The Australian Myth

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 10

The Australian Myth

SUCH IS LIFE, by Tom Collins, Angus and Robertson, Australian price 25/-.

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

HIS Australian classic has rightly earned itself a permanent place in the affections of readers on the wrong side of the Tasman, and has been once more reprinted. It dates from 1903 and reflects conditions of some- twenty-five years earlier, as its whole context is prerefrigeration. It is a novel without a plot, though it is much more cohesive than at first sight appears. Its ‘main character, the narrator, is a sort of chorus, tragic or comic as the case requires, who rides around a country district in the Riverina with unrealistic freedom and aimlessness. (He is some sort of government official, but the scope of his duties is left vague.) His comments on and interferences in the diffuse action of this sprawling, untidy book help to make it a unity, and at the same time give an even more direct expression of the author’s opinions than the rest of it. The life described is of literally pastoral simplicity, and the code of manners is based -- incredibly enough-on the systematic refusal of hospitality by sheep farmers to the travelling bullock teams, which none the less were vital to the well-being of sheep farmers. Collinswhose real name was Joseph Furphy-as an ex-bullock-driver has an irritant, unpurged grievance and his book is in every way an exaltation of the under-dog. Getting grazing and water for their bullocks as they travel to and fro is the great preoccupation of these men, and their subterfuges, triumphs and disasters in the quest stud these pages with gems of prankish wit and much characteristic humour. But it is not a light-hearted book. The philosophic outlook implicit in the title comes out all through, whether the reflection is upon something quite trivial, such as the habits of a half-wild dog, or an anecdotal meditation on the six courses open to the man who uncovers his wife’s infidelity. Two elements in the novel argue a highly-developed sense of inferioritythe dislike of Englishmen and the outof hand condemnation of the wealthy, to whom all manner of &nobbery, meanness eand trickery is attributed as a matter of course: "He was as bad as an Australian judge, passing mitigated sentence on some _ well-connected criminal." The attractive ne’er-do-weel, Willoughby, in an early chapter might seem to argue that Collins can be fair to the English. Many other allusions ‘build up a contrary impression: he seems to envy them most the assurance based on education-perhaps an essential element of the 1903 Australian outlook. _ Collins is a more accomplished stylist than we always realise. His artlessness is deliberate and his digressions as ruthlessly contrived as those of Sterne. His vocabulary and mode of writing are in any case highly literary. He can create a new word-equiponderated-with carefree zest. He can wax facetious and speak of someone "grasping the situation ‘and a long-handled shovel." And he remains self-conscious, referring, with a certain complacence, to "the peculiar scythe sweep of my style." He constantly calls in Shakespeare, and hardly a page is innocent of literary allusion. We cannot find any especially Australian quality

oe in the writing itself, which owes nearly everything to the England he despises. What is Australian and richly so is the procession of forlorn characters who crop up in this rather narrow world of his. These people he draws firmly, with love and insight. Sueh Is Life is instinct with its own crotchety maturity. It has no real equivalent in New Zealand writing. Some of its qualities can be found in Poenamo, in Maning’s Old New Zealand and in Chamier’s Philosopher Dick. The ripe humour of the two former and the high spirits of the latter have their place too in Collins’s novel. But its salty ironies and overdone, flyblown courtliness-half-sincere, half take-off-make up a flavour we can envy but cannot imitate. Nor shall we ever do so. Such Is Life is an epitome of an epoch, a day that has vanished, a world of hard-bitten mounted men, virile, self-reliant, coarse, goodhearted: and essentially lonely. CHASING THE DEVIL THE CRUCIBLE, a play by Arthur Miller; The Cresset Press, price 12/6. RTHUR MILLER’S fine play was first produced in New York several years ago; since then it has been produced many times in America and Eng- land, and once in New Zealand by Wellington’s Unity Theatre, last year. My

feelings about the play, when I saw it, were that the first act was clumsy, the second splendid, and the third, very fine. I am inclined now to think that the (continued on next page)

entire play thas a distinction which I had not fully appreciated before this reading. , Mr. Miller preoccupiés himself with mass hysteria as it manifested itself in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. We see this Puritan society in its decadence. The candle they had lit 70 years before to light the world with a faith and a vision, by whose tiny but pure light they came thousands of miles across the Atlantic to found a new life, has guttered. Discipline has become repression; dedication, prejudice; humility, pride. If the candle flares at all in Salem, it is to show each man the frightened, suspicious eyes of his neighbour. In this atmosphere, hysteria takes root and engulfs the town. The test of a man’s character ceases to be his deeds, but his thoughts, and the best minds of the time, as well as the worst, are set to ferret out these thoughts, label them, and judge them. Mr. Miller everywhere implies parallels with contemporary manifestations of the evil eye, and the apparatus which exists in many countries for their recognition and repression. When I saw the play, I did not find these parallels very striking; having read it, I find them all too compelling. That frightful perversity in human nature which makes the routing of the Devil so much more beguiling than the love of God which would render him powerless, is a perennial theme, running through history in a wave of blood and grief. Mr. Miller has stated this theme, if not in universal terms, then in very powerful ones, and his recent appearance before the Un-American activities committee in Washington makes piquant counterpoint with the substance of his play. His vivid characterisations are most rewarding to actors and his dialogue, as solid, clean and satisfying as good wholemeal bread, makes a most agreeable diet after the rice bubbles and saccharine of most contemporary play-

wrights

Bruce

Mason