Truth About N.Z.

The man from Mars faced with the alternative of using the return half of the ticket for his space-ship might well be induced to stay, if ho confined his reading to the colourful pamphlets of the Tourist Department. But that is only the lying publicity of a Government department. The real truth about the place is to be found in the pages of Salient Litterary Issue, number two, where in the words of one of the writers what is needed to make the place tolerable is (page 11) a coarser-grained, red-blooded and full-bodied engagement in the business of living. Faced with this necessity and the prevalent philistinism. The man from Mars would hardly linger except to look at the scenery, which gets high marks (page 6), before he left for a real country where the canals are straight and there is no social security. And so as the sunset sinks over the magnificent gleaming snows of the Southern Alps, we take a last farewell of the despondent characters of the land of bellyache and the curtain falls, unappreciated by the film critic (pages 18-20), to slow music, disapproved of by the music critic (pages 22-24). As Wordsworth almost said, grim is it in this place to be alive but to be young is very Hades.

"My Best Effort"

My mention of Wordsworth, of course, places me precisely, and shows the readers of Salient (non-literary issue) that I have no qualifications to review its annual literary brother. I am told (page 6) that a knowledge of Wordsworth makes me out of date and any knowledge of the early T. S. Eliot merely underlines my shallow pretentions of modernism. And when I am assured (page 10) that after all I belong to the class of "dry and static university specialists" who have no direct contact with life, I realise (and hope he realises) the great error the editor of non-literary Salient made in asking me to write this review. Sorry, boys, I can do only my best.

What I cannot understand in all this atmosphere of inspissated gloom (Milton, a dead poet) is where it all comes from. I think I know most of the writers, pleasant and personable young men and women—though a few of them I must say [unclear: to] getting on in years to be writing for an undergraduate paper. I have met them all sober and enjoyed their company. Some of them I have met drunk and enjoyed that even more. On paper, however, the Hyde appears through the engaging feature of the Jekyll and altogether Salient Literary number seems almost a classic case of literary and cultural schizophrenia. Beats me.

Of the Individual writers Baxter continues to keep the unchallenged place he has among the poets; Jocelyn Henrid is getting somewhere; Louis Johnson (in these poems at least, for he has done excellent work) nowhere very much: Charles Doyle you should keep your eye on. The editor John Cody and B. J. Cameron write pontifically in the best Landfall manner, Louis Johnson rattles whatever a poet-critic has in place of a sabre and makes frightful faces at Curnow (who appears to have been making faces at him, only I don't keep up much with Here and Now, finding it more like There and Then). Dennis Garrett and Susan Rhind write with sense and moderation on films and music and the irrepressible James Baxter in his Notes towards an Aesthetic shows that he can handle prose as well as poetry.

Smile, Please

Apart from the tone of prevailing bellyache (which may after all find some justification in the group sub-conscious of V.U.C.) a worthwhile effort, and some real achievement, But, boys, boys, need you scowl so savagely at the camera? Why not look at the little birdie? I've seen you do it.

—L.A.G.