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FAR AWAY PLACES

DOCTORS, DRUMS AND DANCES, by Andras E. Laszlo; Robert Hale, English price 18/-. THE NAKED AUCAS, by Rolf Blomberg; Allen and Unwin, English price ,21/-. HIGHWAY OF THE SUN, by Victor von Hagen; Victor Gollancz, English price 18/-. THE LAST CANNIBALS, by Jens Bierre; Michael Joseph, English price 21/-. WORLDS BEYOND THE HORIZON, by Joachim G. Leithauser; Allen and Unwin, En§glish price 40/-.

(Reviewed by

D. W.

McKenzie

literature is the account of the eye-witness, who may be ignorant or well-informed, perceptive or insensitive, understanding or prejudiced. Whatever his characteristics, if he can write vividly of his experiences he can be sure of being read. These five books all reflect in different ways the personalities of their writers and the attitude they bring to their travels. In Doctors, Drums and Dances, Andras E. Laszlo, M.D., writes of a trip through Angola, which must reach nearly bedrock in the matter of preparation. He could not speak Portuguese, let alone any of the native languages of Angola, and was quite helpless in servicing the truck which carried him and one native helper. But he saw @ number of native ceremonies of ‘Tie raw material of travel

various kinds, and if the unimaginable horrors he is always about to describe never quite eventuate, and if the photographs he reproduces are not as exciting as the scenes he describes filming, his staccato narrative makes the most of what he did see. Rolf Blomberg in The Naked Aucas, on the other hand, gives the complete background of an Ecuador Indian tribe which must be as belligerent and unapproachable as any people in the world, with a sinister record from the times of the first Jesuit missionaries, who achieved only martyrdom. Blomberg determined to lead an expedition to the Aucas, but the actual account of this comes as an anti-climax, for they were met with a frail of spears from the forest. and went home without being able to see the natives at all. The account of European contacts with the Aucas, however, is detailed and fascinating. Highway of the Sun, by Victor von Hagen, is a magnificent account of a two-year expedition recording the great Inca highways of Peru. Its author made extensive preparations extending over many years, including detailed study of the records of the Spanish conquerors of the Incas, which enabled him to

locate places whose very existence had been forgotten. In the desolate highlands, into the forest; and across the coastal desert his expedition followed the great roads, sometimes paved into the sands, sometimes climbing upward around the tremendous precipices of the Andes. He brings the Inca culture to life in his narrative, for always he is seeing how their system worked. Indeed, he conducted experiments with native runners between the stops on the ancient roads which showed that the Inca’s boast that he could, high in the Andes, eat fresh fish from the Pacific was quite possible. One surprising feature of the book is that though it abounds in excellent photographs none is shown of the great roads from the air, though the author describes the results of several flights, and though the American Geographical Society, which sponsored the expedition, has already published some remarkable air views of them. Jens Bjerre’s book The Last Cannibals is distinguished above all by sympathy for the peoples he describes, both in Central Australia and in New Guinea. He attempts to find reasons for habits and ceremonials which seem strange and repugnant to European observers, and to understand them in relation to the people who practise them. Finally, Joachim. G. Leithauser in ‘Worlds Beyond the Horizon continues a trend noticeable among German authors of travel works today, and takes

the whole field of world exploration in his view, beginning with the Carthaginians and ending With rocket exploration of space! Though he protests in his preface that "this is no book of heroés," that is exactly what it becomes, though, of course, Pizarro, for example, may be a hero or a villain according to one’s point of view. The personalities of explorers emerge surprisingly clearly considering the small space which can be devoted to each, A NEW ZEALAND MARRIAGE A GALLOWS TREE, by Florence Preston; Cassell and Co., English price 15/-. N our young and relatively unsophisticated fiction, Mrs. Preston’s story on the common theme of incompatibility in marriage comes with a certain freshness and a marked originality of treatment, thereby widening the range and technique of our art. Joanna, the heroine of a A Gallows Tree, is an orphan Gragged up by a slummy and cynical grandmother, but nourished by decent folk. At eighteen, a shy, sensitive, and romantic-minded girl, she is swept off her-feet into marriage with a medical student. There is liking and wonderand did he not save her life on the Milford Track?-but not real love. In a town doctor’s practice Joanna finds she has married a complete and ruthless careerist, and a man utterly devoid of common-sense and decent family feeling. Everything must be suborcinated to his interests as a surgeon: His

love is entirely physical, and he treats wife and children with dreadful mental cruelty. Closely associated with these two are a couple in whom the position is reversed; an idealistic doctor marries a piece of glamorous selfishness. There is a strong medical element through the story. Joanna suffers years of unhappiness under a tyranny she is temperamentally unable to combat. She cannot protect the children. She despises her husband’s raffish "intellectual" friends, and has no real confidant. The ecstacy of a brief love affair deepens her sense of domestic degradation. When she does revolt, her husband counters with his need for her in a professional crisis. What she earns by her compliance the reader must find out. This is an exceptionally spacious and powerful novel. The writing is impressive, though Mrs. Preston would be wise to study the liability of "literary" speech to creep into dialogue. The husband is the chief weakness; is he not too much of a caricature? In real life a howling cad like this might think of his practice ’ before he humiliated his wife in public. I feel Mrs, Preston deals hardly with Joanna, but she is well portrayed in her essential goodness, her longing for affection, her struggle, and, as she sees it in the end, her fatal inability to fight back. The story is a study. in domestic appeasement. The children are excellently drawn, and so are some of the minor figures. And it is without any self-con-sciousness that this is presented as a

story of New Zealand life.

A.

M.

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.I whakaputaina aunoatia ēnei kuputuhi tuhinga, e kitea ai pea ētahi hapa i roto. Tirohia te whārangi katoa kia kitea te āhuatanga taketake o te tuhinga.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19561026.2.26.1

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 12

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,100

FAR AWAY PLACES New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 12

FAR AWAY PLACES New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 12

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