THE WRITER AS OUTCAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 668, 24 April 1952, Page 5

THE WRITER AS OUTCAST

Sir -I enjoyed Professor Gordon’s article very much, It forced me to examine a piece on which I was engaged with detachment and doubt, and for this service I thank him. Yet I find myself in almost complete disagreement with everything he says. I take it he is bored with the childhood pieces to which so many of us are addicted, and who can blame him? Yet can he in all seriousness suggest that this is because childhood is an unsuitable field for us to explore? At what age does one become worthy of a writer’s attention? If writing is boring, the reason surely is that the writing is bad, no other. There can be nd arbitrary dismissal of a whole field of experience which we all share. As Mr. Summers suggests, the reasons for this preoccupation are much deeper than Professor Gordon allows. May I suggest, very tentatively, a hypothesis? Qur modern determinist philosophies tell us that we are merely bundles of conditioned ‘teflexes, economic or sexual propulsions, and all fashion an- image of man as victim, a being who does. not act, but is only acted upon, The ideal image for this passivity, for an aesthetic purpose, is surely a child, who clearly is not free to choose or operate his will. Further, all these philosophies insist

that their conditioning takes place in childhood; they take as first commandment that the child is father of the man. So that I find the preoccupation which distresses Professor Gordon entirely typical and suitable for our time, What we need, I feel, is not less work on childhood themes, but more. Let’s write them in hundreds, our _ tedious little ‘fopera" full of self-pity and crocodile tears, in the hope that this will prepare the ground for the emer- | gence of a major literary talent who will synthesis all these footling little essays inte one grand and definitive work after which, praise be, no more working of this particular vein will be possible. If however, after this, we are still writing works entitled: The Agony in the Woodshed, The First Awakening, or The End of Summer, I hope Professor Gordon will write to you in the sternest and most uncompromising terms.

BRUCE

MASON

(Tauranga).