Caged Lions

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 19

Caged Lions

HAVE now heard several of the We Write Novels series, the most recent being Joyce Cary and J. B. Priestley. I find myself dubious about their value. It should be interesting to hear such people talking about their work, but is it necessary? More, is it wise? It made me uncomfortable to hear Joyce Cary, whom I greatly admire, saying solemnly in an interview that man is doomed to be free. He is not portentous as a writer, but this was. He has spent twenty years creating a gallery of characters whose aim is, in action, to make such statements manifest. I feel that an explicit avowal of aim is a mistake. An artist should be like the Delphic sybil,

either silent or inscrutable. I recall that when T. S. Eliot was asked the meaning of The Confidential Clerk, he replied blandly that it meant what it says. And J. Z. Priestley, poor man, should not have been bar@boozled into saying that "I maintain that the two wars have done great damage to people." Obviously, all too obviously, they have, but the enormous triteness of this remark made me wince, Priestley, though, is by far the best I have heard in the series, a born broadcaster. His voice has a fine energy and a tone I am tempted to call sacerdotal, to avoid a cheap pun on his name. And he is so far only one who has stood up to the rather smug probings of Walter Allen. "You’ve obviously been greatly influenced by Dickens," said Allen. "Not a bit,’ said Priestley, severely, "I must really resent that." A little more resentment, a hint of fierceness here and there, would have dispelled the impression I have gained from this series that Walter Allen is a successful tamer of caged lions.

B.E.G.

M.