." "There is something like that in England, too. I don’t like it, but it is not getting out of control." "Tt has not gone as far as in America?" "The Englishman, and I hope the New Zealander, is not so subject to, hysteria as the American. We prefer to wait and see. One of the reasons why the New Zealanders recommend themselves to the English is their habit of keeping quiet until they do see."