LISPING IN NUMBERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 786, 13 August 1954, Page 25

LISPING IN NUMBERS

Sir-A number of points can be made against the sour, plaintive editorial in The Listener of July 16. To begin with, it is destructive criticism and, as such, does no service to letters in this country. Criticism does not completely ignore the contents of a perodical while quibbling about the contents of a handbill announcing it. I understand perfectly what the Numbers editorial means when it says that "New Zealand is rapidly taming any artist . . ." etc. This paragraph points out an admitted fact, that the frankly materialist standards held in this country do not allow for any art that does not conform. The quip about "personal frustrations" reminds one of Allen Curnow’s

remarks about Rimbauds and Baudelaires in Here and Now (May, 1952). These same critics, I take it, do not deny some literary merit to the aforesaid Rimbaud and Baudelaire. I fail to see what "internal evidence" there is of a coterie behind Numbers, especially as, among the other contributors, I have met only four, and the remainder are from places a long way from Wellington. There are not, emphatically not, enough sources of publication of a periodical nature for literature and the arts. For example, of the verse-publish-ing magazines in New Zealand, Landfall alone publishes any quantity of verse which is also reasonable in quality, but should the kind of verse that’s published be decided by one editor only? The comparison of this editorial with a Times "fourth leader" shows a misconception of the lightness of touch in the latter. The footnote to the Numbers Editorial Committee’s letter I found rather carping and trivial. It still leaves room to appeal for a worthwhile standard of criticism.

CHARLES

DOYLE

(Wellington).