CONTRASTS IN WRITING
EAST OF EDEN, by Jehn Steinbeck; Heinemann, English price, 15/-. CAPTAIN JAN, by Jan de Hartog; Cleaver-Hume Press. En§lish price, 15/=. MARTHA QUEST, by Doris Lessing; Michael Joseph. English price, 12/6. THE ESSENTIAL R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, edited by Paul Bloomfield; Jonathan Cape. English price, 15/-. OHN STEINBECK has been the most dedicated of the naturalists. on whom the mantle of Zola and Dreiser falls more fittingly than on the rounded shoulders of James T. Farrell. His vision of man as violent and uninhibited, and woman as merely a vessel of fertility, is a limited one, yet ‘in East of Eden, his best novel since The Grapes of Wrath, he sees also the dignity of man through his animality, the saving innocence and honesty of his hoboes and farm-hands. This rambling chronicle of an Irish-Californian family and the youngster from the Eastern seaboard who comes out to make his home with them, covers 50 years of America’s great overland migration. One or two characters, like Adam Trask, stand out, but the story is too long-winded and the handling of it too blunt for one of. America’s major novelists to stand or fall by. The author of The Fourposter and other Broadway comedies has written in Captain Jan a wild, Picaresque novel about Holland’s ocean-going tugboats. De Hartog’s hero tows dredgers and floating cranés across the, Atlantic, assaults his boss for sending him to sea in a worthless vessel, rescues a millionaire’s yacht, and finally owns his own tug. The book’s violent deeds are recounted with a flippancy that conceals the author’s real feeling for his tugboatmen. Doris Lessing’s third book is the story of a South African girl, and from the moment when Martha Quest first appears at 15 on the front steps of her father’s farmhouse, reading Havelock Ellis in the sun in rebellion against her mother’s narrow-minded bullying, the pattern of what will follow is fairly clear, from her first ball in a forbidden dress to a job in the city, sexual. emancipation and an unhappy marriage. The theme is redeemed by the intensity of its telling. It is a pleasure once more to read Cunninghame Graham, the aristocratic Scot known as Don Roberto of the Pampas, or "Mexican ' Jack" ‘to his (continued on next page)
BOOKS (continued from previous page) enemies, in this polished selection from his stories of England, Morocco and Spain, the South American and Mexican yarns, and extracts from the histories of the Spanish Conquistadores.
P.J.
W.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530605.2.25.5
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 13
Word count
Tapeke kupu
416CONTRASTS IN WRITING New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 13
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Material in this publication is protected by copyright.
Are Media Limited has granted permission to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa to develop and maintain this content online. You can search, browse, print and download for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Are Media Limited for any other use.
Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.