BREAKING NEW GROUND
SHORT STORIES, by O. E. Middleton; the Handcraft Press, Wellington, 4/6. NE day a New Zealand writer-Mr. Roderick Finlayson has sometimes seemed about to qualify-may give us a book which will fill for us the place of Huckleberry Finn in American literature: it is easier to write variations when a major theme has been fully stated. Meantime, we get hints and sidelights and growing pains. There is a glimpse of the boy Huck in some of Mr; Middleton’s absorbed or companionable fishing sketches; elsewhere, he rebels against suburbia, and is looking for a raft to go on a longer voyage. Inevitably, this little book invites comparison with the early work of Frank Sargeson: the point of view is not so different, though the execution is generally less sure. But the two best stories here, "Saving the Breed" and "A Day by Itself,’ are Mr. Middleton’s own achievement: the workmanship matches the conception, symbolic values are nicely adjusted, there is a flash of real illumination. On this level, Mr. Middleton is a writer of genuine talent who is breaking new ground. And in shorter sketches (some of which have appeared in these pages) he is often entertaining and never trivial. It is only when he embarks on fantasy of a strained and slightly lurid sort-"Mark of the Rimu,"’ "The First Dreamer’-that he fails; but this is an honourable failure, It seems a pity that work of such promise should have to appear in so modest a form, But who knows? This mav vet be a New
Zealand collector’s item. —
J.
B.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19541029.2.22.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 12
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263BREAKING NEW GROUND New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 12
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