War on Suburbia
SUBMERGED in the hectic atmo- | sphere of the Writers’ Conference, | Blackwood Paul’s talk on The Novel in New Zealand came over 3YC recently | as both interesting and closely reasoned. | Dealing with our unstable society in_ which class distinctions, though they are | not wide, are none the less vital, it was | surprising with what ease Mr. Paul fitted Sargeson, Davin, Mulgan, and Ballantyne into a thesis where Suburbia is always the listener, sometimes "silent," lying behind the New Zealand | novelist. When Mr. Paul suggested that. war on Suburbia, the repulsion from re-| spectable society, and suspicion of. the | rational intellect do not provide a broad | enough base for a rich and developing literary tradition he was theoretically right. But this general movement in New Zealand writing is obscurely entangled with the Romantic revolt against materialism. Suburban values are materialistic, gadget-mongering, holidaymaking values so utterly oppressive that the artist’s revolt against them is mostly a sign of health. Mr. Paul seemed to be asking for a novelist with the sweep of a Galsworthy.
‘but without Gals-_ worthy’s compromises; one who had sufficient compassion to love the human. beings in Suburbia while nevertheless insist-_ ing on disclosing the skeletons in Suburbia’s innumerable and convenient cup-_ boards.
Westcliff
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19520321.2.21.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 663, 21 March 1952, Page 11
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207War on Suburbia New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 663, 21 March 1952, Page 11
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