DOCUMENTARY NOVEL
THE RAGE OF THE VULTURE, by Alan | Moorehead. Published by Hamish Hamilton. English price, 9/6. ¥ ‘A LAN MOOREHEAD is a newspaper reporter first and foremost, and has a habit of viewing the political scene, and the human personalities involved, in documentary fashion. It is automatic in journalism to tabulate, more or less neatly, human relationships into set categories which need never become too involved. This entirely unprejudiced but necessarily restricted mode of approach becomes a trifle awry when the vehicle to be used is fictional, because fiction, to remain true to life, has a set of standards of its own. Had the author been content to let us regard this work more as a documentary than as an amnbitious novel, the result would have been pleasing. The background descriptions, integrated with the rise of politics and the Indian attitude to\the going of the British, are not only admirable but satisfying, because they do help the reader to understand what happened during the period of transition when self-government came to India. This is documentary, a method with which the author is entirely familiar, But he goes further and introduces characters who cannot possibly seem real, because they are mere sticks on which to hang the mantle of the
main story.
B.L.
C.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19490812.2.24.8
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 17
Word count
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213DOCUMENTARY NOVEL New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 17
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