SLIGHTLY OUT OF TRUE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 719, 24 April 1953, Page 7

SLIGHTLY OUT OF TRUE

SLIGHTLY OUT OF TRUE, which takes the air from Christchurch next week, is, like New Soundings, devoted to imaginative writing--but there the likeness ends. For Slightly Out of True grows out of the idea that the "literary" short story seldom comes over well on. the air and that radio requires the revival of the old story-teller’s art. Of course, there have been writers of "literary" short stories (hasn't A. E. Coppard been called the English Chekhov?) who belonged to the story-telling tradition, but Arnold Wall, Talks Offer at 3YA, who arranged the series of stories listeners are to hear from 3YA and 3YC between now and mid-Septem-ber, had in mind something of the atmosphere A. J. Alan used to create in his stories for the BBC in the 20’s and 30’s and which those who heard his stories broadcast in New Zealand will know so well, The ideal, in other words, was not a slice-of-life sketch of the sort Katherine Mansfield wrote, but something with a plot and a twist and a sense of suspense and crisis. With this in mind Mr. Wall has gathered together the rather surprising number of 22 stories. They are all told in the first .person and in a more or less matter-of-

fact way--they’re not meant to be good reading. Most of them have a meta* physical-supernatural streak, ‘Slightly Out of True will be heard in the afternoon Mainly for Women session from 3YA on Thursdays, and from ~3YC the same evening. The first broadcast will be on April 30, a story by Leslie Cleveland, some of whose work

has appeared in The Listener. Mr. Cleveland is known to a great many people as a_ journalist and a mountaineer — a man well qualified to write about the wild country of the south which is the setting for his story The Prisoner.

Thé Prisoner will be followed by The Leprechaun, by Anthony Bartlett, a young Englishman who has’ written for Punch and _ other London magazines, and who has been working for the NZBS (now announcing from 4YA) since he arrived in New Zealand

last year. Other writers whose stories will . be heard are Emily Baizeen, an Australian-born free-lance journalist, now in her mMid-seventies, who has written for many New Zealand and Australian papers; G. C. A. Wall — none other that the 3YA Talks Officer himself, whose original work is already well known. to listeners; Elizabeth Studholme, wife of a runholder at Coldstream, Mid-Canterbury, who only recently started writing; Dennis McEldowney, who last year broadcast

an impressive series of talks, The World Regained, about the gradual return of a "blue baby" to normal life; Nora Sanderson, a regular contributor to several New Zealand weeklies, and author of a book of children’s stories soon to be published; Cicely Wylie; an officer of the Country Library Service; and Robert Young, producer for the Canterbury Repertory Society and author of a series of broadcast talks mentioned on page 16.