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Second edition
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Second edition revised to 1965
First published 1961
Reprinted 1962 and 1964
Second edition revised 1966
© Joan Stevens
To E.A.B. and M.S.F.
Printed by Wright & Carman Ltd, Wellington
The origin of this book is work done for the Council of Adult Education in the Wellington University district over the last ten years. In lectures and discussion courses with groups in town and country I have found not only an interest in New Zealand novels, but a need for an informative guide which will enable readers to pursue their own paths with more assurance.
Our pre-eminent critical text is New Zealand Literature, A Survey
(1959), to which frequent reference is made in these pages. Mr McCormick, however, deals with the whole body of our literature, and in discussing the novel has no space to spare for minor writers, nor for detailed analyses of the work of major ones. He has necessarily been highly selective, especially in his treatment of the fiction of the last twenty years. A wider range of material will be found here. In particular, attention has been devoted to early novels not now accessible to readers, and to fiction at popular levels. The aim has been to give a reasonably comprehensive picture of the topics and the techniques of New Zealand novels from 1860 to 1965.
With the needs of the general reader in mind, I have made the presentation conversational and provocative rather than academic, hoping thereby to stimulate argument, discussion, and further exploration. The body of the book consists of seven chapters on the development and nature of our fiction. An appendix offers suggestions for the critical dissection of six well known novels. For the use of members of the groups organised by the Adult Education Service, a set of topics for study is also included.
It was necessary to define what was to be considered, for my purpose, as a New Zealand novel. A decision on this matter is not as easy as it may seem, as will be obvious from the discussion in the opening chapter. Reluctantly I decided that the non-New Zealand fiction of New Zealand authors would be excluded.
Dates of publication are noted in the text; dates of authors, where available, will be found in the index. The quotations which head the chapters are taken from The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse
(1960).
In this second edition I have added a chapter bringing the discussion up to the end of 1965. In the notes for critical analysis, Bill Pearson's Coal Flat
and Graham Billing's
Their assumption that if there was to be a nation, there had also to be a literature... was an entirely reasonable one.
The first question is, what exactly are we to regard as a "New Zealand novel"? Is it a novel set in New Zealand, no matter what it is about? Is it a novel published in New Zealand? For instance, how are we to classify Hugh Walpole, who was born here, as were the thriller writers Norman Berrow and Andrew Mackenzie? What about Will Lawson, Samuel Butler,
It is worth while deciding upon a definition because this makes us consider what we hope to find in a New Zealand novel. It is not enough for the purposes of this book that a novelist lives here; a "New Zealand novel" will be taken to be one which is related to this country, or to its people, or to the experience of life as human beings meet it in these islands. By such a definition we would include Dan Davin's For the Rest of Our Lives, and Guthrie Wilson's
This may seem too narrow a definition, but it will give us a measurable topic, and one within which we have unusual qualifications as critics. It is often difficult to judge the truthfulness, balance, vividness or imaginative perception of a novel set in, say, South Africa, Canada, or India. But we can at least make a good attempt at judging the novel set in New Zealand. We may swallow Hollywood's versions of Java, or Sweden—but do you remember what you have thought of its notion of New Zealand? Overseas critics are often astray, naturally enough, with fiction set in this country. At the Bay
that there was in it no sense of there being anybody about—exactly!
The English reviewer of James Courage's The Young Have Secrets
(it was Pamela Hansford Johnson) spoke glowingly of the background as "excellently done". How does she know? What other New Zealand novels has she read? Would you agree with her?
There is of course another side to this New Zealandness. Readers who accept the imaginative transformation of reality in novels of the European or the American tradition, may tend to react sharply against it when the setting is local. In the visual arts, New Zealanders are dogged by a sullen prejudice in favour of the directly representational; we prefer the landscape, snow scene, beach, town, or street which we can recognise. Van Gogh would have had short shrift with us. In fiction, too, the artist who transcends reality in the search of a richer truth may meet with violent opposition; New Zealand Listener
:
"Many readers want to discuss stories as if they were factual narratives . . . Our pragmatic temper reveals itself in a reluctance to make any concession to fancy. Artistic effect, which must be the writer's aim, is disregarded. Writers are judged, again and again, on questions of fact which for them are of secondary importance, or barely relevant."1 We do, of course, expect novels, as distinct from romances or fables, to bear a recognisable relation to life, but we should beware of condemning a story merely because it startles, annoys, or emphasises an aspect of life which we may personally be unfamiliar with, or prefer to ignore.
The first New Zealand novels are pioneer memoirs thinly disguised, and exhibit an uneasy marriage of fact and fiction, of documentary handbook and elaborate plot. Faced with totally unfamiliar environments and unheard-of experiences, the early settlers licked their pencils and set to work earnestly to convert it all into the plot-threaded adventures of somebody else.
There may be said to be four stages to the development of New Zealand fiction—recording, exploiting, preaching, and interpreting. The true business of the novel, in its maturity, is surely the last—to interpret something to somebody. Our writers did not reach this stage until after the turn of the century, and many of course are still today writing more to exploit our supposedly exotic setting than to deal truthfully with a vision of life.
As so few of the early New Zealand novels are available to readers, except in specialist libraries, details will be given of their content.
The first New Zealand novel is an "exploiting novel", spiced with sensational events drawn from the Maori Wars and loaded with handbook information. This is Major B. Stoney's Taranaki: A Tale of the War, 1861. The second is a "recording novel" using emigrant family material, also spiced and loaded, but not quite so blatantly. It is
To take Isabella Aylmer first. The full title of her story is, Settler's Handbook. The Rev. Mr Aylmer, her husband's cousin, was the first minister at Akaroa in the 1850s; he and his womenfolk must have been good correspondents.
Distant Homes
—the title indicates the unquestioned
Distant Homes
has
The Graham family lose all their money and set off to New Zealand, leaving the eldest son at Cambridge to "master one or two of the languages of the Pacific" before joining them. Captain Graham has with him his wife, two daughters Lucy and Beatrice, and the second son Tom. On the voyage, the author, as I have said, seizes her chance to educate us all, saying, "I think we might employ ourselves very well in finding out something about New Zealand", and remorselessly inserts her facts: "There are several kinds of parrots . . . eighty-three kinds of birds . . ." and so on. The party makes landfall near Nelson, where Captain Graham goes ashore, travelling
Meanwhile Mrs Graham and the girls continue through Cook Strait. Isabella Aylmer proceeds thus: "... a faint white pillar of smoke rose from the volcano of Mount Egmont ... a sight that one who has once seen never forgets, burst upon them—the volcano in action. . . . Said the pilot; 'the old mountain never gives us warning in vain'."
Promptly upon this there follows the Wellington earthquake of 1855, and the sea almost boils. The ship's captain is equal to the emergency however. He recites to Mrs Graham the psalm, "They that go down to the sea in ships".
Incredible adventures follow. The Grahams buy land in Canterbury near a native "pah", are welcomed to it by a Maori tribe, build a house, have a sentimental Christmas, survive a flood, and buy a piano "to soften and refine human nature". Lucy sets up a school for the local Maoris, who in return befriend her when a rising is fomented by the wicked Wiremu Kingi. She and Beatrice grow up into real pioneers—here is a morning chore, cheerfully performed: ". . . at six o'clock . . . when dressed, Lucy went off to feed the poultry; Beatrice to milk the cows, and make butter for breakfast." Obviously, the Graham family did not let the grass grow under their feet.
In spite of its laughable badness, Distant Homes
touches on several topics which recur in early biography and fiction. One is the servant problem. (Bridget the Irish servant is the first of a long line of loyal servants whose dialect provides a comic element.) The maid sits down while Mrs Graham is talking to her, and explains, "You don't let your servants sit down in England . . . but you ain't in England now, and servants are not known here. We only take situations to attend upon people, and expect to be treated like one of the family." Another topic is that of the persistent good works of the daughters of the house, teaching the "cocky's" children, reforming the rough colonial male. Another is the cultured woman's urge to maintain her standards in spite of a hard life; the Grahams bought a piano (like Samuel Butler). Other settlers made do with a flute, but the impulse was the same.
Distant Homes
is a novel only half emerged from its chrysalis of fact and personal experience. You can see Isabella Aylmer wavering now and then. In chapter 12 she says: "Captain Graham and Tom [went] to visit an old friend, who had settled at Akaroa, with his family. Akaroa is one of the prettiest and most thriving little settlements in Canterbury; the church and parsonage, built by the Rev. W. Aylmer, one of the best out here." Note what has happened; the author has forgotten which is letter writer, which novelist. "Out
Major Stoney in his Taranaki: A Tale of the War, on the other hand, is out to
Both G. A. Henty and Jules Verne exploited the Maori opportunity in blatant potboilers. Henty, in Maori and Settler, 1890, at least took the trouble to get his facts right. He offers the Hauhau troubles, and is stodgily informative. " 'There is Cape Horn,' said the Captain."
Jules Verne's book A Voyage Round the World, 1877, has twice the kick of Henty's. The aristocratic hero and heroine navigate the Waikato River, ascend a tapu mountain (Tongariro) causing it to erupt, are captured, tattooed, nearly eaten, and survive to emerge through the primeval kauri forests at Poverty Bay much wiser for all the lectures which their accompanying geographer Paganel has served up to them on botany, history, geysers, birds, etc. As specimens of Verne's information I quote the following: "The sportsmen found whole coveys of the kiwi." "These moas which Paganel was chasing, the contemporaries of the Megatherium and the Pterodactyles, must have been eighteen feet high." And here is the tattooing of Paganel: "He bore on his chest a heraldic kiwi, with
Here are others of this Maori fiction: Hine-Ra, or The Maori Scout, 1887; H. Nisbet,
UGH! UGH! Many of these Maorified romances appeared after 1886, the date of Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. The novelist's Maori is a weird creation, speaking a lingo compounded of Cockney, Red Indian (of the "Ugh, ugh" tradition), and the Bible. Some details from
Another example of the exploitation of a Maori setting in the interests of a "yarn" is Mihawhenua, 1888. This purports to be a manuscript addressed to the Editor, and found attached to a Maori kite on Mount Alta near Lake Wanaka. It tells a first person story of a mountaineering party that fell down an ice-slide into the lands of a lost tribe, the "Ngati-moe". There are volcanoes, geysers, hakas, and moas used for riding, in a species of Maori paradise.
Two stories which do show some real knowledge of the Maori, and have a serious instructive purpose, are Ena, or The Ancient Maori, and John White's
John White was a notable Maori scholar who acted for years as official interpreter to Sir George Grey. From 1876 he was occupied in translating manuscripts of Maori lore for the Government. The
The Ancient History of the Maori
appeared between 1887-1891. He wrote two novels of Maori life,
This brings us to the question of the difficulty a novelist of the time faced in recreating the Maori world of the past. Victorian literature provided, as models for the historical novel, chiefly Scott; as models for the novel on native life there was Melville's Typee, perhaps, or Fenimore Cooper; otherwise there was little to copy. There was no body of accepted conventions about prose style, or the presentation of information; a writer of Maori novels had to establish everything for himself. And then the world he was attempting to portray was so
As a result, Maori novels, if they are serious, tend to sink beneath the weight of explanation. The purely exploiting, entertaining novelist can pluck out the colourful titbits he needs and skim the rest; however wildly improbable his yarn, there will be readers to swallow it. But the truthful imaginative artist who is drawn to fiction with a basis in the past of the Maori people faces a task of enormous complexity.
Third in order of dates in the record of our novels, after Taranaki
and
The next of the women, Charlotte Evans, is, like Major Stoney and Lady Campbell, an exploiter rather than a recorder. She may be said to be the founder of our long line of light love stories. Both her novels, A Strange Friendship
and
"I felt his heavy moustache on my cheek for a moment, then I pushed him away and rose slowly to my feet. I was trembling violently. . . ."
It is only by courtesy of their settings that these can be said to be New Zealand novels. The characters remain nostalgically English, stubbornly elegant and cultivated. They take champagne and turkey for the simple bush picnic, and display on their drawing room shelves, "Kingsley in blue, Macaulay in brown, Thackeray and Dickens in red, and a complete set of the Cornhill Magazine
in handsome bindings". The Canterbury scene and life are only incidental; there are some horses, dogs, sheep, paddocks, but the core of the book is sentimentalised personal relationships from the woman's viewpoint, a world into which men enter only as attractive lovers, irritable brothers, or incomprehensible fathers.
The light love story, like the Maorified romance, began early and continues yet. Many New Zealand women write novels at this level, as Maud Diver did for India, Louise Jordan Milne for China. In the 1890s Louisa Baker, who wrote as "Alien", scored up some dozen with titles such as In Golden Shackles, 1897,
More recent writers who have continued the genre have moved with the times in matters of dress, manners, floods, goldfields, tohungas, and the like, but the pattern has remained the same, with its emphasis on the emotional drama swirling about a heroine with whom
Let us return to the "recording" novels of the 1860s and '70s. The motif of the Pioneer Family Making Good in the New Land recurs constantly; Waihoura, 1872, will do for a further example. A middle-class family, the Pembertons, arrive in the North Island, and are appealed to by the local tribe to save their princess Waihoura: " 'Maori girl berry ill . . . Pakeha doctor make Waihoura well.' " They build her a hut, nurse her to health, go in for missionary prayers and teaching, set up a sheep farm; Lucy Pemberton and Waihoura strike up a friendship based partly on the exchange of information useful to the reader about birds, native life, and civilised beliefs. When the Maori Wars break out, the household is besieged and the women captured. In gratitude Waihoura rescues them, and all ends happily.
A later example, John Bell's In the Shadow of the Bush, 1899, is set in the Scandinavian settlements of Wellington Province. Round a love drama in the bush town of Bloomsbury move quite lifelike characters, Scottish farm hands and squatters. The bush is felled, there is a fire, there are male concerts and jollity at the pub. The simple material here is more successful than Kingston's melodrama, partly because Bell, coming nearly thirty years later, can take so much for granted as known to his public, and avoids both explanations and sensationalism. Somewhere between these two in type comes
A different type of recording novel is that which might be christened the "rolling stone" novel, essentially a man's book, not far removed from straight autobiography, such as A Chequered Career, 1881. Clara Cheeseman's
The most amusing of these novels is W. M. B.'s The Narrative of Edward Crewe, 1874. It is told in the first person, in an atrocious, supposedly funny fashion. W. M. B. is one Baines, who in his preface explains that he has retired to England after "many occupations and
Another picaresque novel, showing the later persistence of the type, is Thos. Cottle's Frank Melton's Luck, 1891. This is, says its preface, "a realistic and truthful description of station life in New Zealand, together with a faithful depiction of the historical incidents woven into the story". With its subtitle Off to New Zealand, and its contents—A Sight of Mount Egmont, A Cattle Muster, Chased by a Cow, I Have a Piano, Gold Fever, Bushed, An Up-Country Race Meeting, A Legacy—it is fully representative of the recording novel, still aimed chiefly at the English market.
Rolling stone novels set in the South Island on the whole have a better literary standard, as well as a more serious moral tone. A subtitle for most of them might well be "The New Chum Makes Good". The first to be noted is Alexander Bathgate's Waitaruna, 1881. Bathgate was a Dunedin solicitor, and author of several books, including
William Langton's Mark Anderson, A Tale of Station Life in New Zealand, 1889, bears even more noticeably the mark of the manse in a heavy formal style, varied with some vivid Scotticisms. Langton tells of Mark's emigration, struggles and final prosperity on a Dunstan station. The plot has an unusual twist, for the "Homey", instead of being the humble learner whom the colonials bait and only reluctantly accept, is a superior teacher of manners to the Otago locals, and shows them how to be gentlemen. He defeats cardsharpers, tracks down sheep thieves, masters a dangerous horse, refrains from swearing and eating with his fingers; in fact, he is an intolerable prig. As a reward he too gets the station-owner's daughter, who comes to prefer him to her first suitor, the home-bred he-man, Craig. It is interesting 'to compare Langton's colonial clodhoppers with those in the contemporary woman's novel, as well as with those who figure in the creative imagination of a pious posterity.
Vicissitudes of Bush Life in Australia and New Zealand. His material, the usual autobiographical-pioneer stuff, is shaped by a commonplace melodrama. After 200 rousing pages in Australia, the teller of the story moves to Otago, where he finds his girl who had run off with the bushranger, is cheated by a gentleman station-owner, meets the diggers on the goldfields, and after bush work, shearing, and stock driving between Hokitika and Canterbury, makes money, marries and lives happily ever after. Ferguson published a second novel,
Zealandia's Guerdon, 1902, he inserts a love and murder plot into a frightful ragbag of South Island information, with a dash of Kipling and Boer War patriotism thrown in. The book reads like a textbook on mineral wealth, tourist attractions, suitable sandhill grass, how to skin rabbits, etc. There is
The Counterfeit Seal, 1897, is one of our early historical novels, being a tale of the 1848 Otago settlement. It is very informative, and very Presbyterian.
GOLD! A special variety of novel is that set in the goldfields of the South Island. This topic would seem to guarantee success. That it still attracts our writers is indicated by Ruth Park's novel One-a-Pecker, Two-a-Pecker, 1957, as well as by the inclusion of episodes of goldfields history in stories such as Georgina McDonald's
First to publish goldfields fiction was Benjamin Farjeon, of the Otago Daily Times. His
Vincent Pyke merits three columns in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. He was an Australian miner and politician before he became secretary to the Otago goldfields in 1862, and later member of Parliament for Wakatipu. Among his many activities, he advocated irrigation for Central Otago, chaired the Vincent County Council, and was an active journalist. In 1887 he wrote the standard
Wild Will Enderby
is an entertaining novel. The style is appalling, the plot melodramatic, and the author's perpetual posturing wearisome, but there is such exuberance, such gusto, and so much meaty detail in the picture given of the Dunstan diggings, that the reader skims along regardless, and with popping eyes. Wild Will, an Australian, disguised as Harry Grey, and Pratt, an American, are partners who strike gold. Will disappears, Pratt is accused of murder, but all ends happily, the hero of course getting the gold
That sort of thing is mixed with digger slang (which is always
Nevertheless, the book has life, and for 1873 was remarkable in being published in New Zealand, and intended primarily for New Zealand readers. There was nothing of those distant islanders in Pyke's attitude to this country. Wild Will Enderby
went into three editions in its first year, and was followed at once by
By the 1890s, our fiction was still only in a rudimentary stage of development. The new environment was so full of variety, sensation, and facts crying out to be noticed, that writers could hardly draw breath to consider, ponder, or select. It seemed at first enough to offer a "realistic and truthful description" of life threaded on to a perfunctory plot; a "faithful depiction of the historical incidents" appeared to provide all the action a writer could wish. Thus recording and exploiting are the main occupations of our novelists in the first thirty years. And to them they brought only the most elementary techniques, imported from the popular Victorian tradition along with other unsuitable pioneer bric-a-brac.
(Topics for Study and Discussion are given in the Appendix.)
O pioneer soul! against Ruin here hardily pitted, What life wilt thou make of existence?
We spoke, at the beginning, of the four stages to be observed in the development of New Zealand fiction, those of recording, exploiting, preaching, and interpreting. Except for John White's unreadable Maori novels, the works discussed so far have been concerned chiefly with the first two stages, those of recording pioneer experiences, and of exploiting the literary possibilities of an unfamiliar and sensational background.
After 1890 the post-pioneer period was setting in. Settlers were consolidating their gains, looking back upon the melee of a receding past, assessing the present, building for a foreseeable future. It is at this point that New Zealand novels appear which, whatever their deficiencies, are trying to interpret something to somebody, to depict the thoughts and actions of characters representative of real life. The exploiting novel continues, as ever, to flourish, but the recording novel proper begins to die out.
The earliest novel which I would classify as serious literature—or attempting to be—is George Chamier's Philosopher Dick, 1891. It is the most mature of our novels before the turn of the century; it relies recklessly, however, on all the fictional devices of the age, letters, diaries, inset yarns, authorial intrusions, lengthy meditative musings. Richard Raleigh, the stock English emigrant-author-hero, is distinguished by education and some idealism from good-time Philistines such as
The novel is a shapeless holdall, exasperating and baffling, but full of good things. The pricking of the balloons of pioneer rhetoric is particularly effective—as are the satirical comments on life. Here are some samples:
"The pig has some distinguishing qualities of the successful colonist, —so it prospered." "A man with an overdraft of £50,000 could only be considered a personage of great weight."
(About New Zealand politics.) "Their everlasting tinkering at legislation, their pettifogging local squabbles, their miserable subserviency to every popular outcry, and their lavish expenditure." (True, now as then?)
Chamier's book gives an excellent picture of the working sheep and cattle men of a big Canterbury run, uses New Zealand vocabulary and slang effectively without feeling any need to explain it, and gives the details of daily life in vigorous profusion. The style is uneven, varying suddenly from an upholstered rhetoric in scenic descriptions to unpretentious New Zealandisms, and with some of that distressing tendency to polysyllabic humour for which Dickens is probably to be held responsible. The tone of the book is not consistent, either, for Raleigh's wry sarcastic attitude shades off at the end into a different one of inquiring interest. Instead of philosophising in revolt against the way of life he finds about him, Raleigh ends by partly accepting its basic premises. When he turns his analytical gaze "philosophically" upon it, some of his musings will remind readers of "Sundowner's" recent contributions to the
Philosopher Dick, then, attempts to
In a sequel, A South Sea Siren, 1895, Philosopher Dick Raleigh is living in the small settlement Sunnydowns, ironically amused at the goings-on of the farmers of the district, "not the common cockatoo, but
Several women writing in the 1890s may also be said to be interpreting the life they knew, trying to evaluate it as well as describe it. One such is Anne Glenny Wilson, whose two novels Alice Lauder, 1893, and
In Alice Lauder, the raw Australian girl goes Home to study singing, meeting on the journey the cultured gentleman hero. The plot provides some nasty jabs at English snobbery as well as at colonial uncouthness. In the end, Alice "sacrifices" her art to marriage—for the feminist movement has begun to shadow even a love story.
Some remarks from Two Summers
will reveal the author's critical attitude, as well as her uncertainty about the right loyalties for Aucklanders in the nineties. Were they English? Or Colonial? (Or—name it not—New Zealanders?):
"Alicia's circle and atmosphere had seemed to him hitherto too much and too consciously a copy of the English original; they were much the same as would be met with in any smaller English centre, but tinned, as it were, and of rather provincial flavour at that. Freddy . . . was always trying with might and main to be colonial. He wore the most extraordinary boots and riding clothes, and was always cracking a stock whip ... his wife [was] trying to be English . . . with a deeper British dye than ever."
Another by-no-means bad novel of the nineties, as well as picturing this provincial world, poses a special New Zealand difficulty, that of the social position to be granted to the educated half-caste girl. Jessie Weston's Ko Meri, 1890, gives an amusing sketch of upper class society in Auckland. We have the grammar school dance, the choral society's
"... she paced up and down the room with a sweeping pantherlike grace, her eyes brilliant with that dangerous light never seen except in the eyes of native races, whose souls know no law but their own instincts and passions—a magnificent figure in her long trailing gown and splendid, voluptuous beauty, the veneer of civilisation fallen off, and the Maori blood surging wildly through her veins."
The Captain proposes, and Mary goes to England to marry him. When, however, he is killed, the uncertain poise of her training collapses; she returns to New Zealand and to the Maori way of life in the pa, claiming her Maori kindred with the words, "The night that has fallen upon my race has fallen upon me, and it is well that I should share the darkness with my own people".
This belief that the Noble Savage was doomed was one sincerely held in the nineties; Tales of a Dying Race. Dora Wilcox, in her poem
Tena koe Pakeha! within this fortification Grows Englishgrass—Tena koe! subtle conqueror of a nation Doomed, doomed to pass!
Four other novels of the time deal with the half-caste theme: Atareta, Belle of the Kainga, 1908;
A Maori Maid
is really very well done. Harry B. Vogel, a son of Sir Julius Vogel, has several novels to his credit, one set in Tasmania. In
Tussock Land
in 1904 being the only New Zealand one. The central issue is the same as Vogel's, the relationship of a half-caste girl and a white boy, and is treated with imagination and insight. In spite of a clumsy exposition and a rather too contrived ending, the book has form. It opens in the tussock hills of Southland, with their homesteads full "of the usual furniture of up-country stations", prints, photos, shells, woollen mats, and "glacial sofas". Here Aroha Grey at nineteen finds her fairy prince first in her father's ploughman, then with more discernment in twenty-year-old, white King Southern of Dunedin.
This solution—that New Zealanders must find their future in a racial and cultural blend, was highly unorthodox in 1904, though it may yet be the verdict of history.
The nineties were an earnest decade; we have
Some "preaching" novels were economic or socialist fantasies of the Utopian variety, designed to show us a Better Way. Julius Vogel's Anno Domini 2000, published in 1889, is a good example of this. It is an abysmally stilted tale of Hilda Fitzherbert, Duchess of New Zealand ("from her earliest years she had never failed in any intellectual exercise"), who in an era of women's equality becomes a great "statesman", marries the Emperor of Britain, reconquers the American colonies, institutes Social Security, sets up Home Rule for Ireland, and establishes equal rights of inheritance for men and women to the imperial throne. The book, as
This philosophy was not without its critics, as we have seen in Philosopher Dick. Another attacker was Samuel Butler, in
Both this, and Butler's earlier A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 1863, give an extraordinarily truthful report of the state of mind and spirit of the settlers of the 1870s. The unresolved tension between past and present, the colonial uncertainty as to whether "Home" or New Zealand was "home", and the money-making realism which was the normal daily life of those who dreamed of Utopias— these are notable in Butler's record. At present it is the Utopian aspect of
Erewhon
is a novel of ideas, with a plot contrived to provide a loose framework for an onslaught on the hypocrisy, humbug, and false philosophy of its time. Butler was exposing pretences in home, school, law, medicine, economic theory, Church, politics and social attitudes to crime and disease. The account of the territory of the upper Rakaia River and the crossing of Whitcombe Pass provides the tough, factual and fully credible material from which alone a well built satiric fantasy can spring. Precise details of navigation and shipwreck serve the same purpose in
Joseph Jones, in The Cradle of Erewhon, 1959, puts it thus:
"For Erewhon
the native background proved enriching; it lent remote-sounding names, a grotesque art, a possibility of being piously regarded as the lost tribes of Israel, one full-length character in Chowbok, and a topsy-turvy code of morals."
Yet for all this, Erewhon
is only marginally a New Zealand novel, and its relationship to the Utopian fiction which sprang up in the nineties is a tenuous one.
This fiction of reform includes many queer, forgotten items. Macmillan Brown, professor of English at Canterbury College, under the pseudonym of Godfrey Sweven published two "novels", Riallaro, 1901, a satire, and
There were a number of pamphlet-novels arising out of the land problems, full of amateur, earnest criticism and cranky notions. Hunted, 1889, is about an Irish family ruined by the land monopoly.
The Utopian visionaries were mostly men. In propaganda for the feminist case, however, it is the women who are to the fore. Louisa Baker has already been noted. Her particular mixture of religious appeal, sex appeal, and championship of women's rights made her one of the popular novelists of her time; her novels even went into American editions. Typical is A Daughter of the King, 1894, set in Canterbury, with chapter headings out of Bunyan, several sickbeds, and a clergyman's unsuccessful marriage ; the climax is the emancipation of the martyred wife who takes to the violin, makes for Melbourne, and ends up resigned to God's will. Independence, writes Louisa Baker, is the "great hunger of the common sisterhood". Women have slowly begun to see "that man— chivalric, deferential, and passionate, or uncouth and uncultured the same—in loving . . . too often is loving self." She sees the women of her time as "in the agonies of the birth pains ... of a larger, broader, purer love, that will triumph over minds illuminated with truth". Local reviewers spoke of Louisa Baker's novels as evil and decadent, but everybody seems to have read them. Constance Clyde's
The position of women was a problem occupying the colonial woman even more than her counterpart then campaigning at
Angela, a Messenger, 1890, set in the Wairarapa.
Hermione marries her wealthy grazier, and finds out. There are swearing, drinking, brutality to man and beast, infidelity, all the horrors. Hermione is caught hard and fast in the matrimonial trap. Several children are born, and then, when she is still only nineteen, Hermione defies her husband Bradley Carlisle in order to give evidence against another wicked husband, this time a wife-murderer. Bradley thereupon beats her up, and causes the death of her little son. She runs away to the wilds, almost out of her mind, while he sinks into drunken delirium. In the sequel, written fourteen years later, Hermione not unexpectedly leads a crusade for women's rights. Bradley, however, with the sanction of society, drags her through the martyrdom of the divorce court, after which she goes forth heroically to die.
The crude exaggeration of this puts it out of court as a serious achievement; nevertheless, Edith Grossmann is dealing with real issues and trying to interpret them, as well as to preach tolerance and independence. There is plenty of evidence in letters and diaries about the moral and intellectual problems which were faced by pioneer women who wished to do more in the world than cook and breed.
Edith Grossmann came nearest to success in her last novel, The Heart of the Bush, 1910. The setting this time is South Canterbury. Adelaide Borlase returns from an expensive English education. Will she marry the bronzed but uncultured colonial, or the too-polished Englishman? Here is dramatised the conflict "Between Two Hemispheres" which was to be acted out in life by so many New Zealanders, from Katherine Mansfield to Robin Hyde. Edith Grossmann gives a crisp amusing picture of Adelaide's struggles to find herself, to know what she really is. Her decision is taken in terms of marriage, when she plumps for Dennis, the New Zealand rough diamond, accepting along with him the diminished prospects of the struggling small farmer. "How will it all turn out," asks the author, "the marriage of the leisured and the labouring class, of art and nature, of civilisation
The temperance movement produced no novelist of Edith Grossmann's calibre, man or woman. Typical of the prohibition fiction, for instance, is Raromi, 1888, published by the Religious Tract Society. It tells the story of the drunkard, Falconer, who is converted from his evil ways, and promises "not to go with the drunken gang at Barrett's Bar". This rouses the wrath of their leader Black Charlie, who hunts down the pious Falconer with Maori trackers in the Karori Bush. There are various pioneer Wellington scenes, much false Maori melodrama, some authentic details such as snaring pigeons, boatbuilding, and so on. In the end Black Charlie dies repentant in the arms of his long-lost widowed mother, while Falconer turns out to be a rich man in disguise, and wins back his lost bride; there was, of course, no liquor at the wedding.
Two women writers who were driven to fiction by the prohibition movement were Alie Kacem and Susie Mactier; both, you will note, also handle other themes which deeply concerned the women of the time, those of dependence in marriage, with its personal consequences, and of financial independence, with its loneliness.
In For Father's Sake, 1897, Alie Kacem writes a highly emotional tale of Nellie Main, whose father's drinking brings ruin; she describes the horrors of the racecourse, slums, and pub. The style is atrocious, a blend of Shelley with
Susie Mactier's The Hills of Hauraki, 1908, reverts to the marriage theme, with a drunken husband to drag her heroine down to depths from which Nonconformist religion can only just save her. Chrissie Bailey descends from life in a neat cottage on the Thames goldfields, through Coromandel sawmilling, to keeping a hotel in Taranaki and a dreadful death. The dialogue is poor, and the men are quite unconvincing, but there is power in the low-toned picture of the woman's lot.
Temperance fiction was written in quantity, if seldom in quality. Preaching from a predetermined point of view, whether religious, economic, or social, rarely is productive of literature.
The genre of the light love story continued in these years with such items as Ellen Taylor's A Thousand Pities, 1901, and romances by Evangeline Deverell, Dulcie Deamer,
One novelist remains, in all the early years up to 1910, whose work has endured and is still readable in its own right. This is William Satchell. The tragedy is that recognition came too late to help or to encourage him. When the Government in 1939 allotted Satchell a special pension—he was just on 80—Pat Lawlor records that royalties on The Greenstone Door
had amounted to only £31 15s. 11d.; a reprint in that year was expected to harvest £30. Compare this with possibilities today for someone who achieves success.
William Satchell was born in London in 1860, and ventured into print with a first volume entitled Will o' the Wisp
in 1883. He was settled in the Hokianga district by 1886, trying to farm. In the 1890s he moved to Auckland, where
Satchell published four novels: The Land of the Lost, 1902,
The Land of the Lost, like
The Toll of the Bush
also has the intrusive plot machinery of the time, the remittance man, the guilty secret. The story, set in a pioneer settlement in Northland, concerns two brothers of contrasted education, Robert the colonial, Geoffrey the English boy, who farm together. Geoffrey loves Eve Milward, daughter of the rich man of
The Elixir of Life
is set on shipboard, but, says
Satchell's fame rests ultimately upon his last book published in the unlucky year of 1914. The Greenstone Door
is a historical novel, set in 1830-60, and involving not experience recalled and transmuted, but a past reconstructed. It is more carefully organised, more thoroughly prepared than the earlier three stories.
In the previous chapter it was suggested that serious Maori novels set in the past tend to sink under the weight of necessary information. Satchell chose most skilfully to focus his story through the mind of an adult remembering his childhood. The reader is in this way taken naturally into the hero's confidence. To some extent, the reader learns as Cedric Tregarthen learns; where needed, and quite acceptably, Satchell exercises the storyteller's usual privilege of supplementing with extra material, but this does not spoil the illusion, for the teller is still Cedric himself. Thus, in chapter 1, Satchell begins evocatively with Cedric's earliest vivid memories, slips in the further details which the grown man knows though the child did not ("I have no actual recollection of the moment when these two intrepid white men . . . ") and fills out the picture from a later point of view with such phrases as "at the moment of which I write ..." or, "At this period the practice of cannibalism . . ."
It all falls together naturally; the recollections of childhood blend with the later wisdom of the man who writes them down. It is a simple technique, handled artlessly, but it works well enough for its purpose, at least in the first half of the novel.
Many New Zealanders know The Greenstone Door. Cedric's father
Together the three young people penetrate to a secret limestone cave, where in their fancy the stalagmites take the shapes of men and women in some drama of the future; Rangiora and Cedric end the racial hostility of their boyhood with an oath of peace, the compact of the Tatau Pounamu, that the
Events then move on in history, through the troubles that followed Waitangi. In his teens, Cedric is sent to Auckland, to be initiated into the white man's world; this enables Satchell to give us our dose of Pakeha facts in their turn. The boy grows up into an eligible young man who meets Sir George Grey and falls in love with a heroine improbably called Helenora. When the wars break out, sympathies and loyalties are divided; we are shown both sides. Purcell, who joins the Maori people, is executed as a traitor. Satchell contrives in Scott's manner to involve his fictitious persons in historical events where they can play noted parts. Cedric goes, for instance, with General Cameron to the siege of Orakau Pa in April 1864, and accompanies Major Mair to the edge of the redoubt to make that famous offer of surrender terms the resounding rejection of which has been so well remembered. It is Rangiora who is made to speak the Maori defiance "E hoa, ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake!" (Friend, I shall fight against you for ever, for ever!) Puhi-Huia is among the slain. With all his companions dead, shattered by his experience of conflicting loyalties, Cedric lies desperately ill, but is nursed back—alas, in the best Victorian sentiment—by the repentant Helenora.
The difficulties of this sort of thing are considerable, but many of them, I suggest, are surmounted. 5—but is an author not entitled to pile it on a bit in a historical romance, as
William Satchell's achievement is, considering his time and environment, a real one. He is, moreover, the earliest of our novelists to be widely read today. When The Land of the Lost
comes into circulation again his reputation should be secure.
(Topics for Study and Discussion are given in the Appendix.)
Between 1910 and 1939 stretch thirty years in which the novelist in this country was searching for reality, for the means of depicting it, and for an audience to listen to him. Only at the end of these decades can anyone be said to have found these things, except Kath-erine Mansfield, who achieved success in short stories but did not live to write the novel which she planned to call Karori. It was a period when a writer's best hope seemed to lie in voluntary exile, which could provide both familiarity with techniques developed overseas, and that sense of perspective which would focus our experience and discipline our too provincial tone.
In May 1908, Katherine Mansfield, then in Wellington and absorbed in her struggle to get away, confided in her notebook: "Go Anywhere. Don't stay here."
And again: "I should like to write . . . about a girl in Wellington; the singular charm and barrenness of that place—with climatic effects —wind, rain, spring, night—the sea, the cloud pageantry. And then to leave the place and go to Europe—to live there a [word illegible; dual? real?] existence—to go back and be utterly disillusioned, to find out the truth of it all—to return to London—to live there an existence so full and so strange that Life itself seemed to greet her ... I should fill it with [word illegible; sinister? climatic?] disturbance ... I should call it Strife
..."
Katherine Mansfield lived that story, rather than wrote it; but it was the experience of a number of New Zealand authors during these years. In the end, the story was written, or part of it, twenty years later, in Robin Hyde's
"Sometimes in class Mr Bellew talked about the godwits, who fly every year from the top part of the North Island to Siberia, thousands of miles without a stop. They fly north, they fly north." And again, "Most of us here are human godwits; our north is mostly England. Our
Robin Hyde herself made "the long migration". On her way "north", in 1938, writing from China, she recognised the significance of the creative tide in whose turning she had shared. These are her words, in an article in
"... in our generation, and of our own initiative, we loved England still, but we ceased to be 'forever England'. We became, for as long as we have a country, New Zealand."6
The material of the next two chapters will be an outline of what was accomplished by this generation from Katherine Mansfield to Robin Hyde.
The years 1910 to 1920 are singularly barren. Satchell, Bathgate, Ferguson, Edith Grossmann, who all published in this decade, are of the older era and have already been discussed. Tanks, 1916, recounting the travels of an incognito duke who samples the Trentham races, fishing, Wairakei hot waters, the Sounds, Queens-town, etc., meeting a lot of silly people chatting pointlessly among the scenery.
The 1920s, however, when the vast effort of World War I was over, are a period of revival and growth. The best known writer of this time is Jane Mander.
Jane Mander was forty-two when she published The Story of a New Zealand River, 1920. She was born near Drury, near Auckland; at fifteen she was school teaching; then she became a journalist on the
was in her bones. The material out of which her novels grew was not a matter of laborious reconstruction, but of family knowledge, and she wrote from the heart with deep conviction, remembering the prob-
lems both physical and intellectual of her own lifetime. It is this direct relation to reality which gives her books both their power and their weaknesses.
The Story of a New Zealand River, hailed as a classic in its time,
This, it seems to me, is what The Story
is really about, Alice's rebirth as a thinking, independent, generous woman capable of response. Note how she enters upon her stage on page one, being towed up the river by Bruce, the remittance doctor who is to be the chief agent in her awakening. Immediately she has to face the brooding dominance of the natural world, typified by the bush, and the insistent claims of personal relationships from which she has previously sheltered behind class barriers. The frontier society begins to break down her taboos from the moment of her arrival.
Only incidentally during the story do we see Alice outside this world, until, having lived the new life to the full and learnt its lessons, she returns once more down the river, this time with Bruce beside her. Within the microcosm thus contrived, Alice Roland becomes a true person. Her daughter, Asia, child of the New World, welcomes all this experience, and is set in contrast against her mother as an example of unspoilt natural behaviour. Many of the problems which were important to the women of Jane Mander's generation are dealt with in this book. Some of them are crudely managed, in the manner of the didactic preachments of the earlier propaganda novels. Much is said of woman's independence, of a daughter's right to her own life and decisions, of religious doubt, of charity for human need, of tolerance in interpretation of the moral code. Much is said too of the colonial dilemma, the absence of books and ideas, the insistent dead weight of material interests, and of the woman's lot in a frontier community.
The Story
has a pattern of contrasts; the generations are in conflict, while the educated wife of refined taste is set against the go-ahead pioneering husband for whom culture is sentimental nonsense. This basic difference in attitude between Alice and Tom Roland is one we have met with before. Samuel Butler noted it in 1863; "New Zealand seems far better adapted to develop and maintain in health the physical than the intellectual nature ... it does not do to speak
When Katherine Mansfield reviewed this novel in 1920,9 she discerned its unusual sincerity, though she had some very hard things to say about its art. She fastened in particular on sticky passages in the first chapter, where Jane Mander tries to show us all at once both her heroine and the world to which she is introduced. Katherine Mansfield picks out this passage from the paragraph on the "tremendous scenery" (page nine) :
"Stiff laurel-like puriris stood beside the drooping fringe of the lacy rimu; hard blackish kahikateas brooded over the oak-like titoki with its lovely scarlet berry." (Just before this passage readers have met for the first time the unfamiliar names kauri, kowhai and rata.)
She asks, "What can that possibly convey to an English reader?" This is the right question, asked in the wrong way. The true audience for literature is human beings, whoever they are. But in 1920, doubtless, it was the English
reader who had to be placated. The real question remains, is this bit of native, local information relevant to the theme, significant, and contributing to the total effect? What is Jane Mander wanting to do? To convey Alice's state of mind? (Did
But The Story of a New Zealand River
is nevertheless a novel which ought to be taken seriously, an attempt to
She wrote three more New Zealand novels, and two with English settings. Unfavourable reception in her own country discouraged her after 1928 from further efforts.
The Passionate Puritan, 1922, brings a young school teacher into the Northland timber settlement of Puhipuhi, where a lively plot in-
The Strange Attraction, 1923, deals with country journalism and politics.
The emotional feminism of The Story of a New Zealand River
is much more luridly present in Jean Devanny's
The novel sold 15,000 copies, and caused a row. Yet everyone acknowledges that backblocks murder for passion does hit the headlines in our news from time to time. What, then, is wrong with The Butcher Shop?
The answer, as so often with our novels at this time, is lack of technical skill. Like Jean Devanny's later New Zealand novels,
A quieter novelist is A Poor Scholar, appeared in 1936. It is the story of the evolution from humble beginnings of a Rhodes Scholar. Ponto is studied from childhood, through Otago Boys' High School and university. The picture of his friendships, adolescent moods and longings, and his growth to maturity is set against a leisurely rendering of the life of Dunedin. Character drawing rather than action gives the book its quality.
This theme of the sensitive boy growing up in small town or suburban New Zealand life, making his adolescent explorations, revolting against his home, having passionate friendships and calf-love ecstasies, and arriving at last at an adult awareness of himself and his country—this theme haunts our last fifty years. The "portrait of the artist as a young man" is almost a local literary genre. Besides Allen's two novels, those of Hector Bolitho, Solemn Boy, 1927, and
Solemn Boy
begins in Opotiki with a study of the English grandmother who cherished her nostalgia for the culture of Home. Timothy the hero, stifled by this environment, escapes to Auckland, journalism, love, and the war.
Alan Mulgan is well known as journalist, broadcaster, essayist and poet; he wrote one novel, Spur of Morning, 1934, which was reprinted following the interest roused by the publication of his autobiography,
Watch, for instance, the author's way of conveying to us those details of the past which we must know. No attempt is made to focus our awareness of them from any consistent point of view; they are handed out baldly in the remorseless past perfect tense of a history book. (On page twelve, in thirty-two lines, that tense, "had married, had played", occurs ten times.) Occasionally a character steps out of the pages to expound in what is clearly the author's voice, as on pages 12-14, 189-90, 256-9. Technical clumsiness of this kind was, as we have seen, typical of the novels of those days, and Spur of Morning
is by no means the worst example.
The story tells of Mark Bryan, red-haired and rebellious from his Sixth Form days in "Eden" (Auckland), who becomes a reporter, then a Liberal-Labour politician, in the era before World War I. By bringing in several couples whose social position and home life is different from Mark's, Alan Mulgan widens the scope of what he can describe. Mark falls unexpectedly in love with Sylvia Feldon, daughter of a rich South Island squatter, conservative and would-be English to the core. Thus the love story attempts to dramatise the two threads which hold the book together, the liberal-conservative struggle, and the division of colonial loyalties. There is a lot about "colonials" and "English snobs"; somehow, freedom, democracy, football, and New Zealandism are ranged against capitalism, a class system, and being British.
A number of the portraits in the novel are recognisable; Braxton must surely be a glance at Seddon, while the student Alice Somers, who makes a single appearance on page sixty, is a well known popular novelist. The anecdote related on page forty-nine is also related on page seventy-five in The Making of a New Zealander. This fidelity to actual experience gives the novel some historical and social interest: otherwise, it is unsuccessful. But its perusal remains a most useful
Plume of the Arawas, 1930, by Frank Acheson, is a historical romance of the Arawa tribe set in pre-Pakeha times. Acheson, a judge in the Native Land Court, acknowledges in his preface the help of his many Maori friends. He chooses for his hero the chief's son Manaia, "Plume of the Arawa", ancestor of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa of the Taupo-Tongariro region. He was one of the
A story of contemporary Maori life is Half-Caste, 1933. Eric Baume, a New Zealand-born journalist who made a reputation in Australia, takes the hoary old plot of the half-Maori child who cannot fit into Pakeha society. Ngaire is born at Oparau Pa, near Kawhia, of a mother who "matriculated and slept with three lawyers and a Captain of Garrison Artillery" before she was 19, going on thereafter to Auckland University. Ngaire is brought up at the pa, taught to read and write, and to appreciate Ibsen, Swinburne, Oscar Wilde. At fourteen, she goes to a Pakeha secondary school in Auckland, where they call her "nigger", and think that her reading tastes are rather shocking. Baume then serves up further harrowing experiences designed to expose the colour bar, but contrived with such exaggeration that one merely laughs. Finally, having been rescued by a right-minded if eccentric English "Hon.", to whom she becomes a companion, Ngaire meets her fate in the shape of Peter, a Scot. They marry in style in the Methodist Church, have a bush honeymoon (like
Eric Baume doubtless meant well, but had no conception of the complexities of the topic. Noel Hilliard's Maori Girl, nearly thirty years later, gets much nearer to the truth.
In the 1920-39 period four women writers appear who have made reputations for good entertainment both here and in overseas markets. They are, in order of publication, Rosemary Rees (first novel 1924), Nelle Scanlan (1931), Ngaio Marsh (1934), and Mary Scott (1934).
Rosemary Rees has written over twenty novels. They all make the conventional romantic assumptions, as the titles indicate: April's Sowing
1924;
Nevertheless, such stories have their place in this account of New Zealand fiction. No national literature grows up overnight; there must always be a base of average, bread-and-butter writing which builds up a reading public accustomed to seeing its life used or misused as the material for fiction. In this way, the novels of Louisa Baker in the years around 1900 served a purpose. The stereotyped characters and the imposed patterns of romance in the novels of Rosemary Rees do not entirely prohibit some good New Zealand touches, and some truthful descriptions of men and things.
Nelle Scanlan's sixteen novels offer a wider range. Two appeared in 1931, but the first to make a name was Pencarrow
in 1932.
The saga of a family has attracted many writers. At this time, John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga
was at the height of its popularity, and may have been in Nelle Scanlan's mind when she began her Pencarrow series. Galsworthy's study was of a family and a social class disintegrating under the impact of war, change, and time. To link a family and its fortune with the fortunes of a country, even as small a one as New Zealand, was a very different matter. The English class structure gave Galsworthy much of his characterisation ready made, for the references were known to his readers. New Zealand local history, on the other hand, had to be retold from scratch. To ' make a settler family come to life, and through its story to tell also that of the growing community, was a task beyond Nelle Scanlan's powers.
The trouble is, perhaps, that the pre-suppositions of popular romance, the tricks, the dodges, hamper the author when she wishes to handle more stubborn material. The Pencarrow men and women are drawn in flat statements, and have to be tagged with recognisable quirks or labels, such as bad temper (Miles), passionate rebellion (Kelly), possessiveness (Kitty), and so on. Even with these devices, relationships are difficult to disentangle.
The same defect of flatness mars the historical setting. The family moves through the generations, children are born, grow old, and
feel the passing of time. Only external details, such as buggies and clothes, fix our position, for there has been no imaginative re-creation of the past. Nelle Scanlan has been too much the exponent of her material. She does not make her story spring from dialogue and dramatic action. Politics, the war, and the influenza epidemic give us our bearings, that is all. The result is a workmanlike romantic entertainment, but no more. Perhaps some later writer will attempt this most difficult genre, and bring off a coup. It is to be hoped so, for the proliferating pioneer family is a feature of our history. Dates of the Pencarrow novels are: Pencarrow, 1932;
Among her other stories are several which have an insight and a humorous truthfulness well beyond those usually found in light fiction. She is particularly successful with young girls, of whom there are life-like portraits in The Young Summer, 1952, and
The basic defect of light fiction is, of course, that its development is according to pattern. There can be no organic growth, for the moral distinctions, like the course of the narrative, are dictated by the wish-fulfilment needs of a popular market. Yet if this is recognised—as we have recognised the weaknesses in earlier novels on which the Victorian plot conventions were imposed—then we may find much of merit in these novels. They are quiet, perceptive, and amusing as well as a little sugary. Dealing exclusively with personal relationships within a feminine world, they are aimed at readers not minded to struggle with intellectual concepts or difficult imaginative pressures.
Ngaio Marsh's overseas popularity makes her possibly the best known of our writers after Katherine Mansfield. Her first story, A Man Lay Dead, appeared in 1934, at a time when the detective story dominated the highbrow entertainment market. (Top place today perhaps is taken by science fiction.) Since then, Ngaio Marsh has published twenty-three novels, almost one a year. Three have New Zealand settings:
In all her stories the backgrounds are brilliantly drawn, while the puzzles posed by her plots rise convincingly out of them. So it is with the New Zealand trio, in which the events of the story are probable enough to hold the interest, while the local possibilities are most skilfully manipulated. The English theatrical scene however seems to provide Ngaio Marsh with more of those eccentric or outrageous characters whose presence makes her yarns so sparkling. It cannot be said that the New Zealand stories are her best. Are we too lacking in wit, too puritan, too comfortably conformist, to make good subjects for "a nice murder"?
Mary Scott has also won a considerable degree of popularity here and overseas; her field, like Nelle Scanlan's, is the light love story, though two novels which appeared in 1934 and 1935 under the pseudonym Marten Stuart are more melodramatic. In 1936 she published a volume of sketches centred on the country housewife, Barbara, whose light-hearted idiocies had been amusing womenfolk in various newspapers in the country. A more recent collection, Barbara Sees the Queen, 1954, is well known.
Mary Scott's stories, Breakfast at Six, 1953,
Yet these novels, for all their shallow portraiture, have gaiety and life, with flashes of perception, and with enough information about country goings-on to build up some picture of what the North Island backblocks are like. This is just as well, seeing that they are translated into a number of European languages. One, The Unwritten Book, 1957, a serious novel, has an obvious autobiographical basis. It traces the life story of a girl graduate who in 1913 abandons the academic life in order to marry a farmer, and lives through events tragic, comic and sensational on a back-country farm until almost the present day. Of the lighter novels, the most successful is possibly
This is the point at which it will be convenient to mention briefly a number of other writers of light fiction. Alice Kenny's The Rebel, 1934, is a Coromandel story of brothers and sisters, a dominating father, and a supposed long-lost brother. Annie Clapperton's
Oddly enough, there are at this period few examples of the parallel masculine exploiting novel. Restless Earth, 1933, a sensational treatment of the Napier earthquake, is one. Two others are Frank Boreham's
In quite a different class is M. Escott's Showdown, 1936, a laconic first-person narration, in a colloquial style, of events set in the Waikato district. David Hawkes, a New Zealand farmer, is in love with an English society girl, and problems inevitably arise. The book manages to convey a sense of ordinary living among ordinary folk, has a local tang, and made a stir at the time.
Better still in this way, and remarkably original, is the work of F. S. Anthony, a naval ex-serviceman journalist and farmer who died in 1927. He was so little known in his lifetime that his name does not appear in Literature and Art in New Zealand, 1940, though he merits a page to himself in the later
Anthony's first book, Follow the Call, 1936, is the love story of a soldier settler living on a fifty-acre farm near Eltham. Mark, who tells the tale, has a keen tongue, and an amused worm's-eye view of farming life. There are good scenes on the land, and comic characters such as old Treadwell the district scandalmonger. The Taranaki rain, the ruinous cowshed, the leaky whare, 'flu, lumbago, an adequate heroine, local dances, and motor bike adventures add up to a pleasant enough novel.
Me and Gus, 1938, offers the same material and some of the same characters. It is of course barely fiction, for "Gus Tomlins" and Frank Anthony lived opposite each other on "Mossy Road", while Ned Wilson, Farmer Dan, Arty Wilcox, the Stead boys, and the rest, are recognisable local personalities. These sketches first appeared in the
Twenty-six years after his death, F. S. Anthony enjoyed a revival at the hands of Francis Jackson, who adapted his writings both published and unpublished for broadcasting, and printed them in 1951, with additional volumes in 1952 and 1955. Unfortunately, both the novel and the 1938 Me and Gus
are out of print, so that it is not easy for readers today to appreciate Anthony as he really was. Funny as the revived
Both in novel and in sketches, F. S. Anthony is an interpreter of our local scene. His broad humour, his easy rendering of cow-cocky vernacular, and his dramatic evocation of typically masculine dilemmas are most refreshing. He has created for us in Gus Tomlins a recognisable persona, a comic reversal of the solid, competent, do-it-yourself New Zealander who constitutes the popular image of a good Kiwi. Gus is a character to be remembered in New Zealand fiction.
It has to be admitted however that F. S. Anthony's stories are very near to life; Barry Crump's A Good Keen Man, 1960, or David McLeod's
Another Taranaki writer of the thirties is John Brodie, who wrote as John Guthrie. The Little Country, 1935, is a cheeky satirical piece. It strives too much for its crackle, and needs a binding central idea to redeem it from episodic impressionism, but it is lively, and challenges some of our assumptions. John Guthrie draws from a journalist's life—as Alan Mulgan did—but with sufficient heightening to make a memorable caricature. Examples of his highlights are the Tern Jubilee, the meeting of the Cod's End Borough Council, the Auckbourne Harbour controversy, and the unhappy fate of the reporter who commented on the smell of the local freezing works.
And what a good title— The Little Country. Guthrie was trying, he said, to show us "our faults as well as our fun". One character testifies, "We've been too busy getting somewhere, like most young countries, to know where we have been going. We've got no national consciousness, partly because we've practically no native songs and little native literature . . . Mentally we're still the nurslings of Britain . . . there's something that stunts our writing in this kinship ..." There were many who said these things in the thirties. That a character in a novel is moved selfconsciously to discuss the subject is a measure both of its importance to writers at the time, and of their lack of technical skill in handling it.
John Guthrie's next novel, logically enough, ventured into history, trying to discover "where we have been going". But So They Began, 1936, is shallow, recapitulating all the cliches of our pioneer fiction. A Maori marriage, the Maori Wars, the search for gold with Gentleman Jack, a remittance man of aristocratic origin, a wicked wooer, a Paul Revere ride, and final wedding bells, do not add up to a historical novel. The book handles its information clumsily, dragging Selwyn, Butler, and Seddon across the tracks of the story. The best things are the incidental sardonic comments on small town life.
After this Guthrie moved to England, where he made a successful career as journalist and editor. During the 1940s he wrote several novels with English backgrounds, none of them notable. In 1952 he
Paradise Bay, and
The Seekers
is a very poor novel indeed, and might well be taken as an example of How Not To Do It. It embodies the worst features of our bad Maori fiction of the 1890s. Everything in it is derivative, flashy, and spurious. I suspect that Guthrie was deliberately angling for a Hollywood offer. He fully deserved what he got. The place which he has in our fiction of the thirties is his by virtue chiefly of his best book,
Otago Daily Times, the old
Her second New Zealand book, The Tracks We Tread, appeared in 1907. Both are South Island in setting, with amateurish workmanship owing a debt to Kipling and Jack London, and dealing with the raw world of droving, mustering, and endurance in the outback. Twenty-six years later, having in the interval made a name with a series of historical romances set in various parts of the Empire, G. B. Lancaster returned to the Pacific area, with
Her last novel, set in Canada at the time of Napoleon, is of the same type, as its title, Grand Parade, shows.
Sundays at Home." 10
If you consider what most of the women in her girlhood were writing about, it is no wonder that Edith Lyttelton used a disguising pseudonym.
Finally, to end this survey of the fiction of the thirties, except for the major novelists to be considered in the next chapter, here are three further novels. A brief note should be made of Gloria Rawlinson's Music in the Listening Place, 1938, a fantastic tale involving the Maori fairies, (the
Beryl McCarthy's Castles in the Soil, 1939, is a historical novel set on the East Coast of the North Island, a complicated chronicle of early settlers, station life, Hauhau troubles, a mixed marriage, estrangement, and ultimate reconciliation.
Similar historical material is in Joyce West's novel Sheep Kings, 1936, a family saga of the Kings, whose founder came to Poverty Bay in 1841, and married a Maori wife. Acquiring in this by no means unusual way some of the wide acres so desirable for sheep, Stafford King established a dynasty, whose fortunes Joyce West then traces through the typical pioneer possibilities. Each generation has a King. Hero and heroine are done with a Byronic magnificence, intended to dignify large-scale land holding and glamorise the great open spaces. "His eyes were arrogant. His hands betrayed the horseman, brown, sensitive, sinewy hands." Neither in style nor in construction is the author equal to her theme, but her subject matter, at least at that time, was fresh, and she has a keen sense of the drama of this type of pioneer experience. The only writer who has yet made it into literature in this country is
(Topics for Study and Discussion are given in the Appendix.)
Writing in The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, Allen Curnow remarks, "The thirties released—or tapped—a spring. It seemed that New Zealand had its own small audience, alert for new poetry. It began to look to its own creative resources, not this time to provide it with something national to brag about, but to satisfy a real hunger of the spirit."
These words are likewise true of our fiction; three novelists made their appearance in the mid-1930s whose work is historically of major importance and intrinsically still worth our serious attention. All three reveal a "real hunger of the spirit", and go beyond the appeal of the merely national. All three are novelists of social protest, their voices gaining power from the experience of the depression years. John Lee, Robin Hyde and John Mulgan, in spite of great differences in technical achievement, shared the compassionate anger of their time, interpreted their world, and interested both the local and the overseas audience. Only John Mulgan, who spent his twenties outside this country, escaped the faults of provincialism; but all three writers tackled topics of human, rather than colonial interest. With their generation our fiction may be said to have grown up.
Let us begin with John A. Lee. Denis Glover has remarked that "it is a common fate among reformers to find that their own efforts leave them high and dry, like a boat when the waters have departed elsewhere".11 In this sense, Children of the Poor, John Lee's first novel (written 1931, published 1934) has been stranded by the passage of time. No one but the social historian is likely to be able to recapture the sense of explosive revelation which this novel' brought to its first readers. With its sequel,
These two novels have an autobiographical base. In the New Zealand Listener
in September 1960, John Lee wrote, "In the nineties I went to get a plateful and a jug of soup from a soup kitchen . . .
In 1900 thousands of us wore patched and re-patched breeks . . . In my teens I went on the swag to find work . . . " 12 Lee was born in Dunedin in 1891, of a Scottish father and a Romany mother. A ward of the State in his teens, he escaped from industrial school, did casual work on farms and roads, and went swagging from one end of the islands to the other. During World War I he served with the New Zealand forces in France, and was awarded the D.C.M. at Messines. He was M.P. for Auckland East 1922-8, for Grey Lynn 1931-43, and before his expulsion from the Labour Party in 1940 was one of its leading members.
Children of the Poor
tells of the stunted childhood of Albany Porcello in the Dunedin of the 1890s, of mean streets and depressed classes, of crude injustice and naked poverty, and of how the "unco guid" look from the worm's-eye view. The motive behind its composition is clear from the dedication, which runs:
"To daughters of the poor. To errant brats and guttersnipes. To eaters of left-overs, the wearers of cast-offs. To slaves of the wash-tub and scrub-brush, whose children, nevertheless, go to hell. To teachers who adopt, through compulsion or desire, the method of the barrack square. To juvenile culprits fleeing from the inescapable hand of the law, sometimes called justice . . . THIS STORY OF THE GUTTER."
Lee expands this story on page nine. "This is a story of the gutter. The gutter is not of Paris, of London, of New York, alone. The social gutter is of every clime and race, of village as well as of town, of the New World as well as of the Old."
The violent attacks made on the book on its publication were of course directed at this frankness and exposure of social need, which seemed all the more dangerous in the later depression when radicalism was deeply feared. "It enjoyed," writes succes de scandale which placed undue emphasis on questions of little relevance to criticism; whether it was a good novel or a bad novel by literary standards was the one question that, for the most part, remained unasked ..."
It is time now to ask it. Matters to consider include the technical skill (or lack of it) in the handling of the first-person narration, methods of exposition, the use of the author's direct address to readers, and the emotional tone and control of the writing. John Lee was an excellent journalist—is there too much of effervescence in his style? Do the apostrophes to the reader effect their purpose? Or is it a case of "methinks the hero doth protest too much"? Has the book any unity beyond that given by the presence of Albany throughout? Are not the dice too loaded against the boy? (e.g. his experience of parsons and chaplains). Bernard Shaw's comment, "The book is a whopper", is probably as much an expression of Socialist approval as a tribute to Lee's artistic success.
The sequel,
Lee's Civilian into Soldier, 1937, is a full-length novel of World War I. Its New Zealand hero John Guy goes through the army horrors, from the prophylactic measures designed "to make vice safe for democracy" to the London prostitutes and the rat-eaten corpses of Flanders. Lee has also written successful light sketches of swagger days
Those of you who know both Passport to Hell
and
Robin Hyde was the pen-name of Iris Wilkinson, who was born in South Africa, coming to New Zealand as a baby and growing up in Wellington. Like Katherine Mansfield, she attended the Wellington Girls' College. She went straight from school to the office of a newspaper. "I was its Aunt Mary [on the Farmers' Advocate, run by the
The kind of life she led at this time, and the kind of writing she
Journalese, 1934. This is in poor taste, and without literary merit. It is, however, well worth reading for the picture it gives of the job, and of the personalities of the literary world of the late twenties and early thirties. You will find there anecdotes about her Parliamentary reporting, her meetings with the famous, with evangelists, fortune-tellers, faith-healers, with Kingsford Smith, Mona Tracy, Eileen Duggan, Jessie Mackay, Edith Howes, Rosemary Rees, Jean D.evanny, Jane Mander. There are stories of Nelle Scanlan in the Press gallery in Parliament, of the Auckland riots in 1932, and of Jim Edwards, whose story she learnt from him in jail, and whose wife and eight children she befriended. Other names are dotted about —
There is much in Journalese
which explains the successes and failures of the later novels.
"I don't altogether approve of myself," she wrote to Johannes Andersen who interested himself in her poetry, "how can one approve of a writer who claims a love of verse foremost, but who also writes novels, short stories, and a journalistic hotch-potch? The novels and short stories mightn't be so bad if I could write them as I want to do. But the journalistic stuff ... I hate and fear. But I have never had much option."13
Dates are important in Robin Hyde's story. She had only ten short years between her first book and her last, ten years in which great promise did not quite come to full fruition. Only in a few of her last poems is her genius seen untrammelled by the handicaps of her life and time.
Here then is a list: 1929 The Desolate Star
(verse); 1934
The novels were written in the four years 1935-8, and reflect not only the thinking and feeling of her time, but the personal inner tensions which she was unable to resolve. When she set out for England via the East in 1938, she was, like the godwits from whom she named her last novel, making "the long migration" which seemed to her generation the only hope for New Zealand writers. (Get out, young man . . . ). She did not live to prove
In the article already quoted about New Zealand literature in T'ien Hsia
she distinguished three stages of development, the early Maori and pioneer period, the Mander-Satchell generation, and her own, that of the depression of the 1930s.
The first stage, she said, was that of "unselfconsciousness, when writers knew without question, moralising or hesitation what they were, . . . not exiles or minds divided, but whole people", Englishmen that is, although transplanted. In the next stage, she said, in a false unreal atmosphere "the writers of my land and generation grew up: loving every inch of the terrain, feeling it grow into minds and bones, but knowing little of its story or cultural past". It was their task to become true New Zealanders, and she realised that in the third stage they had done so. But how difficult it was. "New Zealand ... is not easily put on paper." She ended the article with the words quoted earlier, "Remember us for this, if for nothing else: in our generation, of our own initiative, we loved England still, but we ceased to be 'forever England'. We became, for as long as we have a country, New Zealand."
What "New Zealandism" meant to her may be seen from a comment made as early as 1934 in
"The Pretty Boys who've been to England once say ... we must develop a purely Colonial Style, no family or Windsor Ghosts, local colour laid on as thick as a chorine's grease paint. Sit about singing to tuis and babbling of bellbirds for the term of your natural life, but if you happen to think of something that might have occurred just anywhere in the world of man, woman and child, keep it dark. I hate these aggressively insular New Zealanders."
Putting New Zealand on to paper, then, a task of extraordinary difficulty as we have seen, was not to be a matter of tuis and bell-birds, but of human experience "in the world of man, woman and child", located here only because all human experience is of a time and a place.
This is the clue to all her novels, and to her story of her experiences in China, Dragon Rampant. Her theme is the people, "garrisons pent up in little fort"; they are New Zealanders, but she will not be "aggressively insular" about them, for what is of ultimate value is the revelation of truth about "man, woman and child".
Passport to Hell
is the novel in which the influence and friendship of John Lee can be most felt.-It is Robin Hyde's strongest "personal protest" about injustice, suffering, and society's intolerance of deviation from mid-Victorian morality. Win-
Passport to Hell
is a fictional reconstruction of the life of James Douglas Stark, bomber, Fifth Regiment, N.Z.E.F. In her author's note Robin Hyde explains, "This book is not a work of fiction. I have related its incidents and the circumstances under which they happened, as Starkie told them to me ... At his own wish I have given the names of Starkie's family circle correctly, and those of the little group of friends who during the war were leagued together as 'Tent Eight'." A field chaplain, two generals and two New Zealand politicians are correctly named, otherwise the names are fictitious.
This novel, as well as its sequel Nor the Years Condemn, is remarkable for its picture of the tough male world which Robin Hyde could know of only by hearsay, and reconstruct only with imaginative sympathy. Readers will instantly think of parallels from the literature of World War II, such books as
The book begins with her description of how she met Starkie, sent to interview him in his little Auckland slum, with his motherless coffee-coloured children whom he refused to part with to the welfare officer. Speaking of the problem of the returned soldier in every country, she notes his desperate desire to fit in again, to "go forward and die" as one of the most valuable things remaining in our world. Then she tells Starkie's story from its beginnings. As the book is at present out of print, here is a brief outline. Starkie was born in Invercargill in 1898, son of a Delaware Indian from Great Bear Lake, who had come to the goldfields. His mother was Spanish. With his coal-black hair and bronze skin, the father "stalked through the psychological fences" of racial troubles "like some mahogany Moses". There follows a vivid re-creation of Starkie's rebellious childhood, his hatred of school—six months was the longest he lasted at any— and his spell at the Burnham Industrial School for the reform of incorrigibles, when he was twelve. He asked to go to sea, was put on a coal boat trading to the West Coast, was maltreated, deserted at Lyttelton, ran for it into the interior, was succoured and given temporary sanctuary in a back-country sheep station. After some time on the run, with casual jobs in woolstore or on wharf, he spent a year in Invercargill gaol marked down as a "Red Indian Savage". Released at sixteen, homeless and unloved, he enlisted. Life at Trentham, and his mates of Tent Eight, offered him companionship for the first time. On the voyage to Egypt he was in more trouble,
This is a violent book, savage, full of anger at injustice. Yet, unlike John Lee, Robin Hyde leaves her tale to carry its own message. Starkie goes all through the war, being shipped home at Christmas 1918, bringing nothing with him "but his tattooed captaincy stars, a record of nine courts-martial, a total of 35 years' penal servitude in military sentences—all cancelled for gallantry in action".
Thus Starkie returns, aged exactly twenty, to take up civilian existence. "Everything—life even—is field punishment." No moral is drawn, except what may be implied in the final words of the story:
" '. . . Do you know your charge?'
'Charged with being Starkie, sir; and God knows what else.'"
Nor the Years Condemn, the sequel, is much less successful. It is an attempt to present the boom-and-bust period which followed the war, as well as to tell Starkie's later story. But Robin Hyde's grip has relaxed; the book is dull, and written in a style which varies unpredictably between the pedestrian and the fantastic. This liability to exasperating mannerisms remained one of her gravest stylistic defects. The content of this novel has not been realised in her imagination; it remains, as it were, on the level of news. She has not been able to shape the raw material to her intention.
Check to Your King
which followed
emigre of revolutionary days, bought himself in 1822 a little private Kingdom in New Zealand, some 40,000 acres near Hokianga in the North Island, for the price of thirty-six axes. At least, that is what missionary Kendall to whom £1,000 capital was apparently entrusted, is said to have paid over to the Maori chiefs concerned. Fourteen
Passport, Robin Hyde is searching for "the truth beneath the surface lies". In her own words, "Shakespeare kept saying, 'to thine own self be true' ... I began to wonder, which self? True to which self? . . . I was always in bad trouble . . . with the truth. Not so much knowing
Was Starkie a criminal desperado, or a hero? Truth has a "double face". Was Baron de Thierry a rogue, a lunatic, or a man of fine ideas and fine ideals?
History writes him down as an eccentric with delusions of grandeur, a marginal bad joke in the March of Progress. Yet the man evoked in Robin Hyde's reconstruction is a very human being, fallible, vain, courageous, pathetic, honourable and silly. His Utopia came to nothing, but he was not alone in his century in dreaming finely of it, nor in trying to set it upon some distant savage shore.
Check to Your King, then, is based on historical research, but it is more than a reconstruction, it is a personal attitude, an interpretation, a point of view. This is why Robin Hyde begins her story so breathlessly, with a zestful selfconsciousness which puts the huge craziness of the de Thierrys before us in a light both mocking and loving. We are at once associated with the author in her personal approach, so that our tribal defences against marked nonconformity are set aside, and we take a sympathetic stand within the experience, while retaining the independence of an observer. The effect of the kaleidoscopic changes in technique is to give us a lively portrait of the hero and his world. Once she has landed her cargo of Utopians in New Zealand, Robin Hyde handles her story more straightforwardly and brings it, in spite of some guidebook stuffing, to a moving climax.
Robin Hyde was always in peril on the border between reality and fantasy. Whimsy, especially in imagery or would-be poetic flights, disfigures her fiction again and again. Only in Wednesday's Children, however, did she allow fantasy to be the basis of a whole work. Many readers find that they cannot
The story is of Wednesday, half-sister of Ronald Gilfillan, a comfortable conforming New Zealander with "a quarter-acre section neatly fenced". Having consulted Madame Mystera, a fortune-teller of Freemans Bay, and been told that fortune, lovers and children are ahead of her, Wednesday takes a ticket in a lottery. She wins £25,000.
It is impossible to indicate what happens next without spoiling the first impact of the book. Enough to say that reality and fantasy become inextricably mixed, for Wednesday as well as the reader, and that there are poetry, humour, unexpectedness and delight.
At the end Wednesday endeavours to explain it all in a letter, from which the remark quoted earlier about the "second selves of truth" was taken. "Most surface selves are such lies," writes Wednesday— speaking for the author. Wednesday's Children
is, like
Robin Hyde's record up to 1937 is of several starts in different directions; first, the realistic, as in Passport;
then the fantastic, as in Wednesday's Children;
all the time, the poetic, for her verse volume
Her next and last novel, The Godwits Fly, represents the nearest she approached to this. It has flaws, but also merits, and it does begin to achieve what Robin Hyde felt her generation of writers had consciously set out to do, to make possible "the integration of a country from the looseness of the soil".
In its issue of July, 1932, the short-lived little magazine, Phoenix, expressed this idea in another way: "We are hungry for the words that shall show us these islands and ourselves; that shall give us a home in thought."
Robin Hyde tells of the Hannays, a Wellington family whose trials, vicissitudes and enjoyments she contrives to make representative of us all, the middle-class New Zealanders. The period is that of her
The Hannays, John and Augusta, come to New Zealand with their children. Augusta has genteel notions, of English origin, "but tinned as it were", and sinks only reluctantly into New Zealand ordinariness. She cannot at first, for instance, stomach the "meaty-coloured combinations and underpants" displayed to view on many a backyard clothesline. John, on the other hand, merges happily with the democratic good-fellowship around him, is attracted by socialistic theories, and craves for the warmth of casual company. In spite of Augusta, the family assumes a protective New Zealand colouring. "Whenever she won some little advantage, a neighbour who could be called 'nice', a patch of lawn, . . . something went wrong." How clearly Robin Hyde conjures up the Wellington world of the young Hannay girl Eliza! She is excellent at capturing the feeling of place, as we have seen in her Auckland descriptions and in the account of Starkie's childhood in the South. Eliza knows the old Newtown Zoo, with the fire-bellied newt which she is never allowed to see because "belly" is a rude word; we see the old, loved ferry boat Cobar, on its excursions across the harbour to Days Bay; we see Form 3 at Wellington Girls' College, where John Masefield's poems are read in privacy at the bottom of the grounds, Eliza imitating them, just as young Iris Wilkinson did— "It's a far way to England".
There are several themes in the book, not well fused. Most striking is the personal anguish, reflected in the explanatory foreword; what does it mean, especially to the sensitive child who may become an artist, to be a New Zealander? Eliza, who is the focus of the book, grows up unable to resolve the intolerable split in her experience. "You were English and not English . . . you were brought up on bluebells and primroses and daffodils and robins in the snow . . . one day you realised that there were no robins and no snow and you felt cheated." Those who rebel against the cheat are the human godwits, "who fly every year from the top part of the North Island to Siberia, thousands of miles without a stop. They fly north . . . they fly north." Like the godwits, young New Zealanders "must make the long migration, under a compulsion they barely understand; or else be dissatisfied all their lives long".
Eliza, questioning her world in her schooldays, asks "Don't you think we live half our lives in England, anyhow? I was thinking—there can't have been anything quite like this since the Roman Colonists settled in Britain: not the hanging on with one hand, and the other hand full of seas. Wouldn't we be different there [in England], more ourselves?"
This theme is not, however, worked out in the terms of the novel,
stated, but not shown in its impact on Eliza's life. This is a major weakness. Instead, we have a brilliant rendering of a Wellington girlhood, which shades off into loneliness, unhappiness, disaster in love, the loss of a child, and final grey acceptance of what life has brought. The godwit, in this case, did not really fly; but we are not made to feel that Eliza would have been "more herself" had she "flown" to the other hemisphere, for the tragedy is in her own temperament. The godwit theme peters out, after a memorable opening.
Yet The Godwits Fly
remains one of the remarkable novels of its time. Technically there is nothing new—our novelists till the 1950s have not been venturesome in their craftsmanship—but there are evocative writing, perception, compassion, and an understanding of loneliness and of the springs of human conduct "beneath the surface lies".
The feeling that "you were English and not English . . . hanging on with one hand, and the other hand full of seas" was expressed by others at this time besides Robin Hyde, notably by John Guthrie and the two Mulgans, father and son. Alan Mulgan's Home, 1927, epitomises the allegiance of the New Zealander who hung on with both hands; John Mulgan's autobiography
Report on Experience
should be read for its picture of the generation who, in Robin Hyde's words, "loved England still, but ceased to be 'forever England'", who "became, for so long as we have a country, New Zealand". John Mulgan's picture of the New Zealand he had come to love most when he had left it is idealised eloquently with the same kind of poetic heightening as you will detect in Robin Hyde. It is a moving testament of a new, more mature kind of patriotism; John Mulgan is no "aggressively insular New Zealander . . . babbling of bellbirds".
Before he died at the end of the war he had time to express this new maturity of vision in only one novel, Man Alone, 1939. Like John Lee, like Robin Hyde, he is "groping for the scent of the people".
John Mulgan was born in 1911, went to Auckland University College, knew the student agitations, the ferment of ideas, the political pressures, the socialist theories of the 1930s. There followed further university experience at Oxford, an appointment to the Clarendon Press, journalism, editing, and routine literary jobs. (There is a little history of literature by Davin and Mulgan.) He enlisted in 1939, before the war began, and was awarded the M.C. in 1943 for his
Man Alone
and its wider outside political implications were those of John Mulgan's own experience.
Man Alone
is old as well as new. It is old by reason of its social purpose which was the motive of Edith Grossmann and John Lee; like Chamier, John Mulgan has a thesis, "it is not good for a man to be alone". New is the method by which the theme is implicit in the story, almost
Also new is Mulgan's central figure, Johnson. Refreshingly he is neither an intellectual frustrated, nor an adolescent in turmoil. As he is an Englishman, not one of us, he can see familiar things in a fresh light, and comment accordingly. Through his eyes a dour, unfriendly, unhappy "little country" is seen, in which easy good-fellowship erodes under the pressure of unfamiliar evils. This, by the end of the story, is not a land of Kiwi cobbers, but of men alone.
The title, drawn from Hemingway, is a sign of allegiance. Johnson is a Hemingway figure, inarticulate, sensitive, representative of his kind. But the North Island world he moves around in is not Hemingway's; it is native through and through. James Baxter has commented on the description of the Queen Street riot in Auckland, "that superb study in crowd psychology", and on the brilliance of the conversation with the old drunk in the railway truck. Scene after scene comes to mind as authentic. Look at the description of the land at the opening of chapter two, and the dialogue and comment which follow. Look at the narrative of the journey across the Desert Road country and the Kaimanawa Range.
Man Alone
is a well made book, much more complex than it appears. Two elements dovetail, the sense of modern man's isolation and losing private battle with forces he cannot control, economic, military and political, and the picture of a social structure in collapse. As the bits fly apart and cohesion is gone, so man becomes the solitary, the outlaw, the hunted, the "hatter". It is a mark of Mulgan's talent that he should see in that typical New Zealand figure not only the image of Western man between the wars but an image of the human predicament. The book is thus lifted above mere reportage of our scene, and those things in it which are peculiarly our own become also symbolic of twentieth-century humanity. By the end of the novel, Johnson has turned into an almost mythical figure, the common man. "He was a good man. He took what was coming ... he was just sitting there . . . there are some men . . . you can't kill . . ."
There are several styles of writing in the novel. Much is told in the
I have allowed these remarks made in 1960 to stand in this edition, but they should be read in the light of Paul Day's revealing critical study of the genesis of the novel in Comment
24, August, 1965.
Man Alone
is the fullest prose rendering of what the New Zealand twenties and thirties felt like; in poetry, perhaps the best picture is to be found in the work of Denis Glover,
(Notes for a critical discussion of Man Alone
will be found in the Appendix. Topics for Study and Discussion are also given in the Appendix.)
Keith Sinclair—
In comparison with the lean years of the thirties, the years 1940-9 are quite fat ones. Dan Davin's first novel appeared in 1945, as did Frank Sargeson's, though he of course had published short stories before then; James Courage's first is dated 1948; so is Roderick Fin-layson's. There are several good novels which represent "one performance only", such as David Ballantyne's The Cunninghams, and Erik de Mauny's
Some generalisations are possible. Three novels draw upon the material of small homogeneous local groups, national or religious in origin. These are Helen Wilson's Moonshine, Dan Davin's
Other groupings may be noted. Sargeson's great originality, for instance, lies in his inventing a convention of toneless, colloquial dialogue or thought-monologue which suggests our speech rhythm and idiom. In this F. S. Anthony and M. Escott had been before him, but neither was so convincing. Ballantyne and Finlayson also attempt to get our way of speech on to paper.
The novels of the 1940s moreover, have in common an avoidance of any crusade. None of them has a message, as had John Lee and John Mulgan. Is passionate devotion to a cause something which died after 1945?
There is little more, either, of the open expression of the "urge to be a country" of which Robin Hyde spoke. Novelists go about their business of interpreting something to somebody without being selfconsciously national. Only in the exploiting fiction of the time, as still today, does obtrusive local colour flaunt itself on the pages. What
Finally, only one of the major novels of the decade has a conventional old-fashioned plot. Plots aplenty feature still in light fiction, but the thoughtful novel uses other scaffolding. Helen Wilson's Moonshine
is the exception. She works with the old ingredients, a hero, a heroine, a villain and a contrived mechanism. Most novels of this time do not have a hero, except in the sense of having a central figure, and none has a heroine, though there are womenfolk around. They even have no villains, unless circumstances, war, slumps, fate, can be said to be villainous. In the 1940s our writers no longer see the world in Technicolor, nor in black and white, but only in a drab grey for which no one in particular can be blamed.
It is true to say, probably, that John Mulgan's Man Alone
is the best handling of the theme of outlawry and pursuit which we have had. But R. M. Burdon's
Another novel of "the hunted", to use John Lee's title, is that by Erik de Mauny, The Huntsman in his Career, 1949. This does get below the surface, being an exploration of the problem of personal responsibility. Most young men have had to consider their attitude to war or capital punishment. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a commandment—when, if ever, do circumstances justify a man in setting it aside? When may he refuse to take part in actions sanctioned by his society? If he conforms, to what extent is he guilty, or to what extent can he contract out in spirit while obeying physical commands? How far is a man involved in the collective guilt of the community, and how may he purge such guilt?
De Mauny weaves a net of tentative explorations round a murder (the Graham case again). His seeing eye is young Peter Villiers, a sensitive intellectual, journalist, and pacifist. There is much talk of books, ideas, values and the meaning of life. As an outlet for his
Next in the pattern, but unrelated in any way to Peter, is Bernard Cleaves, whose growing up in shoddy suburbia is drawn parallel to Peter's. Bernard is murdered by the third figure, Gerald Milsom, a backblocks boy, who has been driven into a nightmare fantasy by years of unrewarded slogging, financial trickery and long suppressed hatred of his father's authority. These three barely meet—but "no man is an island"; murderer, victim, hunter, are linked. Who is innocent? Whose is the guilt? And who may kill? There is no villain, or scapegoat. The hunting down of Milsom becomes the image of Peter's private war with himself.
These themes are strongly handled, but the ending leaves a vague sense of failure. Peter decides "I will kill this man because pity and understanding are not enough . . . only the act . . . has reality . . . If it should be the act of another, I would have to consent to it . . . But by making it my own, I make the responsibility mine: and I do not consent."
Making thus a positive gesture, he fires the shot which kills Milsom. He then departs on an overseas troopship. In spite of the weaknesses of an uncertain philosophy and a rather undisciplined style, this book has merit, not least that of taking life seriously.
Dan Davin has made for himself a little corner in Southland Irish Catholicism, all but two novels and most of his short stories being born of that material. Davin's typical hero is young, at odds with the world, essentially puritan but tempted beyond the range of home decencies, anxious to find his own way yet saturated with the outgrown beliefs of a religious childhood, unhappy, a misfit. Is it fair to say that each of Davin's novels is a further attempt to say what he said best, perhaps, in his first book of all, Cliffs of Fall?
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne'er hung there. Davin used Gerard Manley Hopkin's words in this first novel for their relevance to its particular inner struggle; but it is permissible to ask whether the "cliffs of fall" may not be also those other elements which recur so constantly in his work, the rejection of home loyalties, of religious affiliations, of one's native land. These colour all that Davin has written. In a sense, he is still writing the same novel.
Cliffs of Fall, 1945, tells of Mark Burke, chafing at the restraints laid on him by the narrow interests and pieties of a tight little Irish Catholic community. Somewhere in the ancestry of this, clearly, is James Joyce's
The setting is Southland, Otago University, the pub, student digs, Dunedin's Town Belt, the suburbs. The story is outwardly about the way in which Mark is driven to murder. Inwardly it is about the struggle between freedom, experience, and ambition on the one hand, and conformity, love, and the cramping domestic routine of New Zealand respectability on the other. The inner and the outer plots fuse in a figurative and an actual interpretation of the title. Once over the edge of his decision, Mark is driven by his obsession to throw himself off the St. Clair cliffs. The writing is uncertain, and often too high-pitched. In parts the method seems wrong, especially the mixture of the realism of the Irish home and student days with the fantasy nightmare at the end. Taken as a whole, however, the book is a remarkable achievement.
Roads from Home, 1949, centres on the same milieu, seen more elaborately this time, with a family as its focus, rather than one rebellious young student sprig of it. This is, of course, Dan Davin's own background. He was born in Invercargill in 1913, educated at the Marist Brothers' schools and Otago University; a Rhodes Scholar in 1935, he took an Oxford degree and joined the Clarendon Press. He saw war service with the 2 N.Z.E.F. in 1940-5, and compiled the official war history,
The short stories in The Gorse Blooms Pale, 1947, had sketched in this Southland world of childhood with acute perception; his war novel,
There are still patches of melodramatic heightening and clogged rhetorical flights. The theme is still conflict between the different values of the generations. Norah Hogan, the mother, is devoted to God and to her menfolk, but the menfolk strain at the leash of her affectionate control. The two sons, Ned and John, are trying to beat out their own roads in life, which lead inevitably away from mother. Ned's problem is religious. He has trained to be a priest, but his faith is weakening, and in any case the priestly vocation will, as he begins to appreciate, cut him off as a man apart from the warm community about him. Is this, then, the right road? (Mark Burke, the intellectual in Cliffs of Fall, also had to face the result of cutting himself off.) John has married a Protestant girl; in addition to the problems which this creates within the circle, he has begun to question the satisfactions of the road
"Ferreting wasn't the fun it used to be . . . Something had gone out of it. You had a tendency now to think about what the rabbit must be feeling."
Even the father of the family, Jack Hogan, wonders whether his life took the right direction long ago when he became a railwayman. Whichever road you take, you will damage someone. This is the human predicament. Davin makes this movingly clear, in a convincingly drawn New Zealand setting, without any parade of local colour.
At this point readers may wish to check Davin's picture of the little Southland pocket of Irishism against two other books which offer testimony about it. Both are by Helen Wilson, a novel, Moonshine, 1944, and her autobiography,
Moonshine
is set in the 1880-1900 period, and tells the story of Tangi Flat, a South Island settlement of "bog Irishmen" who were isolated by geography and deliberate choice from the hated English about them. The material on which Helen Wilson drew is given in its factual form in her autobiography, chapter five, where she describes her experiences as a young teacher in the late 1880s at Waitohi Flat. In the novel she makes the teller of the tale into a young man, Robin Marchant, a transfer of viewpoint which is not very effective. Much that Marchant thinks, sees, feels, is not masculine, so that as a character he is a failure. As the structural centre of the book, however, he is adequate, and in any case the virtue of
Davin's next novel, The Sullen Bell, 1956, acknowledges his expatriate status by being set among New Zealand exiles in post-war London. The title has the usual literary echoes. Shakespeare's "No
No Remittance, 1959, abandons the method of omniscience adopted in
The tension has gone out of the struggles recorded in Roads from Home, however, partly because this narrator is old, and looking back not in anger, but in whining self pity. Technique here is almost too smooth. But what emerges, beyond another quite acute rendering of the social pattern of New Zealand life? Davin's major difficulty is that one cannot handle the deepest issues in the slack colloquial medium he has chosen, unless one is a masterhand at selection, as Frank Sargeson is. In any case, prolonged to the length of a novel the mannerism is tiresome. What inner necessity created this novel? It could have been an exciting psychological study, but the theme never quite lives
Frank Sargeson is by far the most original
novelist, therefore, he may not seem so impressive. But readers will wish to follow up his stories as well; here then is a list of his writings.
Conversation with my Uncle
(stories), 1936;
A discussion of work up to 1954 will be found in a symposium of essays edited by Helen Shaw, The Puritan and the Waif, 1954. In an extended review in
Frank Sargeson was born in 1903 in Hamilton. He took a law course at Auckland University College and spent some time in England. Since he returned in 1928, he has lived in various parts of the North Island, but the Waikato and the King Country remain his particular area. Like John Mulgan, he can report most faithfully the speech of the casual North Islander, still to be distinguished at that time, so the linguistic experts say, from the lingo current in the South.
His first book, Conversation with my Uncle, is a set of stories related to the depression-born novels of John Lee, Robin Hyde, and John Mulgan. D'Arcy Cresswell wrote that when it appeared in the mid-thirties "it was as though the first wasp had arrived, a bright aggressive little thing with a new and menacing buzz ... it prefers jam, any kind of bright, sweet, sticky, falsified jam, and open windows and the smell of dishonest cooking. And soon it was evident that the suburbs, where they have flowers on the piano and eiderdowns on the beds, were being severely stung."
The collection A Man and his Wife
contains a well-known story,
This body of stories made Sargeson's reputation, so that it was no surprise to followers of modern writing when his short novel, That Summer, appeared in three parts in
That Summer
is really a long short story, a
Sargeson's world is one where there can be no satisfactory relationship between men and women. Only between cobbers can there be the tenderness and compassion which the disorganisation of society and our puritanism deny to us, so Sargeson suggests, in other relationships. This aspect of Sargeson's fiction is fully discussed by Winston Rhodes {Landfall March 1955) and by Robert Chapman {Landfall March 1953, "Fiction and the Social Pattern"). It is the dominant element in a number of Sargeson's stories of mateship, treated at its upper level of human need for companionship. "A man wants a mate that won't let him down."
The literary craft of this little novel is very fine indeed; Sargeson keeps to the semi-articulate narrator's viewpoint, using his memories or snatches of dialogue simultaneously to develop the story, evoke its setting, suggest character, and record the teller's emotions about events and people, both at the time of the story and at the time of recalling it. This is almost a dramatic technique and leads the reader to identify himself with the teller, without the need for clumsier expositions.
Earlier it was noted that New Zealand writers were technically unadventurous; this cannot be said of Frank Sargeson. By his discovery of a stylisation of our idiom which could fulfil his creative purpose, by his control of the point of view, by his elimination of irrelevancy whether in character description or in presentation of local scenery, he shows himself to be a craftsman of a high order. But his best work is in his stories and nouvelles.
Winston Rhodes writes, "Many [readers] have felt uneasily that the Bills and Bobs and Freds and Jacks and Teds are by no means typical or even individual New Zealand figures . . . Sargeson's art is deceptive in that it might lead his readers to think that he is engaged in reporting the lives of representative New Zealanders in a series of vivid snapshots of character and episode, but, ... he is concerned with a private vision ..." This private vision is the substance of the novel I Saw in my Dream, 1949.
The title is from Bunyan: "Now I saw in my Dream, that at the end of this Valley lay blood, bones, ashes and mangled bodies of men, even of Pilgrims that had gone this way formerly; ..." And again, "Now I saw in my Dream, that ... the Pilgrims were got over the Enchanted Ground; and entering into the country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleasant ..."
In this novel the first-person point of view is abandoned, but not the intention of making the reader feel as if he were within the chief character's consciousness. The method reminds us of that in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There Joyce presents Stephen Dedalus in the third person, but contrives by various devices to place us inside Stephen's experience. There is interior monologue, verbal echo, thematic repetition, and considerable heightening of the prose style.
Frank Sargeson adopts the method of interior monologue but avoids any poetic heightening, and keeps to the flat colloquialisms which his central figure may be supposed to use, for speech or for thinking. When flashbacks into the hero's inner mental world occur, they are indicated in italics. Dialogue, too, is filtered through his mind, so that nobody really is alive in the novel but the protagonist, Henry-Dave.
To appreciate both Sargeson's debt to Joyce, and his difference of method, readers may find it useful to compare the first few pages of the two novels: similarly, to read Sargeson and Hemingway in association is most illuminating.
I Saw in my Dream, falls into two parts. In the first, Henry, son of middle-class, church-going parents, and too much loved by his mother, is shown setting off on his pilgrim's road through life, with assorted giants to bar the way, obsess, and terrify. This is in a small town somewhere in the North Island. In the second part Henry, now become a new personality so different that he is called Dave, works on a sheep farm of marginal efficiency. The first part is the short novel,
Henry-Dave is nebulous as a character, a mere receiver of sensations. The value of the book is perhaps in the picture of New Zealand suburbia, and in the attack on puritanism, sentimentality, mediocrity, fear of ideas, fear of commitment. Jane Mander, you remember, noted our puritanism in The Story of a New Zealand River, saying "Puritanism is an awful disease". Frank Sargeson also sees it as an eroding sickness, responsible for some of the failure among us to respond fully to the experience of living.
I Saw in my Dream
is not a realistic novel. Sargeson's New Zealand is a world of shadows, in which the hero is struggling with the dream of the title. Where can a man escape to? "Ron said the escape idea would be all right if there was anywhere to escape to ... If there's
Dave sees in the end that it's not a question of place, "Because, look! A dream comes true . . . The happy land, where there is neither rain nor snow . . . I'm not Dave, not exactly . . . I'm what I was. Henry. But I'm also what I have become. Dave . . . The right place is the wrong place if you're the wrong me. And you have to BE the right me . . . No fretting for the moon. Accept."
The search which the novel prosecutes is for a real self. Sargeson makes more of this than merely the "growing-up" theme we have already met. In the process of knowing himself Henry-Dave comes to terms too with his country. It is a very New Zealand book. Sargeson commented, in 1947, "The writer should have the capacity to hear, see, feel, think, imagine, invent, and arrange; ... his capacity for using words should be such as to make the reader feel that he had received an important communication—one that would be, among many other things, both moving and entertaining, and one that would be truthful above all other things; . . . directly or indirectly, everything he wrote should reveal an attitude." It is in this sense of communicating an attitude that this novel is so remarkable. But it is not a unified whole.
This is a long short story, in which a triumphant change of narrator has been made, Sargeson rejecting his laconic cobbers for the persona of an old maid. The tone is still grim, waspish, stinging suburbia out of its oily satisfactions. This is still a "private vision", for most readers would feel that the heroine is as untypical as the Bills and Teds of the masculine sketches. Katherine, however, unlike the menfolk in Sargeson's earlier work, is not a rebel, but a conformer squeezed into dry spinsterishness by the pressure of middle-class respectability. Since she writes a diary, we explore her from within. This form, and the narrow three-month period which it covers, give the novel concentration and unity. Katherine moves from sentimentality to disillusionment, from being an outsider because she feels there is more in life than she has had, to being an outsider because what life really can be horrifies her. She, for one, has found that life is not the cosy, rosy, predictable affair which the story books suggest, and that people do not necessarily live happily ever after.
The pattern of irony in I, for One ... is complicated, but close and firm. In its small way, the novel is a triumph. (
Writing for Sargeson's fiftieth birthday, a group of sixteen authors sent him an open letter printed in Landfall
in March 1953, in which they spoke of him as "a liberating influence on the literature of this country". Among the crucial points
All these things are true. Robin Hyde, who was also born in 1903, spoke the exact truth when she made her assessment of what her generation had done for our literature. "We became . . . New Zealand."
By the accident of alphabetical order, the first signature to that letter was David Ballantyne's. He might well have signed first on logical grounds also, for his novel The Cunninghams, 1948, is, in its ironical, compassionate, unheroic picture of suburbia, clearly akin to Sargeson's work. So is its marked success with the artistic rendering of New Zealand idiom.
After various jobs, a year in the army, and another as reporter on the Auckland Star, Ballantyne left for England in 1954. There he has been successsful in journalism and in serious television drama. His novel
It offers us a small-town family, and because it apparently keeps to a transcript of fact, readers tend to bypass the literary question and, as they do for John Lee, Jean Devanny, John Mulgan, Frank Sargeson, to ask instead, "Is New Zealand life really like this?" Usually they then answer themselves, "No". But anyone who reads Truth, or does social work, will admit that the edges of our society are ragged. If you object, "Yes, but why choose to write of such people", I would say that an analysis of a way of life is often most significant if made at the point where that life is disintegrating—that is, at the not-so-presentable fringe.
Let us then consider the literary question, is this a good novel? It presents Gil, Helen, and Gilbert, "man, woman and child", and out of the failure, futility and uncertain explorations of their lives, builds up a commentary on lower middle-class life, on our utilitarian values, on the inadequacy of our social philosophy, on the sterility of our spiritual satisfactions. Gil, the returned soldier—the year is 1936— has been defeated by his ruined health and his lack of inner strength. Helen believes that we all have a right to be happy. When she gets her bit of fun, it is a half-and-half affair which offers neither her nor her lovers what they thought they would get. She has no depth for remorse, only a mild regret at not measuring up to her private view
These three threads plait into a tale. There are no crises. There are no colours, certainly not rose or pink. It is a book without hope. Tragedy, or even pathos, requires an imaginative lift, which you find for instance in Man Alone. This book is the poorer for being so deliberately flat in tone. There is not even anger in it, merely a grey pity. It is a version of
Adolescent agonies are probably natural quarries for first novels by young novelists; certainly they haunt our literary landscape in outrageous quantities. When, however, mature writers return again and again to the theme, one is moved to ask why. Is our writers' preoccupation with it a kind of mirror image of our growing pains as a people, a necessary part of the process of finding ourselves in a literature? Certainly it is only a post-nineteenth-century phenomenon; those hardy pioneers to whom the first two chapters were devoted sprang up fully adult with their pens in confident untroubled hands. Only in this century has the topic of childhood been so noticeable; Katherine Mansfield may be said to have started the trend, perhaps. The childhood theme in New Zealand fiction is discussed by Islands of Innocence, 1964.
It is the novels of James Courage, especially The Young Have Secrets, to which these remarks are leading. Courage, like Sargeson, was recognised and successful overseas. Unlike him, he was a permanent exile, moving further and further away from the refreshment of actual contact with the world he was impelled to write of. Has this not led to nostalgic falsity of rendering, as well as to thinness of texture, in his novels?
His first New Zealand novel, The Fifth Child, was published in 1948, and is set in the North Canterbury of his boyhood. Courage was born in 1903 at Amberley, the eldest of five children, brought up on his father's sheep station, and given an education at Christ's College and Oxford. From 1923 until his death in 1963 he remained in England, except for. brief visits home. His first novel,
The germ of each of James Courage's novels is a remembered experience which struck such deep roots into the boy he was between 1903 and 1923 that he could draw upon its substance twenty-five or thirty years later. Katherine Mansfield, the obvious parallel, was never as far away from her past as that. The perils of the situation are obvious, and it cannot be said that Courage surmounts them. The Fifth Child
is good in parts. Mrs Warner, at forty-six about to bear her last child, takes a house in Christchurch for the winter to think over her marriage. The children are well drawn, especially Barbara the teenager, with her motor-biking boy friend. The family life is that of 1948, but the setting, with servants, private schools and swaggers on the streets of a Christchurch suburb makes the psychology an anachronism. Were there motor-bikes in the swagger days? The New Zealand scene is rendered self-consciously in the bad old manner, nor'-westers and the Cathedral being given real blurb treatment. The theme too, is not new in our fiction; Edith Grossmann and others had been busy on the situation where a husband insists on his rights, while a bored, anxious wife dreads more childbearing.
Desire Without Content, 1950, is equally unsatisfactory. Its plot is what would be called "strong". Mrs Kendal, the mother-heroine, is left to manage a big Canterbury run with the assistance of one of those crusty Scots lovables who crop up continually in our 1890 novels. She has a retardate son, Lewis, to whom she devotes her life. When he is in his teens, his abnormality troubles her, but the problem is shelved until later when she gives hospitality to the young fiancee of the local minister. Effie, daunted by the prospect of parish life now that it is just ahead of her, finds Lewis interesting, draws him out, provokes his love. When Lewis threatens to marry Effie, Mrs Kendal is faced with an unresolvable conflict of duties. The story gains force toward the end, with the foreseen tragedy of murder and madness coming to pass. Mrs Kendal is left to struggle with her inner confusions.
Fires in the Distance
followed two years later. Again, it is a tragic love drama, a foursome, set in the Canterbury back country. The time is 1921. Donovan, fiftyish, an Irish colonial, and his wife, very English, drag along together. Mrs Donovan is the consciously nostalgic exile, cultured, over-sensitive to the brutality about her. (There are plenty of echoes there!) Neurosis is her refuge, as liquor is her husband's. There are three children, Katherine, who like her father, enjoys sheep work in the open air, Leo, who resembles his mother, and Imogen, who is an average accepter of what life offers. For a short visit there comes a young farmer's son from near by, who writes poetry and is about to "go to far-off England". Katherine, Leo, and Mrs Donovan all fall in love with him, being in their cir-
This is certainly James Courage's best effort. It was published in 1954, and met with instant recognition, being chosen by the Book Society for December of that year.
Its achievement is the portrait of a child, ten-year-old Walter Blakiston, to whose point of view the reader is restricted. This narrowed focus gives Courage dramatic economy of persons and dialogue. It is by now a well-known device for a certain sort of concentration, such as is achieved for instance in The Go-Between, possibly an ancestor of
The plot is neat and tidy, while the background of 1914 Christchurch is memorable. The emotions of the adults are still "strong", but are muted by the child's relative incomprehension. Walter is touched by their feeling only where it impinges upon his own private world.
It remains a question however whether any adults would so frequently confide their woes to childish ears; this is a necessity of the method, not of the characterisation. And is the symbolism too obvious?
Walter of course is the sensitive boy; fortunately there is also an insensitive, earthy one, the delightfully drawn Jimmy Nelson, with his even earthier mother, whose robust vulgarity is a welcome contrast to the expatriate gentility of the Garnetts. The book has a high professional polish on it, but leaves an uneasy impression of artificial contrivance.
The Call Home, 1956, is very uneven, in spite of its deft construction. Norman Grant returns to his half-forgotten homeland in search of emotional and physical health. His sojourn in his North Canterbury parental home traverses his inner seasons as well as the external ones of dry summer, declining autumn, fast-frozen winter, and reviving spring. Other poetic echoes and parallels of imagery attempt to reinforce the impression of depth. Both Norman and the woman he comes to love, Louise, have known failure and loss; they are brought neatly together, each to revive the
Perhaps the most convincing element in the book is the dry, hard observation of life which Grant is able to make by reason of his being an expatriate, at once familiar with and critical of Squatterdom. His father and mother, his sister and brother, are a dismal set, modern versions, it seems, of the displaced unhappy ones in our fiction of the 1900-1930 period. Or should we compare them with Sargeson's hopeless folk in the other island, whom they do resemble in spite of differences of class?
Courage's last two novels have English settings. A critical essay on his New Zealand novels, by Landfall
71, September, 1964.
In the centennial literary competitions in 1940, when Sargeson's "The Making of a New Zealander" won a first prize, third prize went to Roderick Finlayson for "The Totara Tree". Like Sargeson, Finlayson has done his finest work in the short story, though he has written two novels.
His first collection, Brown Man's Burden, 1938, like his second,
Finlayson's first novel, Tidal Creek, 1948, is a series of similar sketches held together by the central figure, Uncle Ted, and by its theme, which is that just outlined. The setting, somewhere tidal north of Rangitoto, is reached by a symbolic voyage in a crock of a coaster. Ted and his visiting town nephew Jake appear in all the tales, which often have the same quality as the inserted Dickensian yarns of our earlier fiction. Is Uncle Ted something more than his unshaven rural bachelor self? Is he to be linked with those other repudiators of society's values who recur in New Zealand fiction, hermits, rejectors of collars and ties and conformity? He is, in fact, a 1948 Philosopher Ted, or a fictional version of the poet Denis Glover's Arawata Bill. Ted will have nothing to do with the modern world, with its tractors, artificial manure, cities, and slick agents; he rejects the respectability of home and church. Even the prospect of meeting his sister makes him uneasy and he puts the ordeal off continually, saying to Jake, "We won't go up to your Ma's place yet". In addition, Uncle Ted has his dream, a "long trip" to the North Cape. "Must be a mighty lonely place. Yes. I'd like to go there. . . . That sounds lonely enough for me." He is too wise, however, to put his dream to the test. "Some day, Jake, some day. What's the hurry?" Uncle Ted has a philosophy too, rather a homespun affair. "Old Tidal Creek has got the lot [town blokes] licked. We own ourselves . . . What I do know is that I've dug in my dung here till me and the land sort of belong to each other. And here I live till I die."
Through the medium of rural sketches designedly comic, and somewhat of the Me and Gus
type, an attempt is made to suggest a deeper significance. Ted is now himself, now a symbol. The book is uncertain in aim, but it is most original.
The Schooner Came to Atia, 1952, is a much more closely knit short novel restricted in time and place. It is set somewhere in the Cook Islands, which Finlayson does not see as a paradise. Missionary, native girl, visiting seducer, shooting, blackmail, are elements in a yarn intended to be not romantic entertainment but a bitter comment on the human situation.
(Topics for Study and Discussion are given in the Appendix.)
James K. Baxter—
The earliest published of our war novels was Martyn Uren's They Will Arise, 1945, a story of the Greek resistance, subtitled "A Romance of the Hellenes".
It was Dan Davin who in For the Rest of Our Lives, 1947, made the first real attempt to get the 2 N.Z.E.F. on to paper. The scope of this book is the war in the Middle East from the desert offensive of November 1941 to the fall of Tunis. Davin in a foreword announces that the characters are imaginary, while the historical events are to be taken as "a frame, a background, conditioning the fictitious". There is no plot, only the chronological march of events, accidentally determined as these things are in war. Thus there can be no causal relationship between what people think and feel, and what happens. Such unity as the novel has is a tonal one, its impression of disjointedness, of waste, of futility; in addition some unity comes from its focus on three chief characters, Tom, Tony, Frank, who may be taken to reveal between them various facets of war experience.
Frank, an officer convalescent from the Greek campaign, is seen mostly in Cairo, where booze, books, and bodies occupy him, especially the first and the last. Tom, a political rebel, with Otago University and the Spanish War in his background, is out in the desert, defeating foe in battle and friend in Communist argument. He reads books, avoids bodies. Tony enjoys life, war included, without afterthought or foresight. Around these mix in and out sundry females, sundry males, and some half-and-halfers. It makes a nasty picture.
There is a lot of background, painstakingly detailed, often with a strident satirical note. Davin seems to have been in a thoroughly savage mood, but without the critical discipline which turns anger and pity into literature.
The book, of course, was attacked, more perhaps for its frankness of speech than for its picture of war. In 1947 there were not many war
New Zealand Listener
for 12 September 1947. "If you want realism, you must put up with realism; it isn't nice," Sir Howard continued, adding that his own preference was for a degree of reticence. He was aware that the book would have a mixed reception. "You will be pleased or shocked, delighted or disgusted, but in any case deeply impressed." In his opinion, the theme of Cairo life is thin and unreal, and most Kiwis who "had said their goodbyes and borne the wrench years before and far away" were not more than casually concerned with "desks and flats and bedrooms in Cairo". While admitting the truth of the picture of "that rabbit warren G.H.Q. Middle East", Kippenberger felt that it is only when Davin moves to the battlefield that "he touches greatness". Out in the desert, the reportage is brilliant, "there is not a false note". There is high praise for the documentary value of the novel. Readers may wish to compare it with Davin's
Next come the two novels by Guthrie Wilson, Brave Company, 1951, and
Brave Company
has the great advantage of a brief central episode to give it the unity which war as a whole can seldom have. Wilson's heroes are a company of the New Zealand Division in the mountains of North Italy. The actual battle incident from which the novel springs is described in chapter seventeen of Sir Edward Puttick's
The novel at once won overseas acclaim. It is the narrative of "Lawyer", the survivor of an infantry platoon in the bitter campaign of 1944-5. Nothing explicit identifies the men as ours ; this may be intentional, to make them stand for any men in any war, but it leaves them rather one-dimensional. The characters are flat, typical, not personal, Hadfield being the fullest picture. The point of the novel lies, however, not in the separate individuality of these men, but in their community, with its suffering, stoic philosophy, endurance, humour. Brave Company
is at its best in rendering the things heard, seen, felt, in warfare. In particular the night climb to Costa San Paulo and the company's leave spell in Forli are memorable.
Brave Company
is not the usual type of war novel. There is no direct assault on the horror and the waste; there is no wide sweep of
Guthrie Wilson's next novel, Julien Ware, 1952, will be discussed later. In 1954 came his second war novel,
However this psychological theme is too much for the author, whose obsession with brutality exploited in strained rhetoric reminds one of the turgidities of cheap sensational fiction. The climax of the novel is when Brutto returns to New Zealand, murders, and has to be hunted down, a sacrificial "Christ with a Sten gun". This book raises doubts about Guthrie Wilson's artistic control. Is he merely making a blatant appeal to the popular market for blood-and-sex? Or is he writing out his obsessions after a tragic personal experience of what war does to men?
Very different is Errol Brathwaite's Fear in the Night, 1959, a story of the crew of a Ventura bomber forced to land in Japanese territory, and struggling desperately through the brief hours to effect repairs before the enemy can arrive to the attack. The crisis, described with mounting tension, through which the technical terms thread their realistic way, tests and reveals the individual quality of the men. Brathwaite had a tour of duty as an air-gunner in the Pacific during the war. Those to whom Air Force lingo is an open book appreciate his verbal accuracy and effective excitement. His method of switching from the consciousness of one man to that of another, and from friend to Japanese foe as time slides relentlessly on, is a factor in the success of the book. (See also chapter eight.)
I'll Soldier No More, 1958, is about everyday life in the Army, without heroics, excitement, or too much blood. Joseph follows a group of soldiers through their
Where do old soldiers go in peace time? The period of readjustment after a war is legitimately to be thought of as the field of a war novelist. Davin followed For the Rest of Our Lives
with
This first novel has all the uninhibited vigour of John Lee's stories, without their propaganda. Like Frank Sargeson, too, although without his scrupulously selective art, Slatter produces a sense of reality by a rush of words colloquially ordered. A Gun in My Hand
has a genuine Kiwi gusto.
It covers twenty-four hours in the life of Sefton, who has brought back from his war a gun and a grudge; he sets off to a battalion reunion in Christchurch determined to use the gun on the girl he had left behind him and on the man who married her. Sefton's neurotic state is an opportunity to canvass every aspect of New Zealand life since the war. Like Wilson's hero in Brave Company, and like the cobbers of Sargeson's many stories, he prefers the uninvolved comradeship of war to the domestic cosiness of home and women. As he boozes his way round, he meets and rejects all the compensations which New Zealand since 1945 has offered to a man tired of adventure.
With lively satiric distaste, Gordon Slatter looks at the different levels of our activities, whether the level of races, pubs, football, and R.S.A. dinners, or that of "quarter-acre sections neatly fenced", concrete mixers, seaside baches, and devotion to Mum, the kids, and the vegetable garden. Our life in this land is evoked with exasperated, affectionate accuracy. English reviewers commented on this "strong rich flavour of New Zealand".
Is A Gun in My Hand
a good
The years 1950-60 were notable in New Zealand fiction for two trends, one the increase in the volume and quality of popular novels, the other the appearance of novels which won overseas recognition at high levels, and which are worth serious critical investigation. No longer does one need to feel apologetic when visitors say, "Now what about your novels?"
The rest of this chapter will deal with the popular exploiting novels up to 1960. (See chapter eight for trends from 1960 to 1965.)
A rough grouping may be attempted. First, and by far the most numerous, there are the novels of love and of domestic life, written exclusively by women, and read probably only by women. This is the tradition begun nearly 100 years ago by our first women writers, Isabella Aylmer, Charlotte Evans, and continued in the nineties by such women as Jessie Weston, Louisa Baker, Edith Grossmann, and Anne Glenny Wilson. In the 1930s and 1940s Rosemary Rees, Mary Scott, Nelle Scanlan continued the type. Today, twenty or more women could be named who are steady suppliers of light romances.
Second, and to some extent overlapping the first, is the group of "historical-settler" novels, which range all the way on a scale from those of quite serious intention to those which are frankly potboilers like John Guthrie's
Third comes a set of stories in the class of thrillers and detective puzzles; the women in this group go in for the puzzles, the men for the horror and the violence.
Writing in the New Statesman
Pamela Hansford Johnson makes the following comment as a preamble to her review of a bunch of new novels:
"In England at present [1958], we are publishing far more novels per annum than any other country. This means, of course, that we are publishing an enormous amount of muck; and that, in the dead seasons, a reviewer may be landed with a batch of novels that might never have been published at all, for all the good or the harm they do to anybody. Now, I have an idea that this is not altogether a bad thing. It seems to me probable that really good literature needs a great weight of other literature, or written words, beneath it, for it to have any real strength; and I suspect that if a country publishes
Sexton Blake
or
Today's writers of light fiction have built up, both in New Zealand and overseas, a public willing to read New Zealand stories, and a body of work large enough for standards of criticism to come to definition. It is a commonplace to say that the bad or the average illuminates the good, but it is true. Both in supplying readers at all levels of literary taste with fictional pictures of New Zealand life, and in making the treatment of ourselves in novels quite a normal affair (as it is to Englishmen to find English life described), our entertainers have done us a service.
To take the stories for the feminine market first. In addition to Rosemary Rees, Mary Scott, Nelle Scan-Ian, whose work continues to be widely read, there are a number of authors who have become popular only within the last ten years, when opportunities for publication have so greatly improved.
These novels vary greatly not only in their competence, but in their range. Some are wholly concerned with personal relationships, some are religious, some aim at farcical comedy, some give an unpretentious but lively picture of New Zealand life as the average woman-in-the-home knows it. None of them questions the assumptions of our society, or explores it in any depth; but several of them do achieve a minor authenticity of a delightful kind; several writers are successful in certain elements, such as the portraiture of girls, without being able to control a whole novel.
Dulce Carman writes artless rose-tinted stories for an overseas romance series, and has to date published fifteen ; Mavis Winder, who also writes as Mavis Areta, has scored up fourteen, several with a strongly-toned religious message, and all riotously emotional. Similar colourful unreality is offered by Margot McClymont, Sketches from Maoriland, 1939, also wrote three love stories, gay trifles with merit in their kind. One of her titles,
Indeed, so saleable at present is the New Zealand romance—how different the situation from that thirty years ago—that several overseas manufacturers of entertainment have paused in their production to place a story in New Zealand. Elizabeth Goudge, for instance, in her Green Dolphin Country, 1945, tells of an 1840 Channel Islands
Higher up the ladder of serious artistic purpose comes a group of writers who are endeavouring to get something truthfully observed on to paper, as well as to provide satisfaction for the daydreams of their readers. Often their novels are marred by the stock conventions of plot and character adopted, and by the uncritical manipulation of tired language. Yet they will always be good in parts. There will be neat satirical glimpses of home life, of men's ways as women see them, of social habits; there will be bits of genre painting, observations of places and people, flashes of psychological perception, evocative echoes of New Zealand speech among children or womenfolk. It is for these things that this body of work should be valued.
Margaret Jeffery's first novel The Forsaken Orchard
was produced as a radio programme in 1953, and published in book form in 1955. It is set in the apple lands of Nelson, where the author grew up, and is a natural readable story of a girl's adolescence, marriage, griefs and happiness. On the community doings of a small place the author writes well; there is much enthusiastic but rather irrelevant scenery, a rich uncle, and some melodramatic horrors, but such amateurishness can be pardoned for the sake of the real attempt which the novel makes to interpret something to somebody. Two later novels were disappointing, but
Florence Preston has published four novels. Her first, A Gallows Tree, 1956, will recall to readers the themes of Edith Grossmann, Jean Devanny, and Jane Mander, for the "tree" is the experience of a woman tortured by a difficult marriage. Her sufferings are rather dramatically overdrawn, so that the writing tends to be hysterical, but there is power behind it. The style has a literary air,
Harvest of Daring
and its sequel
In The Dark Water, 1954, Margot Campbell uses a hackneyed idea, that of the girl who makes her life on a big sheep station, and is wooed by a farmer hero. The book gives convincing detail about the technicalities of managing a high-country run, for Bess is that rare phenomenon, the woman owner who really knows the job. (So few of the glamorised heroines of romances ever look out of the lounge window!) The writing is rather dull, and the construction is lame, but a picture of the life does emerge through the expected trappings.
Also set in the South Island are the six novels of Essie Summers, of which the first, New Zealand Inheritance, 1957, is the best. The English reader is obviously in the writer's mind; scenery and Maori motifs are exploited for their exotic effects. But the story is well contrived and the dialogue easy. Essie Summers has salt as well as sugar in her mixture, which has a bite now and then.
Quite a fresh track has been followed by Grace Phipps, whose first two stories present with a keen eye the minor excitements of the domestic round. Marriage with Eve, 1955, is a series of sketches rather than a novel, a fault which is not remedied in
A North Islander with a similar light touch in sketches of family affairs is Eva Burfield. Yellow Kowhai, 1957, is a love story rendered
Jean Hill has written two novels; Sun at Noon, 1956, brings an English girl out to New Zealand adventure. There are some acid detached observations upon us colonials, and some neat genre painting, such as the account of the local competitions, and the dances in the district hall, and the A. & P. show. Her work has a religious trend, being related in this way to the preaching fiction of an earlier time, and, like it, does not really transmute its ideas into art.
Finally, mention must be made of Henrietta Mason, whose first novel White Orchid, 1953, tells of a New Zealand girl's experiences in the New Hebrides as governess to the children of a mixed French-Polynesian marriage. The heroine is well drawn, and the background is unusual, though the authenticity is hard to judge; the plot is, to say the least, eventful. A later novel,
The historical novel does not arise in a country's literature until there is both a history and a consciousness of history. William Satchell, writing in 1914, could almost have given The Greenstone Door
the same subtitle as that which Scott gave to his first novel,
Only the more difficult reconstructed historical novel is now possible for writers who wish to go back to the Maori and the settler of the nineteenth century. With the approach of the national centennial celebrations in the late 1930s, interest began to grow, and was stimulated by novels such as Robin Hyde's and Nelle Scanlan's. The centennial itself called forth a good deal of community self-congratulation, in which the politicians, "Rose to the platform, hanging in every place/Their comfortable platitudes like plush/Without one word of our failures".19
Most of the historical novels which were written in the tide of our increasing national self-consciousness then and since, have, like the politicians, not remembered our failures. Hero and heroine in these stories, it is true, suffer great hardships; but they "win through". It is certain that success was not always the pioneer's reward. But in
tragedy.
Two stories with an honest purpose not quite realised in achievement are Helen Wilson's Land of my Children, 1955, and Georgina McDonald's
As history began to sell, more and more tried their hands at it, most exploiting its supposed drama and frontier freedom from conventions. Somehow, our settler ancestors seem to have been more sex-obsessed than was ever acknowledged on the centennial platforms— or so a perusal of historical romances would lead one to suppose!
Brief mention should be made of several writers. Julian Mountain, in The Pioneers; A Romance, 1946, covers 1850-80, beginning with the emigrant voyage in the good old style, bringing in a back-country run, a Maori wife and half-caste baby, racial tensions, childbirth, villains, madness. All's well that ends well, however.
David King's The Mountains are Still Green, 1950, which covers 1836-1948, is a costume romance of the "and then" type.
Two recent novels exhibit neatly the way in which the writers of popular entertainment exploit history for their own ends. Frank Bruno's Black Noon at Ngutu, 1960, is yet another tale of the Taranaki War, a sadistic blood-and-guts yarn of the tough he-man type. Bruno has been soldier, cartoonist, journalist, boxer,
Exploitation of the feminine kind is not so strongly flavoured, and may be seen in a novel such as Dorothy Eden's Sleep in the Woods, 1960. Most of Dorothy Eden's stories are thrillers, but in this venture into history—her second, counting a bad first novel in 1940—she writes a skilful Cinderella romance also set in Taranaki at the time of the Maori Wars. (What would our romancers have done without the wars and the Maoris?) The basis of the novel is not any attempt to evoke or to understand the past, but just the wish to place a strong love story in a setting likely to be attractive to overseas Eden fans. There is a lot of elaborate, erotic skirmishing. Unlike the men, however, the women writers avoid blasphemy and bashing.
Of this same exploiting type, but with much more strength in the writing, and with some historical flavour and knowledge of maori-tanga, is Olga Stringfellow's Mary Bravender, 1960. Her heroine gets involved with the Hauhau troubles, as well as marrying the wrong man, and then taking the whole book to come to terms with the right one. But the story has verve, and some sense of period.
More serious in intention are The Red Kaka, 1955, and Leo Fowler's
Brown Conflict
is a pro-Maori romance of events leading up to the 1860 wars, with the settlers on one side clamouring for land, and the Maori leaders on the other unwilling to forfeit their heritage. Somewhere between are those Europeans who by birth or experience are aware of the claims of both sides. Such is the hero, blood-brother to a chief, who tells an artless story of what happened and how he felt. Actual personages such as Governor Gore Browne and General Cameron, Rewi and Tamihana, appear.
Fowler's literary skill is not equal to his knowledge of Maori matters; his characters do not come to life, the writing is often stale, the plot a bundle of cliches. But the novel is redeemed by its sincerity, and by the interest of its details, such as those of the flax-cutting industry and of Maori life. Compare it with
A complete contrast to Brown Conflict
is offered by Ruth Park's
Ruth Park was born and educated in the King Country, became a journalist in Auckland, and later moved to Sydney. Her story may be read in her autobiography, Drums Go Bang. It was with two novels born of her bread-line poverty in the Sydney slums that she made her name,
That was Sydney, where anything may happen. When however, Ruth Park applies the same formula to Te Kano, a small King Country town, in The Witch's Thorn, 1951, and
This group divides neatly into two, the thrillers of violence, by the men, the thrillers of tension or puzzle, by the women. On the whole the women's work is more sophisticated.
Several of the men who write international yarns to the standard recipe visit New Zealand now and then for their locale. Cecil M. Wills's Death in the Dark, 1955, is a detective thriller in which the victim dies in the Waitomo Caves. Wills is as dully informative about our tourist attractions as
Available in Denis Glover's Bedside Book, 1963.
Another standard line in male fiction is the cowboy story, not easily naturalised in New Zealand, where a cow is a cow, and not glamorous at that. Our only equivalent for the
Albert Lord's Kauri Hill, 1957, was first published as a serial in the
Arthur Manning, in his first novel We Never Die in the Winter, 1958, made a mystery melodrama out of a quite probable New Zealand incident, the stranding of a busload of people caught between slips on the Kaikoura Coast road. The idea is that the personalities of the little group will clash and develop under strain. Manning is not very serious, of course, but makes something of the resulting tension.
Denis Rhodes in Fly Away Peter, 1952, set out to spin a good yarn in the John Buchan manner, utilising the Canterbury foothills, fire, flood, snowstorm and mountaineering for the machinery of the plot. The basis is secret service intrigue, a crabbed old man's will, two heroes, two heroines, and enough cloak-and-dagger stuff to make a good brew.
Peter Llewellyn, who wrote fiction as Michael Ellis, published two novels, The Score at Teatime, 1958, and
The doyen of our New Zealand detective-story writers is of course Ngaio Marsh, whose stories were noted in chapter three. She remains queen of her own territory. There are only two challenges from New Zealand women writers, though neither threatens to dethrone her. The most direct is that from Elizabeth Messenger, who has written four crime novels, all set in this country. Her first, Murder Stalks the Bay, 1958, is her best.
For comment on novels published after 1960, see chapter eight.
What is the most effective procedure for the local murder story? Surely, to exploit what our setting offers, not to import imitation plots from abroad. Smuggling of diamonds, of atomic bombs, of space secrets, is not our cup of tea. Our murders need to be cosy and credible within our normal set-up. It is in this respect that Murder
Stalks the Bay
is—like Ngaio Marsh's
As we have seen, overseas entertainers sometimes set a story here. One such is Elizabeth Salter, an Australian, who has clearly been reading Ngaio Marsh. Another is Tom Gurr, who fictionalised the Parker-Hulme murder.
It is not these, but Dorothy Eden, who comes nearest to a successful challenge to Ngaio Marsh, though not on the same ground. Her line is not puzzle, but suspense, centred upon a heroine. This is, of course, a traditional type, pioneered in the late eighteenth century by Mrs Ann Radcliffe, whose The Mysteries of Udolpho
established the Gothic tale of terror. Mrs Radcliffe's Emily goes through some hair-raising experiences, defenceless, alone, unfriended, in a foreign land; only at the very end do the hero's comforting arms enfold her.
Settings, conventions of behaviour, prose style, all have changed, but the core remains, the build up of suspense by devices variously contrived. A good exponent of the genre today is that 'feminine John Buchan', Mary Stewart. One of Ngaio Marsh's titles would do for the class as a whole, Spinisters in Jeopardy. Sometimes the heroine is not a spinster, but a widow, or a wife temporarily parted from her protector, but the effect is the same.
This is Dorothy Eden's type of story. Five of her novels have New Zealand settings. The Schoolmaster's Daughters, 1948, and
Ngaio Marsh is read by every kind of person, male and female, blockhead and egghead. Dorothy Eden's market is obviously more restricted, because the novel of romantic presuppositions has never had the general intellectual appeal of the detective puzzle. Moreover she has none of Ngaio Marsh's champagne sparkle. But her success in her genre is a considerable one.
(Topics for Study and Discussion are given in the Appendix.)
Ursula Bethell—
Writing in the New Zealand Listener
in December 1960,
This is a sign of the times. New Zealand writing, New Zealand publishing, have taken an upward turn. With literary fund support for some new work and for some reprints of our "classics", interest in our own literature is rising steadily. Equally important are the greater opportunities open to novelists who wish to publish overseas. Some break first into the English or American market—as did Sylvia Ashton-Warner with Spinster;
some arrange publication simultaneously here and in England under a new type of partnership now developing. Some appear first in New Zealand, and may make enough stir to attract a later overseas offer. This is what happened to
The quality of the items in this rising tide of production varies, naturally enough, nor can any final assessment be made of books so new and so near to us in time. Posterity will sort them out; meanwhile we can read them, and argue.
For too long the typical fate of a New Zealand novelist was to put forth one or two shoots, find the weather inclement, and fail to "become established". This happened to William Satchell, to Jane Mander, to Robin Hyde; a feature of the literary landscape today is the number of serious established writers. Dan Davin, James Courage, Frank Sargeson, Guthrie Wilson have already been noted.
Guthrie Wilson's first civilian novel, Julien Ware, 1952, is a study of class conflict in the feudal society of the Canterbury foothills. Julien, son of Tom the rabbiter on the abandoned Cecil run, the Torrens, longs to own it and make it green and fertile. But the Torrens will be inherited by Stella Cecil, living on the plains below on her father's other estate. The core of the novel is Julien's ruthless ambition,
There is no doubt that Guthrie Wilson has here a good subject, with rich opportunities for sardonic observation of the world of wool cheques and social mountaineering. Julien, the outsider, should have been the centre of the tale, a personality whose ambition, love, and hate would really move us, and whose defeat would in some way arise from the whole pattern. This is not so. What effect did the author intend by having him killed at random in a war? If there is the implication that such is the end of earthly ambition, the irony is not made clear. Moreover, the ways in which Julien breaks into the land-owning class are only accidental, too reminiscent of the lost wills and rich uncles of Victorian melodrama.
These flaws prevent Julien Ware
from being much more than an unusual love story told from the man's point of view. It is written with admirable economy, and evokes land and people without fuss. The characters, except Julien, are rather cardboard affairs, and the philosophising often seems false. Perhaps Guthrie Wilson was not himself sure quite what he was trying to do.
Sweet White Wine, 1956, is the narrative of Simon Gregg, aged fifty-one, a successful novelist. Guthrie Wilson has chosen ground he knows well, Palmerston North, Wellington, Victoria College, war, local politics, literature, the law. Simon, recalling the course of his friendship with Paul Mundy, puzzles uncomprehendingly at the problems of human relationships, revealing to us faults in Paul of which the narrator is unaware. This double view is a fine device handled with skill. Paul, Simon, and Simon's wife Jean emerge as believable people by whose fates we can be stirred.
The weaknesses of the novel are those with which New Zealand writers have struggled for so long. How to transmute actual experience into fiction, how to create people whose lives will interest us though outwardly ordinary, how to suggest the locality without giving lecturettes, these are the problems. Simon's boyhood in Palmerston North is convincing, his university years less so; some of the minor portraits are too recognisable, too near to biography, as was the case with Alan Mulgan's Spur of Morning. In spite of these troubles,
This is the novel which was the subject of a libel action, following
Times
in Palmerston North (22 September 1956). Check back to
In Strip Jack Naked, 1957, Wilson returns to the theme of violence which dominates his two war novels. This time it is a study of another "man alone", Jack, who has skipped his ship, knuckledustered his way round the waterfront, beaten up a Maori, and finally in a surge of uncontrollable anger, committed an unpremeditated murder. Then we have the hunt, and the leap off the wharf back into the waters which had brought him here. There is argument about the value of this novel; some hold it to be cheap, violent nonsense, others claim that it is a penetrating short study of obsessive elements in our life.
"In Julien Ware
and
Since he crossed the Tasman to Sydney, Guthrie Wilson has not again used the New Zealand setting. Dear Miranda, 1959, is a light comedy of an Australian girl in London and elsewhere.
Two lone novels of the fifties have dropped undeservedly from sight, Diarmid Cathie's She's Right, 1953, and John Gillies's
Diarmid Cathie—this is a pseudonym—is an Englishman who spent a term here in the broadcasting service. His book tells the tale of MacGregor, an Adult Education drama tutor in the Marlborough district, and of his degeneration among his colonial cobbers, until wine, women and song lead to murder. MacGregor is unsatisfactory as a character, while the motives for his fall are inadequate. One is meant to shudder at the emptiness of unoccupied days, at nights spent in futile classes among silly people, and to agree that eight weeks of this would bring even a Scotsman low. This seems, on our New Zealand record, highly improbable! What is good, however, is the incidental
Voyagers in Aspic
is a witty story of three New Zealanders making the sea pilgrimage to England. They observe their fellow travellers sardonically in the manner of Evelyn Waugh. Colonial drinking habits, richly ostentatious women, literary aspirants, are all touched on with farcical gusto. Once the trio land in London, however, the derivative nature of John Gillies's satire becomes too plain. Except for the adventures of Mrs Willoughby-Smart, who has taken her daughter Home with the highest social expectations, the rest of the book is not as good as its opening chapters.
In Parson's Packet
some years ago,
That was in 1950. Since 1955, however, there has been a major breakthrough in fiction. While the established writers, Courage, Davin, Guthrie Wilson, continued to publish, several new names appeared. Janet Frame, Ian Cross, Ruth France, Sketch-Plan
still has application to much of our current material, but some recent New Zealand novels at least would lie beyond the reach of his mockery. The tide began to run strongly in 1957, with Ian Cross's The God Boy
and Janet Frame's
Janet Frame first came before the public with short stories in the volume The Lagoon, 1951. Their theme was the sense of insecurity, of loss, of exile and homelessness of spirit which the child or the unstable personality may feel among those average folk, however kindly, who must deal with them in everyday living. These stories are compassionate without sentimentality. They are fragmentary, however, and give an impression of imperfect control.
Owls Do Cry, 1957, expands and deepens this tragic understanding. As a novel it is bound together in a structure which resembles music or poetry rather than conventional narrative. There is perhaps some uneasiness in its rapid transitions between realism and' poetic suggestion, but the content and method are so original that it can be judged
This is the novel for which Robin Hyde was seeking, one which is not "aggressively insular", but is about "something that might have occurred just anywhere in the world of man, woman and child". It is about life, suffering, the death of the heart, about "the second selves of truth". That these things haunted Janet Frame's pages was obvious in The Lagoon;
how then to organise them into a coherent artistic vision, one that would have unity, focus, the memorability of co-ordinated impressions?
Janet Frame chooses the life of a family called Withers; one suspects at once a symbol in the name. Bob and Amy, their children Francie and Daphne, Toby and Teresa, live at Waimaru, a setting recognisable down to its smallest detail, with its flour mill, rubbish dump, begonia house, woollen mills, butter factory, and "shovel scoop of a bay". The extraordinary vividness with which this little town leaps to the mind is partly due to the undeceived childlike penetration of the gaze that is turned upon it, and partly to the author's scrupulous selection of detail./Here, then, in this instantly recognisable local scene, are the foundations from which an exploration of the meaning of life will start. The Withers family are not typical New Zealanders, rather they typify human experience. Not all the disasters of sickness, sudden death, mental failure, epilepsy, slow desiccation by middle-class respectability, befall every one of us; but these are all elements in tragic human experience, which is what Janet Frame is writing about.
Chronology, obviously, will not be enough to hold such material together; nor can one point of view be maintained, if the inner life of Toby or Daphne is to be fully evoked. Thus Janet Frame adjusts the angle of presentation to suit her need, not entirely regarding the reader's convenience. It is this constant change of viewpoint, as well as the frequent unforeseen shifts from realism to symbolism, from satire to interior monologue, which make the novel difficult to grasp. One reading is, of course, not enough, any more than one hearing satisfies for a new symphonic work. "It is necessary," remarked Winston Rhodes, "to turn the pages backwards as well as forwards."21
A novel like this occupies a place somewhere intermediate between a fable and a fiction. William Golding's Lord of the Flies
is a fable, concerned to embody and express in concrete terms a preconceived thesis about human life. Fielding's
Janet Frame has tried to make a poetic statement which may be felt to be true for all, to make the particular bit of personal history with which she deals stand as a symbol for human experience. The Withers family are to be not merely themselves, New Zealanders with a local habitation and a name, but Man, Woman and Child. That this is so is made clear by the epilogue, where an effect is created of withdrawal from the immediate instance, the immediate realism, into something universal. The poet John Donne wrote, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee". Janet Frame puts it thus, "And the name was Daphne Withers, though the papers said another name".
The method which she has chosen involves presentation of her material in the usual manner through the third person. Not content with this, however, she has also woven in passages in italics which give either the dream world of some speaker or the twilit mental world of Daphne, who is to see and feel for all of us as the story goes its way. Daphne thus expresses explicitly, in a poetic monologue, what Owls Do Cry
means symbolically; she is also a character within the story; she is also very obviously the voice of the author. This is too great a burden to place upon any device of character or plot, and the novel suffers accordingly. In addition the texture of the novel is notable for all sorts of poetic patterns, such as the ' verbal echoes, the clustered images which gather about the treasure trove-rubbish dump, and the fire which "withered" Francie, the first of the family to be destroyed. More closely interwoven and perhaps more effective are the continual poetic references to childish rhymes, to poetry with its non-rational overtones, to objects out of the world of childish magic, and to childish misunderstandings of words and things which suggest other, expanding meanings, in the manner of James Joyce's puns.
A reviewer of The Lagoon
expressed the hope that Janet Frame would win through to more control of her form in her later work.
Owls Do Cry
as "explosive"; the same year 1957, however, witnessed another explosion, that made by Ian Cross's
The novel is set in Raggleton, recognisably a North Island coastal town, and narrates the story of the eleven-year-old Jimmy Sullivan, a tough little Catholic, prepared when fate takes its cruel turn to do battle even with God. For God "put one across him" in the disastrous three days before the adult world sent him to the convent for refuge. But Jimmy survives ... "I don't care what else God is going to try on me, but whatever it is, he had better watch his step".
"I don't care" is almost a refrain, highlighting ironically Jimmy's "care" and anguish, the deep unhealing wound which he is anxious to hide, just as he hides his hurt when he is punished at school. The reader, too, "cares", being left with that sense of human endurance which is the basis of tragedy.
For his story Cross adopted the indirect presentation of his material through the mind of one participant. When that participant is a thirteen-year-old, remembering what he had lived through two years before when he was only eleven, and when the material to be presented is an adult drama which the boy did not understand at the time and does not yet fully understand at the moment of recall, you have complexities which only a skilful navigator can control. Ian Cross does so triumphantly. Jimmy's narration is almost always convincingly in a boy's language, the recorded dialogue brilliantly so, while the childish level of comprehension at which the story moves has a transparency which enables the reader to penetrate to the adult interpretation of what Jimmy saw.
Jimmy's nervous concentration, his love and his terror transfer to the reader, who longs for some saviour to intervene. "A chance in a million for someone like God to step in and give me a helping hand ... if he is such a hot scone why doesn't he do more day-to-day stuff." But no one steps in, not the nuns nor the priests, not Jimmy's sister Molly nor his old pal Bloody Jack, not God himself. Time and
"There's no hiding the fact that in some ways I am dissatisfied with God . . . this from God, and me only little. He could have waited till I got bigger ... If enough people started a mutiny against God, maybe he will sit up and take notice."
Among the ironies of the story is Jimmy's sense that he is a God Boy, "a boy that God has his eye on", because he thought himself elected for special favour, being both clever and good. But God has his eye on Jimmy Sullivan in a different sense, that of having a "down" on him. On the last page there is perhaps a further turn to the sense of "God Boy" when old Sister Francis, repulsed in her endeavour to soften the skin of Jimmy's protective toughness, confesses, "God makes little boys stronger than old women in more ways than one". Jimmy will survive, however damaged; this is also a manifestation of God's ways.
The God Boy
is a vital and original little book. It offers various pleasures, among them the recognition of familiar truths and the exploration of assumptions. Above all it is authentically moving. To achieve all this in a short novel concentrated in its focus into the mind of a thirteen-year-old New Zealand boy is a remarkable feat.
Second novels are always awaited with some trepidation. Was the first a flash in the pan, or the beginnings of a steady fire? The Backward Sex, 1960, is a book to raise some doubts. For one thing, it is so similar in its material to
The marginal material is excellent, as before. Minor characters such as the local constable, the stepmother and the girl friend are accurately observed. The passages between the two boys are particularly good. But is Mrs Rainier, the boarder, credible? As the instrument of Robbie's discovery of himself as a man, she makes the plot tick; but is she anything more than a bit of plot mechanism?
What E. H. McCormick has noted as Ian Cross's "extraordinary
The God Boy, partly because this seventeen-year-old narrator, Robbie, though more articulate than Jimmy, is still not one to analyse his feelings in words. Emotions have therefore to be inferred from the many surface details. The book seems in consequence to be one-dimensional, with a disturbing physical emphasis. It is a serious novel, but close to melodrama. (See also chapter eight.)
If the publication of Owls Do Cry
could be said to make an explosion in 1957, 1958 saw several outbursts quite as exciting. It was a bumper year in fiction.
Spinster
was published in England, where it attracted "rave" reviews before New Zealanders ever had a chance to get their hands upon it. It was read therefore here with great interest, and promptly became the centre of vigorous discussions. Was Anna a possible person? Was teaching in an infant room ever like that? Who anyway was Sylvia Ashton-Warner?
Members of the primary teaching service knew the name "Sylvia" as that signed to articles on teaching methods for Maori infants. The author is a teacher with plenty of experience of the type of school and community described in Spinster. Clearly, then, the background was authentic; indeed, its very authenticity led readers astray, in the manner so characteristic of us, into judging the novel as a transcript of fact. As in the visual arts, New Zealanders prefer the pleasures of recognition to those of imaginative exploration. Photographic realism on the whole is more likely to be acceptable to us than transmutation of actuality into a higher and more universal truth. Too many discussions of
The spinster of the title is Anna Vorontosov, gifted in art and in music, as in human relationships, but a little balmy. She primes herself each morning with brandy, frequently weeps, talks to trees and flowers, has bursting headaches and exhausting nervous crises, longs for a man and children, yet has refused, long ago, the one who might have comforted her. The school where she is infant mistress offers other menfolk, the Head, married and imperturbable, Paul Vercoe, the not-so-young "pressure cooker" trainee, Abercrombie the inspector. Anna is drawn to them all in turn, without satisfaction.
But love, the longing for relationships, and the urge to create will not be stifled. They burst out into Anna's teaching life in that prefab classroom among the falling cabbage-tree leaves where day after day she swims in the turbulent noisy brown-and-white sea of infancy. Maori voices beat about her:
'Miss Vottot—Seven he's got a knife! He's cutteen my stomat!'...
'My twin she dong me on the boko.' ...
'Twinnie's cryeen. Who donged you, Twinnie?'...
'I teached him and he won't listen.'...
'Aren't you goin' to wead the B'ue Jug, Mitt Wottot?'. ..
'That's why somebodies they tread my sore leg for notheen.
Somebodies.' . . .
Dennis's lost pencil must be found, Wiki wants "a scissor" to cut out "those leg", Matawhero's shirt must be tucked in, kooties combed from little heads, noses wiped. Bundles of tears and toes and fingers must be picked up and soothed, the prefab dinghy must be kept afloat in all temperamental weathers.
Paul Vercoe makes the same appeal to Anna as do the children she teaches, but without the same unchallenged rights. How can he, who thinks that teaching others is "such a waste of time", understand the pulsing flow that goes "between Thee and Me" in the creative joy of Anna's life? "I teached him and he won't listen." Paul, who can strike one child and dishonour another, can find no outlet for himself in the relationships which the school offers, nor is Anna willing to be drained of her reserves to help him. He blows his brains out, and Anna's dinghy goes tossing on.
Anna's inefficiencies, her chaotic classroom, her missing rolls, her abandoned work books, are outward matters only. Beneath there is the search for the key which will unlock life for these little brown minds. To what will they respond? Anna listens to their voices.
'What are you crying for, Very Little One?' . . . ('It's always relationship they cry over,' comments Anna.)
Matawhero doesn't draw. He is reading the Blue Jug to Patchy on the steps . . . Matawhero is too closely concerned with the personal relation to do anything with only himself in it. . .
T be your pet, ay,' suggests Riki, climbing upon my knee as I sit on my low chair. T be your pet over all them others . . . ' She wants what she wants and likes what she likes and what she wants and likes is a full measure of Thee and Me . ..
What is the key, then, to such children? What, if it comes to that, is the key to life, for which Anna is searching?
The key for the children is discovered in a flash of perception; it is in the words to which they will respond on the reading book page, the words of their life—fear, ghost, kill, butcher, police, fight, gaol. These, not the Janet-and-John sentimentalities of A Cat on The Mat, will draw the Maori child into the world of written communication with his fellows.
. . . 'What's this word?' asks Tame.
'Kiss.'
A strange excitement comes over him. He smirks, then laughs outright, says it again, then tugs at Patchy nearby and shows him. 'That's "kiss",' he says emotionally. 'K-I-S-S.'
Patchy lights up too in an extraordinary way. They both spell it. The reading is held up while others are called and told and I feel that something has happened though I don't know what.
The next morning Patchy runs in, his freckles all agog.
T can till pell kitt!' he cries. 'K-i-et-et!'
Anna reflects, "What terrible power there must be in words for little children if we could only tap it and harness it!"
This she does, in the Maori reading books which she writes and illustrates. But her own problems of living are less easy to solve. When her work is not recognised professionally by the grading awards, she abandons it. The end of the novel sees her setting off back to her own land to meet the shadowy Eugene who has at last, it seems, offered to put the question for which Spinster has been craving for so long. The hurt will be healed which was inflicted by "Somebodies", her longing to create will find its fulfilment, and a son, perhaps, will be hers to cherish as another Little One in another land.
This is what Spinster
is about. It is
The technique is that of first-person narration, so that the prose has to carry not only the story, but the impression of Anna's personality and of the personalities of others. Anna comes over clearly, with perhaps too much confessional intimacy. No one else is as plain, but this may be because Anna is interested only in her own reactions, and in the children. The children are masterly; in choric echo, in repeated phrases, incidents and suggestions they are revealed individually while making the musical continuo for Anna's discovery of the key to life.
To order this tumbling chaotic material, Sylvia Ashton-Warner has framed the novel firmly within the round of the seasons, tidied up its ending with a return to the opening pages, and woven the whole together with recurring quotations from the poetry which she, or Anna, or both, love because it expresses their need. The chapter headings, the musical and poetic references, the thematic Maori conversations not only provide the emotional force of the novel, but are elements in its structure.
How good is Spinster?
Opinions vary in a remarkable way. Here are a few:
"Anna Vorontosov is a major literary creation." (English review.)
"Spinster purports to be a novel, and in her efforts to pretend that what she has to say about how to teach reading is material for a novel the author has had recourse to a whole series of gimmicks ..." (One of the New Zealand educational journals.)
"Spinster cannot be given the highest marks as a novel. It is too uneven." (New Zealand Listener.)
"All this adds up to a recognisable human being. It is true that the reader is occasionally bored by some of her outpourings and irritated by her mawkish habit of nearly always calling children 'little ones', but then Anna in real life would certainly be irritating, and sometimes boring."22 (Landfall.)
"... a loose, rich, rhapsodic work that owes nothing to precedent . . .
"The author has created a highly original—if sometimes extravagantly implausible—character; but her greatest triumph is the evocation in all its fruitful anarchy of the 'pre-fab' battlefield of races, theories, personalities." (
Take your pick!
(Notes for a critical discussion will be found in the Appendix.)
Sylvia Ashton-Warner was awarded the New Zealand Literary Fund Scholarship after the publication of Spinster, and set to work on her second novel which appeared first in America in 1960. America had, of course, taken up
"One excellent novel is just that; two of them by the same author form strong evidence that the world has another fine writer," said 23
Incense to Idols
employs the same first-person narration as
Germaine de Beauvais, a pianist of note, has improbably left Paris to come to a small New Zealand city—it could be Hastings—in search of her old French maestro. There she exists between cocktails and music in a whirl of sexual obsession. Five men come into the story, four of them destroyed in various ways by their relationship with her. The fifth, the Reverend Guymer, who unpredictably attracts Germaine the most, is relatively untouched, for he has his own obsessions and offers incense to his own idols. He is an eloquent preacher,
Thus a "genuine sinner" like this woman can go to church "with little moral risk at all" of being converted. In this spirit Germaine attends the services, sinking into "the minor paradise of sound" which Guymer's rhetoric provides. The author draws together these two threads in the pattern of Germaine's story, her passion for him, his passion for God. When Guymer thunders out his attack on the idolaters of the City who burn incense to idols, Germaine reflects, "I'm your City ... I, who squander an inheritance in fashion, wallow in wine, risk life in speed ..."
'Thus saith the Church: "For three transgressions of New Zealand, and for four, God may not turn away the punishment hereof. for we smack each other up every night when the pubs have closed at six, and in broad daylight we speed head-on upon each other; we spend multimillions over the years on horses, pubs and possessions, ..." '
Incense to Idols
is a novel with serious pretensions. But its style is exasperating beyond even the point at which Germaine's undisciplined flood of sensations is intended to irritate. It is too long, too repetitive, and in places (as in the episode of the baby in the wineglass) incredibly and unnecessarily unpleasant. Though Germaine is clearly meant to be out of emotional control, there is surely hysteria in the writing in excess of what is required to exhibit her neurosis.
But when all this is admitted, there remains the fact that Sylvia Ashton-Warner has something to say. The novel is about conversion, among other things. "Saints should be sinners," reflects Germaine. The Reverend Guymer cannot, therefore, be a saint, because he is too obsessed with his role as prophet to understand sin or suffering when it is before his eyes. When Germaine appeals to him for help, he rejects her. Perhaps, then, in reverse, a sinner can be a saint? Germaine, the worshipper of Baal, has never felt stirring within her the "sparkling insight" which others call a soul; will she discover one? "I have just not known what it is. All I know is that if I ever do become touched with it, it will be through the material and the mortal since with people like me the unseen must be proved by the seen."
This "touching through the material and the mortal" is the substance
The book carries an epigraph from Job xlii: 5, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee." At the end, this reference is picked up again, as Germaine stumbles up the deserted church into the pulpit and reads the open page of the great Bible; she finds not only verse five, but verse six, "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes". Recalling the sterile sex-obsessed life that lies behind her, she sees that "my whole life I've burnt incense to idols when I could have burnt incense to love", and sinks melodramatically into the oblivion of suicide.
This novel has bored, baffled and angered readers. Some put it down half-read, unable to penetrate the muttered turgid prose in which Germaine's interior monologue is rendered. But it is worth a struggle before you dismiss it. Bell Call, 1964, which employs equally whirling prose, tells of Tarl Prackett, genius-mother and believer in freedom. It is not yet available in New Zealand.
Ruth France first became known when she won the prize for a Royal Ode for the proposed visit of King George VI. For her poetry she uses the pseudonym of Paul Henderson. She is the wife of an experienced yachtsman, lives at Sumner, and has two sons.
The Race, 1958, is an exploration of moral and emotional stresses in men and in women at a time of crisis. For the men, the revealing test is a stormy passage from Wellington to Lyttelton in the yacht
Like Spinster, The Race
is a book to cause argument. Most reviewers—masculine ones—admire the taut sea drama aboard
I am reminded of a passage in Katherine Mansfield's At the Bay, where the father of the family, Stanley Burnell, has to be organised
Into the living-room she ran and called "He's gone!" Linda cried from her room: "Beryl! Has Stanley gone?" Old Mrs Fairfield appeared, carrying the boy in his little flannel coatee.
"Gone?"
"Gone!"
Oh, the relief, the difference it made to have the man out of the house. Their very voices were changed as they called to one another; they sounded warm and loving and as if they shared a secret. Beryl went over to the table. "Have another cup of tea, mother, it's still hot." She wanted, somehow, to celebrate the fact that they could do what they liked now. There was no man to disturb them; the whole perfect day was theirs.
Nothing as good as this appears in The Race, where the writing has not this subtlety. But the observation is as acute; maybe the men are not the best judges of that? The behaviour of the women under strain in
What of the scenes at sea, first printed in Landfall
some years earlier? Probably it is true to say that the contrast between old Con, who "loses" himself, and young Laurie, who finds in himself an unexpected strength of will, has not been thought out to its depths; there is something cloudy in the philosophical issues raised by the
Early in 1959 another new author appeared, Marilyn Duckworth, with a short novel set in London but having a New Zealand girl for protagonist. A Gap in the Spectrum
is a study in odd states of mind, almost clinical in its psychological detail. The heroine loses her memory, and searches London to find herself, her parents, her identity. There is a good picture of the loneliness of the big city for one from far away, and a number of striking grotesque episodes, including one in a mental hospital. The heroine's puzzlement,
The Matchbox House
followed in 1960. This is stronger meat. Mrs Dobie, housewife with a baby and a philandering husband, minds the three children of a friend who is ill. Their father visits them weekly. In the neurotic context of Mrs Dobie's manoeuvres to attract him, the story thrashes along. Something is conveyed of the mental and emotional fog which day-to-day coping with insistent children can induce, something is expressed of the nastiness of neurotic obsessions. But the artistic purpose and direction of the book are far from certain. This kind of subject, humourless, and set in the half-light of peripheral states of mind, is one peculiarly difficult to assess. Is this pretentious stuff-and-nonsense, or a genuine attempt to express a "private vision"? By awarding Marilyn Duckworth the Scholarship in Letters for 1961, the New Zealand Literary Fund has indicated its view that these books are of value. (See also chapter eight.)
Just before Christmas 1960 two novels by new writers came from English publishing houses. Noel Milliard's Maori Girl
is the first full-length story of the
Noel Hilliard is known for short stories, mostly on Maori themes. The opening of this novel evokes with clarity the look, the sound, the atmosphere, of a Maori child's life on a farm somewhere in Taranaki. Haki Samuel had wrenched a farm out of the kahikateas at Mokamokai, and founded a family. There were nine children, two given away to relatives. Netta, the girl of the story, was born at the beginning of the depression.
Maori Girl
is another item in our literature of protest; rightly, David Hall has drawn attention to its kinship with
"Fourteen people lived in the house, including five married couples, each in a single room, and a year-old baby. They all shared one bathroom, one small washhouse, and one lavatory."
Arthur, equally insecure, finds to his astonishment that he is putting down roots:
"He nailed a box for the milk bottles to the crazy-fence at the front, and he put up a rough shelf to hold the knick-knacks ... on Friday nights they went shopping together, arms linked, Arthur carrying the string kits . . ."
When, in this newly found urge to settle, he protests to the authorities about housing conditions, Netta's boss, who is landlord as well, turns her out instantly; before this can be known to Arthur, he reacts in illogical fury to his chance discovery that the child is not his, rejecting Netta with a deadly insult:
" 'Black!—you're as black as the bloody ace of spades.' "
The rest of Netta's story can be imagined; Hilliard tells it with speed and enough restraint to make it really moving.
This is, of course, a "preaching" novel, but its thesis springs fairly naturally from its realistic detail, which is rendered with some skill. This new submerged tenth of our towns needs a new Sargeson to interpret for it. If Hilliard can develop his art, he should go far, for he has the knowledge, as well as a controlling moral intention. (See also chapter eight.)
Frances Keinzly is also a writer of promise. Her plot mechanism in Tangahano
creaks badly, especially the hackneyed contrivance by which the father is drawn back into the family so that a romantic happy ending may be clearly in sight on the final page. The writing too, is in the romantic tradition, relying overmuch upon the colourful adjective. For example, look at the account of the roadside fruit stalls passed as Kathy and her family motor south from Auckland, "... set out to display red satin strawberries, red velvet tomatoes, red shot-silk apples ..." One is reminded of the adjectival excess which clogged Jane Mander's prose in the opening chapter of
Kathy, brought to this alien place by a husband who needs the high wages, makes a home out of a shack in spite of fate; but the hard driving force which she exerts in order to do so undermines her marriage. The novel is an analysis of this development, in which the people
A refreshing lightweight story is Robin Muir's Word for Word, 1960, which makes a piquant final titbit for this series of discussions, since it deals with the trials of a New Zealand printing and publishing house.
Though one hesitates to assert that all our publishers behave like these, the book provides an amusing version of the popular image of the literary world. We are shown the breathless haste of production, the unpredictable vagaries of public preference, and the personal eccentricities of our local Grub Street. Word for Word
runs on a current of witty, heartless, shallow dialogue, with a probable debt to Evelyn Waugh, and will certainly amuse. Particularly welcome is its deflating refusal to mount on any rhetorical high horses.
This study of the New Zealand novel in its first hundred years has revealed our persistent urge to get the people and the country on to paper. The task has not proved easy. Nobody realised until the 1930s quite how difficult it was to pioneer a new literature. Like the early settlers, our early writers were content to transfer the plants of European culture to the local scene, without realising the differences which a new environment might impose. Nor did they reckon sufficiently with the possibilities of native growth.
The resulting discrepancies between fact and fiction, between the reality and the convention, did not become fully obvious until the third generation of native writers was in its maturity. Earlier voices of protest—Katherine Mansfield's or Jane Mander's—were no more than individual cries.
But those who grew up with Robin Hyde effected a change in our state of mind. As she knew, her generation had discovered their real identity, and found ways of expressing that experience in works of the imagination. The natural conservatism of the reading public, together with the retarding effect of the war, held us back for a while from appreciating just what the 1930s achieved. Now it is possible to see that those were the years in which the New Zealand novel began to take root. It may be too soon to say that the plant is now established, but it is a native, tough, resilient, and it is doing well. The present climate seems favourable, the soil is certainly fruitful.
Recently, the crop has been of high quality. Moreover, there seems to be an expanding market for the product; perhaps we can look ahead with some confidence to the next one hundred years.
(Topics for Study and Discussion are given in the Appendix.)
Judging by work published in 1960-65, the novel seems indeed to be established in New Zealand. Among serious writers there have been new novels that consolidate old reputations (Cross, Frame, Ballan-tyne, Hilliard, Duckworth), while there have been also some memorable first appearances (Pearson, Shadbolt, Wallis, Billing). In light fiction, the upward trend in quality and quantity continues, while there have been some useful extensions of range.
The bread-and-butter of popular fiction publishing continues to be earned by romantic entertainments aimed at women readers, our earliest and longest-lived type of "exploiting" novel. In it, sheep stations, North and South, are still plentiful; the Maori people still have sales-appeal in plot, title, and jacket design; and a rosy glow of unreality suffuses the "enchanted islands", "long white clouds", "blue remembered hills", and "singing tides" of the exotic country which these tale tellers evoke. History is still with us: sometimes a beautiful girl will "cast a shadow over three generations" in the dear old homestead under the elms; sometimes she has a turbulent life among the Wild Whalers at Port Underwood or Te Awaiti; sometimes she is a waif washed ashore on a raft, and roughs it on the goldfields; sometimes she comes fresh from the Old Country to dwell in a "colonial mansion by an enchanted river", meeting there tattooed Maori chiefs, perils and passion, and finally choosing the stockman for her mate; he proves to be, of course, an Earl.
Romances with contemporary settings are less hackneyed. In these, the heroine takes a job in a country store during her university vacation, boards with a Maori family, and marries "an exciting hermit"; or she runs a guest-house for tourists in Fiordland; or she meets some attractive medico on the Voyage Out, and is later rescued by him after hectic adventures with seducers, deserted whares, and old gravel pits in the pine forests. One or two story spinners still offer the old style heroine, ordered by an eccentric will to come "to the colony" (today!) and marry some unknown bronzed "colonial" who, of course, turns out on her arrival to have other ideas. One heroine, the spoilt child of wealthy, class-conscious parents, falls for the unpretentious man at the service-station; another settles for a country school teacher. Thus is democracy asserted.
Some shrewdly observed local and domestic scenes give a ring of truth to Eva Burfield's The Long Winter, 1964, in which a hitch-hiker's involvement with the family establishes a strong plot. Margot Bennett's heroine Jenny, in That Summer's Earthquake, 1963, shares with her brother in the sheep work (lambing, shearing, dogs, maggots and all) on a Napier run, and falls disastrously in love with the "hired hand" Sam, a drunken swagger with a past. They elope, but the author evades the problems which she has very convincingly posed by ringing down her curtain with the earthquake.
Less acceptable are several popular exploitations of Maori themes: in these the colour question is invariably raised, but handled with sentimental insincerity, or deliberate cheating. In one story, the racial barrier between young Dr Tane and pretty little Gay is removed by the expedient of revealing that he is, after all, of white blood, having been merely "brought up Maori".
New names among romancers include Doris Addison, Menie Archibald, Marama Brent, Joyce Dingwell, Annette Eyre, Margaret Fenwick, Catherine Hay, Douglas Lord, Sally T. Ollivier,
A new area has been opened up by several writers who offer the "hospital novel", basically a love story spiced with tonsillectomies, blood transfusions and graver occasions. Will staff nurse Kate elope with Dr Peter? Has Matron really fallen in love with the hospital porter? Who will snap up the youngest house surgeon, or the so-wealthy and handsome accident case in Ward Three? This romantic sub-type offers possibilities, for the closed setting of hospital life promotes that clash of personalities which is the stuff of fiction, while the drama of life and death is a readymade background. Something more than mere entertainment may be made of it yet. Marion Kennedy's melodramatic The Wrong Side of the Door, 1963, is clearly meant to be informative as well as thrilling. It is a first-person story of the training of a psychiatric nurse.
Another sub-type flourishing in recent years is the detective story, where we have at least one remarkable success, Simon Jay's Death of a Skin Diver, 1964. This has a tight plot, good writing, and a really knowledgeable exploitation of the New Zealand setting. What could be better ingredients for a local thriller than skindiving, yachting and yachtsmen, expeditions by day and by night on the intricacies of the Waitemata Harbour (with maps), plus some smuggling, some science, some humour, and some murder? Simon Jay is a pseudonym disguising an Auckland pathologist; his amateur
There are several other newcomers to the genre. Ralph Stephenson has an "on-the-run" yarn; Valerie Grayland has tried to establish a Maori detective; Noeline Tarrant sets a lively story among Rotorua weekenders, with boats and a tapu cave as extras. Barbara Cooper, in Target for Malice, 1964, makes an original first thriller out of tensions below the suburban surface of a group of isolated houses. The young married folk involved are well managed, as are the criminal details, the poisoned cat, the social evening, the sleeping pills, the conventional chit-chat, and—not to give the plot away—the milk bottle.
Our most consistent producer of homegrown detection has been Elizabeth Messenger, who has added five titles to her list. The best is A Heap of Trouble, 1963, set in the Bay of Islands. Who used the launch last? Why is Miss Preedy's rockery interesting? Is that a
Kath is a girl's name, and also prison slang for an indeterminate sentence. Both kinds of "Kath" threaten the central figure of Keith Henshaw's novel Kath, 1964. The publishers announce this as a suspense thriller, which it certainly is. But it is also as economical and vitriolic a satire on the lower levels of New Zealand life as we have had for a long time. The dialogue is sharp, crude, crackling and recognisable. The setting is real. The little ring of vivid, amoral characters grate upon one another in a fast plot. Vern, Merv and Ne are "chippies" on an Auckland housing construction job, and take to large-scale timber stealing, aided by Nev and nasty little Eric. Kath is the wife of Vern. In spite of the vamped-up horror fantasies of the ending,
The sex-and-violence thriller with a historical base is still saleable, it seems, to judge by the continuing issue of stories by Frank Bruno and George Joseph.
The mystery yarn with a realistic contemporary base has begun to have some importance. Arthur Manning followed up his first venture with Tainted Money, 1963, in which the teller, with stolen money in his care, is involved as both
Some light fiction offers us a picture of contemporary life for its own sake, using amused recognition rather than mystery or drama for its supporting structure. Such are the two novels of In the Sticks, 1963, and
Michael Davis began with a series of farcical sketches, Mutton on the Menu, 1962 (what a Mary Scott title!), but in
One unpretentious story reminds us of the "preaching" novels of the 1890s. It is His Own Enemy, 1965, by "S.S.", which deserves individual mention here for the sincerity of its purpose and the fidelity of its detail. It tells of the rehabilitation of an alcoholic.
Among the romances two stand out for their more serious intentions. Margaret Mackay's Amanda, 1963, is an example of our saga of family life, somewhat in the Scanlan tradition. It begins in the 1890s with newly-weds pioneering in the southern high country. Amanda is widowed, the children grow, and
Dell Adsett's A Magpie Sings, 1963, is based on life in a small northern farming community in the 1900s. It is handicapped by the size of the canvas, by the author's uncertain management of her angle of presentation, and by lack of a strong narrative line. But the children are real, and there are very lively sketches of local life.
The line that divides "light" from "serious" in fiction is difficult to draw firmly. Some of our recent novelists appear now on one side, now on the other. Margaret Jeffery,
Margaret Jeffery's Mairangi, 1964, for instance, is clearly to be taken seriously, both for its carefully modulated handling of emotion and eccentricity and for its evocation of atmosphere. Young Judith the heroine and her great-aunt Eulalie are a triumph. Only the over-dramatic stress of the second half of the novel recalls the much lighter fiction with which the author began ten years ago.
Charles Frances's first New Zealand novel, Ask the River, 1964, is a murder mystery. His
No Boots for Mr Moehau, 1963, is a loving and sensitive achievement, which some hackneyed conventions cannot destroy. Old Mohe Moehau and his wife Hema live at Matarangi, an out-of-the-way Maori settlement on the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula. There is fishing, marginal farming and forestry. Audley presents their way of life with humour, a poet's feeling for sands and sea, and an intimate knowledge of Maori behaviour. When Matarangi is threatened by land speculators, he contrives a fairy-tale plot which thwarts the villains just in
Also straddling the dividing line with a pair of novels is The Scarecrow, 1963, has the vividness conferred by the casual boy-lingo of the narrator Neddy, of a "no-good family" in a small town. The opening sentence indicates the tone and the shock tactics, "The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut." Neddy's narrative whizzes on from there, a jerky and unpredictable mixture between a comedy of errors and a sexual melodrama. In his discussion of it in
Holcroft notes the connection between The Scarecrow
and another novel about the delinquent fringe of boyhood, Norman Harvey's
Anne Holden's short novel Rata, 1965, is a refreshing change from these. Rata Lovell, child of a Pakeha father and a Maori mother, is an orphan of eleven, living in Wellington in the care of an earnest Pakeha spinster. Lonely and without loyalties, she plays truant, gets deeper into trivial deceptions, and finally runs away (in a vividly rendered journey) to find her Maori relatives in the Urewera country. We have an authentic and perceptive child's-eye view of life in the pa, where she is taken in without question; her half blood however makes her sharply aware of social differences, and the book closes on her decision to accept the self which the Pakeha world offers her.
The work of Phillip Wilson is difficult to assess. His short stories {Some are Lucky, 1960) reveal him as a serious artist,
Beneath the Thunder, 1963, studies a post-war marriage in a rehabilitation farm settlement in the Waikato. Pete, who has had a bad war, is at odds with his wife Glenda, and retreats to an intrigue with Poppy, wife of his Maori neighbour Joe. A bush journey, a burning house and a thunderstorm bring the drama to exploding point. Ultimately Pete breaks through to his "still centre", and there is hope that the adoption of his child by Poppy will redeem his sterile marriage.
Pat Booth's work also is variable. His Long Night Among the Stars, 1961, set in Australia, was a prize-winner in the
Several writers besides Booth have satirised our small towns. David Ballantyne, who has been silent on New Zealand matters since 1948, launched an attack in The Last Pioneer, 1963. He brings to Mahuta a London widower with a six-year-old son, and involves him in community and personal dilemmas. Ballantyne's intention is to expose the shortcomings of our casual, beery, and unsatisfying way of life. Unfortunately the enveloping matey boredom that is evoked tends to stifle the reader as well as the hero. "Fiction is more than fidelity," says
Maurice Gee's The Big Season, 1962, is also full of "ordinary jokers". Its centrepiece is the United Football Club; Rob Andrews, fullback, is a local variant of David Storey's sporting hero, while the lingo spoken is sub-Sargeson modernised. But Rob finds little meaning in the bourgeois round of booze and bawdy which is all his family, friends and town can offer; he rejects them all, football included, for the spontaneous companionship of a safe-breaker and a tart. This
Our most comprehensive study of an ingrown township is Bill Pearson's Coal Flat, 1963, which Charles Brasch described in
In this prejudiced piece of sociology, Pearson analyses "with un-appeased resentment" the little country he had just escaped from. He expresses here the attitudes from which the novel was later to grow. I quote some remarks: "There is no place in normal New Zealand society for the man who is different." "We need an art to expose ourselves, explain ourselves to ourselves, see ourselves in a perspective of time and place." "No artist can work without an audience willing to co-operate: if he is to be honest his audience must be honest; they must be prepared to speculate about themselves. This is something New Zealanders will not do." "There is a paucity of common experience ... a need for a common experience to talk from, and the need for conventions to account for and place emotions unrecognised in the threadbare constitution of social behaviour."
These are the words of 1952. I believe that in the thirteen years since, artists have established such conventions and located our common experience, that the art has been found which can show ourselves to ourselves, and that both writers and readers are more honest than they were. Pearson's own novel is a measure of the change. Like The Story of a New Zealand River
and
Pearson takes a West Coast mining township, admirable for his purpose because it is small, isolated by geography and social tradition, and with a strongly marked individuality. Such a town is manageable within the compass of a novel, and offers a microcosm of New Zealand life.
There are the pub, the school, and the dance hall; there are doctors, publicans, teachers, priests, housewives; there are the main road, the railway, the creek, the dredge, the water-races, the cicadas, the blackberries. And dominating all is the mine, with its union and its politics, and its workers who balance the more usual middle-class preoccupations of our satirists. Pearson chooses this community for a study which is to "expose ourselves to ourselves".
His method is orthodox and ample; bring to the town an outsider:
Coal Flat
tells, then, of Paul Rogers, a Coaster who is "different" because of his education and his stand as a conscientious objector. He is haunted by a sense of guilt, however, since he did not stick to his conchy principles after all; with an urge to atone to society in some unspecified way, he arrives one February morning to take up a post at the school. In the year that follows, he is tested as an idealist, as a socialist, as a lover, and as a teacher. By November, it is clear that he has failed in everything except his personal relationship to Flora Palmer. The school, the mining community, the church, the ordinary families, are impervious to change. The boy he would have helped is back where he was. The miners have learnt nothing from the boycott and the strike. Social attitudes are unaltered. The town wins, and settles back unmodified, as the closing paragraph suggests.
Paul gives up, and takes Flora away: "I can't stay here. I'm out of place. The town isn't with me . . . I've got to start in another place . . . I'll be a safe conforming suburban backgardener . . . boasting of beancrops over the back fence . . . I'll steer clear of ideas. I'll be just another suburban New Zealander . . . and I'll go for the job and the family and the house and the garden."
It is a pessimistic view of ourselves that Pearson offers, and the reader will probably want to argue with him. The town "let Paul down", it is true; but how valid are Paul's ideas, anyway? Much of the novel centres on this problem of loyalty, to people, to class, to principles, to friends. Paul's story raises in acute form problems we have all had to face.
(Notes for a critical discussion will be found in the Appendix.)
Another group of novelists, working however on a narrower canvas, have endeavoured to "expose ourselves to ourselves". Ian Cross, Redmond Wallis, Marilyn Duckworth, deal more with personal relationships than with social realism. Before discussing them however I will look at some second novels by writers whose first attempts appeared at the end of the 1950s.
I'll Soldier No More
with
Ruth France's Ice Cold River, 1961, is a study of a family group under strain. Three generations of Lewises meet at their Canterbury homestead for Christmas, and are isolated by sudden floodwaters. As in
From its opening sentence, Noel Hilliard's Power of Joy, 1965, brings many delights of recognition. We all of us remember some creek, pool, tree or flaxbush which represented in childhood our escape from the hostile or puzzling world; we remember books which brought merciful oblivion,
This is not to suggest that Hilliard is imitating; on the contrary, he is presenting a significant experience, shared with others in the context of this time and country; it is in New Zealand that the "moments of vision" have come, and it is in terms of a New Zealand boyhood that he expresses them.
The story is of Paul, a solitary five-year-old, son of a complaining slattern and her on-the-dole husband, in one of the abandoned railway camps of the Depression years. Paul is a "loner". His approach to people alternates with retreat from them, retreat into a private world
This choice of a tree symbol is excellent. The trees, river and hills in Power of Joy
are as actual and as deeply observed as Hilliard's accurate bush lore can make them, but in addition, the tree is a brilliant image of that "Heaven (which) lies about us in our infancy". William Golding once wrote about his own experience: "There is something about a tree which appeals not to a vestigial instinct but to the most human, if you like the highest, in a child . . . Everything else has been shaped, touched, used and understood, plumbed, by powerful adults. But a tree lifts its fork above them, ramifies in secret. There is in a tree only a yard or two above your head, that which is most precious to a small boy; an unvisited place, never seen before, never touched by the hand of man. This chestnut tree was my escape." Young Paul's "escape", then, is the focal point of a fine novel.
Power of Joy
has the structural discipline of its narrow range; trivial but formative incidents acquire resonance as time passes, providing a texture of reality within which moves a very believable boy. The lyric mood is well sustained, and is no aery-faery stuff, but rooted in specific and salty actualities. The prose is modulated skilfully to keep us at the boy's viewpoint, and has many felicities of observation and style. There are weaknesses; the school dance, for instance is only ordinary, and that too-perfect classroom run by Mr Simmons; but these are balanced by the grim conviction of the Stonehurst brutalities. In his next novel perhaps Hilliard will tackle a wider subject; meanwhile,
Errol Brathwaite has published four novels since Fear in the Night. He won the
Perhaps of all our subjects this of the Maori wars is the most intractable, and in spite of fine gifts as a novelist Brathwaite has not quite conquered the ground. He follows the career of a settler, Phipps, who joins von Tempsky's commando unit; through a Maori friend Matiu, we enter rather shallowly the Maori experience. The strength of The Flying Fish
lies in its handling of military detail—weapons, strategy, manoeuvre in manuka groves and flaxswamps, stockade and homestead. The reader begins to realise what these indeterminate skirmishes felt like to those who lived through them. Brathwaite makes a genuine imaginative penetration into material that usually stimulates our writers only to romantic rhetoric or fiendish bloodbaths. The historical basis of the book is discussed by Dennis McEldowney in
Brathwaite has now followed it with the second of the planned trilogy, The Needle's Eye, 1965, which takes Major Williams, a minor personage in the first volume, into the Waikato war of 1863-1864. The military detail is again authoritative, and Brathwaite develops further the theme of the moral and personal problems men meet in these "affairs". His work in these two novels represents a real advance in our serious historical fiction.
To return to writers on personal relationships who, to use Bill Pearson's phrase, need an honest audience if they are to write honestly. Ian Cross, in After Anzac Day, 1961, certainly attempts to "explain ourselves to ourselves", and asks us to follow his investigations sympathetically. In a technique which cuts the past constantly into the present, he tries to comprehend the contradictions of both and the effect they have upon the lives of his characters. Four persons create the drama. John Rankin and his wife Margaret; Jennie Page, a part-Maori typist; and Margaret's eccentric, dying father, Creighton. Jennie is pregnant to a boy away on an overseas ship, and has been offered shelter by Rankin out of some obscure sense of guilt related to her colour and to our colonial history. The story is of the deepening currents of misunderstanding among the four, against the background of the Public Service and the waterfront strike of 1951. Not all readers will accept the New Zealand pictured here.
Three novels of 1962-3 may be grouped together as remarkably plainspoken studies of personal relationships among the young. They are Point of Origin, 1962, by Redmond Wallis;
Wallis's Point of Origin
has the same surface glitter, but more depth. Its affinity is with the novels of Iris Murdoch, with philosophical explorations embodied in personal relationships and brought to focus in a detailed sequence of dangerous action. Peter Hennessy, a working hero with a gift for mechanical inventions, meets Gillian Sedgley, of one of the Canterbury families "off the first four boats". In their love story Wallis studies our traditional sexual codes, our class frictions, and the meaning of existence for the contemporary young unbeliever. He expects his readers to be literate and prepared "to speculate about themselves"; those who are will be well rewarded.
Much the most sophisticated of the three and the toughest is Marilyn Duckworth's A Barbarous Tongue. It has less optimism, and its dialogue and characters carry such conviction that the story hurts as it would do in real life. It tells of nineteen-year-old Frieda. She flats in Wellington with "poor Thelma", sleeps with John who is only temporarily diverted from his obsession with his cancerous dying sister Barbara, goes to Dunedin when her pregnancy is realised, and is sheltered, also temporarily, by older, one-armed Austin in his bachelor flat. There Barbara joins her, and John, in crowded tragicomic chaos. In a brilliant sequence, Frieda's baby arrives. After Barbara's death, John marries Frieda, but is never hers emotionally, and soon abandons her. Austin, too, is only "half a man", as his missing arm suggests, but he believes in selfhelp, and turns Frieda out, baby and all. We end as she begins at last to assume responsibility for her own life. The title is from Yeats:
But I am old and you are young,And I speak a barbarous tongue.
This suggests that the narrator is old, but since Frieda, the "I" of the story, is young, the symbolism is vague. Obviously Barbara's name too, is intended to have symbolic resonance. These suggestions of depth are however not over-emphasised, merely lying in wait for the
Comparable in the attitudes studied, though not in its level of competence, is Jean Watson's Stand in the Rain, 1965, a feminine counterpart to Barry Crump's yarns.
Several of our novelists began with the short story. Frank Sargeson comes to mind, Davin, Courage, and Janet Frame. This may or may not be an advantage, because skill in the shorter length is not always transferable. Perhaps this difficulty explains why we have not yet had novels from two of our finest story writers, Among the Cinders, 1965, which is not without dull patches between its episodes. Shadbolt's Nick Flinders relates his own story of the "fire" of trouble that leaves him, if not seared, at least "among the cinders" in the last chapter.
Nick is that familiar (too familiar?) New Zealand figure, the disturbed teenager, and he takes to the bush, as perhaps readers will guess. Grandfather Ben—another familiar figure—goes with him, a cantankerous old romantic in search of his lost youth in goldfields, gumdiggings and milling camps. Nick is driven to flight by his unanalysed sense of guilt, which has been brought to the fore by contact with a notorious local murder of parents by sons, and by his own accidental killing of his Maori "blood-brother", Sam. This is the fire, we take it. Nick's subsequent rejection of his parents and real brother, his throwback to the primitive rituals of manhood with Ben, and his initiatory escapades with sex and drink, bring him full circle to a more mature attitude to society.
Nick's reiterated phrase is "to tell the truth": but what is the truth? "There's truth and there's real truth, if you know what I mean." The reader is given only the facts, and has to establish the "real truth" for himself, a point underlined by the surprising twist given to it all in chapter twenty-eight.
Among the Cinders
has fine qualities, but raises niggling doubts; neither its central conception nor its picaresque sequences are new, the style is sometimes uncertain, and the book is longer than its content really warrants. As a short-story man Shadbolt has been deservedly successful, and his second attempt at a novel will be welcomed.
The major novelist of our 1960s is undoubtedly Janet Frame, who followed Owls Do Cry
with
Essential to an understanding of Janet Frame's achievement is her autobiographical essay in Landfall, March 1965, in the series "Begin-
This confession brings a major critical illumination, as readers who know the Bronte story will recognise. The Frame girls chose a Bronte each; Janet was Charlotte. The imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal in which the Brontes lived as children, writing endless wild sagas peopled with their fantasies, brought destruction to Branwell and near-destruction to Emily. Charlotte turned her back on "that world" and made her way into the world of reality only with difficulty. Janet Frame, however, came to live increasingly and dangerously in her imaginary world, and in her early twenties suffered a mental breakdown from the strain of attempts to conform to normal life. She spent some eight years in hospitals. When the therapy was suggested to her of "making designs from my dreams", she wrote The Lagoon
and
Faces in the Water
is the first product of that commandment. It is a documentary not a novel, but in the context this hardly matters. Istina Mavet, a made-up character with a made-up name, spends three separate periods in hospitals in both Islands. The horror of her experience is brought home to us unbearably, partly by factual reporting and partly by an understructure of symbolism. The picture is of Inferno, in which there is no communication between beings imprisoned in themselves, and no hope of salvation.
The Edge of the Alphabet
takes up the story of Toby Withers, the epileptic son in
Will Time publish us too as grotesque, purposeless,beyond the range of human language, between the pages of iceturned and torn uncuriously by the illiterate yearstill our story is sealed at lasttill no human mind remains to tracethe compelling reason,the marginal dream?
The writing in this novel has a more subtle imaginative sharpness than anything we have had for years; look, for instance, at the last paragraph of Section twenty-seven in Part Three, describing Zoe's winter in London.
Scented Gardens for the Blind, which springs from the same "marginal dream", is both less poetic and less realistic. Its world is wholly imaginary, with insistent symbols that come from deep down in Janet Frame's submerged experience. As a child of three, she records, she made up her first story. "Once upon a time there was a bird. One day a hawk came out of the sky and ate the bird. The next day a big bogie came out from behind the hill and ate up the hawk for eating up the bird."
The hawk is fate, necessity, vengeance, what you will, an image of disaster like the atomic bomb that explodes in her last chapter. And "when there are no human beings left on earth, who will name the ashes?"
Scented Gardens
is about words, about sight and blindness, hearing and speech, about hallucination and reality. Three "characters" occupy the stage, blind Vera Glace (true mirror?), her daughter Erlene who is dumb, her husband Edward. He is a genealogist whose investigation of the Strang family (Strong?) is designed to prove that they will outlive disaster.
In turn each character takes the stage, but little is clarified at the rational level. Is Vera blind, or not? Is Erlene really dumb? Who is Uncle Black Beetle whom she talks to, on the windowsill? Is he the same as the psychiatrist, Dr Clapper? There are no plain answers; this is a book for individual struggle. Perhaps the starting point in a search for its meaning is Chapter eleven, in which Erlene's conversation with Doctor-Uncle-Clapper-Beetle takes us to the dictionary. One can live in it, it seems, in various apartments, "between speech and
spell", or "between spectre and spindrift, between spark and spirit, seem and sprout, seek and spy, seed and squander, science and stone." Or perhaps, in "a forest in the neighbourhood of flock, flood, foliage, forgiveness and fountain."
The issue of Frank Sargeson's Collected Stories
in 1964 brought one of our best known elders back into circulation, and evoked both tributes to the force of his achievement and regrets that we had not had a novel since 1949. "I like him," wrote
The year 1965 has produced one first novel of remarkable quality, Graham Billing's Forbush and the Penguins. Billing is a journalist and broadcaster, as well as an ex-Merchant Navy man. In September 1963,
His Ross Sea Journal is the direct expression of an imaginative penetration into the Antarctic experience. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel completely wordless. I'm responding very deeply to all that is happening and perhaps that is the reason." "I absorb the cold like a sponge ... I feel translated into another substance, impressed with another spirit, immersed in another medium of darkness."
Several passages record the moments from which the novel was born. "Truly strange and disturbing, strange forces stirring in the mind, strange sights seen and sounds heard." "I see a penguin chick almost grown, recently dead, a red hole in his neck where a skua gull has attacked and fed. I lie down on the guano and take a photograph of the dead bird, the blood, the rookery; and beyond, the people, the boat, the ice, the long inlet, the glaciers, the mountains, rock, grey mist, the icebergs stranded in the bay."
The Journal made it clear that here was an Antarctic adventurer with a poet's eye and a turn for metaphysics. That he should also prove to be a novelist is good fortune.
Forbush is a biologist who spends the southern summer studying the Adelie Penguins at Cape Royds. Isolation and cold assail his sense of reality; to reaffirm it he exercises human skills; he plays the clarinet, talks to himself, and invents a "Penguin Major Polyphonic Music Machine" made from Shackleton's sauce-bottles, a frozen potato, a toaster, and a toy rabbit. He survives a blizzard. (This is a sequence notable for the tension derived from accumulated detail.) He watches the penguins arrive at the rookery, and the miracles of life and of death that come with them.
Behind all this lies the insistent question, bared to its essentials by the implacability of the Antarctic. What is the significance of life? Are we not all victims? "What is the answer? There is no answer."
The novel makes at the end some affirmation of belief, but it is hardly won. The book closes with a deeply felt description of the freezing of the sea in early March, as the relentless period of the dark and cold returns. Compare this fine passage with the Journal entry for 18 February, and with the colour photographs in
(Notes for a critical discussion will be found in the Appendix.)
These, then, are the achievements of the last five years. They are, I believe, sufficiently varied in range and high in quality to justify the claim made in 1960 (at the end of chapter seven), that the New Zealand novel "is a native, tough, resilient, and . . . doing well."
(Topics for study and discussion will be found in the Appendix.)
John Mulgan: Man Alone, 1939. Guthrie Wilson:
Fiction is an art more closely related to life than any other of the arts. Its raw material is human experience, its medium is language, its purpose is to delight and instruct. "Instruct" and "delight" should be taken in the widest sense, as meaning to enlarge our sympathies, our understanding, and our stock of ideas. Literature reveals significance and pattern in the chaos of experience. The pleasure it provides is the greater for being intelligent.
Critics distinguish "art proper" from "amusement art". "Art proper", whatever its medium, demands the positive co-operation of readers, lookers, listeners. A creative effort is required to understand what the artist has created. "Art proper", moreover, not only springs from life but reflects back upon it, overflowing from the book to influence human action or belief. Many people do not wish their entertainment to disturb them in this way, preferring "amusement art" which lulls, or offers only a passing stimulation.
Some novels, that is, merely amuse; others offer deeper satisfactions. How is the critic to tell which is which, when new books come before him? Here are some suggestions as a guide.
Theme: What material of thought, feeling, or human experience is explored by the novel as a whole? What is the controlling intention? What attitude to life is revealed, and is it a responsible one? Is the theme truthfully felt, and observed with a genuine personal vision? (For instance, what is the theme of Macbeth?
The
Plot: This is the skeleton of a novel, for the persons and events must be inter-related in some organised way. "Amusement art" has usually only a plot; the fiction of "art proper" usually has a plot which also conveys a theme. Not all novels have a plot for their
no plot, why not? What framework has been provided instead?
Background and Subject: Often a novel will have an interest arising from its subject. This is obvious in historical novels, and in those set in unfamiliar environments of any kind. The important question then is, how far are such interests absorbed into the fabric of the story? Are they touristy excrescences or open propaganda? Similarly, ideas have no place in a novel except as a function of character or temperament; a novel is not a textbook.
In all these matters of content, watch for intelligence and emotional range. Fine literature does not offer appeasement; it "entertains" in the highest sense, challenging assumptions, disturbing complacency, and widening sympathy; it has an expansive effect upon our apprehension of life.
Type: What type of novel is this? Is it a realistic, feet-on-the-ground novel (Galsworthy), or is it poetic and symbolic in its approach (Virginia Woolf), or is it nearer to fable, satire or allegory? (Butler, Orwell, Golding). What is the author trying to do?
Structure: How exactly is the story told? In the first person? In the third? Does the author himself openly handle the story, being there to chip in as required, to chat, to philosophise with his readers, as do Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot? Where is the reader placed— at the author's elbow, or beside some character? If the latter, is he at the angle of vision of one character (as in The Young Have Secrets)
or of different characters in turn?
Clearly in a first-person story the viewpoint is that of the speaker, as in The God Boy, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, The Greenstone Door, Spinster. How rigidly is this viewpoint adhered to? Are there matters discussed of which the teller could not at the time have known? If so, what device does the author use? His own open intrusion with the facts? The teller's later explanatory comment? Letters er a diary? (Consider Frank Sargeson's That Summer, Graham Greene's
Exposition: A great test of an author's skill is his management of the exposition. How does he convey the information which readers must have as to who is who, what is what, and when and where and why and how? Do the facts appear in indigestible chunks, or do they slide in easily as the story moves along? (In particular, amateurs have difficulty with the past perfect tense—had been, had seen, had gone, had . . . had . . . had . . . )
Thoughts: How does the author deal with the inner thoughts and feelings of his characters? By direct statement, "She thought that . . . "? or by interior monologue? Diary entries? Letters? Poetic suggestion through imagery, recurrent phrases, or references to poetry, music, etc.? (Consider Virginia Woolf, Janet Frame, Frank Sargeson.)
Plan: Is the book divided into books, chapters, or other divisions? If so, why? Are such sections related to the movement of the novel? Is each named, or given an epigraph, or in any way marked to show the author's intention? Is there thematic linkage of any kind, such as persistent quotations from a special author, Biblical references, key images, key phrases?
Is there a "unity of time", or "unity of place"? (i.e. a restriction of the focus in any way as in classical drama).
Dialogue: How is speech managed? Is it an element in characterisation? Does it seem to be real? If not, is this a deliberate artificiality, and why?
Setting: How is the setting in time and place handled? Since most New Zealand writers have felt the pressure of our background or history, scenery and facts have been serious problems. How relevant is local colour to the author's purpose? If it is relevant, is it managed with economy, with subtlety? Is it presented openly as author's description, or evoked through a mind in the story?
Characterisation: The traditional English novel created convincing individual characters; not all contemporary novels do so, especially those which make a poetic or symbolic approach. Writing about character drawing, Mauriac says "the novelist is not an observer, but a creator of fictitious life. It is not his function to observe life, but to create it". For such creation, truth of fact is not enough. An artist must select and heighten his facts to make a credible picture. Watch the methods of characterisation. Are we told about the person, or do we learn by inference from his actions and speech? Or in both ways as in a play? Which characters are "flat", which are
Aspects of the Novel.)
Is a balance between characters kept? Are plot and character drawing related?
Not all these questions can be asked with profit of every novel. But they should start readers off on useful investigations of their own.
The notes which follow on six New Zealand novels are designed to draw readers' attention to structure and technique as a preliminary to discussion of themes and final values.
A. Structure. This book is framed between introduction and epilogue, in which "I" describe how "I" met Johnson casually in Brittany "a year or two ago" (1937, it seems); he had "just come out of Spain" on leave, and was going back. In the epilogue—by this time about 1939 when the novel was published?—, "I" pick up news of his later doings. He is still alive, for "there are some men you can't kill".
Who is "I"? Obviously, not Mulgan. Or do you take it to be Mulgan pretending to tell a true story? Why is this device adopted? How is it related to the manner of the telling of Johnson's story? Who
anyway tells the story? Does "I" ever appear in the story proper? Think out what Mulgan's reasons can have been for making the novel a narrative told casually to someone by Johnson (in the third person), and provided with an outsider's comment, however brief, on Johnson himself.
Within this frame, the book has two parts. What is the content of each? Why are they separated? Within part one, does the progression of chapters correspond to movements within the narrative? Is there a plot of any kind?
Note the exposition; Johnson is to go to New Zealand—how does Mulgan get him there, explain to readers what it is like, introduce the people, the geography, the climate, the customs, the scenery, the economy? How do we know the date? How is the passing of time shown? Notice, for instance, chapter three, when Johnson travels down to the farm in the Waikato. Mulgan shows us what Johnson saw (the key words are "saw", "watched", etc.). Note this device persistently in chapter six. Are we ever told what Johnson "thought" or "felt"? To what use are the many conversations put, both with named figures of some importance such as Scotty, Robertson, Crawley, Stenning, and with once-met rouseabouts, drunks, barmen, drivers, etc.?
By chapter five we have got to 1930 and "the temper of the country
In chapter nine Robertson writes to Johnson a long explanatory letter; is this device successful? Why did Mulgan resort to it? Does the style of it pass muster as Robertson's? Notice that Robertson comments on the significance of the riots—would Johnson have done so? Why, at this point in the story (midway), does Mulgan emphasise this material?
' In chapters eleven and twelve, the months and the seasons are particularly noted, quickening to days—Wednesday, Friday, Saturday —in chapter thirteen. Why? The pace alters again in chapters fourteen and fifteen—why?
Part two, chapter eighteen, begins, "When the European fighting started again ..." What is the implication in that word, again?
B. Style. There are several styles in this novel, varied according to Mulgan's intentions. Study a typical conversation, such as that between Stenning and Johnson at the opening of chapter ten; what is it doing for the action, characterisation, or themes? And does it seem a natural New Zealand conversation?
Study the sentence structure of the description of a coastal inlet in chapter four ("A week later he got a job . . . "). Why is it of this particular sort? Compare that passage with one from chapter six, for instance, "Johnson went with them to the sound of glass breaking ..." —what are the differences? Why has Mulgan changed the style? Is it necessary, or effective? Compare that again with passages in chapter fourteen, for instance "As he went on in the early morning . . . ". What is different here, and why? (Has Mulgan still maintained Johnson's point of view?)
Is it correct to speak, as reviewers did, of the "tough, laconic understatement" of this novel?
C. Themes. Track down in as many places as you can any references to: war; settling down; personal ownership (in land, ships, women); freedom to move about unchallenged; easy times and work; sharing or being part of a community or joining in communal activity ("standing together"); men alone; attitudes to "they", and scapegoats in general.
What in your view is the theme of this novel? (See note at the end of this section.) Does the plot, such as it is, offer opportunities for the theme to arise naturally? Consider particularly the relevance to the theme of these persons and episodes: Thompson's obsession with the war; Petersen; Mabel; Scotty's part in the riot; the riot itself; the old drunk in the railway truck; the complications between Stenning, Rua and Johnson; the bush journey. What is the significance of Old Bill Crawley, who has been "alone" since the Great War . . . ("They've all
In chapter eighteen, after experiencing English life again, Johnson is shown as being unusually articulate about his ideas. Is this probable at this point? What does its placing here do for the book?
In chapter nineteen, living in London which is "as lonely and im personal as living in the bush", Johnson feels that he "belongs to the whole world and to no one place"; when he meets O'Reilly (why an Irishman?) this need to belong crystallises into a decision to go to the Spanish War, "doing something together" because "a man spends too much time alone", and anyway, peace is more dangerous than war. Why—what does war offer? And how is peace "dangerous"?
Throughout, Johnson meets passing goodwill, but which persons show real charity to him? Almost all are impressed by his potentiality, urge him to settle, to farm, to marry, to get a steady job, but he does none of these things. Does the novel make us understand why this should be?
Finally, it is obvious that Mulgan has a serious theme; why did he choose our New Zealand setting for its location and its persons? Think over the places to which Johnson went, the people he met, the work he did, the experiences he had, above all the emphasised nightmare journey in the bush; what opportunities did this New Zealand material offer to Mulgan? And has he made the most of them?
Would this novel qualify for Robin Hyde's praise, as being not "aggressively insular" but about human experience?
Note:
Writing in Comment
24, August, 1965, Paul Day reveals that Mulgan's first draft of the novel was Part I only, and entitled "Talking of War". He had in mind the battle between men and the land in this country. His publishers suggested the addition of Part II. Day's article provides material for a fresh interpretation of
A. Structure. There are fifteen chapters; what episode does each cover, at what time, how is each organised (direct chronological order, flashbacks, or what) ? Is there a plot?
The teller is "I", Peter Considine. Consider carefully how Wilson manages this device; note the exposition . . . how, and how soon, do we find out who "I" is, to whom he writes, when he writes, who the others in the story are, what the background is? Some of these facts are given in conversation, some by "I", etc. Does Wilson ever speak in his own author's voice? "I" is an observer; is he ever a "character" as well?
The most common tense, though not the only one, is the present;
not used, and why.
There are a number of passages of philosophising about the experiences of war, about life, death, home, fate, and particular elements in the psychology of soldiers. Note how these are presented—as "my" comments, as soldiers' talk, or how? Do they appear quite naturally? Do you think Wilson's way of dealing with this material is effective?
"I" must be left surviving to tell the tale, obviously; how is his separation from the "Brave Company" managed? Is it prepared for? Was Wilson right to have Considine at HQ during the crisis, instead of making him stagger back with an eye-witness tale to tell, as did Harris?
Brave Company
is about a small group of men in a short period of time in Italy; how then does Wilson contrive to bring in other areas of war, other campaigns? Do you feel that he makes his novel representative of war as a whole?
B. Style. The prose style in this novel varies from colloquial to elaborate. Study the occasions on which Wilson uses the different manners, and consider how effective they are.
Reviewers complained of a tendency to "novelese" in the book; do you agree with them? Note the continual use of short jerky phrases, designed to suggest intense emotion, or excitement. Do they achieve this effect?
C. Themes. Almost every chapter has some general comments about attitudes to life and death, about the comradeship and "happy days" of war, about courage, about "base bludgers" and civilians, about women, about the attitudes of privates and of officers, about human behaviour under stress, and so on. Consider how these comments are handled. Does each arise naturally? Does it convince you as true, either absolutely or at the moment? What is the total effect of such passages? Are they worked fully into the fabric?
Has Wilson been honest about his war, or has he tried to "write it up"? Is the attitude to comradeship sentimental? Considine says, "Two things and two only are vital. Love and war. And the greater is war" (chapter nine). Is this a final judgment, or merely a dramatic part of the situation and the teller's experience?
What is the theme of this novel? (Consider well all the implications of the title.)
A. Structure. This novel has two parts and an epilogue. Within the two major sections the narrative moves in short chapters, each focusing on a particular episode. In part one the four children and the father and mother are presented as a family group. In part two,
In addition to this firm formal outline, the novel is bound together by the intricate pattern of recurring imagery.
B. Narrative Techniques. In Owls Do Cry
a number of narrative techniques are employed, according to the content. First there is the material in plain type, which is of several different kinds; second, there is the material in italics, also of different kinds. This variation results in a constantly changing angle of vision from author's mind to character's mind, and from the inner and unspoken to the outer and spoken.
(1) The material in plain type is the bulk of the novel. Most of it comes to us filtered through the awareness of one of the characters, or of several of them by turns as the kaleidoscope is revolved. Janet Frame, however, does not abandon her authorial control of narrative, description and comment. To see the procedure clearly, you need to analyse a passage closely, asking yourself at every point, "Whose is the mind which presents this to me?"
For this purpose, take chapter eleven; here are some suggestions for discussion of its key points. Whose mind presents these? . . .
The opening paragraph. (The author?)
"It was Saturday afternoon ..." (The author? or the children?)
"So there was Francie ..." (The author? or the children?)
"But it doesn't matter what they wore . . . it's just so you can see them ..." (Clearly, the author?)
The description of the sofa, with "stuffing bursting from its middle, like the inside of a dead hedgehog". (Clearly, the children?)
The last line. (Who?)
Note in this way throughout the novel the angle of vision through which you are being asked to enter the experience.
What are the advantages, and the disadvantages, of these varying viewpoints?
(2) The material in italics is equally varied. Janet Frame has had to use italics to indicate different levels of consciousness, as well as different types of content.
(a) First, there are the semi-lyrical passages by "I", a figure who is soon revealed as Daphne, "singing from the dead room". The book opens with such a passage; others occur throughout, e.g. in chapters
(b) Unfortunately, however, Janet Frame has had to use italics for other purposes as well as to mark Daphne's stream of consciousness. She has used them for passages of daydream, for inarticulate ideas or emotions, and for unspoken consciousness generally in other characters besides Daphne. Perhaps for Toby such italics mark the "confusion of dream" which indicates the onset of an epileptic fit? What is indicated by the use of italics at the end of chapter twenty-eight?
(c) Also in italics are some—but not all—of the bits of rhyme and poetry quoted. Can you discover any rule governing the distinction between those in plain type (the end of chapter eight, or the hymn in chapter six) and those in italics (chapters twenty, twenty-four, forty)?
(d) To add to the reader's difficulties, some italicised passages are located within a mind, but it is not clear whose. Who is the speaker, or thinker, of the passage in chapter eighteen beginning, "Toby, it is Saturday morning . . . you are busy with nothing, . . . "?
(e) Finally, do italics sometimes represent the author's comment? Who thinks the thought of the last line of chapter twenty-four?
The printer has obviously done his best. Should Janet Frame have found other ways of indicating which consciousness was at work at any given point? Has she attempted an impossible task in trying to give us at once so many angles of vision? What other techniques have you found in your reading of modern literature for suggesting to readers the experience of being within different minds?
C. Imagery. An intricate pattern of imagery binds the novel into a whole. Janet Frame has used various devices more corrmron in poetry—repetition, the emotional 'association of words, "echo, rhythm, etc.—to evoke states of mind and emotions not easy to convey in plain_statement. The images, the scraps of verse, the repeated phrases, are used symbolically; what "any bit conveys can only be appreciated on a second or third rea"ding of the book, when its place in the whole pattern can be seen. Once your mind is alerted to the method, Owls Do Cry
will make a much deeper impact. Its meaning is not on the surface.
Here are some of the elements in the pattern. Notice the way in which Janet Frame introduces much of this material in part one in an apparently quite natural childish context, and then later turns it this way and that, altering the implications, using childish meaning as an ironical comment on adult usage, and so on. Consider the part
Items:
The rubbish dump in its hollow, with its "circle of toitoi", and the associated ideas of treasure, of gold, silver, money, etc. (note especially in chapter six, "they can't tell what's rubbish from what isn't rubbish", and in chapter ten, "if only grown-ups could tell what is treasure and not treasure"); clocks, watches; blue writing in ledgers; glass cases ("everything in a glass case is valuable"); the brand of the leather strap; time, and time payment; the mill, wool, knitting, unpicking; snow, seas; primary colours especially green; pine trees and their needles; pipes and music; fairy tales; diamonds; the laundry, mangle, and washing; fire, burning; the use of cosmetics; dancing, and the names of dances.
D. Plot. Is there a plot?
E. Themes. What are the themes of Owls Do Cry?
They cannot be stated in plain words, for they emerge from the pattern of the book, from its reiterated symbols, from its poetic suggestions. Here are some particular aspects to consider:
(1) The material in italics in chapter fourteen ("Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth").
(2) Chapter thirty-five: in this, consider Daphne's madness. By our own usual standards of normality, Daphne is not sane, but who is to say what is normal reality? Men have always felt that the fool in his madness and simplicity has access to instinctive wisdom. What is "the genuine treasure"?
(3) Chicks marries and lives a "normal" life—but does she find any better "treasure" than Toby or Daphne?
(4) The shock treatment of chapter thirteen "opens the eyes of patients in a triumph of instilled blindness". What is meant? Is the theme, perhaps, an exploration of values in life, an examination of our "civilised" and "normal" assumptions?
F. Debatable Points. Several of the structural devices of Owls Do Cry
have been the subject of critical debate.
(1) What is your view of the device by which we enter the mind of Chicks? We do not slip in and out of her consciousness as we do with Toby, and Daphne; she is not in the "confusion" of dream, as they are. She is to be the "normal" child whose shallow satisfactions are to be the "rubbish" which grown-ups mistake for "treasure". To appreciate the futility of her petty goals, however, we must see inside her mind. Janet Frame therefore contrives that Toby finds and reads her diary.
Is this an effective device? Is the satire too heavily underlined? Is the exhibition of the motives of a social climber too realistic to fit
(2) Another incident intended to have symbolic and satiric overtones and to underline the theme, is that of the filling in of the hollow where the rubbish dump lay, and the building on it of houses to one of which Chicks returns as a married woman. Clearly this symbolises the materialism of the values upon which our civilisation rests. Is this too contrived?
(3) Yet another debatable element in the pattern is the ironic symmetry of the fate of the Withers children—of whom only Daphne, after "curing", is successful in acquiring the material things which adults call "treasure".
G. Epilogue. Finally, consider the epilogue. What does it add to the significance of the symbolic fable which Janet Frame has composed? We are invited to realise that Owls Do Cry
is
Presenting this theme through the eyes first of children, and then of children grown to maturity in differing degrees, Janet Frame makes the approach used by many poets. The best known instance is Wordsworth, in the Immortality ode. The child is "An Eye among the blind". "Heaven lies about us in our infancy", but "Shades of the prison-house begin to close/Upon the growing Boy", and truths glimpsed in youth "fade into the light of common day". Daphne, whose abnormal state enables her to hold on to her childish vision, thinks in chapter thirty-five, that "the real how and where and who and why are in the circle of the toitoi . . . ", a truth which grownups deny. We obliterate the sense of wonder in creation, deny values that are not material; it is we who are the truly dead, the truly mad.
The epilogue is subtitled, "Anyone we know?" This is the question asked by the manager, as his wife reads out the titbits of news. What is implied here about our attitude to suffering around us?
What, on a final reconsideration, is Owls Do Cry
about? Its technique is obviously highly original, and not easy to follow; is this justified by the theme? Why did Janet Frame give her book this title?
We have very few really tragic novels in our literature—would this be one of them? (See Winston Rhodes's comment in Landfall, December 1957.)
A. Structure. The novel is bound together in theme and in construction by continual reference to five major sonnets by Gerard Manley Hopkins, numbers 44, 47, 50, 51, 55. Much other poetry is quoted in this novel (Hopkins's Peace, Hurrahing in Harvest;
Housman; and others)—trace what you can.
Spinster
has five movements of different lengths. Note each, and check its title, the quotation used at its opening, the sequence of the seasons, and the events of each section, the persons met, etc.
B. Narrative Technique.
(1) From what point of view is the story told? And in what tense predominantly? Why is this so, and is the procedure consistent, and effective for its purpose?
(2) Take one section of the novel and analyse the balance of dialogue, monologue, description, analysis, narrative.
(3) Consider how the story is managed. What is the time order? (Normal? Flashbacks?) How are persons first introduced? or explanations made? There is obviously a very careful pattern of linking in the repeated verbal echoes, descriptive details and incidents. Trace out some of these.
(4) A major part of this closely woven texture is the Maori children's "chorus". This provides background, setting, local colour, and comic relief. But it does much more. Check through the novel to note all the ways you can find in which what these children say, write, or do, is relevant to the themes of the book. In particular check on the use made of these words, incidents, ideas:
(a) words such as—old, young, age; ghost; kiss; baby.
(b) phrases and details such as—the building of castles or towers; "somebodies they tread my sore leg for notheen"; the writings of Patu, Riti, and Mohi; "those kids bust it"; the children's paintings; the stories of violence and death; the kooties (is this episode only realistic detail?).
(5) As an example of what such details contribute to the whole, study the handling of the story of Red Riding Hood. Why did the author choose this fairy tale? How is it related to her themes? What does the Maori children's reception of it convey to us?
C. Plot. What is the plot? Is it convincing as a series of events in the life of this person, at the time and place described? Do any of its incidents seem forced?
In particular consider the part of the plot connected with Paul.
D. Paul. What is his function in the construction of the novel? Do you find him, or his behaviour, credible? In what ways—verbal echoes, pattern of incidents, details of the story, similarities of per-
E. Style. Study the prose style. What is its most consistent quality? Does it vary? Does it convey anything of Anna's personality? Is it well adapted to the author's purpose? How effective are the continual quotations?
F. Themes. Spinster
has not only a plot, and a subject background, but a theme; this is the importance of the
Consider all the ways in which this theme is sounded in the novel (the quotations, the infant room, the teaching of reading, the story of Paul, the Maori children's stories, Anna's own music and painting, her own creation of the little Ihaka books, etc.).
Do you think there are other themes also in the novel? creative energy? the conceiving and creating of new life, new art? spinster-hood, motherhood, love?
Does the matter of the key vocabulary fit into the whole pattern of the novel? Or do you feel that it is an excrescence?
What do you feel about the ending—does it follow naturally and logically from the whole course of the book? Does it gather up the threads, and satisfy you as a finale? Does it deepen (or spoil?) the impressions made?
Finally, do you think that Spinster
is a good
A. Structure. There are twenty-four chapters, most with subdivisions. The story covers ten months from February to November, and is limited with minor exceptions to the town of Coal Flat.
Pearson tells his story straightforwardly in the third person, concentrating our attention upon Paul Rogers, but using to the full his authorial privilege of discussing him and many other matters openly with the reader. Characters are organised in two groups, an inner circle centred upon Rogers and including the Palmers, the Herlihys, and Miss Dane, and an outer circle of townsfolk, miners, school staff,
A novel arising from detailed social fact requires thorough documentation, and presents the author with very difficult terrain, since readers have to assimilate large doses of information. In chapter one Pearson makes a good job of his entry into this material. In subdivision (1) we note the date and the place, for which we are given a few (only) details that are to be economically recalled throughout—the Yorkshire fog, the blackberries, the scream of the dredge, the water races, the surrounding hills. These we meet as they are noticed by a minor but key character, Heath, who moves at once into a key setting, the school. It is Paul Rogers's first day, and we are given a glimpse inside his mind. Subdivision (2) brings us to 3.20 p.m., key details are repeated, and we have an external view of Paul through Mrs Hansen's eyes. In (3) we meet the Palmers, whose relationships are established in dialogue. In (4) the mother-dominance of Mrs Palmer is indicated ("They always come back to Mum"), and Paul's history begins to be explained. In (5), Pearson takes us into the bar and establishes some of the personalities and the tensions of the township; we meet Cairns, Henderson, Nicholson, Herlihy. Catholicism, politics, and suppressed sexual stresses are indicated. In (6) Pearson describes directly Rogers's possessions, past, and psychology.
Block construction of this kind is the method throughout Coal Flat. Consider chapters seven, or eleven, or sixteen. There are no subdivisions in chapters twelve, fourteen and twenty. Why?
B. Narrative Techniques. Within this structural frame, Pearson gives variety in several ways. He turns his attention now to this group, now to that, and he changes his methods of presentation. Consider chapter one again. Subdivision (1) opens with two paragraphs of author's exposition of the setting, followed by an entry in paragraph three into Heath's attitude: "This year, he thought, ... he hoped ... he expected." In paragraph four we have Heath's impression of Rogers, in paragraph five we begin to see through Rogers's eyes, and guided by his perception move into the classroom. The penultimate paragraph gives us, in the third person, some clues about Rogers's ideas, through the medium of his examination of the children. This passage ("He studied them . . . ") is full of concealed ironies ("Hard puritan society . . . innocence and simplicity ... he would educate them . . . tolerance, service of the common good"). Subdivision (2) is mainly authorial. By comparison subdivision (3) is predominantly dialogue, stiffish and unreal because Pearson is using it too blatantly to get information across to us. (4) and (5) are partly authorial, partly dialogue, that in (5) being successful in indicating themes through dramatically realised conversation. Subdivision (6) however is wholly authorial, a solid chunk of factual exposition.
Consider the paragraph beginning "For, once that first fight was over ..." Do we, at this point, need all this detail unloaded upon us? How much of it contributes to our understanding of Rogers? Isn't some of it too obvious (e.g. that book on The Problem Child)
?
Variation between dialogue and factual exposition continues in this way throughout the book. In a novel exploring society in depth, the author must be free to describe, explain and discuss, but the liberty should not be abused. The author's voice must not bore us. Dickens once told a young writer: "My notion always is, that when I have made the people to play out the play, it is, as it were, their own business and not mine." The scenes in which Pearson's people "play out the play" in family quarrel, union meeting, school committee discussion, or pub talk, are excellent. But what is your view of his lectures to the reader? Would you agree that he seems not to trust his people and his action to carry his message for him, and so attempts to support them by speaking out himself?
As a basis for discussion of this complaint, consider the handling of the whitebait material in chapter twenty-two, "The whitebait is a delicacy . . . "; or chapter five (1) with its plodding account of Don Palmer (eight uses of "had" and eighteen of "would" in the opening paragraph); or the accounts of McKenzie in chapter four (2) and Cassidy in chapter eighteen (2); or the opening of chapter eleven (1).
Sometimes Pearson's dialogue is not the dramatically convincing talk of people "playing out the play", but only two author's voices supplementing each other in spoken exposition. Consider chapter eleven (2) in this light.
On the other hand, his group dialogues are among the highlights of the book; consider chapter nine (1) and chapter fifteen (1) and (2).
C. Thoughts. Pearson handles skilfully his transitions from the external view to the interior one. To get in and out of a character's mind he usually slides from thoughts rendered in direct speech to thoughts given as normal reported speech. From there he moves into a reported speech-current, shaped or modified to suggest the thinker's spoken idiom and to keep us aware of his personality. Examine Mr Tribe's speech in chapter twenty, "Well chaps . . ."
In chapter four (1), the passage in which Rogers theorises about Peter should be studied closely, beginning at "He was a test case ..." First we have directly what "he thought". Then we slide into a report of what Rogers "had heard", the phrases "from all accounts" and "they said" reminding us that this is town gossip. At "The case history" we return to Rogers's thought, and then move into his speculations about the future, phrased as questions. Pearson brings us back to the actual situation from which these meditations sprang with a remark in direct speech from Mrs Seldom.
Another device is the use of "you" within a character's thoughts,
D. Plot. All the plot lines converge on Paul, but some of Pearson's material is, surely, very tenuously related to his narrative line and themes?
Take, for instance, O'Malley in chapter sixteen (3), Cassidy in chapter eighteen (2), and Tribe in chapter twenty; Pearson gives an elaborate documentation for each. Do you think he was wise to bring in a quite new character at these points? Do you think the expository detail is burdensome?
Something, I believe, is wrong with the last third of the novel; it sags and interest slackens. Is this your view? How relevant do you think the episode in the Maori home is in chapter twenty-two? What is intended by the long preamble to the trial in chapter nineteen (1)? Why does Pearson spend so long on the view from the hospital window in chapter twenty-three (3)?
Other plot matters to consider are: to what extent is the account of Don Palmer's first marriage necessary? Is Miss Dane's story adequately tied into the whole novel? In particular, what would you say to the suggestion that her portrait, especially at the beginning, is nearer to satiric caricature than to realism, and is badly out of key with the rest of the book? Does Pearson sometimes take sides too blatantly, e.g. his description of Miss Cole the welfare officer, and Mr Hankinson?
Do you think Pearson's plot material is well organised? Consider the elements—a problem child with sexual obsessions; two strikes, Seldom's and Herlihy's; a beer boycott; a schoolmistress seduced; Catholicism, and Presbyterian puritanism; socialism and communism; several disastrous marriages and a suggestion of sexual deviation; and a possessive, dominating "Mum".
E. Theme. What is the theme of
Attitudes to sex: "Have you known a community that, deep down, is more obsessed with sex than puritan New Zealand?" (chapter eleven (2)).
Attitudes to ideas and ideals: "a hard puritan society, materialistic to the point that it was afraid of ideas because ideas were not material." (chapter one (1)). See also chapter four (3), and the final page.
Betrayal: "scabbing", letting someone down, disloyalty. Consider: chapter twenty-three (5) "He's never had a chance and none of us have ever done anything for him."; Peter's constant accusations about being "let down"; Rogers's war record; Rogers's
The complexity of human motives and the need for tolerance (consider chapter eleven (2), where Rogers thinks out his attitude to the boycott).
Mother-dominance in our society.
Perhaps the true centre of the novel is not Paul Rogers, but eight-year-old Peter Herlihy—"A boy who's the odd one out like that has a nose for all the weaknesses and rotten parts of his society." (chapter eleven (2)). "Which comes first, the unstable personality or the unstable society?" (chapter four (3)).
There are many other sub-themes in this rich full novel; colour prejudice; the healing qualities of the bush and the hills, if we would submit to them; educational methods; Irish Catholicism—and what else?
Finally, what is your verdict? Does the plight of anyone in the novel really grip you? Does Pearson get below his elaborately documented surface? Do you think that "the dominant personality is the Coast"?
Footnote. Miss Dane is writing a novel which is outlined in chapter seven (4). Pearson was probably unwise to let himself go on this irrelevant little parody, but it is enjoyable enough. Can you identify the New Zealand novelist(s) whom Miss Dane is taking as her model?
A. Structure. What period of time does the novel cover? There are twelve chapters: what time and what incidents does each cover?
Although Forbush is almost the only person involved in this experience, his story is told in the third person by the author. Why did Billing choose this method? What is gained? Is anything lost by it?
How is what Forbush feels and thinks conveyed to us? Consider chapters three and eight, chapter six, and chapter eleven.
Both time and place in this novel are severely restricted; what is the reason for this? Would you have preferred, for instance, some scenes with Forbush before he went to Antarctica? or some scenes among the men at Scott Base as a change from our concentration on Forbush?
Commenting in Landfall, June 1965, Lawrence Jones complains about the two episodes of the visiting Americans in chapters four and six, that they are "only peripherally relevant to the novel's true centre of interest and . . . not sufficiently interesting ... to merit
What is Billing's purpose in interpolating into the Forbush narrative passages giving his memories of Barbara? How are they relevant to the speculations and emotions roused by the Antarctic experience? Do you find these scenes "trite" in their presentation? or are they successful enough for their purpose? Why does Billing give Forbush a girl he has just met, not a fiancee or wife?
Observe carefully the way the author has managed his opening exposition: obviously, he has an unusually heavy load of facts to deal with. How does he convey to us in chapter one the information essential to the reader? Is he skilful over it? Consider: what is seen, heard, felt and by whom; details about the hut (why Shackleton's?); Forbush's actions and thoughts, and what we infer from them; the Visitors' Book (is it referred to again?); the books; fixing the radio; the toy rabbit. Have we, by the end of chapter one, learnt anything of the man, as well as of the time and place?
The structure of this book rests on a very few elemental phenomena: ice, sea, rock; men, penguins, skuas; light, dark, wind, snow, sun. Would you add to this list? What is the effect of this deliberate economy?
B. Style. Prose style in this novel varies according to subject and purpose. Consider these representative passages: is the style suitable and effective?—chapter nine (pp. 160-1) "For Christmas dinner"; chapter six (p. 97) "After that they went"; chapter eight (pp. 132-3) "The foot pedal". (Page references are to Reed's 1965 edition.)
C. Theme. The theme is man's search for the meaning of life, set in an experience where only the essentials of survival count. In the sterile Antarctic world, a human being comes to study the miraculous passing on of another form of life. His study reveals also "life's demand for death in order to maintain itself" (chapter ten). Forbush is both a scientist and a human "creature", and in both capacities seeks to understand the final meaning of existence (opening of chapter six).
What aspects of this theme are explored in these passages: the arrival of the penguin in chapter three; the opening and closing pages of chapter four ("nothing has changed"); Forbush's longing to help the penguins, his hatred of the skuas; the description of the seal pup at the end of chapter five; Starshot's "bad dreams" (pp. 28, 159, 162); Forbush's "ever-present sense of being a victim" (pp. 119, 166, 188, etc.).
Two sections of the novel stand out for the brilliance of the writing, the account of the building of the Music Machine, and the account of the blizzard. Apart from their intrinsic interest, what do these contri-
human variety of "creature"? Consider in this regard: chapter three (p. 44), "Draw for me, the ice said, the line between life and not-life"; chapter seven (p. 113), "O hell we're all creatures. I'm a creature . . . "; (p. 121) "I'm human . . . I'm alive . . . I'll beat it."; chapter 8 (pp. 128-9); chapter nine (p. 154), "They're just creatures, Dick."
What part in the development of the theme is played by: the arrival of Starshot, and the Christmas dinner; the departure of the ice and Forbush's sunbathing; the episode of the seal and the sea-leopard; the catapult affair; the juxtaposition in chapter eleven of the skua's killing of the penguin chick and Forbush's capture of a skua chick? .
Penguins look like "little men": does Billing suggest any analogy between their fate and ours? Penguins, skuas, men, are all "victims"; in what episodes do we see them fighting, or enduring?
The climax of the novel comes at the end of chapter eleven, in Forbush's affirmation of freedom. What is your view of this?
Consider carefully the last paragraph: it is prose of remarkable quality. What suggestions and images from the whole novel does it pick up and echo? Notice the repeated words. What is the implication of the image in the last sentence?
1. At the time of their first publication, these novels raised quite a storm. In the light of The Cunninghams, 1948; Jean Devanny's
2. Now that plenty of the letters and memoirs of early settlers are in print, it is possible to assess the basis of truth in our first New Zealand novels. How do Isabella Aylmer and Charlotte Evans and the rest compare with, for instance, Lady Barker in Station Life in New Zealand, 1870, or
Other records which picture pioneer life are Charlotte Godley's Letters from Early New Zealand, 1951, Alison Drummond's collection
3. It has been suggested that the writer who wishes to set a serious novel in the Maori past faces a difficult task; can you say whether any modern writers about the past of a non-European race have succeeded in making their stories both truthful and interesting? Is it easier for a writer on India or China, than, say, on Africa or Polynesia? What seem to be the major difficulties?
Would you agree that on the whole our writers have exploited the Maori theme, rather than attempted to understand or interpret it?
4. New Zealand pioneer experience took place between 1850-90, when literary models for would-be novelists were somewhat conventional. Suppose, instead, that we had been colonised between 1920-60; would the models of that period have provided our novelists with more effective techniques—or with worse ones? Imagine Distant Homes
planned in imitation of Virginia Woolf, or
1. In The Deepening Stream, 1940,
2. Writing in the Journal of the Polynesian Society
in September 1958,
Does this seem to be true of the Maori novels so far discussed? Is it true of later ones which you know? Is the choice of a white hero and Maori heroine dictated by the author's deliberate "idyllic" imagination as Pearson suggests, or perhaps, at any rate in the early days, by the realities of the social situation?
Do any of the Maori novels discussed in this chapter satisfy you as having a serious artistic purpose?
3. Do you think that the women writers' preoccupation with the problems of the educated woman in marriage did reflect an actual New Zealand situation? Is there any evidence of the persistence of the topic in current writing by and for women?
1. "Tutira is recalling and exploring experience, with a view to realising its meaning. By contrast, many New Zealand romances are merely picture-makers for what is behind their readers' daydreams, and make no exploration at all."
Would you agree with that judgment?
2. Is it still true today that, as
3. Would it be just to say that Nelle Scanlan's Pencarrow
series is "exploiting", not "interpreting" New Zealand life?
4. In The Uses of Literacy, 1957, Richard Hoggart devotes some time to a discussion of popular fiction. Some of his comments are— "These publications must aim to hold their readers at a level of passive acceptance, at which they never really ask a question, but happily take what is provided . . . There must be no significant disturbing of assumptions . . . [This is] not the attitude to language of the creative writer, trying to mould words into a shape which will bear the peculiar quality of his experience, . . . but a facility with thousands of stock phrases which will set the figures moving on the highly conventionalised stage of their readers' imaginations."
How far is this verdict applicable to New Zealand light fiction?
Bleak House
(Dickens) or
1.
2. In Check to Your King
the point of view throughout is really Robin Hyde's; she makes her controlling consciousness deliberately obvious. Yet frequently she varies this procedure by presenting her material indirectly, through Charles and his letters, or through the thoughts of Emily or Isabel. How well does this technique work?
Would you agree that the method adopted for the narration of Check to Your King
is related to Robin Hyde's desire to show that "truths had second selves", and that the truth about de Thierry has "a double face"?
3. In an article in Landfall
for September 1953, James Bertram comments on Robin Hyde, "... we must judge her literary output as imperfect, marred by attitudinising, and too often shrill ... we have noted in her certain limitations that were exaggerated—if they were not largely imposed—by the colonial dilemma ..."
What is your view?
1. Reviewing Dan Davin's Roads From Home, Sargeson wrote, "Something very like New Zealand is to be found in astonishing abundance inside the covers of his novel."24 He then adds that this sense of reality is due to the fact that the book takes the puritan spirit for granted, puritanism being a major influence on our behaviour. Would you agree, either about Davin's book, or about the importance of puritanism in New Zealand life?
2. Do you agree with the suggestion that Frank Sargeson's / Saw in my Dream
is about the search for a real self?
3. Robert Chapman, reviewing David Ballantyne's The Cunninghams
in
"The familiarity of Gilbert suggests that New Zealand prose writers may be experiencing a not unlikely temptation to listen with Mr Sargeson's 'asdic' and thus receive only lower middle class fish noises and an occasional submarine character."
Does this seem to be true, either of The Cunninghams, or of other post-Sargeson writing, even up to the present day?
4. Obviously the present writer does not have as high an opinion of James Courage's novels as many critics do. What is your view?
1. "Well, if you want realism, you must put up with realism; it
artistic grounds, in a war novel?
2. Which seems the best novel, to readers with war experience, Brave Company, For the Rest of Our Lives, or
3. The novel proper is about the interaction of life and character; its plot springs dramatically from what people are, as much as from what they do. War is accidental, and its events are without personal causation. Must war novels, then, be always of a special kind?
4.
What is your view?
1. One of the most obvious perils for the serious New Zealand novelist is that revealed by the libel action over Guthrie Wilson's Sweet White Wine. What should be the attitude of the creative artist to his raw material? How far may a writer go in drawing from life?
2. Three of the major novels of the 1950s show unusual technical skill— Spinster, Owls Do Cry
and
3. Would you agree that Ian Cross maintains exactly the right level for Jimmy's vocabulary and phrasing throughout The God Boy?
(A beautiful gutzer, kids, sort of, do his block, like nobody's business, bullswool, a bit iffy, a heck of a splash.) When other persons are heard to speak—the nuns, Dad, Molly, Father Gilligan, Mum—is Jimmy's level of speech adapted accordingly?
4. Do any of the comments made in Incense to Idols
about the New Zealand way of life seem to you to have a basis in truth?
5. In its issue of July 1932, the little Auckland magazine, Phoenix, in a remark already quoted, stated, "We are hungry for the words that shall show us these islands and ourselves; that shall give us a home in thought". Do you think that such words have yet been found by any of our novelists?
1. I have attempted to draw a line between "light" and "serious" fiction; what are your views on the qualities that distinguish them? Would you disagree with any particular decisions?
2. Bill Pearson said in 1952 that if an artist is to be honest, "his
3. Overseas critics have often regretted Janet Frame's "aimless events and objectless soliloquies" which, says Time, "belong in a fashionably satiric exposition of meaninglessness". The truth is otherwise, for
4. How much insight into truth do you find in the novels about our small town life?
(not identified in the text)
1. New Zealand Listener, Jan. 13, 1961.
2. New Zealand Literature, 1959. p. 52.
3. Ibid., p. 62.
4. Ibid., p. 93.
5. Ibid., p. 94.
6. Tien Hsia, Aug. 1938.
7. New Zealand Listener, Jan. 13, 1950.
8. A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 1863, p. 51, p. 70.
9. Novels and Novelists, 1930, p. 219.
10. Letter to F. A. de la Mare.
11. Landfall
18, June 1951, p. 150.
12. New Zealand Listener, Sept. 23, 1960.
13. The Evening Post, Aug. 26, 1939.
14. New Zealand Libraries, Oct. 1947.
15. New Zealand Listener, Sept. 5, 1956.
16. The Puritan and the Waif, 1954, p. 1.
17. Ibid., p. 17.
18. New Statesman, Jan. 11, 1958.
19. Denis Glover,
Verse, 1960, p. 222.)
20. Landfall
53, March 1960, p. 93.
21. Landfall
44, Dec. 1957, p. 29.
22. Landfall 41, Sept. 1958, p. 281.
23. Time, Oct. 31, 1960.
24. New Zealand Listener, June 10, 1949.
New Zealand Literature, A Survey. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1959.
Creative Writing in New Zealand. A brief critical history. Published for the author by Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., Wellington, 1946.
Discovered Isles
(including
Sinclair, Keith. A History of New Zealand. Penguin Books, 1959.
Allott, Miriam. Novelists on the Novel. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1959.
Edel, Leon. The Psychological Novel 1900-1950. Hart-Davis Ltd., London, 1955.
Aspects of the Novel. Edward Arnold Ltd., London 1927.
Gordon, Carolyn. How to Read a Novel. Viking Press, New York 1958.
Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. Jonathan Cape Ltd., London 1921.
Muir, Edwin. The Structure of the Novel. The Hogarth Press Ltd., London, 1946.
Main references to authors are given in bold type.
40, 53
46-7, 63
103-8 142-3
117-8
10-3, 83, 150
116
28, 43, 83
73, 113, 119, 150, 152
18, 36
42, 53
129-130, 147-9
40
119
123-4
47-8, 60, 83
64
Carrick, R. 21
Casey R. (see Christian, Kenneth R.)
22-4, 61, 150
17
74-7. 95, 97, 98, 126, 152
101-3, 113, 121, 124, 152, 153
79-80, 82, 95, 97, 98, 126, 150, 152
64-5
39, 53, 73, 85, 150
125-6
31
46, 63
Eyre, Annette, 114
19, 36
77-8
31
90
98-100, 113, 126-9, 137-41, 150, 154
108-9, 122
97-8
29-30, 31, 36, 39, 61, 75, 83, 85
110-1, 113, 122-3
81-2, 98, 103, 121-2
111-2
19
50-2, 54, 55, 56, 60, 61, 63, 64, 69, 73, 82, 150, 151-2
48-9
88
36-9, 53, 71, 76, 85, 95, 110, 111, 112, 150
44, 53, 92, 93, 94
87
92-3, 115
40-1, 47, 60, 96
60-2, 63, 64, 69, 73, 134-6
120-1, 143-7, 153
43, 53, 83, 84
"S.S.", 116
68-73, 74, 77, 82, 95, 111, 126, 129, 152
43-4, 45, 53, 83, 84, 87, 151
45, 83, 84, 93, 115
126
82
13, 15
24-5, 83
14, 22, 25, 42, 89
52-60, 63, 68, 69, 73, 82, 87, 88, 95, 99, 101, 105, 112, 152
24, 83
14, 89
80-1, 82, 95-7, 98, 136-7, 153
67, 88
118-9
46