THE LONELY TRAVELLER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 900, 2 November 1956, Page 12

THE LONELY TRAVELLER

IMMANUEL’S LAND, stories by Maurice Duggan; the Pilgrim Press, Auckland, Cloth 16/-, boards 12/6.

(Reviewed by

James

Bertram

remote Bermudas, now finds its own place in the Great Puritan Myth. It was Immanuel’s Land that Frank Sargeson saw. in his dream; though he, too, like Hubert Witheford after him, found that under the Delectable Mountains "the waters, indeed, are to the palate bitter." Christian on his first glimpse of Immanuel’s Land (if we remember our Bunyan) was promised further guidance from "the shepherds that live there." It need not surprise us if these shepherds should turn out on closer acquaintance to be rather less than divinely inspired, Ordinary New Zealanders live quite a long way from the Celestial City. Maurice Duggan is the latest of our literary pilgrims to have set out on that loneliest of journeys, the imaginative exploration of his birthright. What he owes to earlier travellers along this road -to Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson in particular-is clear enough. iN ZEALAND, as once the

What is his own is a sensibility that is vivid but uncloying, and a very subtle insight into human motives. If we add to this that his writing is clean, firm and sinewy in the notation of the most elusive nuances, and that the structure

of the best of these stories is quite masterly, we can see why this should be far and away the most striking volume of its kind since John Reece Cole’s It Was So Late. Not even excepting Dan Davin’s The Gorse Blooms Pale. And here comparison is inevitable. Both Mr. Davin and Mr. Duggan draw heavily on the experiences of a New Zealand Catholic childhood, which both seem to have moved some distance away from. Lacking Mr. Davin’s bravura and flair for melodrama, Mr. Duggan seems to me much more successful in recreating the peculiar atmosphere of Roman Catholic institutions in this country. Very well aware of the puritan side of transplanted Irish Catholicism, he writes out of love and understanding, not out of bitterness. His humbly tolerant Brother Ignatius is central and _ beautifully realised; his Brother Mark a_ horrid warning. These stories are "epiphanies," in the ‘same sense as Joyce’s Dubliners, of which they sometimes remind us. They deal with moments of perception or revelation occurring in familiar everyday circumstances. There are no tricks or surprise endings; the quality of New Zealand life revealed is embarrassingly authentic. Yet it is a very rare perception indeed that can so delicately and unsentimentally isolate beauty and tenderness from a drunken dance-party amongst northern Maoris, from a gro-

tesque evangelist’s cellar in Auckland, from an adolescent shooting expedition that ends up in the magistrate’s court. Much of Mr. Duggan’s strength as a story-teller derives from his spare economy: he knows just what to leave out, so that the reader is compelled to let his own imagination work. (We do not see the goaded MHopkins strike Brother Mark; Mr. Davin could not have resisted this coup de theatre, and: it would have thrown the whole story out of key.) Several of these stories are about children that, since Katherine Mansfield, is where many New Zealand writers of fiction have begun. But Mr. Duggan’s adults are just as convincing as his children. The Lenihans become, like the Cunninghams, a real family;

the parents-in that small masterpiece, "Towards the Mountains," which is a perfect synthesis of the commonplace, shifty New Zealand ethos-are the real victims of the society they have created. This is the clear-sighted artist’s truth about our way of life; how many of us will relish it? Ten short stories, and a_ brilliantly written travel-diary of a voyage to Italy and Spain. It does not seem much to get excited about. Yet to those who care for creative writing in this country, this first book is as much ofa portent as Alistair Campbell's first book of poems. It announces a talent just as striking, and confirms a more difficult achievement, for the prose-writer has a much harder task here than the poet. If New Zealanders have any appreciation of an original vision directed at themselves and of a quite exquisite craftsmanship with words, they will insist on a second edition of this handsomelyproduced volume before Christmas. If booksellers have any conscieuce, they will display Immanuel’s Land in their windows at least as willingly as the latest (probably spurious) adventure from Poland or Arabia. And I cannot think of a better Christmas gift for New Zealand puritans of all creeds and sexes,