A SENSE OF MIS-DIRECTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 951, 1 November 1957, Page 11

A SENSE OF MIS-DIRECTION

Sir,-Being somewhat astonished by the excerpts quoted in your leader, "A Sense of Mis-direction,’ I looked up the article to which it applied in the Times Literary Supplement. There to my further astonishment, I read that the New Zealand writer must not only be au fait with "the entire range of European civilisation, everything from A. N. Prior’s Formal Logic to the collection of Greek vases in the Otago Museum, but he must now find the energy, too, to take in the Chinese Classical Theatre, and have a working knowledge of modern Canadian poetry." If it is really true that this country’s writers are as pansophic as the contributor to the Times Literary Supplement would have us _ believe, their writings seldom betray the fact. That "the whole of New Zealand life, and a great deal else, comes under review in (Landfall’s) pages" is a statement in keeping with other ie made in the article, Landfall has done an excellent job in printing and reviewing New Zealand poetry, but apart from this, is has long since become a pedants’

playground, with a small, and, I understand, diminishing circle of readers. The hysterical note that prevails in the article on New Zealand literature is wholly absent. from those dealing with the literatures of Canada, Australia and South Africa in the same _ periodical. I think that the New Zealand contributor would have done his country more service, and incidentally spared his countrymen’s blushes, if he had avoided the methods used in commercial adver-

tising.

NE NIMIUM

(Wellington).