A DEFINITION OF CULTURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 524, 8 July 1949, Page 5

A DEFINITION OF CULTURE

Sir-For a number of reasons, we must all be grateful to your correspondent, Dr. Peter Muntz. Following Dr. J. C. Beaglehole, he has finally exposed the pretensions of this Eliot who has hoodwinked his contemporaries for a quarter of a century. The fellow is now revealed as a nouveau riche, his extensive writings as a shoddy facade built up’ te conceal ‘his humble origins. True, he oftens refers to his native "colony," but this is merely the trick of a master charlatan, the device of an artist in hypocrisy-an artist in nothing else, I need scarcely add. As a dabbler in criticism, I owe a special debt of gratitude to your correspondent who, in one flash of insight, has disclosed the formula sought after by philosopher-critics through laborious centuries. How simple it is when it is set down and how ridiculous that it occurred to no one before the Muntz era! If a man’s style of writing is tortuous, if his thought processes are involved, he clearly lacks integrity and his writings are therefore worthless, We may now dismiss not only Eliot but such obscurantists as Donne, ‘ Coleridge, Henry James, James Joyce, and also, I fear, Karl Marx. Conversely, we are now free to admire the prose style and character of Willie Jones of Standard Four, author of the prize-winning. essay, "How I Helped Father Build Our Fowlhouse." There is simplicity for you, thére is coherence, there is integrity! (I confess to some misgivings about the specimen of ptose Dr. Muntz has provided for our inspection; but to pursue that subject further would be ungenerous to our benefactor.) Again, as a "colonial" myself, I must thank Dr. Muntz for adopting the prophet’s mantle to assure us that "The real vitality of Western culture is about to create a society which is (sic) similar to modern democratic colonial society." It will soon be possible for us "colonials" to move at ease in a Europe divested of the irritating, even intimidating, expressions of an "unreal" vitality. In place of restaurants we shall find fried-fish shopy; cathedrals will have been converted into picture palaces; and where centres of humane study once flourished we shall meet with schools of "social. work" and political "science." My final words of acknowledgment must be reserved for Dr. Muntz’s revelation of the death-bed utterance of A. N. Whitehead. If I may indulge myself in a fancy (spun from a long-discarded European mythology) I find satisfaction in the spectacle -of Professor Whitehead’s arrival at the portals of Heaven, there greeted by the souls of those expunged at Hiroshima. I hear their ntild voices raised in timid approbation: "We thank you, prophet of the ‘Atomic Age; our mental horizon surely hac heen widened "

E. H.

McCORMICK

(Auckland).