"Pigs is Pigs"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 541, 4 November 1949, Page 8

"Pigs is Pigs"

"THE LISTENER" recently published a short story, "The Eyes of the Pig," |

by

Peter N.

Temm

Corres-

a pondents quickly pointed out that details of the pig hunt, which supplied part of the action in the story, were improbable; and allegations were made that violence had been done to factual accuracy. Mr. Temm defended himself by saying that his story was not a report, but was an imaginative work of fiction, and should be judged as such, At this point.we thought the subject required fuller discussion. We therefore invited A. R. D. Fairburn and F. J. Foot to prepare cases for and against literary licence. Their arguments (and each seems to have kept his mind open to the last possible moment) .are printed below.

ey (and Con) S a writer of fiction justified in stretching the facts? Or should the imagination be curbed, in the interests of accuracy?" The Editor asks these. questions, which, as he says, relate to the more general one of literary licence. I think the short answer is that when a writer is trying to convey information he should keep to the relevant facts; but that when he is trying to stir the imagination and the emotions he may use whatever degree of licence may be necessary. Some important qualifications must be made. There is a core of factual reference in even the most imaginative writing-for, instance, Through the LookingGlass, or Kafka’s novels, or the election manifesto of a political party. And there is such a thing as "irresponsible emotive writing," in which the reader is misled. Everything depends on this question of what the writer is trying to do, and on the "contract" or understanding he establishes with the reader at the outset. We do not accuse Poe of trying to pull our legs in his Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Writer and reader agree to enter the realm of fantasy. And we do not blackguard Lewis Carroll for creating the March Hare. If the writers of the past had been manacled to factual accuracy, the greater and more valuable ‘part of literature would never have come into existence. The mind of the imaginative writer must be granted the freedom of the cosmos. He must be free to create Othello, Heathcliff, Puck, Don Quixote, angels and devils, anthropophagi, moons made of green cheese, and rose-red cities half as old as time. The poet enjoys (and: not infrequently abuses) a greater degree of licence than does the novelist, who is compelled to draw heavily onthe details of common experience in order to create his particular little world. If a novelist offers us figs that grow on thistles, motor-cars that have no forward gears, birds that fly upside down, railway trains that chase dogs, mothers who devour their young, square billiard balls, paets who are modest, he risks destroying the sense of reality he is building up in his reader’s mindunless he is writing fantasy in which such things are given a special meaning. It would be idle to deny that "The Eyes of the Pig" belongs to a ¢elass of fiction in which much of the imaginative effect depends on the vivid depiction of the details of common experience, The real question, in this particular instance, is probably: "How common?" No doubt there are errors of factual reference in every piece .of fiction, which the specialist in watch-making, Egyptian history, navigation or stamp collecting will pick up. For him they will. be magnified, and become a foreground as obstructive of full vision as a pea held up against the eyeball. He will find it hard to believe that Moby Dick is. not primarily a textbook on whaling, and Jude the Obscure not first and foremost a geographical study of southern England. He will be irritated-just as you or I should be if a writer showed his imperfect knowledge of our pet subject. Not knowing much about pig dentistry, I did not notice -Peter Temm’s slip, and my reading of the story flowed on without mental obstruction; just as. my dinner would not be spoiled by the presence of a hair'in the soup if I were a little dim-sighted, or used to eating in restaurants, © I must admit that I have a divided mind about the matter, I am fully sympathetic with the pig hunters, for (continued on next page)

— lel PRO Con)’ whom the story was impaired. I can hear all their arguments. What would the reviewers say of a novel about New Zealand farm life in which the bulls were milked every morning and evening? Or about a short story ‘containing a highly circumstantial account of an_ international tennis match in which the rackets were referred to as "bats?" How would you like to be a yachtsman and read of a boat setting its spinnaker when it was sailing on the wind? And so on. I agree, there%s room for sympathy. On the other hand, do such details really matter-or should they really matterin a work of the imagination? No, of course not. But if the writer puts on a show of being very knowledgeable, and makes crude errors of detail, he can irritate us beyond bearing. I confess that I never read, in a sea story, about a ship doing so many "knots per hour," without wanting to see the author keelhauled. I suppose the common sense of the whole matter ‘is that a writer of "naturalistic" fiction should do his best to avoid falsifying small details; that, statistically speaking, there must always be a small percentage of readers, in Tespect of any given novel, who are unavoidably irritated by the author’s lack of omniscience; and that they are foolish to let their enjoyment of the breakfast egg be spoiled if it’s served wrong way up in the egg-cup.

A. R. D.

Fairburn

CON (and Pro) NE hesitates to place fetters on the imagination of writers, but let us indicate some limits, with special reference to the case in point. In "The Eyes of the Pig" a huge wild boar is despatched with one knife thrust, without the aid of a holding dog; and the illustrator depicts the furious animal with its long curved tusks projecting from its upper jaw. Correspondents suggested that Mr. Temm had never seen a wild pig. Mr. Temm with. admirable frankness agreed, but made the defence indicated. It has not yet been pointed out that the pig went on feeding after a dog was in full cry after it, and that the hunter, presumably still armed with knife only, broke off a tusk and "slashed off its gory head." ‘The ‘author thus nonohalently disposes of two difficult operations. The case is not without precedent. Let us discuss it on a high plane. Doctor Johnson severely criticised Milton’s Lycidas. "It’s form," he said, "is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar, and, therefore, disgusting. . .. In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth." He complained of the mixing up of a lot of pagan deities amid shepherds, flocks, and flowers, with conceptions drawn from sacred subjects. Johnson had no time at all for poetic shepherds and, ‘in another essay, he fulminated against "heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together." When Fanny Burney called on him the following conversation took place: "Yet there is such a thing as invention-Shakespeare could never have seen Caliban?" "No, but he had seen a man, and knew, therefore, how to vary him to a monster, A man who would draw a monstrous cow, must first know what a cow commonly is; or how can he tell that to give her an ass’s head, or an elephant’s tusk, will make her monstrous?" The plain man will tolerate the abnormal but net the absurd. He admires Lycidas not because but in spite. of artificial poetic shepherds and fantastic and almost irrelevant heathen divinities. He welcomes, nevertheless (in Othello), the introduction of "anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders"; but not pigs who go. into action with their main armament upside down. Is he.to accept with undisturbed complacency a boar whose awful tooth is so off-handedly reft? His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge .... "Ah! who hath reft" quoth he "my dearest pledge?" And the rude hunters of the wild boar are entitled to say that they don’t care a fiddler’s fee about poetry, but that stories about pig hunting are different. © "Tt is no skin off our noses" they proclaim in their rough unlettered way "if Bellerophon is said to have killed Chimera; which was shaped like a lion in front, a goat in the middle, and a dragon behind. What we think is the horse’s behind is pretending to tell a’ story about a New Zealand wild pig and then turning it into Chimera." It may be said on the side of Mr. Temm that pig hunters have been known to refer to "blue pigs." On investigation it appears that these pigs are of a brindled grey colour and called "blue" only by imaginative courtesy. But as the imagination is here exercised by the pig hunters themselves, it may be asked-why not by Mr. Temm also? 'If; for instance, ‘following the Chimera tonne he had made the ee, those of a gryphor, the anifnal would’ have Had ; _ (continued on next page) baa

CON ‘(and Pro)’ wings. We should then have been able to say: "This pig might fly!" It may be, therefore, that Mr. Temm’s aims were too moderate and that he left a much more fertile field untilled. To blame the illustrator for the drawing would be unfair. It appears that he has, merely attempted to follow faithfully the flights of fancy indulged in by the author. His role is that of an interpreter and in this he has been successful. Mr. Temm takes full responsibility. He has not said as Doctor Johnson said to the lady who asked him why he defined a horse’s fetlocks as its knees "Ignorance Madam, pure ignorance." He says his work should not be judged by reference to any fact. To take a modern instance, Virginia Woolf had ‘no hesitation in changing the sex of Orlando, and even the century in which he lived. That is fantasy, but it is not absurdity. Absurdity, of course, has its proper place, Refer to James Thurber passim. If you want the quintessence of absurdity take Thurber’s favourite ‘example from the Marx Brothers- : Groucho: "It is my belief that the missing picture is hidden in the house next door." Chico: "There isn’t any house next door." Groucho: "Then we'll build one!" None of these examples, however, reasonably justifies Mr. Temm’s chimeri-

cal pig:

F. J.

Foot