Good Words

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 944, 13 September 1957, Page 26

Good Words

HERE have been some lively talks of late, First, in every respect, was John Pocock’s latest Letter from Cambridge, which chronicled a visit to Paris and made entertaining news of this most hackneyed of tourist places, what with professors on strike and the dis-

covery that Napoleon is still beyond reproach ("like Eisenhower’). But his chief purpose was to make our flesh creep with a lucid and doom-laden account of the effect of the Algerian war, which he believes to be dividing French opinion as fundamentally as the Dreyfus case did. This was a Lookout talk of a distinction we seldom hear from Lookout. Dr Pocock is so accomplished a speaker that he has turned even his inability to pronounce his "r’s" into an idiosyncratic virtue. It is good that his voice returns though he has deserted us. Then the superior vocational guidance talks entitled My Poor Boy, which managed the lightness of touch the title demanded, yet could penetrate to some reasonably perceptive observations. Of those I heard I admired most the Rev. George Naylor on the ministry, for his was certainly the most difficult task, and he came through with wisdom and aplomb, And, The New Zealand Attitude. This Joseph fan was sad to find M. K. Joseph somewhat laboured and _ painstaking (though just) on the arts; and pleasantly surprised to find J. H. Robb delivering a full-blooded assault on our conception of equality. He said we are not. as equal as we think we are, and where we are, we are perversely so. Cc. G. Hill on our conformist and adolescent personal relations was mostly second-hand, out of Bill Pearson and Robert Chapman among others. Last year we had The New Zealand Way, this year The New Zealand Attitude. I suggest that next year’s series be entitled The New Zealand Attitude to the New Zealand Way, and that it consider, among other phenomena, the compulsion felt by the intellectuals who write such talks to reverse so violently the common or gardening New Zealander’s prayer, "Make her praises heard afar." After all this, it has been instructive to hear from 2YA’s Women’s Session a BBC talk by John Berger on the difficulty the artist has earning a living and finding an accepted place in the community; and another by Marghanita Laski on the difficulty of giving children individual values in face of the pressure to conform of a mass-produc-tion, mass-consumption, mass-communi-(continued on next page)

cation society. It would seem that New Zealand problems are not all so unique to Néw Zealand as we sometimes

imagine.

R.D.

McE.

Shaw’ Without Tears T is many years since I’ read Shaw’s You Never Can Tell, but I had remembered it as a very light-weight piece, almost foolproof material for amateurs and, in parts, good fun. The NZBS production on Sunday Showcase showed that my memory hadn’t failed me, but also showed what a fine crafts-. man Shaw was even at this thinnest. Much of the play has dated=~all that New Women stuff, in particular-and it would be almost funnier today if a Waiter didn’t have a son distinguished in some profession; but the bright, crisp, beautifully flowing dialogue, the delightful anti-climaxes, and the human observation could still give points to. Mr Terence Rattigai and his peérs. Thoughtfully cut for fadio, the play was taken at a vigofous pace by a cast largely of NZBS regulars, among whom I liked especially George Royal as William, Selwyn Toogood as Bohun, and Peggy alker as Mrs Clandon. Shaw’s recipe for this play remains the best description of it; "fun, fashionable dresses, a little music, and even an. exhibition of eating and ~ drinking by people with an expensive air, attended by an if-possible-comic waiter." Judging by the success of this presentation, it is still a serviceable formula, even if it nowadays seems to bé mofe appropriate to. English musical comedies than to straight plays. With a Yah and a Boo A BBC feature, Sticks and Stones (1YC), recording children’s rhymed jibes and games, was a highlight of my

last week’s listening. I had just finished reading the poet’ James Kirkup’s "autobiography up to six," The Only Child, in which he records many of the Tyneside children’s chants, and so was especially interested to hear a number of these in the high-pitched voices of Glaswegian and Dublin youngsters. Pipingly confident, they hurled their invective against the odd, against parents, against the English, against. other religions, against teachers (I liked the one about Teacher X, "Who goes to church on Sunday/To pray to God to give him strength/To bash the kids on Monday"). Some of the rhymes clearly had their roots in ancient customs, or recorded forgotten history; some were crude, some sophisticated; some are still heard in our own playgrounds in almost the same form; some were mere chants, some set to popular songs. But all showed a response to reality more eantidtins

lively than that of our youngsters, perhaps because such chants are the product of a more continuous community. Certainly I can remember from my own childhood few such rhymes not inherited =

(C) | vanch from "the old country"; nor do I hear our childfen responding to anything with rhymes as colourful as those this

programme offered. hail

J.C.

R.