COUNTRY OBSERVERS
MASTER OF NONE, by A. G. Street; Faber and Faber, English price 12/6. HERE’S A NEW DAY, by Alison Uttley; Faber and Faber, English price 15/-. \ THEN an author has produced 20 books there is not much to say about the twenty-first. It would be cheeky to say that it is one too many, when so many thousands are waiting for it, and impertinent to suggest that Mr Street can have nothing new to say on any subject after expressing himself so freely-as author, journalist, and broadcaster-for the last 25 years. Even when he repeats himself there are hundreds eager to hear him, and no man can repeat himself for 200 pages. In any case, Mr Street moved ‘a year or two back to a new farm, and that gave a new slant to his agricultural comments. He decided at the same time to spend more time indulging himself, and that fills some fishing and hunting pages. But I suspect that the chapters with which he was most pleased himself, when his manuscript went to the publisher, were No. 6, in which he trails his coat through Scotland, and No. 15, in which he challenges the Devil and the BBC to justify modern fashions in music. For myself, I have been more interested in his report on myxomatosis. Mrs Uttley’s book is more restrained, miore sensitive, and more carefully written. Though the countryside is her subject, too, her approach is poetic and gently meditative. She feels where Mr Street looks and talks. But only readers turned out of the same mould will share all her feelings and respond to them. To say, for example, that a tree keeps confidences means something if you feel that it does. If you have no feeling of that kind about trees, it will sound like nonsense. But you are an unfortunate reader if you can make no response to the chapter on smells: the scent of hay, the smell of a brewery, or roasting coffee, or of particular brands of soap; the smells of boots, leather, bags and saddles; the composite smell of a grocer’s or of a chemist’s shop; autumn fires. shearing sheds, stables, wet earth.
O.
D.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570607.2.24.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 12
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367COUNTRY OBSERVERS New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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