GOOD WRITING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 491, 19 November 1948, Page 13

GOOD WRITING

TURNSTILE ONE. Edited by V. S. Pritchett. Turnstile Press, London, and the British Council. ITERARY miscellanies now appear so frequently that readers may look doubtfully at still another collection of stories, essays and poems. Turnstile One however, deserves special attention. Its contents have been taken from the files of The New Statesman and Nation, mainly in the period since 1931. ‘This means that they are consistently good. Every paper with a literary reputation has contributions which stand out noticeably. They do not come every week,. or often enough; but over the years they can grow into an impressive body of writing. Contributors to The New Statesman and Nation have always included some of England’s most distinguished writers. Everything they have written has not been equally good, and some of their best work was done while they were still not widely known. But the pieces reprinted here have one feature in common: they have been written more or less spontaneously. Some of them, no doubt, were commissioned for the paper; but they were not commissioned for a miscellany, and the distinction is important. Writers who are asked to send along something for a volume in preparation do not always supply work of the best quality. It is the occasional contribution, ‘written because a man has "(continued on page 15) |

BOOK REVIEWS (Cont'd) |

(continued from page 13) an idea that has been interesting him for some time past, which brings most satisfaction to an editor. Turnstile One is therefore nearly all cream, and it is so good that ‘a reader can lap it up jn a single sitting. The names of writers in the list of contents read like an index to a study of modern letters in England. Yet even where almost everything is good, some things are better than others; and one or two pieces are close to the highest level of writing in the period covered by the was scape My own favourites are a cruelly clever little story by H. G. Wells, a story by H: E. Bates-‘"On the Road"-which makes a chance meeting express the poignancy of lives that miss fulfilment, a study of Beethoven’s influence on modern music by Edward Sackville West, a fragment of raphy by Ethyl Smyth, and W. H. Auden’s "Song." Incidentally, the verse scattered through the book refutes the belief that all modern poetry of any value is obscure. Some of the most beautiful pieces, by poets of high reputation, have a Mogartian precisign; and even when the mood is romantic-as in a sensuous lyric, of unusual, power, by Roy Camp-bell--the meaning is perfectly clear. This may mean, of course, that the editor prefers simplicity; but it also seems to mean that poets who have puzzled many readers can be clear enough when the mood is favourable. — There are to be further volumes of Turnstile, The completed series should be worth. keeping.

M. H.

Holcroft