THE ADMIRABLE CRITERION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 11

THE ADMIRABLE CRITERION

Sir,-In the second of her talks titled The Admirable a a ag (1YA’s Feminine Viewpoint, July #5), Sarah Campion quoted the opening paragraphs of several novels in order to support her contention, and that of Elizabeth Bowen, as to the importance of good beginnings in novel writing. Although as a New Zealander I find her tastes rather too English, I do not usually quarrel much with Miss Campion’s broadcasts; but when, among quotations from James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and one other whose name J forget she sandwiches an unacknowledged quotation from Frank Sargeson’s When the Wind Blows, and dismisses it by talking of its "self-pity," and by saying that it does not entice the reader to read on, I can express only the strongest disagreement. To begin with, to have quoted the first page of When the Wind Blows over the air without having made acknowledgments to the writer was discourteous -especially since the names of the other writers were given. As it is, New Zealand writers have no reason to thank the NZBS for its liberal patronage, and I hope that in addition to making a formal acknowledgment, the NZBS will also pay Mr Sargeson for the use of his work. Unlike Miss Campion, I find that a treading of the first page of this short novel (it also formed the first part of 1 Saw In My Dream) invites and subtly entices the reader to a closer share in intimate childhood experiences. Some small indication of the merit of When the Wind Blows, however admirable Miss Campion’s own criterion, may be drawn from the fact that it was chosen by the distinguished editor and critic John Lehmann for publication in Penguin New Writing in 1946.

O. E.

MIDDLETON

(Waiau Pa). ;

(Miss Campion took pains to emphasise that she was giving a personal opinion. "You may be violently disagreeing," she said in the talk. "So much the better.’’-Ed.)