A Sense of Mis-direction

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 949, 18 October 1957, Page 10

A Sense of Mis-direction

MERSED in affairs, and surrounded by the noise of Wellington, it is possible sometimes to feel that much is going on of which we in the capital city know little or nothing. Signals come in as if from a far country: we hear rumours of other New Zealands, islands uplifted higher, where the people’s interests are in’ no way connected with money, football, racehorses and the staid life of the suburbs. Intelligence of this sort has just reached us from the Times Literary Supplement, a solid paper which now and then brings out special numbers of massive proportions. Its Autumn number has a 44-page inset under the general heading, "A Sense of Direction," described further as "an examination of the efforts of ‘writers to keep or regain contact with the everyday realities of life in. terms of modern literature." This production includes an article, "New Zealand in the New World." It is unsigned, in the T.L.S. tradition. Let us taste it. "There is," says the unknown contributor, "a passionate quality in modern New Zealand writing. . Whatever form it takes, the current tone of New Zealand writing is one of passionate commitment, or willingness to be committed, to anything and everything. Nothing half-hearted is tolerated, nothing remote." All that follows is an elaboration of this theme, presented in a series of statements. "Cultural delegations set off for China. . . New Zealand holds conventions on International Relations, commentaries on the state of the arts and society arrive regularly from Canada and Australia. . . Maori poems are translated and annotated with all the fuss and care of a new edition of Horace. . . Articles appear on Suez and New Zealand’s foreign policy, on civil liberty-a New Zealand writer must be committed." The intense activity implied in these and similar passages would be delightful if it were true, or if it were true outside a few isolated cases. Cultural delegations have gone to ‘China-at least two of them, to our certain knowledge. There have been international conventions, though generally of scien-

tists: the others are not easily remembered. During the Suez crisis the articles published were mainly in newspapers, and nearly all of them were similar in argument and outlook. If New Zealand writers were passionately committed, it would have been natural to expect some outbreak of opinion comparable with the tumult which arose in England. But there was nothing of the sort, The writers of whom the anonymous contributor was thinking must at that time have been passionately committed to something elise. Who are these writers? He does not name them. ". . . It would be almost impossible," he says, "and certainly misleading to attach examples to the various remarks." It would indeed, though not for the odd reason he puts forward. "To begin with, these writers are such Jacks of all trades, that an exemplar of one attitude in one year, or book, or poem, might very well turn up in the opposite camp not long after. No system has its settled exponent; it is all as changeable as a love affair, or the weather." At this point the overseas reader ‘would no doubt be envious of a country where the facilities for publication must be utopian. If, as the contributor suggests, "there are almost as many real and personal attitudes as there are people writing," the attitudes must be constantly expressed in print: otherwise the critic we are quoting would have no knowledge of their existence. Yet immediately afterwards we find the following sentence: "The scarcity of purely literary material in the country-papers, magazines, local traditions, cliques, sets and characters-means that the whole complex of everyday life, anything and everything, has become material for creative writing.’"’ The connection between the two main parts of this sentence may be grammatical: it is certainly not logical. We are asked to believe in a creative ferment which exists because it has few means of expression. And how few they are! There are only about three "good" publishers, and apparently no Broadcasting Service. Yet presently we learn, from a long and enthusiastic passage, that one journal- Landtall- provides a _ sufficient platform, and indeed has become so identified with New Zealand letters that it is superfluous to mention the names of writers. Nor is it just a literary quarterly. "The whole of New Zealand lite (our italics), and a great deal else, comes under review im its pages." Now Landfall is a journal to which we have been happy in these columns to pay tribute. But it is certainly not the beginning, the middle and the end of contemporary writing. Even if its place and functions had been described correctly, the journal-which appears -four times a year-would be quite unable to support the weight of passionate: commitment that is said to exist in New Zealand today. There are problems enough for writers; they are made no lighter when a frivolous and misleading view of the literary situation is presented to the world outside, especially in a paper whose imprint has suggestions of

authority.

M. H.

H.