NO ROOM FOR MR MICAWBER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 936, 19 July 1957, Page 11

NO ROOM FOR MR MICAWBER

Sir.-Shame,on you! Churchill, Senator McCarthy, Dave Beck, Picasso, Dylan Thomas, L. D. Austin, Denis Glover, Nasser, Hitler and Mussolini rise up to confound you. My father-in-law, who looked like General Smuts and could hold the floor against all comers. People I have known who, when thwarted, smashed the furniture. Any gathering of yachtsmen or any kind of artists. The man we all know who has two wives, two homes, two families. My

milkman neighbour, who was also a poet. His name was Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk. The last I heard of him he was wandering London in sandals and toga. Admittedly this would .look conspicuous in Christchurch, but Indian women living here wear saris. The list could go on indefinitely. Surely people are still, even in these days, intensely interesting. Eloquence may mark the "character," but don’t forget that loquacity grows with age. It is scarcely fair to expect it from Teddy Boys. It comes later, that is, if not side-tracked by the team spirit, psychiatry, and marriage guidance, All leading, of course, to your dismal prophecy of "case-histories" instead of "characters." What *hope then for gusto, colour, character, eloquence? Dare one say that that is the business of the artist, who naturally does, or should live, vigorously, to a far greater extent than you indicate? The characters of Dickens, Dostoevsky and Chekhov are. still among us. What is needed is another Shakespeare, another Dickens to reveal them. —

RUTH

FRANCE

(Christchurch).

(We doubt if Sir Winston Churchill, Senator McCarthy, Dave Beck, Picasso, Dylan Thomas, Nasser, Hitler and Mussolini are quite the sort of people to be described as "cards" or "characters." But we agree (and said so in the editorial) that the varieties of human character are infinite. What seems to be changing is our attitude towards the oddi-ties-one reason, perhaps, why no new Dickens comes along to reveal them.-Ed.)