Will Boldness Pay?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 517, 20 May 1949, Page 14

Will Boldness Pay?

OUR OWN COUNTRY. Paul’s Book Arcade, Hamilton. 25/-. HIS is one of the boldest ventures in publishing I can remember in 40 years. I can think of subsidised jobs (like the books of Johannes Andersen) filial devotion books (like Heinrich Von Haast’s), and books of provincial pride (like McLintock’s History of Otago) that all-cost a great deal more than this one; but I can’t remember another case where quality on the production side seemed to be the only consideration with a publisher so well aware of the limited appeal of the text. It is of course a cheering situation when it happens, but I can’t think why it happens. Anyhow it has happened. The book costs 25/- and the: number of people likely to. buy it can be large only after e long period. Admirable though some of its séctions are, they are the kind of thing you appreciate when you have long acquaintance with them, or very close acquaintance with the subject matter of them; and in this latter case if

you know one of the worlds well you are not likely to know the others. Because, I havé life-long knowledge of one of the geographical areas, and the knowledge of oné non-geographical subject that comes quickly because we go hungry if it tarries, I have found myself turning back to some pages over and over again. Many others will do the same. As our pleasure is renéwed we shall tell others, a new. group éach time perhaps, and so gradually do the advertising. But there is nothing that shouts from the pages themselves: no sensations, no scandals, no political provocation, no flashing wit or hearty laughter. You travel all the way from Arrowtown to Kerikeri without feeling once that this is the first or last fresh word that scéne or situation will provoke. There is some forced writing, some thin writing, a little (but not miuch) foolish, smart-alec writing. Everywhere, too, there is superficial writing, since there had to be superficial seeing. The editor could, I think, have blued out a further 10 per cent. when he was making his selections from Korero, the Army Education magazine from which the present book has been gleaned,

But say what you like about the writing, it has revealed and not concealed New Zealand. It is our own country we see as we read, and a good deal more of it than most of us have seen before. The writers are more than reporters if not quite artists and interpretersthough they come near to interpretation in an occasional bright flash. I read my

own copy in a caravan between Naseby and Lumsden, with Cobbett’s Rural Rides for a change of fare. I am not going to say that I found one as good _as the other, but it was possible to read the two simultaneously. As for the externals--the printing, binding, and illustrations-I have, I think, indicated already. that they are

as good as twenty-five shillings, the Caxton Press, and Janet and Blackwood Paul could make them in New Zealand at the present time. All readers \ will hope that their boldness will pay.

O.

D.