Reader Says "It Stinks"

Sir,—R.G.L.'s editorial in the last Salient stank of the type of mock derision it has been the practice supposedly sophisticated writers use in describing young nonconformists at the university.

As the article is based on a few observed facts which are strung together from a conservative viewpoint (with an admittedly partly ironical manner), I think I am justified in making some observations of my own.

How does the writer expect freshmen entering the university to have a complete and ordered method of protest and artistic expression when they are only about three months out of our authoritarian school system? To me social protest and art at this stage are indissolubly linked and the artist-musician, writer or painter, who follows the Pound heresy is to my mind committing a very serious error in judgment.

I consider that contrary to R.G.L.'s assertion, the most pseudo intellectual group in the university are, I shall call them pretty boys who seek that amorphous thing "the beautiful" as a thing away from human life.

I am not advocating Socialist realism though I do believe in all the aims of the New Left. Rather, I advocate a genuine movement that will tie social criticism with a mankind which is not "vulgar."

To the pretty boys, social protest is personified in drugs, fast cars—something in general that will absolve them from the banalities of vulgar man. This to my mind is a far more immature approach than that which R.G.L.'s psueds are guilty of. Most of them, except for a poor sort of personal protest, still live in the shadow of their political beliefs. At least our psued Mr. R.G.L. has broken himself of that.

Whether the psued as he is painted has enough intellectual capacity to actually become a member of the New Left is another thing. I think the writer, like most Conservatives, has little idea of the nature of this movement

It is not just a method of social discontent but is made up of people who, apart from this, have the intellectual ability to put forward practical suggestions and do important research as well. The socialist forums in both Auckland and Wellington are the only New Zealand manifestations of this movement.

From my own observations, both these groups are composed of graduates, or others well advanced in their degrees, as well as trade unionists and working-class people. To a pseud, if one does exist, these meetings would be not only incomprehnsible but intolerably boring.

I do not condemn the pseud for drifting into C.N.D. but perhaps rather naively hope that what has originally begun as "the thing to do" will become a deep and intellectual persuasion.

To R.G.L. it is pardonable that the pretty boys be allowed to become articulate in the university artistic circles but not anyone who is on the way to having a genuine voice of discontent.