Sargeson

Collected stories reviewed

Collected Stories by Frank Sargeson, Pauls Book Arcade, 1964. 304pp.. 16s., reviewed by H. B. Rennie.

One of the near incredible gaps in local publishing has been filled through the enterprise of Blackwood and Janet Paul—and none too soon. For Frank Sargeson represents a New Zealand age— an age which once found in his writing no reader is likely to forget. Sargeson manages to create in his writing an immediate sense of personal relevance through settings and action which work out a more universial truth. His observations of New Zealand life and character in the first half of this century form a background which his characters try to come to terms with.

There are two views possible of Sargeson. One is that Sargeson represents the New Zealand writer at home in his environment at last, his nationality accepted and assimilated, his own language discovered and in use. As Bill Pearson puts it in his introduction. Sargeson's compatriots of the thirties, without the release of expatriation, found in him 'a writer who . . . had cleared some of the tracks they might confidently follow'. He had gained through personal effort the ability to write of his society without rejecting it or adopting a pose which at times betrayed damaging self-consciousness.

This view seems amply borne out by the stories now gathered into the present volume. Sargeson writes with conviction and achieves his effect without creating the faint sense of 'something achieved' often found in New Zealand writing of that time. The control of style and content produces a conciseness of form which has sharp impact.

Yet while this conciseness produces an effective short story form, and, suitably varied, succeeded in the novella 'When the Wind Blows' (the first part of 'I Saw in My Dream'), it reinforces the second view of Sargeson, the doubt that Sargeson achieved what he promised. The beginnings of the answer are found in this collection, although the key probably lies in his latest works, his plays, which are to be published later this year by Caxton Press.

The promise of Sargeson's work may be likened to that of a growing boy. The latter is a theme found often in Sargeson, for many of his stories deal with characters in the half-world that lies between childhood and adult life. He writes of the adjustments of children to life in an adult world with conviction and sympathy. But while he is well aware of the problems of New Zealand life, and can brutally illustrate the damage they can create (the Puritan discipline in 'A Good Boy' for example), he is pointing to the problems and not to the solution. It was something of this kind that Professor Joan Stevens was pointing to when she wrote that in Sargeson's world "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 in other relationships."

This relationship of 'cobbers' is a child-like relationship found in a number of the stones dealing with adults, and in 'When the Wind Blows', right from the time that the girl comes to the lawyer's office Henry seems on the verge of something he does not quite understand.

In these stories the initial apprehension of the boy-girl relationship is caught, but the reader may question whether it is passed. Did Sargeson find his place in a young New Zealand but not keep up with a growing one?

Whatever our final conclusion may be about Sargeson's achievement, and this reviewer's opinion is that the second view has been over-rated by more than one reviewer, this volume demands a place on your bookshelf. It is stated to contain all the stories which Sargeson wishes to see kept in print, but it contains more than that.

It has an excellent introduction by Bill Pearson already referred to, and a copiously annotated bibliography of all Sargeson's works. It is well-produced (even if the jacket design is credited in different places to two different sources) and at a commendably low price through the allocation of a Literary Fund grant. Sargeson's capture of the New Zealand vernacular of the thirties has been preserved by the addition of notes on phrases which may have passed the unobservant New Zealander by. All in all, this book is essential reading which will fascinate the literature student and delight the ordinary New Zealand reader.