THE WRITER AS OUTCAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 666, 10 April 1952, Page 5

THE WRITER AS OUTCAST

Sir.-Holding Professor Gordon in some regard, I hesitate to challenge his statements publicly, but do so knowing he would prefer argument to silent disapproval. Agreeing with some of the Professor’s points, I yet think that they are so generalised that nobody could prove them: specifically. It is no surprise therefore to find him walking in such a circle that he eventually treads on his own heels, First, he admits Baxter and Sargeson as two of our best writers. Surely, then, they could not have achieved distinction in the field other than by writing about what they know"’-the Professor’s prescription for good writing. All that the Professor is left with is a few complaints that our writers are not tackling what they don’t know! By trying to make a number of loopholes in the argument, the Professor has deprived himself of the grounds on which his case rests. The case surely could only stand if Baxter and Sargeson were

failures because of their lack of social attitude. Scorning the "myth of childhood" which obsesses our novelists, he quotes three: When the Wind Blows, The Huntsman in his Career, and Roads from Home. Yet none of these books is exclusively childhood stories. Rather do they explore New Zealand family life, the very thing which the Professor implies is lacking. This misunderstanding is not surprising since the Professor says that a writer must write about something, whereas the people in question have only "individual vision." Yet the Professor seems to have dismissed most of the writing of these men in favour of his own "individual vision" or interpretation of a sentence from each, upon which his whole case rests. They can only have written about "nothing" (which is implied) because (a) the Professor has not read them, or (b) remembers only the sentences he quotes out of the context of all their writings. Further, if d man is admitted as being either a writer of distinction, or as possessing an "individual vision," my guess is that his reasons for wilfully choosing the life of a social outcast will be worth heeding. The English experts have every right to be concerned with the state of our literature; but our writers, even more, have the right to demand that their works should not be publicly misinterpreted by the experts.

LOUIS

JOHNSON

(Wellington).