Writers in New Zealand: a Questionnaire 36 Commentaries : NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT-ANOTHER VIEW, A

VOLUME

FOURTEEN

1g6o

Reprinted with the permission of The Caxton Press

JOHNSON REPRINT CORPORATION JOHNSON REPRINT COMPANY LTD. 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Berkeley Square House, London, W. 1 LANDFALL is published with the aid of a grant from the New Zealand Literary Fund.

&9/49, First reprinting, 1968, Johnson Reprint Corporation Printed in the United States of America 'THE

DQJl.fi.,jtilii:.!J&!Nl Landfall

A New Zealand Quarterly edited by Charles Brasch and published by The Caxton Press

CONTENTS

Notes 3 Poets of the Sixties: Peter Bland, Cordon Challis, Owen Leeming, C. K. Stead 9 An End and a Beginning, Alexander Guyan 29 Writers in New Zealand: a Questionnaire 36 Commentaries : NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT-ANOTHER VIEW, A. R. Entwis]e 71 THE REPORT ON THE UNIVERSITIES, T. E. Carter 77 THE WIDE OPEN CAGE, fames Bertram 81 GREEK PLAYS IN DUNEDIN, G. R. Manton 84 Reviews: THE NEW ZEALANDERS and THE STONE, R. A. Cop/and 87 A GUN IN MY HAND, ETC., lan Cross 90 COAST TO COAST and WEST COAST STORIES, Ruth Dallas 93 POEMS OF DISCOVERY and HEROES AND CLERKS, M.· K. Joseph 95 THE BEST OF WHIM-WHAM, Robert Chapman 98 NEW ZEALAND POETRY YEARBOOK, Basil DowJing !02 PORTRAIT OF A MODERN MIXED ECONOMY, Conrad BJyth 104

Correspondence, John Miller, f. G. A. Pocock, 0. E. Middleton w6 Landfall's Portrait Gallery (II)

VOLUME FOURTEEN NUMBER ONE MARCH 1960 Notes

THE beginning of this new decade seems a good moment to pause and reflect on the country's life during the fifteen years since the last war. Landfall has therefore invited a number of persons with widely differing backgrounds and interests to set down their views of what has been significant in the life of that period. Some of those invited are New Zealanders by birth, most of them travelled New Zealanders, some have been settled here long enough to know the country well while retaining the detachment of persons brought up in other societies. Some will be writing mainly about fields of which they have special knowledge, others will write somewhat more generally, although not attempting any formal, historical objectivity. The series, inevitably limited in scope, is a series of personal surveys. It will begin in the next number. None of the contributors to the series will be concerned mainly with literature. But a glance at the present state of literature in New Zealand will not be out of place. For some thirty years now (but scarcely longer) not a year has passed without the appearance of work by good writers who were neither amateurs nor journalists; the number of such writers has increased and the body of work grown steadily; the foundations of a New Zealand literature to come have been laid down. But the outlook is not quite as simple and rosy as this may suggest. How do writers manage to write, and what response do their books find, at a time and in a society in which books and writers are apparently so little regarded? The nineteenth-century respect for them, which has survived or been revived in Russia, has gone in English-speaking societies. Writers have become private individuals again; they are no longer seers and preachers, oracles to whom the hungry multitudes listen; indeed in New Zealand they are rather less than other men, and solid citizens shy in embarrassment at the mere mention of the word, as if touched on the raw. Figures as eminent as Forster, Russell, Eliot, Trevelyan, and their like in other countries, are eclipsed in general esteem by a host of rivals such as never challenged their nineteenth-century peers. That may not matter. But their work does not penetrate society as it would have done in the past. It cannot command attention, it must persuade silently, competing with other per- 3 suaders whose more immediate appeal gives them a decided if short-lived advantage. Where the educated public provides a large market this is serious enough; in New Zealand it sets very heavy odds against books and against that enquiring concern with human affairs which fosters and is fostered by literature. What can the writer do, what should he hope for, in this situation? What does he do, in fact? Can we expect to see literature flourish here under such conditions? In an attempt to explore the situation, Landfa!J asked a number of writers to answer questions about it and to give their views. Questions and answers will be found in the following pages.

TwELVE years ago, in December 1948, Landfall printed a substantial group of poems by six young poets (none of them had published a collection of work at that time) who were to be among the best- known writers of the fifties. In this issue, it prints a selection of recent work by four young poets who are likely to figure promin- ently among writers of the sixties.

YEAR after year, the country gives up to the mountains in sacrifice a precious few of its finer spirits. This summer a heavy toll claimed, at the height of their powers, two most able and experienced climbers well known far beyond the mountains and greatly admired. M. J. P. Glasgow was editor of The New Zealand Alpine journal, and T. H. Scott, first head of the Department of Psycho- logy in the University of Auckland, had been closely associated with Landfall almost from the start and later with the Alpine journal too. Tried climbing friends, they were killed together near the summit of Mt Cook on I February. T. H. Scott took a large part in the shaping of Landfall's character in its early years; it owes a great deal to his ardent support, to the breadth of his outlook, his generous imaginative sympathies, his cool informed judgment. He wrote several memorable papers for it, enquiries, diverse in subject, with a common theme running through them: what it means to be a New Zealander. They are landmarks in the growth of the country's consciousness of itself. In his own field of experimental psychology he did some remarkable work, especially on the effects of per- ceptual isolation. Fittingly for a New Zealander and climber, he also explored the subject of isolation in other contexts. His interest in all the main fields of scientific endeavour was accompanied by an acute feeling for literature, painting and music, shown in his writings. He was thus led to a wide-ranging view of the nature 4 of man and the world he lives in, and to that humane passion for knowledge, the just society and the good life which our time so much needs. He had one of the most gifted, fertile minds of his generation.

IN THE thirties, radical opmwn was strong, active and sanguine enough to create its own organ of opinion, the political and literary journal Tomorrow. Starting in 1934, Tomorrow came out, first weekly and then fortnightly, with only one break, until suppressed by the Labour Government in 1940. Its editor, Kennaway Bender- son, who died in Christchurch in January, aged eighty, enlisted many able contributors who continued to write for it without payment; most New Zealand writers of the time appeared in its hospitable pages. To bring out an independent fortnightly regularly in this country was then (as it would be now) a heroic effort. Kennaway Henderson edited Tomorrow single-handed, as a labour of love, unpaid; he gathered his contributors, kept them up to the mark, wrote for the journal himself, and illustrated it with his cartoons. A collection of these last was published shortly before his death. Tomorrow provided an invaluable centre for political and literary aspirations. It was the most important journal of opinion which had yet appeared in New Zealand.

Television THE government's decision to introduce a television system which is not to be handed over to commercial interests but to be publicly owned and controlled gives ground for hope. But the government has rejected the proposal that television should be administered by a public corporation responsible to parliament; instead, it is to come under the direct control and supervision of the government and to be 'associated' with the Broadcasting Service. This means that, being politically controlled, TV will be forbidden to deal with controversial issues-with what is really news because it excites immediate interest and argument, such as the Maoris and All Blacks issue, and so is likely to be as tame and lifeless and out of this world as broadcasting too often is. Much may happen, however, before a full service comes into operation.

Copyright THE Report of the Copyright Committee, 1959, recommends 5 several changes in the law of copyright which, if enacted, would be very damaging to the interests of every New Zealand writer. It proposes that the present term of copyright, the life of the author and fifty years after his death, should be reduced to fifty-six years from the date of publication of the work or the life of the author, whichever is longer. Other proposals would reduce the control which an author now has over the reproduction and performance of his work. There is no space to go into detail here, but together these proposals form a serious attack on what has been for many years in most civilized countries, New Zealand included, the traditional protection given to authors of artistic, literary and musical works. Copyright is not a matter which writers in this country have had to bother about in the past; but the position which had been won in England and transferred to New Zealand must now be asserted and maintained here. Under present New Zealand law established by the Copyright Act r9r3, copyright begins automat- ically when the work is created; it is not dependent on registration; it remains the property of the author of the work unless he for- mally signs it away; it lasts for his life and fifty years after his death. It is important to note that this term of copyright has recently been confirmed by Britain under its Copyright Act r956. Copyright depends on international agreement, principally under the Berne Convention of r886, which New Zealand adhered to later, and its revisions, notably the Brussels Revision of r948. This New Zealand signed but has not ratified; changes in the present law are necessary before it can do so. Hence the Copy- right Committee, set up by the government in r957 to examine the whole copyright situation and make proposals. The Committee called for submissions, held sittings, and its findings and proposals were eventually published as a Parliamentary Paper last August. This document should be studied carefully: it is of concern to every writer in the country and his heirs and dependents. One interesting clue to the Report is that while many of the most powerful interests in the country put their cases to the Committee, whether by direct invitation or not, no single writer and no writers' organization did so. Yet writers, with composers and artists, are the persons most directly concerned in matters of copyright, which is designed expressly to give reasonable tection to their work, and would hardly exist without it; they are the primary producers. But the Report reflects the interests of a strange assortment of middlemen, from librarians and publishers to the N.Z.B.S., the Tourist Department, the New Zealand Manu- 6 facturers' Federation, the National Council of the Licensed Trade, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, the New Zealand Racing Conference, the New Zealand Newspaper Proprietors' Association. It maintains in its opening section that it received submissions 'representative of all points of view on the subject'. Since writers (and artists) were not heard, this is manifestly untrue; and to that extent the Committee failed to carry out the task entrusted to it. That the Australasian Performing Right Association presented its case for composers under the general term 'authors' does not affect this statement. It is no doubt the fault of writers themselves that they were not heard. Yet not entirely so. The appointment of the Committee and its wish to receive submissions was advertised in the press. But, since writers have not had to consider questions like these in the past, and since they have no professional organization to protect their interests and act for them, they were understandably unaware of their interests in the matter. That is no excuse for penalizing not only them, but all writers afterwards. It goes without saying that if 'direct communication with parties thought to be interested' was made to any organization at all, as the Report states it was, it ought to have been made (in default of a professional organization) to P.E.N., the most eminent and well recognized writers' body in the country. But this was not done and the Committee must be held responsible. The Minister of Justice stated at the end of last year that before any copyright legislation is enacted all interested parties will have a further opportunity to express their views. The composers, deeply concerned about the Report, have already done so. It is to be hoped that writers will have acted before these notes appear. The issues raised by the Report prompt a further question: is it not time to form a professional organization to which all New Zealand writers should belong? Its function would be to protect the interests of writers in their dealings with publishers, theatre and film companies, broadcasting, TV, etc., to advise them about contracts, fees, income tax, and the like, to represent them in enquiries such as those of the Copyright Committee, and provide legal advice for them when necessary. For models, there are bodies such as the Society of Authors in England, the Fellowship of Aus. tralian Writers, and the Australasian Performing Right Association, mentioned above.

7 Readers' A ward

A WORK of art has no value except its truth or reality and the delight and wisdom which it offers those who see and hear and contemplate it. To set a price on it is as absurd as to price delight and wisdom-the wisdom that is beyond rubies. Yet artists have to live, and so must be given some kind of monetary token for the expense of their time and talent; which is generally done today by allowing works of art to be bought and sold as if they were shirts or scrubbing brushes or stocks and shares. Readers who have enjoyed poems and stories and other work in Landfall will guess (if they do not know) how inadequate as an expression of their pleasure is the necessarily meagre payment which the writer receives. Writers give more pleasure than they ever dream and get little thanks for it, especially in this ungenerous country which is grudging even of praise. Landfall itself cannot praise its contributors without seeming to beat its own drum. Instead, it now offers readers a chance of showing their appreciation of work which they have admired in its pages. Readers are invited to name the title and author of one story (which must not be an extract from a novel), one poem (or sequence of poems), and one other contribution (excluding illustrations), which seem to them outstanding in Landfall up to the end of 1959; they may vote for one or two or all three of these. They are also invited to send a donation with their vote, if they wish; this will go towards an award to the authors of the work which receives the largest number of votes in each section. Unless readers state that their donation is to go towards the award for a particular section, it will be divided amongst all three. Any sum from half-a-crown to £500 will be gratefully received; Landfall will start by putting down £30 for each award. It Would be unrealistic to expect readers to go through all fifty-two numbers of Landfall before voting, so that the result (which will be announced in the September number) is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. Nevertheless it will be a mark of respect for good work. Entries, which must state the name and address of the person entering them, should be addressed: LANDFALL READERS' AWARD, The Caxton Press, P.O. Box 363, Christchurch.

A Prologue for 'The Shrew'

A PRIZE of ten guineas is offered for the best Prologue to The 8 Taming of the Shrew, to be spoken in a production of the play by Rosalie and Patric Carey at the end of this year. The Prologue should be in heroic couplets, of not less than twenty and not more than forty lines. The judges will be Patric Carey and Charles Brasch, and the winning entry will be printed in Landfall. Entries should be sent to Landfall, P.O. Box 363, Christchurch, to reach it not later than 31 August 1960. Envelopes should be marked The Shrew.

Poets of the Sixties

PETER BLAND

PRAISES

I PRAISE Prometheus, in chains for love, Krishna, the Christ, even Crane, Who gave himself back to the sea, to sink Into its womb, still heavy with love.

I praise them the more now they have gone And give no hint they will ever return. Creating a second coming Yeats was not wrong To see chaos born in once holy Bethlehem.

The Gods are dead. The best of men Barely keep alight the spark Each day threatens to drown out. I praise Their bitter conflict, and a blackened heart.

DEATH OF A DOG

SALLY is dead, and the children stand around Like small white lilies. Someone, In a terrible hurry, has ground Her red tongue into unaccustomed silence. Now, all that was so much living Lies like a mound of wet rags-freezing Beneath my daughter's rough excited hands. 9 It is no loss for her, this going near A silence she cannot understand. Frank as forever she has wandered out Beyond all thought of our complaining, and Stands there pouting-puzzled to believe That one who partners her adventures Still lies at daybreak in a tangled sleep.

I tell her this is death, and leave It at that. She does not weep But runs repeating what she's learned To all who'll listen. Women up the street Feign kindness-grief lies on them Like a load of dishes. More matter of fact Their men rush past to urgent buses

Destined for the day's awaiting needs. She feels her message meets with mild reproof And so returns to that child-crowded scene Where all was black and white-but finds Someone's removed the death she runs to greet. Tonight there'll be a burying, and tomorrow A gap in the world to help her cram with pleasure.

TWO POEMS OF COMBAT

EACH day he comes to the empty arena Intent on sacrifice. Each day the sun Sends him home beaten like any labourer Whose seed finds no other womb but dust.

He comes to kill. His dripping cape Is wet with sweat not blood. He calls His challenge to every shadow, but gets It hurled back from the arena walls.

Yet each day finds him back and waiting To meet the beast he was told would come Like a mad bull-something solid to fight Beyond the pain of knowing he cannot run. 10 II Consider this clash of opposites Within a ring of sand-a bull, All blackness, bred to obliterate, And the solitary shape of man

Dressed to catch the light Like summer, and absorb The white sun in a blaze so bright It dulls the black bull's passing storm.

They are a unity we recognize, but still We thrill to find it so-enthralled By blood spilt simply to smooth the sand Where something positive struggles to be born.

TERMINUS

A GREY 'Good morning' may reward our urgency As things get moving here. Smooth, clocked, and chill, The trains-like small red ferries-slip their moorings, Sidle out and suck their cargo in. Shrill

As stones hurled through a carriage window, (Or the window of our world) school kids at play Burst upon us like a flock of pigeons Onto station statues, ignoring our grim clay.

The sun stacks up our shadows like a porter And screws our eyes against the coming day When Death's black train will whistle round the corner, The kids pack up their stones and go away.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS for my daughter

TREMBLE to accept your overwhelming trust, Born of a will to take the world for granted. It leaves no loopholes; unavoidably, one must Assume the disadvantage-and, confronted, 11 Stand as before a too disarming mirror. Even your tears reflect my own spent errors.

Framed in turn, I must most often seem The clumsy object of your trained aplomb. Best welcomed when, sparing playtime or ice-cream, I shrink to nursery size-a dubious Tom Thumb Lost in a wonderland where, daily, you complain Of the inconstant potions making me man again.

Dear wilful 'Alice', it appears twin sights On either side the looking glass, unearth a dross Of broken toys, soiled promises, and nights, Full of fears for the future, cruel with frost. Foresworn to this household vision, yet I ask That I might grow, like you, simply because I must.

THOUGHTS ON UNPACKING Unpacking, clothes, crockery, and cans fall into place-each knows its use. The rooms fill up with debts that wait to cushion me-who, once again, abuse the public pattern taking shape beneath the measuring window drapes.

Those blood-red curtains up, we feel we rule both dark and light, but any fool outside can see that they rule us-as, down the street, blinds go up like tired eyes, or close venetian lashes on the panes of sleep.

Looking through that blood-shot glass it seems as if my life is led down one long street-each new address finds me back in that home hotel which, as a child, I rushed to leave: the bill unpaid; the landlord on my heels.

The years add interest to that debt and shape the looming landlord who no longer lives to lose his head. 12 More than his blood is mine, for time leaves me his role like arrears of rent. Hanging his photo up, I find

resentment fades at such resemblance. In me I recognize his rage who always knew that sex was bait, society the trap, and innocence the mirror in which the guilty gaze as they lie that bait upon its willing back.

So that, like the bearer of bad news, I've more than memories to unstack. Sitting among my fears, I finger love and death-the same old pack of battered shadows my children shape on moonlit walls, with trembling hands.

GORDON CHALLIS

THREE THINGS THREE things that trouble me I can't explain : the pictures on the shelves of blind men's rooms, the dust on artificial flowers, and the moon which brushes past the clouds and sounds like wind. Some strict logician would abstract a meaning, find a common causal factor; I cannot, can only wonder why the night outside delays for reasons more than glass from flooding through, can only ask: for whose eyes are the waiting pictures and if the blind have far more faith than we; for whose lame touch the wax or plastic flowers and in what soil their cells forget to grow; for whose late benefit the polished moon which shines with so much cirrus friction. These three things : the pictures on the shelves in blind men's rooms, the dust on artificial flowers, and the moon which brushes past the clouds and sounds like wind. 13 THE THERMOSTATIC MAN THE world could fall to pieces any moment now; with luck it won't, mainly because it hasn't yet. Though cracks appear, I'll merely count them leeway spaces left so masses may expand to meet and don't.

But I, who used to walk bolt upright, this day bow as meek as wheat: how can I be sure I shall not always fear to face fierce heat, to face the sun, not watch my shadow lagging back behind, and feel complete?

From strips of many metals am I made. I grow beneath the sun unevenly. I cannot cry lest the least tear should cool down one soft element and strain the others. I am bland, bend to become the thermostat which keeps my spirit burning low. One day I shall perhaps be tried by a more humble, human fire which, blending all my elements in one alloy, will let me stand upright, prepared to fall.

AFTER SHOCK TREATMENT Now that the stopgap lightning has, for the meantime, hamstrung death's dark horses, drowning those heartfelt hoofbeats in its general thunder, I do not care to catch up on the latest news of a world I never bargained for, was never that much sold on anyway. I'll not amuse myself with whether the soul exists at birth or after death. I do not greatly care if human fate is worked out all beforehand I4 and taken so for graphlike granted, writ so clear that, knowing the coefficients, all could read: such issues, which once troubled me, are no affair of mine these days. I do not wish to fathom the human heart and mind, our purpose here, our lot of happiness or anything so trivial. I only want to know one thing-the spot where the first pedestrian crossing is in Willis Street, whether it's at the corner with Lambton Quay ... or not.

THE SINFUL MAN You cannot see it now, of course, but if you ever went to Sunday-school and got those prints they give for good behaviour you might have met a case quite similar tC' mine: I mean that picture of a man who toils toward a green hill with his hoisted sack of sin.

You cannot even touch it, nor can I, and yet you cannot say it isn't there, for you don't have to carry it . . . I do. And I've begun, these past few days, to woniier what this sack contains. Coming across the stream it grew much heavier; this fact suggests the stuff that sins are made of may be dehydrated, crystal-forming, or absorbs its water by osmosis. If you prefer a mythical account then call me Christopher and say I save my master who could walk the waves though in the process I go deathwards down.

I do not think, however, Christ would ride any man that hard. The only handicaps are heaven-set and judged on past performance; mine was never good, but people sometimes bet heavily on rank outsiders, try to beat the tote by backing me at odds against myself.

So now I'm only fit for packhorse duties bearing this black old sack, not knowing what 15 material is here. Is it the sand on which the random seed was scattered to be gleaned by birds? Is it the seed itself which, moistened now, would grow but burst holds open, break my back in two?

Sometimes I like to think I stumble under a load of roses, spilling on the stream for someone else to gather, a load I might see for myself if only I could go back to where I started, right back to the bank, before I shouldered them forever out of sight.

BUILDING Do not tread on the ants. Do not kill the bees. Do not tear down the beavers' dam. I want to set my feet on something solid. Jacinto Fombona-Pachano

THESE commands at least seem easy to obey. So we shall find a rock where no ants track and let the queen-bee settle on our shoulder when her hive swarms yet stand stock still and wait to see what sweetness may be worked within our mouths; and we shall try which river's ice is thick enough to bear man's weight and yet not block the beavers' home.

But steps we watch by day by dark will crush, and we in fear will thrash whatever stings, and ice, however strong, must melt or mounting crash a winter wedge to cleave the beavers' dam.

sometimes wish like ants we knew our track, had not so many signposts which the local louts have waggishly adjusted on their wild way home from weekly dances; or that our strange gyrations took teaching from the bee-both pattern and the dance- who knows her tropic distance and direction; or that we knew our seasons as the beaver knows the time by which his building must be done, 16 the kind of saplings best to bind the pine, a place in which to rear his young, a place to die. ii How difficult to know one's limits without which no act of art or love can be complete!

Even the simple building of a house is hard enough though there your section pegs define the site and leave no room for flexibility. The statutory regulations say in black and white that walls and fences should be finished in a year and when I said our neighbours and ourselves would help each other build, would give and take, the Council architect was tactful, making clear that this was good in theory; 'but for the sake of argument, if your revolving clothesline was put too close beside the section boundaries and if your neighbour got knocked ninepinlike by some quite sudden unguessed gust of breeze, he might see his solicitors and not waste time with gentlemen's agreements. Anyway, you know the age-old saying-"what is mine is mine and what is yours belongs to both of us"- it's very true.'

And thus these past few days I've been concerned with nails and palings, strainer posts and spirit levels. All this fuss is maybe what I want to dodge by praise of fenceless freedom. A tent would do, a sailing boat or caravan with just a magic circle sketched scantily in dust with stick or stone, serving as a garden where each visitor might choose all fruits and never pay; no sickle, withering or blight would touch what there had grown; no one would toe the line and no tenacious tar could keep the people's feet firm on the ground; all movement there would be for no good reason, for no sufficient cause, yet one could step freely back and forth to spaces where all sound will synchronize with action and daylight freezing 17 objects solid will not warp and melt or lap away their form and shadow. But then the blind evangelist in me will scuff his unwashed feet across the line-as when an angry loser finds he could not keep the rules of playground marbles, the rules which he devised and cannot beat. iii It's true that robins know the rules of trespass on each other's territories, do not need to fight it out since each bird knows his rival's right by ritual; this will not suit a restless animal like man whose rote responses hide a hankering for unconditioned flight. Yet I'm not sure that I would hope for this, for lawless motion simply by my own volition, or hope for rest as peaceful as that single swan I saw the other day who made the pond his own concentric home where trees in passion bent though no stones wept to hear his song made visible; the ripples woke no resonance except their own, most aptly from the trees- whose age is read by ripples stilled in time, whose limits are the destined cells which once were near the core. But all this seeming ease of vegetable living calls for some divine extreme of contemplation such as Buddhas have, as swans half-symbolize; (and we forget the bird who clears the temple groves with his bone-breaking wing).

I have not learned nor till now longed to move between my limits-self and shade-have only heard about the albatross, never seen him mastering all altitude by that which else would hold him back: I mean the friction of his moving home the air, the home which changes underneath his ample span as he gives form to each new dome or peak of steady-winged ascent. I dream him pausing where all forces are in balance, swinging so he can again descend downwind, and there his shadow waits upon the changing surface of the waves. Bird and shadow merge till once more he creates rise and reunion, limits for which he craves. r8 THE MOUSE CIRCUS, AFTER DARK

DURING the day our showman shouted, 'This way please! The mighty mice! See how they run, see how they run!' He put us through our paces; all his entourage, expert as ever, walked the tightrope, ran the maze. Now that it's night and someone has left my cage Unlocked, I'll try the treadwheel once again,

Practise the tricks my keepers didn't teach me. Last time I got excited in the public gaze And ran along the rungs much faster than My legs could carry me; the world completely Lost its balance, spun a hundred hectic ways. This time I've got the knack and know I can

Keep even keel, taking things easy. Just a dour Plodding step will stop mistakes, avert disaster. I'll now ignore the cheesebait moon that lures me on, Knowing it for milkmist curdled and gone sour; Better to forget the prize pursued too long . . And yet . . . I feel the rungs revolving faster.

OWEN LEEMING

SUNSET OVER LONGOS

SHADOWS silt the air; The mountain grips his green holiness about him, His deepening frowns Crinkle in a mirror of honey-winking sea.

This minute of cool repose Is splendid with mule-bells and the sun's Long gaze of love Before the rolling of horizon into night.

A dread in pines is etched Across the pumice brow of pallid Athos, And a stirring of eagles; As the forts of God prepare to chain their doors. 19 THE PICNIC YouR holiday body decked for no kill, Slacks unpressed, your quiet eyes Choosing our ground, sky in them, Bit by bit you made arise A private place by the road's margin. Because of this, I shall never condemn

The English again their stately board By a roaring bypass: Mum, Dad, And Auntie Flo with beef to carve. For your enclosing held us both glad, Hungry but glad, in a charmed ring By a field where fifty rooks soared.

And clouds-prosperous clouds, plush As sofas, sailed. We had roast Chicken and things, though someone, me, Forgot to pack the salt. Then tea, Tasting of thermos flask and polythene. We dashed the leaves on our host

Grass beside the field. It was newly ploughed. Brown laminates ran evenly away Along the rise. With your fingernails, red And sedulously manicured, you touched my head, My chest on the nipple. Then rewrapped Our end of bread. Across the loud

Car lanes a haystack with thatched Roof made its point. And a pale Hill with a crown of oak fought The dark of your blowing hair. I drove out Clouds and ploughed field. Thought Brought you under me. Crumbs scratched

Us as the wheels sped by, as blind To it all, we dallied together in the mind.

20 FOOTHILLS, 4 A.M. AsTIR, and morning not begun : With first light spreading up the east beyond Lacklustre hills, I awoke and broke surface In a sea of awareness, Cascading sleepy fantasies like foam, and spun From the dark to a blond Foreknowing of the sun.

In stillness primitive as the world, With an occasional crowing of a far-off cock, Beneath sky cloudless, innocent, wan, I set my boots upon The death-road, crunched silence to dust, and curled A lazy finger on the stock While a day and its destiny unfurled.

Hunger has its taste I tasted it; my boots crunched the swinging miles And scattered stones from the shingle road, as wives In farms picked up their lives, As sheepdogs yawned, as damp sparrows sat spaced Along fence-wires, as the rhythmic miles Went marching into waste.

Under sky now blank And whitely bleached, my boots brush dew-beads From tussocks, a header-harvester red and square Squats in a wheatfield, while a mare Stretches to make water; they climb a bank, My boots, till the valley recedes Into tawny laps, each flank

Of a folded muscular hill. Fanfare! The trumpet sun blazons its dawning Loudly golden on every shoulder, in gulleys pours Deep purple; a hawk soars In the upper air; my eyes sting with fill Of light. On such a morning It seemed merciful to kill.

21 BEGGAR WITH TRUMPET CHRISTMAS Eve is shoppers' day : main street Flows with baskety women, shuffling feet; Seems no through road; my bus is stuck. Hark-thinned by glass-herald-suck Of consumption-yes, herald angels sing. Ice crystals flay the sky, and sting Housewife faces. Where's this deathstick brass? A grind in low gear. There he is, poor ass, Blowing himself under my nose, glass between.

Christ, he must be cold. Mittens, a pea-green Muffler, cpat with raw edges. Glory-he blows, Coughs up phlegm, sees me looking, and goes On-to the new-born-plink. Plink in a bag, Tied to the flared end, of black silk rag, Of threepence, I think. Boy held up by his Mum. Blue fingers press pistons. His eyes shoot dumb Daggers at me. I shoot them back. To feel Guilty is to feel nasty. He plays like a real

Deadbeat bum. The lights change twice, Four times, back to red. Women aren't nice, Not mobbirtg for food, I decide. Move, bus, move. He's standing in the gutter; cool, in the groove, Ha ha; a river of blood should come and sweep Him down a grating. Man is vile, cheap, Disgusting. His breath must be bad. Then he's gone. So has his peace on earth. The traffic moves on Ten yards and stops. In the mid-afternoon grey He was a lighthouse of woe. His tune goes away, Heals into the background. Night falls square At four, and all ugliness leaves the air.

22 C.K.STEAD

WINTER SONG THE moon roosts high in a winter tree- bright bird whose eye can fleck with light or darkly patch this room, and watch where you and I lie calm, lie deep, nightlong in intertwining sleep.

The snow road leads to Westbury from Temple Meads across the Downs; tree-shadow falls on road, on walls, innocent light impales the sky and lies along the shuttered eye.

Winter and death accuse our love. What soul's faint breath haunting the snow- bound blackened trees can here appease the living cell? Let the night weep that waits for us. Lie calm, lie deep!

ELEGY Thy firmnes drawes my circle just, And makes me end, where I begunne. John Donne

CoNSIGN the husk to earth. Heap high the place Richly compounded, where farmer, patriarch, Makes earth at last his own. Such rites are public. 23 But question how the expected breaking-up Felt, and was fought, when the passage of his blood Faltered, and the last corridor pitched into dark.

Death is its own poem. We guess what strains Launched against chaos, are composed at last In hard lines echoing down our silence.

The sculpted, familiar features are all we see. But agony, like flame, rages between His forward look and final monument.

II Ripeness is all to make the thing that dies. Small, with intolerable patience, the wind plucks, And earth is thankful for small mercies.

But patience wells to violence: unnumbered leaves Flattened on walls or sent like planets whirling Are cut by whips that held them; earth heaves Root-shaken, wrenched from sleep and quilted grass.

Or when the air, like a still pool, stands Filtering light-still the intangibles pass.

It is the dead we love, appeased and cool As we composed them last. So now his husk- More than its sap-days did-prompts us to tell Tall scenes he never played in: how he was soft In spring as greenest daughters, in summer proud; How, fallen, he cast as Lear all rage aloft.

Ill The nails of rain are driven; the clouds cross. The soil that fed is fed by its own loss.

The hill he eyed now closes like an eye Under the damp grey pupil of the sky. 24 The life he listened for stops in his ears; The bone-tree, fallen, sheds the guilt it wears.

This landscape mourns and makes him as he fails Unfailing, planted in the flesh of hills.

CARPE DIEM SINCE Juliet's on ice, and Joan Staked her chips on a High Throne-

Sing a waste of dreams that are Caressing, moist, familiar :

A thousand maidens offering Their heads to have a poet sing;

Hard drinking beaches laced with sun, The torn wave where torn ships run

To wine and whitewashed bungalows. This summer sing what winter knows:

Love has a cuckoo in its clock, And death's the hammer in the stroke.

LAST POEM IN AUSTRALIA

EucALYPT scent disperses in blue smoke, Tree shadows stretch into the afternoon; Under this clear, half-wintered sky, no sound Breaks but the steep gears of a truck, hauling North out of the town, out of the valley.

To the man walking that road my hillside smoke Signs life among the trees, as he for me Is patterned at this distance with the land, Who daily perhaps passes me in streets Unnoticing, unnoticed. So now the town Heavy with sunlight on its yellow trees Becomes, in beauty, a place unknown to me. 25 Always the present blurs with opulence- This rough slope with its fierce, gesturing gums Living and dead, its rocks and stubble grass Burned brown by sun and frost, its sagging wires Strung out with brilliant parakeets like beads; And smoke dissolving up where whip-birds wait To crack the silence, while the black soul of a crow Flaps, on slow wings, into the downward sun. Only what lies behind falls into shape, Orderly, quiet-and is not the truth. Two years that hovel town has weathered me (Neither here nor there, neither alive nor dying); Now on its fringing hills, close to departure, I grant it, in this Autumn afternoon, That grace which nothing earns except in loss.

CHORUS after Euripides' Alcestis

AnMETUs, your walls have seen Such wealth, such gifts of food And cellared wine, That not the tuneful god Apollo, could disdain Shelter under your roof From wind and rain. In your long halls he sang A marriage song, or ran Headlong over the hills among Your flocks, piping them on : His song of shepherd's hopes Fled like a girl Down stone-deaf slopes. Held by the great god's lyre, Lions in Orthys glen Followed that golden wire : From leaping forests of pine Lynx and deer Caught in his net of music Ran out to hear. 26 Thus from the stabled sun Your rule, Admetus, reaches To rocky Pelion By Aegean waters. Rich in flocks are the lands By Boibe's deep lake Where your house stands.

Admetus of high birth And wisdom inherited, Today you place in earth A woman loved. Your door stands open, receiving The guest who sees Nothing of grieving.

Imperious stones of art, And custom's mask, deny The destructible human heart. For beauty's sake you lie With tongue or pen- Humble before the gods, Proud before men.

WHETHER THE WILL IS FREE (Winter landscape, New England, Australia)

SNow wraps a harsh and gum-grey land, Slug-blood retreats from the shelled hand

And foot needled for warmth pines Stamping the hills. Breath-charted air

Caught from a gramophone, defines A girl's mood whose doved hand

Dances. Outside, a bird on the bare Head of the white-haired day is a stare 27 At the crop of the sprinkled seed of sleet. Whether the will is free, the shiver

Runs in me that ruffles the feather; Whether the will is free, the beat

Of the doved hand, the dove moan, Chords my mind to the gramophone.

ii A dog is a hopper on the snow. Wanting wings, or shoes, he goes

Spring-full as hope, and quivering An arrow nose at frozen trees.

iii This loping landscape doesn't care What falls on it, what freezes there,

Whether the wants are few that house In the head of a girl, the eye of a stare,

Whether streams have a will, but sends Them even under ice, to sea.

iv May be I'm the girl, the bird, the stream, The hungry dog in this iron time,

Not hell bound or heaven bent, Willing to get to where I'm sent;

Under its ice my small life crawls Pecking and snuffing at grey walls :

Whether the will is free or seems, I would be music, doved in snow.

28 ALEXANDER GUYAN An End and a Beginning

IT wAs during the train journey that Sarah began to wonder just how different this holiday was going to be. Of course it had been mentioned rather carefully by her mother, and cheekily by her brothers, that it would be different on her own, and she had said, 'Yes I suppose it will be' to her mother, and 'You could never imagine how much I'm looking forward to it' to her brothers. But it wasn't until now, sitting in the train, with her luggage above her, a book and her tennis racket on her knees, that she gave the idea of being on her own very much thought: thought that was not made necessary by the need to answer. Ever since she could remember she had spent at least three weeks of the summer holidays with the rest of the family by the sea, staying with Aunt Kate. Sometimes Sarah's parents had sent the children on their own, and followed them later, and sometimes they had all stayed longer than three weeks, and only once when John had taken sick had they stayed less. But they had always gone. Aunt Kate, who lived on her own in a large white villa, wrote books, not very good ones she insisted, but successfully enough to keep her comfortably well off. She obviously loved having the family with her, and Sarah and her two brothers loved being there. Aunt Kate was wonderful fun, in fact the children secretly found her to be more fun than their parents, although this was an incomprehensible fact which they never allowed themselves to be preoccupied with. But this summer the two boys had gone off to a camp, Sarah's parents had been indefinitely detained in town, and Sarah was on her own. And now she somehow had the impression that it had all been deliberate, and that everyone had joined in a plan to send her to Aunt Kate by herself. She couldn't think what had given her that idea. Perhaps part of the cause had been that mother had seemed so terribly fussy this time, fussy to such a degree that Sarah had finally said in exasperation: 'Mother I am sixteen you know.' Her mother had laughed, and. replied: 'I know- that dear, but this is the longest journey you have ever gone on your own.' 29 And then, too, mother had been so insistent that this holiday was going to be different, saying this as if she was warning Sarah, who had listened without paying very much attention, something that she found herself prone to do lately. But now she began to think about it. She would be on her own a great deal of the time she supposed; that would be different from the other times when she and the boys had been inseparable. Strangely enough she did not think that she would mind being on her own. One had to be so energetic to keep up with the boy& And they yelled so much. But even without them she would do all the usual things like swimming and long walks, and this year she wanted to take photographs of sea birds for an idea she had for the school magazine, just as last year she had collected sea shells for the class museum. And this time I'll lie for hours and hours on the sand without having the boys wanting me to do something all the time. Perhaps mother means men. She looked out the window and grinned at the passing countryside. That sounds like the title of an American musical comedy: Mother Means Men, starring Sarah Firbank in her most revealing role. No, no, that is much too unlikely, mother could never associate me with the word men; much more likely to be boys. She laughed softly. Honestly, she thought. Her breath steamed the window over, and she drew a grinning face on it. Honestly, mother has nothing to worry about.

Aunt Kate was at the station to meet her, and while they drove to the house in her small car, she talked gaily and incessantly to Sarah, showing, without any intention, how happy she was to have her. 'I've got lots of things arranged for us to do together', she said. 'Oh?' 'Well I thought that with John and Mark not being here your holiday would take a little more arranging than usual.' 'I really don't mind being on my own.' 'I'm glad to hear that. I dislike people who crave for company all the time. But what I mean is that you can't possibly spend the whole month entirely on your own, so I rather thought we could do one or two things together. The Vicar is having a garden party on Wednesday for instance, and I've arranged that we go. I don't think you have met his daughters. They are a little older than you, but I'm sure you'll have a lot in common.' Sarah felt faintly resentful. She did not especially want to meet 30 the Vicar's daughters, and she did not like the idea of Aunt Kate deliberately entertaining her. 'What about your work?' she asked. 'Absolutely at a standstill, and best left alone for a while', Aunt Kate answered, and then added, 'Of course I'm not going to take up all your time.' Sarah sensed that her aunt was a little disappointed with her for not showing more enthusiasm, and hastily said that it all sounded wonderful. 'I love garden parties,' she said. 'At least I think I do; I've never been to one.' Aunt Kate laughed, and Sarah felt better.

Almost as soon as they arrived at the house Aunt Kate took Sarah up to her room, only it wasn't her room, not her old one that is. It was the one that her parents usually shared during their visits. The large bed had been shifted out, and a single one put in its place. 'I hope you like it,' Aunt Kate said. 'It is the nicest room, and as your mother and father won't be coming down I thought you might as well have it. I had it freshly wallpapered last week. The other room is really too small for you now don't you think, and this one is so much more feminine.' It was a lovely room, and Sarah had always liked it, and on one wall now, directly opposite the bed, the new wallpaper was pale green like the colour of cooking apples, and it was omamented with tiny bunches of flowers, the whole effect making the room even more enchanting. But somehow the change displeased Sarah, and when Aunt Kate left the room she sat down on the bed and thought about it. It wasn't that she wished she had been consulted; rather that it had never happened. Again she had the impression that everything had been planned, changed and rearranged for a purpose. Simply because she was a year older than she had been last year, everyone seemed determined to pull her familiar world to pieces. This garden party for instance. Going to a thing like that had never happened before. Neither she nor her brothers had ever brought the necessary clothes with them, because they never expected to attend anything that was vaguely social. Now it was different. This year mother had insisted that she pack her nylon frock, not that she could have known about the garden party- or could she? Sarah remembered the long telephone conversation that her mother had with Aunt Kate, and she thought bitterly of 3I how she hated that: being discussed and decided upon by adults, especially her mother, as if she was not supposed to have a personal existence of her own. That evening, with an awkwardness that irritated her, she told Aunt Kate that she didn't want to go to the garden party. Aunt Kate did not look at all disappointed or angry.

Sarah went into the water slowly, pulling at the bottom of her costume. She was a physical coward, and the icy coldness made her gasp with pain. Gritting her teeth she walked forward until the grey water was lapping around her knees. Small waves curled their way in, passing through her, and when the big ones came she hopped over them with a rigid movement that extended along her arms, and her neck, and her face. Feeling that she should make some effort to acclimatize herself she bent forward and splashed the surface of the water, causing large drops to fall onto her arms and legs. She did this with great enthusiasm, actually forgetting the purpose of her actions, until finally, without really deciding but just doing it, she leaned forward and entered the water. She swam quickly, with undisciplined strokes, trying to combat the shock of the water on her body by thinking-It's a lie, it's a big lie; it isn't the least bit better once you are in; it's much worse-until finally the coldness became neutral, and she turned on her back, and looked up at the sky. It was the day after her arrival, and directly after breakfast she had told Aunt Kate that she was going down to the beach. She had expected this to meet with disapproval or resentment, but on the contrary her aunt was enthusiastic about it, and Sarah wondered if the plans that her mother and her aunt had made (she had decided that they had made plans) had been abandoned. She hoped so, for this holiday had become strangely, unhappily complex, and now perhaps it would stop being like this, and become as the other holidays had been, effortless, simple, and not at all complicated. She floated in the water, and watched the wisps of cloud in tne sky. She began to count them, and then began to think out a story in which two children lived on such a cloud: a cloud that was made of white candy, which they ate, until there was only a small piece left, and when that happened they simply jumped on to another large piece. The very tiny wisps were left-overs she decided. She swam a few energetic strokes on her back, and then looked down her body towards the beach. She was surprised to see how 32 far out she was, and that she had drifted near to the short jetty that pierced its way into the sea. It cast a shadow, and here the water was dark green and black, and much too calm. She brought her legs down to see if she could touch the bottom, found that she couldn't, and was alarmed. She trod water, and then swam with frantic energy towards the jetty. It was built of rocks cemented untidily into a thick flat finger like a giant's thumb. Sarah pulled herself up onto one of the rocks, and sat there breathless. She looked across to the beach. A few people had come down, and had distributed themselves into tiny heaps along the sands. A child was running from the edge of the water to the concrete ramp, and then back again. A young man and a girl were leading each other timidly into the water. Feeling reassured by all this, Sarah climbed further up the side of the jetty. From here she could see that the jetty was the end of the dividing line that split the town into two distinct factions: the old, where the fishermen and their families lived, and the not so old of the retired accountants and bankers, and people like Aunt Kate. The line was always there, in the form of a street or a building. Always distinct, it was rarely broken by the fishermen, and only occasionally by the other residents. Yet it was only now that Sarah really noticed it. She stood up, but instead of returning to the water-she could not bring herself to do that, it looked so black and bottomless- she began to climb up the rocky side. She imagined herself a sea creature, a beautiful sea maiden suddenly given the power to walk on land, and affected by this she attempted to make her ascent to the parapet a mysterious and effortless thing. When she had reached it she swung herself over, crossed the narrow roadway to the other side, and sat down, swinging her legs over the side. She felt incredibly happy. From here she could look at the tiny harbour. Small fishing boats bobbed alongside the quay. They did not seem nearly so neat and clean as they had from a distance. Directly below her on one of these boats a fisherman was bent over a coil of rope. After a while he sat back, sucked at his pipe, and then spat wildly over the side. He was short and stockily built, with a square heavily lined face, and a thick crop of grey, curly hair that sat on his head like a helmet. Slowly he turned and looked up at Sarah, and she realized that he had known she was there all the time. He grinned at her, and she saw where the stem of his pipe disappeared behind white, hard teeth. 33 'Morning', he said. 'Good morning', she answered. 'Fine day.' 'Yes, isn't it.' His grin was beginning to embarrass her, and she could not understand why. 'Like boats?' he asked, leaning against the side of the cabin. 'Not very much', she answered before she realized What she was saying. He laughed, and took the pipe out of his mouth. 'Nothing like being honest about it is there? Want to come aboard?' Sarah was completely unprepared for this, and she flustered, and said yes she would like to come aboard very much. She could not have brought herself to give another negative answer anyway. She climbed down the iron ladder that was attached to the side of the jetty, and when the slight movement of the boat caused her to hesitate on the last rung the fisherman grasped her by the elbows and lifted her on board. 'That's the stuff,' he said. 'Bit awkward when you aren't used to it.' He smelt of fish, and there were scales on his blue jersey. She stepped past him and walked along the short deck pretending an interest in the boat. She felt uncomfortable because she knew he was watching her, yet excited too. She was very conscious of the fact that this was not the sort of thing that Aunt Kate or mother would approve of. 'If I'd known I was to have company I'd have tidied her up a bit. But she's a trim enough craft; nice lines.' Sarah knew, just knew, that he was talking about her, and somewhere inside of her, in the pit of her stomach a spark of fear was lighted. She told herself quickly that she could quite easily leave; she was standing beside the ladder again. 'It's a very nice boat', she said, grasping one of the rungs. 'Come and see the wheelhouse', he said. She followed him into the cabin. It was quite small, like a sentry box, and most of the space was taken up by the wheel, and by an object that looked like a clock. 'That's the compass', he said. There was an edge of pride in his voice, and for a moment its presence relieved Sarah. But this feeling of relief ended with his next remark. 'Like a drink?' he asked. 34 'No', she said very adamantly, and then losing courage, 'really, no--' 'Sure?' 'Yes, I'm sure.' 'Go on,' he insisted. 'It'll warm you up. You must be cold in just that swimming costume.' He poured out a drink for her, and she took it from him, and when she felt the touch of the glass on her hand she thought, why am I doing this. It was whisky or brandy. He drank straight from the bottle in large gulps, and she wondered if her glass was clean. When he lowered the bottle she saw the liquid splash inside. I have to get off this boat she thought. Perhaps the beach, the town, the iron ladder are no longer there. Perhaps I'm a million miles away from them. 'I have to go now', she said. There was something in her throat-sick-yes, she was going to be sick. She stepped towards the door unavoidably brushing against the fisherman. From the corner of her eye she saw him watching her closely. His face was flushed, perhaps angry. She was halfway through the doorway when she felt his hand on her shoulder. Trembling she turned her head towards him. 'Finish your drink', he said. The grin that had been on his face was gone. There was a kind of anguish there now, so that she realized that his words were not a command but a plea, and with this realization everything that she did not understand came down upon her, and therefore when she moved away from his hand, and across the deck, and up the iron ladder, it was a flight from something less tangible than fear of him.

Aunt Kate was in the garden. 'Did you have a pleasant swim?' she asked. 'Yes, it was lovely', Sarah answered trying to hide her breath- lessness. 'The first one is always the best.' 'Aunt Kate-I'd like to go to the garden party.' They looked at each other for a moment, and then Aunt Kate smiled. 'Of course my dear', she said.

35 Writers in New Zealand: A Questionnaire

LITERATURE in New Zealand has now had a continuous history of more than a generation; that is, if we ignore several isolated earlier writers and reckon this continuity from the twenties, starting with the work of Jane Mander, R. A. K. Mason, Ursula Bethell, D'Arcy Cresswell and others. Today, in 1960, we can count at least a dozen novelists and writers of stories and a score of poets the standard of whose work marks them as professionals, and most of whom would, if they were able, give all or a large part of their time to writing. In fact they cannot do so, because writing does not pay. How then do they live? What are their conditions and prospects? Writing is for them necessarily part-time work; family and social responsibilities increase, for most of them, from year to year, until children grow up; in these circumstances, do they find it more or less difficult to write as the years pass? What then is the outlook for literature in this country? The number of writers since the war who have done good work (counting fiction and poetry alone) for some years and then stopped is alarmingly high. Did they stop because the demands made on them by daily living grew so exacting that in the end they had no time or energy left for writing? Is it only the few, luckier than their fellows or richer in energy, who are able to go on writing when that requires settled habit as well as occasional impulse? Are there as many casualties among writers in other countries, relative to population? Most writers at all times live on the edge or in the interstices of society, precariously. Those who are strong enough will write and be read somehow. In every society that is not enslaved or fossilized, men are looking all the time for writers and other artists to speak for them and to them, to enlarge their lives imaginatively, to show them an image-critical, flattering, divert- ing-of the body social, to offer them alternative purposes, beliefs, standards of behaviour, above all to keep them alert and responsive. Writers can do this because in the oceanic pressure of society, which grinds so many people down into units like pebbles, they remain stubbornly personal; social pressure, together with the growth of their powers, merely defines and sharpens each one's 36 nature, the vehicle of his gift. Remaining close to the sources of life, they become the spokesmen and guardians of that potential virtue which is the endowment of every human being; they form the unlicensed conscience of society. But the society that needs them must provide enough material encouragement to allow them to go on writing. In a society with a large market, such as Britain, conditions are hard enough. In New Zealand they are so adverse that we may have to expect a large proportion of gifted writers in every generation to succumb. This waste of talent may be such that our intellectual and spiritual growth is all the more likely to fall behind the material development of the country, while growth of population will not be enough, in this century, to alter the situation by providing a viable market. The position is not easy to judge. In order to make it clearer, Landfall drew up a questionnaire and submitted it to a number of writers (as widely representative as space would allow), in the hope that their answers would help to define some of the problems. Every writer is a special case, answerable only to himself. Hence the peculiar uneasy sense of responsibility between the writer and society, responsibility for, not to. Every writer seeks and must live with his own irreducible portion of reality, from which there is no escape and from the struggle with which he emerges lamed like Jacob. Yet writers share two common needs, lack of time and lack of money, which (for some of them) there are certain general ways of alleviating. It appears from the answers to the questionnaire that poets and prose writers take rather different views of what can or should be done in alleviation. The latter, and particularly novelists, whose work must go on regularly day after day, often need substantial help if they are to find time and energy to carry out plans which may occupy them for months or indeed years. Poets seem to value chiefly the recognition and consequent stimulus given by awards and competitive prizes, since poetry does not make the same public stir as fiction. Both wish to have prizes and awards more valuable, and to see new fellowships or scholarships established in addition to the two existing ones. The only competitive prizes at present are the two Katherine Mansfield Awards established last year, for a story and an essay; there is none for poetry. The questions that were asked rest on certain assumptions. No good writer is ever really idle. He needs as much time as he can get, not only for putting pen to paper, but for wide reading, 37 travel, observation, rumination, as well as for normal social life. State aid to writers has come to stay. But, as at present organized, state and other aid can only be temporary and marginal. All such aid, although given on grounds of achievement or promise, should be given unconditionally and not be made to depend on results; it must therefore take risks. It is not a matter of helping those unwilling to help themselves. That a writer manages to go on writing at all for some years argues a rare gift of energy. For the common good, that energy must if possible be enabled to find a proper outlet and not be left to spend itself, as it is sometimes compelled to do, in an unequal struggle against frustrating circumstances. The aim of all patronage of the arts should be to allow the free play of imaginative energy. Thirty years ago, Virginia Woolf summarized the minimum conditions that a writer needs as £soo a year and a room of one's own. Although she had in mind the young unmarried woman writer, we may take these conditions as indicating the kind of minimum in which good writing is likely to flourish; but for £500 we should read £woo, roughly its equivalent today.

Questionnaire

I (a). How much time do you need in an average day or week or week-end to do the best work you are capable of? (b). How much time do you get? Is it continuous or broken? Do you get it at the time of day when you can work best?

2 (a). What is the most you have earned in one year from writing (every kind of literary work, writing for broadcasting included)? (b). What do you consider your best piece of sustained writing, and how much did it earn for you, compared with other payments for work you consider less important? 3· How many times have you been abroad, and for how long at a time? Did you go at your own expense, or with the help of a grant or fellowship? Would it stimulate you as a writer to be able to go abroad occasionally, say once in six or seven years, as university teachers can do? 4· What is your job now, what other jobs have you had during the past decade, and how have they (or has it) helped or hindered your development as a writer? 5· Do you find it stimulating in any way to take on outside work, such as reviewing and broadcasting? If you do, 38 (a). Could the N.Z.B.S. help you as a writer more than it does, and if so, how? (b). Could the existing literary periodicals help you more than they do, and if so, how? 6. Would it help you to be offered commissions, as composers, portrait painters, and biographers often are, and as poets and playwrights used to be? If it would, of what sort? 7· At present, the Literary Fund helps writers in three main ways. It offers an annual Scholarship in Letters, of £500. It makes grants to writers to enable them to write or complete work planned, and makes occasional awards. It makes grants towards cost of publication of work completed. This help is valuable but limited. For example, writers with jobs and family responsibilities cannot always take advantage of the first. In what other ways could the Literary Fund help writers, assuming that it had a large enough grant to do so? (It has £2ooo a year now; the Writers' Conference last September urged that the amount be increased.) 8. What else could be done to help writers?

ANTONY ALPERS

I (a). Having no talent for the sort of small-scale work that can be attempted in a weekend, I write longer things. I have always imagined that to do my best I need long spells of freedom, but I suspect this is mistaken. I spent nearly four years full time on Katherine Mansfield, but A Book of Dolphins (to be published in r96o) was written over a four-year stretch in holidays, Easters, weekends, and lunch-hours. I don't know which of the two is 'the best work I am capable of' and so must answer 'Don't know' to the question. (b). The usual interval between meals, unless visitors come. 2 (a). I am a journalist, and if that is 'writing' my entire income since leaving school has been earned by writing. If it isn't, the answer would be 'in an exceptional year, about £5o'. (b). I suppose Katherine Mansfield, since it is my only such piece. Because I took so long over it this book earned me about £IOoo less than it cost to write. That is, the cost of the travel 39 involved and the loss of wages (reckoned at the rate of the job I resigned to do it) came to £rooo more than the sum of Literary Fund grant (£650) and royalties and translation rights (about £1000). 3· I have been abroad once. I spent four years in England. I went at my own expense, to do the Mansfield book, and was given a Literary Fund grant after I got there. I can imagine few things I would like less than to be offered a grant and told I had to go abroad (or to any particular place). As an exception, I would like to see the dolphins at Marine Studios in Florida. The Auckland Star sent me to the Cook Islands (which are not 'abroad' but are part of New Zealand) to examine their administration. I certainly was stimulated by that experience, and there is a book coming out of it, but the idea of deliberately turning my back on New Zealand and going abroad for stimulation is abhorrent to me. 4· I am an assistant editor in School Publications Branch of the Department of Education, in charge of a technical magazine for teachers. Before that I was for twenty-two years a journalist in a wilder environment (The Press, the Listener, the Auckland Star). Oliver Duff helped me to learn to write when I was on the Listener, but my answer to the essential part of the question is 'Don't know'. 5· Emphatically, no. Reviewing, I regard as literary onanism. (If you have fertile ideas, their place is in the creative womb, if you have one.) I consider it no part of the duties of the N.Z.B.S. or of any periodicals to 'help writers'. 6. Spare me from all commissions, grants, etc. (see the facts under 2 (b), above). 7· I consider it no part of the function of the Literary Fund to 'help writers', although in the course of what it does for literature in this country, some writers may be helped. There is nothing intrinsically virtuous about writers, any more than there is about jockeys or bricklayers, and the number of times the expression 'help writers' occurs in this questionnaire makes me feel em- barrassed. The present Literary Fund grants have the effect (in most cases, at any rate) of obliging the writers who have accepted them to finish what they have undertaken, without making it easy. In 40 my view that is a good way of 'helping' them. The grants usually cover cost-of-living only (or less), for the period concerned, and make no provision to offset what it costs to give up a job, lose provident fund entitlements, etc. Larger grants like American ones would do so. Do we want this? I don't know. 8. In my view nothing at all should be done to 'help writers'. 'And when are they going to do something to help the workers?' cried the man at the back of the meeting.

JAMES K. BAXTER

This questionnaire raises all, or nearly all, the practical problems that are likely to worry a man who wants to spend some of his time writing. They are chips off a single granite block, possibly from that remarkable boulder which Sisyphus, streaming with sweat, shoves uphill every day and night in the not-so-imaginary Greek underworld. It seems to me that no one is likely to be contented with a series of deadpan answers. The real problem raised concerns the weight, size, shape, geological or theological formation of this boulder, and what handholds (if any) can be found on its surface. So my answers will be aimed, however obliquely, at a solution. I have never had enough time to write. In my late teens I developed the habit of throwing up a job, drinking for a week or so, writing for a month or so, then taking another job. It worked quite well. The best poems I have written (those in Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness) were written in this way. But nowadays I have no time at all to write. From 7.30 to 8.30 a.m. on a weekday I am occupied in getting to work; from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. I am occupied with work; between 4.30 and 5.30 I return home; from then until midnight I am occupied in meeting the very real demands of family life and social life. The weekends are very properly devoted to gardening, family outings, painting the kit- chen ceiling, a little reading, changing the night soil for the cat, conversations with my wife, and answering a voluminous correspondence. The time between midnight and 2 a.m., which younger men devote to erotic entertainment, is the only time free for serious concentrated writing. Fortunately I have a robust physique. But the time-picture is a misleading one. In fact, for the past fifteen years, I have found time for writing by robbery- robbery from my employers, from my wife, from my children, 41 and possibly from the Almighty. By an artificial schizophrenia, by never giving my full attention to any work on hand, I have been able to sustain that interior life which in its turn leads to crime, divorce, hypocrisy, and the incubation of poems. This requires a casehardened conscience. As the carpenters arrive, as the telephone rings, as children sicken and wives explode like cannon crackers, as the priest repeats the absolution, the poem-making machine grinds on regardless. It is, I think, a genuine diabolical miracle. Money is also a problem. It distracts the mind from any sustained meditation. If one has it one thinks about it. If one has not got it, one thinks about getting it. I dislike money intensely. Once I earned £5o in one year by writing; and for my worst (and only) piece of sustained non-critical writing, jack Winter's Dream, I received about £20 from the N.Z.B.S. and about £r5 from Landfall. That kept me in tobacco for the year, but not in coffee. I have been abroad once during my adult life-to India, under a Unesco Cultural Grant, in 1958. It came as a great surprise to me, and I do not expect to be able to repeat the experience. But I would like to go to France before I die; and to the Holy Land, if that is possible. These are irrelevant wishes. I have had nearly thirty jobs in the past fifteen years : all of them kept me alive and tended to prevent me from writing. Quite frankly I do not think that travel grants, commissions, different jobs, or even leisure, could give me 'freedom to write'. It is my family who need the money, not me; or who will need it if I stop work and thus cease to support them, or die, or go for a long rest in Avondale; but they will need thousands, not hundreds, and only hundreds are likely to be offering. In Freudian symbolism, money equals dung, and dung is necessary to manure the crops. I would be glad to see new prizes and grants. I am quite ready to get on the gravy train. But I will never take off my hat to the driver. ·one becomes used to living on the razor's edge. If my economic or social or domestic condition were alleviated in such a way that I had more leisure to write, and possibly more stimulus to write, I would be a Sisyphus divided from his boulder. The gritty touch of its huge surfaces, the grinding weight, the black shadow which it casts, are the strongest intimations of reality which I possess, and the source of whatever strength exists in my sporadic literary productions. I remember seeing in the Turnbull Library a document which moved me greatly-a manuscript of Henry Lawson's, in round unformed writing, in which he described how he had received notice of the acceptance of an article or poem 42 by some periodical (I think it was the Sydney Bulletin) while he was sandpapering the walls of a hearse. The hearse of the Welfare State is jet-propelled. It is part of my peculiar destiny to sand- paper its walls. I fear that more money or more leisure might make me less angry, lessen the muscular cramp, persuade me that it is not a hearse but a winged chariot. I might become divided from my fellow D.P.s. That would be quite fatal.

IAN CROSS

1 (a). Three hours a day, before noon. Of course, the whole day is best, when it is available: the morning for writing, the afternoon for research, brooding, reading, muddling, answering question- naires. (b). Normally, I write from about 6.30 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. and (if I'm not too tired after a day's work) from about 8.30 to 10 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays I work in the mornings, my best time. When I started writing fiction I was chief reporter of a metropolitan morning newspaper and also writing a column three times a week. My working day as a writer and newspaperman extended from my departure from home at 9.30 a.m. until my return just before midnight. I also worked every other Sunday afternoon and evening for the newspaper. Over an eight-month period I was averaging around an eighty-hour week. Of course I couldn't keep it up and paid some penalty for the effort. As a matter of fact, I'm still paying for it.

2 (a). I've earned my living by most kinds of literary work since I was seventeen years of age, except for a year on a banana plantation. My peak earnings for a year would be the annual salary paid me by The Dominion newspaper. For my age and family responsibilities, it wasn't too bad, I suppose. What I did for the salary did not qualify me for this questionnaire, of course. My problem has been to combine the kind of writing that earns money with the kind that doesn't: far too often the quality of both suffers in the combination. (b) I'm working on my best sustained piece of writing now and I don't expect that it will return me more than the initial advance from the publisher when I finish it in about a year's time. Since I started writing fiction three years ago I've turned out two novels-one not too good, the other not too bad-and am well into my third. The God Boy has so far sold in England, America, 43 Italy and may go elsewhere; it is about to come out as a Penguin and is trembling on the brink of first-class production as a play. The publisher hopes my second will go quite well, too. In addition, a short story of mine was awarded an Atlantic Monthly prize. At present I hold the Burns Fellowship at Otago University for 1959. Now this is what shocks me: I can't make a living by this kind of writing, despite my initial impetus. An exhausting effort at not inconsiderable personal cost on the one hand and more than my share of good fortune on the other have got me so far-yet my net earnings over the past three years would not quite pay my rent in Wellington (or meet the interest on mort- gages on a house) for the same period. I'm married and have three chUdren. So to clothe and feed five human beings, educate three of them and provide for other contingencies, I must obtain money by other means in the future. Other means must involve me in about forty hours' work a week-at least-and leave me only the fag-end of my mental energy with which to write. So the novel I'm working on now is likely to be my last: I wouldn't be satisfied in the future with the lightweight efforts that part-time writing produces and I haven't the physical and mental stamina to work an eighty-hour week, except in occasional bursts. I like eating, drinking, a reasonable degree of comfort, and must provide for these and other satisfactions for five people. The satisfaction I get from writing is a purely selfish one and, when family needs are taken into consideration, certainly cannot be given too high a priority. I'm not complaining about this situation. Nobody asked me to be a writer and I enjoy being a father much more. The world of letters is not going to miss much if I have to quit it, or fade away to the level of occasional short stories. I don't much care for the New Zealand literary scene: there are almost as many failed or frustrated writers as sheep in number per acre; they have the same kind of bleat, too. Whenever people ask me to put a price on my work, however, I quote £1,000 for a novel and, £ IOO for a short story: if money earned is their literary yardstick, I like to give them a good one. 3· I've been abroad four times. The longest period-1947-9-under my own steam. The other trips were made as a journalist. The New Zealander must travel overseas if he is to achieve any depth of understanding of his own country. A writer must get outside his own class and society in order to write about it: the only way a New Zealand writer can do that is by going overseas. 44 4· I've worked for newspapers most of my working life. News- paper work shows you the ground on which you can put your feet: it teaches you the value of craftsmanship and technique: it gives you access to all levels of society. The difficulty is referred to in my answer to 2 (a). I'm a journalist. I think of Dickens, Anderson, Hemingway, Lardner-well, the list goes back to Defoe, I suppose-and don't feel too unhappy about it. 5· No. (a). No. (b). No. 6. No. 7· All the State Literary Fund should do-apart from subsidizing Landfall, of course-is buy writers the time to write. Unless a writer turns up with an unsaleable manuscript of merit (Owls do Cry is an example) the Fund should not subsidize actual publications in the future. We're nearly over the publication hill now, surely. If our publishers need subsidies-there could be a good case for it, too-they shouldn't come to a literary fund. And as for works by scholars: hell's bells, our universities are a major industry, with executives who feel they are on the bread-line when they're taking home £1625 a year; they've got their own presses all over the world-yet from time to time they come along and dip their hands into the poor-box that is the Literary Fund! Perhaps poetry should still be subsidized. 8. The State should support, say, ten writers, at a salary according to age and number of dependents. The appointments should be for three years for the first term, four years for the second-and so on; those appointed should have full civil service superannua- tion rights. All earnings from their writings should revert to the State. With a little sensible management, I think that in some years the writers could make a financial profit for the country, although never to the extent of off-setting any serious slump in wool prices. They could do incidental advisory and contact work for such departments as Broadcasting, External Affairs, Tourist and Publicity, Justice, Customs-especially Customs!-and other departments. I've worked as a civil servant in Wellington. Believe me, the writers could match any other group in the service in giving value to the State. Incidentally, the State is already supporting about seventy musicians and one overseas conductor. Are musicians all that much more worthwhile than writers?

4:5 ALLEN CURNOW

I (a) and (b). I have for so many years, and in two vastly differing kinds of employment (from night sub-editing to university teaching) had to do my original writing whenever and wherever I can make the time, that I have forgotten how to answer questions like these, if I ever knew. I think it is generally true that nobody teaching in a New Zealand university today gets enough time for writing, or reading either. You lay hands on what you can get, according to your readiness (which fluctuates crazily) to conceive your writing more urgent than your academic work, in a scan- dalously understaffed and overcrowded university. I shan't go into the rationalizations I personally contrive, to justify my own decisions. It becomes a week-to-week, day-to-day, hand-to-mouth business. I imagine it is like that for other people and in other jobs. Life is like that, too. The other side of the picture is (perhaps not for everyone) that if you want to get it done badly enough, it gets done all right; the job isn't the only hindrance; morally, one is up against the general slack-tempo low-tension character of New Zealand intellectual and aesthetic life. Helping people to write because (poor souls) they need to write doesn't seem to me the healthiest approach; better to kick, curse and starve them into writing whether they want to or not; 'writers' aren't so easily downed as some people think, but there is a danger of cosseting sickly talents and sickly tastes-the healthier ones are apt to be found escaping down the hospital fire-escape and taking to the bush. 2 (a) and (b). I'd rather not talk about earnings; I couldn't live on my writing, but on my kind of writing very few people have, ever, anywhere in the world. My play Moon Section netted me around £6o (6 Yz% on gross takings). I consider it my 'best piece of sustained writing' (if that excludes lyrics). 3· Once, for fifteen months, with the aid of a State grant which very nearly made up the loss of salary suffered by going away. As for university teachers, where I teach it is only professors who get sabbatical (each seven years) leave of right. Other teachers, if lucky, also qualify from time to time. They get their salary plus about £300 'travelling allowance'. This isn't enough, and most have to look for grants and fellowships like anyone else. I know one senior lecturer who confesses that it has cost him, personally, £woo to accept a year's leave abroad. 5· I find both reviewing and broadcasting tiresome and distract- 46 ing. When I do take on either, I feel underpaid for my trouble. Double the money would make it much easier. But I believe New Zealand criticism suffers from the in-breeding of ideas caused by writers incessantly reviewing one another. I think Dr Keith Sinclair drew attention to this in Landfall some years ago; much better if people who don't get called 'writers' were encouraged to do this kind of thing. Most of our reviewing fails to put writers in touch with their audience, and vice versa; we need buckets of cold clean water over this cat-orchestra of writers purring or miauling or love-scratching at each other. 6. I'd like a commission to write a play. But I'd hate to write a play that anyone I can think of would commission. 7. This one needs more time. Offhand, I would say (I) that the annual Scholarship in Letters should be at least £woo. The £500 is ridiculously low, unrealistic. And an annual Fellowship (like the one lately awarded by Otago University) of at least £I500, for specific literary undertakings, either 'creative' or scholarly, could well be instituted; to be taken up either in New Zealand or overseas; and I would emphasize the 'specific literary undertakings' side of it. Otherwise, I think it would be highly undesirable to entrust the Literary Fund Committee with any increased funds for general disbursal. Perhaps the special grants to writers for work in progress, valuable as they are, could best be transformed into a limited number of regular Scholarships or Fellowships, regularly (and competitively) available. 8. Leave them alone. I mean 'alone'. Trade and professional groups we may call collectively lawyers, master butchers, etc., and in that capacity they are all the same. Writers are all different-one from another, far more different than a butcher from a lawyer. Do we need any help to breathe? Or to stop breathing?

RUTH DALLAS

I (a). It's not easy to say when a writer is working, and when he is not working; he might be working mentally, when he is apparently absorbed in manual work; and who can say what he might or might not be capable of, if his energies were not spent in other ways? But I find four hours a day at my desk, for reading, writing and typing, sufficient, at present. 47 (b). Usually four hours a day, though not always. Sometimes continuous, sometimes broken. Sometimes. 2 (a). About £70 (prose, no poetry, no broadcasting). Strictly speaking, I have earned more this year (ending March 196o); but all payments are not yet received (prose again, with the exception of a fee from the B.B.C. for poems broadcast, which was more than double the amount that I was paid for publication of the same poems in New Zealand, and more than double the amount that the N.Z.B.S. has paid me for similar work). (b). Country Road and Other Poems, The Caxton Press, 1953· Most of the poems brought in a few guineas, over the years, when they were first published, in periodicals and anthologies, or broadcast. 3· I have never been abroad. It might be stimulating to go abroad; but a writer will write, wherever he is. I don't feel that I need stimulating; all that I want to write about already lies within me, and about me. It is expensive to send a writer abroad; only one or two could be sent; at this stage (when we need as many good writers as we can get), I should prefer to see the money used to help a number of writers, rather than one or two. I should like to see writers paid more for their published work (in some instances), and more money made available for competitions. If, at any time in my writing life, I had been able to earn in one year (or win in a competition) even one hundred pounds, I should have been helped considerably. And this might be the case with others. I should then have felt that I could afford to buy the books I need. (e.g. I still lack The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, about £8; I can afford to buy very few New Zealand books, though I ought to have most of them; and I should like to be able to subscribe to Meanjin, £2 a year, and other literary periodicals which interest me, and which, at present, I borrow in back numbers from the public library.) 4· At home, keeping house and garden; family responsibilities. This has both helped and hindered me. 5· I can't say that I find it stimulating to take on outside work, such as reviewing and broadcasting; it takes up time that I'd prefer to use on work that has a life of its own. But I am interested in broadcasting as a medium. (a). It would be helpful if the N.Z.B.S. were to publish a small book setting out its requirements. I have a paperback.on my shelf, Writing for Broadcasting, A aomplete guide to the requirements 48 RODERICK FINLA YSON M. Friedlander

MAURICE GEE RUTH DALLAS Carlotto Munz

BRUCE MASON MAURICE SHADBOLT Clifton Firth

C. K. STEAD GORDON CHALLIS Ct;fton Firth

MAURICE DUGGAN of all departments of the B.B.C., ]oanna ]onsson, 1949, which is useful; it is only a handbook; there are better books on broadcasting; but this one is cheap and practical and full of information, and it is the kind of book we need. A list of books recommended for study could be incorporated. (b). The existing literary periodicals could help me more if they were in a position to pay more; that is, if more money from the Literary Fund were directed into channels where it could be used as payment for work published. I think it is unlikely that a grant from the Literary Fund could give me the same satisfaction and stimulus that I would receive from good pay for work done. These remarks are not intended as a criticism of the making of occasional grants to writers, to enable them to write or complete work. I only wish to point out that it is far from encouraging for a writer to realize that in the time spent in writing, he could earn more money at any other occupation, even if it were only typing accounts. 6. A commission is helpful at times; but I much prefer choosing my own work. 7· I should like to see some money from the Literary Fund placed in a position where it could be won by open competition. A competition, in comparison with an award, may be depended upon to draw the most needy. There will always be some writers who feel they have not enough confidence in their powers to apply for a grant in advance; and some who will never ask for help, whatever their circumstances. But there would need to be plenty of competitive work, perhaps annual, biennial or triennial competitions, with first and second prize, for novel, story, poem, or book of poems, plays, children's books, non-fiction, work for broadcasting, and so on. Writers should be encouraged in every field, and as many writers as possible; it does not matter if their work is not outstanding at first; let us at least reward the best we have. A winner of a competition not only receives a little money to help him along; his work attracts readers; he has encouragement; he might find it easier to live and work among those friends and members of his family who think his time could be spent more profitably. 8. A pension for established writers might be helpful, even if it were only enough to enable them to cut down the number of hours spent at another job. And younger writers would be 49 encouraged if they knew that partial financial assistance lay ahead.

MAURICE DUGGAN

Is wntmg a profession or a hobby? Put this way I think the question of time answers itself. With more time, with all the time there is, we will have the professional man of letters : with less time, the weekend or occasional writer. These might be the economics of the short story, of its popularity, so to speak, as a form. I could use five hours a day, every day, in the morning. After this I like to read and need time, too, in which to think about what I write. What time I get isn't continuous or of a consistent length. And I'm often troubled with guilt at the methods I use to get what time I do have. The sort of courage that is necessary here-the courage to be thoroughly selfish-is not easy to command; but it's necessary, for all that. There will always be a sense in which the writer is writing against his family and his responsibilities there. I doubt however whether even celibacy would entirely relieve this. My first story (juvenilia of course) was published over thirteen years ago. I had sixteen of such stories published-stories not collected into Immanuel's Land-without payment. I shouldn't think that over ten years I ever made more than twenty pounds a year from writing, literary journalism, etc. I may have risen once, since then, to a hundred and fifty pounds in one year. I received nothing for 'Towards the Mountains'-a story I can still think fairly well of. When I was overseas I received ninety pounds for 'Guardian'-and I can see many faults in that story. It's curi- ous comment that writing for children is more lucrative than writing for adults; and here I have robbed Peter, so to speak, to pay Paul; or used the children to subsidize the adults. It's another form of rifling the child allowance. I've been abroad once. I was away for three years or so. I went under my own steam; or, rather, some of the money I saved and much I borrowed or scrounged from relatives and friends. These debts remain unpaid. Of the value of travel to the writer it would be difficult to generalize: there are writers and writers, voyeurs and voyagers. I should think it valuable to any writer, or any person of sensibility, to go abroad-especially when young. (I have the idea 50 that New Zealand is an awful country in which to be young- so dull; and so suspicious of youth and so afraid of it.) No, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt the writer to get out, once in a while. But here one is shamefully reminded that we entertain too little ever to be able to expect to be asked out. We have no system of cultural exchange, to use the jargon. Surely we might easily ar- range such a simple thing with the governments of, say, Australia and America. It couldn't be less than very valuable to do so. I do, however, wonder in another sense if we aren't rather too preoccupied with what Whim-Wham called overseasia-with the going and the coming and the itinerary of churches and monu- ments. Our whole way of life seems to me an affair of making hay while the sun shines. A good long look out the door, so to speak, must surely convince anyone that we stand somewhat closer than is popularly realized to the 'end of the golden weather'. A look to the north-west. Then again we might perhaps discover some virtue in staying put. We camp everywhere along the roadside, having with some ingenuity and no taste disguised our tents with brick and timber: we camp along the lines of escape, the more easily, perhaps, to reach the anti-climax of what may be happening over the hill. We live on small islands: the horizon is everywhere watery. It may be inevitable, to go abroad. ('To go abroad' is not an Auckland expression. We 'go away': we 'go overseas'.) My last job was as brush-hand, painting the inside of a house. Before that I worked in a venetian-blind factory; and before that as correspondence clerk, proof reader, van driver (through all one hot summer collecting suburbia's dirty linen), food canner, etc. The value of all this is obscure to me. The money was useful; and I've never doubted the value of being with people. ]e suis un homme pour qui le monde exterieur existe. The disadvantage, for one's writing, is simply the time and energy spent on something other than writing; it prolonged my 'apprenticeship', so to say. I don't know how important a disadvantage that might be. I've never been stimulated by reviewing. I have never been able, for example, to understand what principle, if any, governs the selection of books for review by such things as ZB Books, Book- shop, and the daily press. Even the Listener still puzzles me more than a little in this respect. Anyway, I only rarely received a stimulating book to review-mostly they were parcel reviews. I did it for the money, or should I say the peanuts. I don't do it now. But there are apparently many people in this country still 51 so desperately in need as to be careless of the damage they do to any professional possibilities. The N.Z.B.S. could help writers, certainly. But it would have to begin with a little simple arithmetic. One guide to what the N.Z.B.S. really thinks of writers or writing in New Zealand may be found in the amount they are prepared to pay those writers who will work for them. They could demonstrate a changed attitude by quadrupling their fees, for imaginative writing at least. They could further demonstrate their interest in writing by putting their various book sessions under the supervision of someone capable of formulating some policy on what is worth attention and what is not, and of insisting on a decent standard. The present state of affairs is an embarrassing farce where, to quote Henry James, 'the review is in nine cases out of ten an effort of intelligence as undeveloped as the ineptitude over which it fumbles'. This would be a beginning. After that the N.Z.B.S. could be taken out of the hands of the government. After that . . . but there isn't space. I would recommend anyone interested to look through the advertised YC programmes, for instance, and do their own thinking about the writer and broadcasting. A good many of the country's writers have worked for the N.Z.B.S. at some time: why do they not do so, now? Why is the N.Z.B.S. satisfied, as it plainly is, to operate on the same principle as a can-opener? Literary periodicals do what they can to help the writer: they publish him. Unhappily they can rarely pay, or pay much. But they are there, and happily they are more diversely there than has sometime been the case. No businessman has ever backed a literary magazine in New Zealand; but perhaps that day may come. Meantime the Literary Fund assists, as it should. The question of commissions is tied up with the question of patronage. (Are we sure what we are talking about when we talk of the glories of private patronage, in the past?) I fancy there is one way to commission writing and that is by publisher's advance. (Doubleday the publishers paid Nelson Algren sixty dollars a week for two years while he worked on The Man With the Golden Arm.) We don't have that sort of publisher; the return on two thousand copies would hardly support it. There are then, at present, two main ways of getting this sort of assistance in New Zealand. The first, in every sense, is the Robert Burns Fellowship which has considered not only the problems of writing but also the practical problems of the writer. Then there is the Literary Fund Scholarship which, serious as it undoubtedly is in its inten- 52 tions, hasn't taken thought of the cost of living at all. Its £soo, less tax, should be trebled. There is, I think, a graver problem implicit in all this. With only two workable solutions in any one year someone is bound to be disappointed, thrown back on his (I imply her) own resources at the most unsuitable moment. The Government concern to assist the country's writing could well be a little more generous. I would argue that the Literary Fund should be re-financed, not necessarily on money subject to annual vote, but with a large capital grant, renewable at need, from a source not to be confused with 'tax payers' money'-if that is too nervous a thought to members of Government. I am convinced that with more room, or more depth, in which to exercise their discretion the advisers and officers of the Fund could undoubtedly overcome any difficulties at present to be found in its functioning. I appreciate what the Literary Fund is doing: I should like to see the gesture broadened. I should not care to be thought of as arguing money values. If I seem to have done this it is done because I can see no way of assisting writers (I leave the question of whether this is desirable) that doesn't involve money. To speak of what a story 'earns' is to say nothing about the story itself-this is obvious. Talk of payment is, in this larger sense, irrelevant. The writer of whom I am thinking isn't one who writes for money: this assumption is, I hope, plain. And the whole small edifice does rest on the shoulders of the man scratching away. The function of a function is to function: Mr Glover said it in Wellington. I agree. I think that as writers we do tend to function with a little too much reverence, a little or a lot too much respect. We are rather nice about a lot of things. All art is subversive: I have forgotten who said it but I believe it. The problem then is to relate that statement to this questionnaire.

RODERICK FINLAYSON

1 (a). At least one unbroken day a week. (b). Very little time at present. Weekends go in family, social, and communal activities. Week nights one often works overtime or is just too darn tired to write. Alarm clock goes at 5.30 a.m.

2 (a). About £300 writing bulletins for School Publications Branch of the Education Department. 53 (b). Perhaps The Schooner came to Atia. Earned less than £25. Still consider that Brown Man's Burden contains some of my best work. It was published at my own expense. Some of the stories earned money as reprints. Biggest earnings came from the series of seven or eight bulletins on the Maori written for School Publica- tions over a period of two or three years, and the stories for the School journal. 3· Apart from a childhood visit to Australia, have been twice to Rarotonga at my own expense to visit schoolday friends and to see the place from which the Maori set sail for this country. As one grows older travel seems less important, but could in some ways be stimulating. 4· Assistant in City Council printing-room, some twenty miles bus and slow train travel daily. Leaves little leisure; but possibly quite a rich vein of ore to mine later. 5· Reviewing and broadcasting not my line. 6. Yes. The Education Department's commission helped me over a tough patch. But who commissions short novels? Also, to accept a commission now would mean giving up the security of a job. 7. I do not know. 8. Instead of answering this question let me simply put the problem in fairly general, not merely personal, terms. To provide nowadays for a wife and several children a man needs between £8oo and £1000 a year. But at any ordinary job regular overtime must be worked to return such a sum. On the other hand a writer working seriously and carefully might turn out one novel a year. Unless that novel contains the slick ingredients of today's best- sellers what publisher can make it earn the writer anything like £10oo? The irony is that the work of a man helping to produce say cars or radios will be on the junk heap in a few years while even one good novel can enrich life a century hence.

RUTH FRANCE

I (a). Probably ten to twelve hours a week. It's difficult to tell. Continuity makes for ease of writing and flow of thought, but on the other hand can produce exhaustion. (b). In the winter I can find time for about ten hours writing 54 weekly. For the rest of the year the time varies greatly, is never any more, mostly much less. It is broken time, but I can write at any time of the day providing there is not too much else pressing to be done and I can relax. Of course one's writing time includes those hours when one sits staring at an empty page.

2 (a). £170. (b). The novel The Race. It has earned £240, of which about half is royalties for ten months. £100 came from a Literary Fund Award. Royalties outside England were on a 5% basis, which meant the book must sell a thousand copies in New Zealand to earn £25 gross. This is poor payment compared with what one receives from New Zealand School Publications, for example. 3· I lived in Australia from 1934 to 1937, but otherwise have not travelled. I have had no travelling grant or fellowship. It would indeed stimulate me as a writer to be able to go abroad sometimes. 4. I am what is known on tax forms as a housewife, which for most women is as fundamental as anyone's being a writer. So far as this denies time for writing, it denies my development, but not in any other way. Apart from its deeper values and its opportunity for insight, my life has given me many practical things to write about. 5· I find it stimulating to do a little outside work, such as reviewing and broadcasting, b"ut would not wish to do much. I would rather spend my time on creative work. (a). Not for work for myself so much as for other writers would like to see more discussions of a general nature on the air and better reviewing. Although Bookshop does support and advertise books by New Zealand writers, its policy of reviewing is for the average reader, with its reviews largely a synopsis of the story. There is room for reviewing of a better standard, by better reviewers. (b). Scarcely, in a personal sense. I do find publication for most of the poems and stories I write. 6. A little, in the sense that it's good to try various forms of writing. Many writers who are very good at one kind haven't the technical fluency or the emotional insight for others. I've been offered a few commissions, at which I usually become panic- stricken, but have managed to do them. Commissions for children's work would interest me more than other kinds. Poetry to order is difficult, though I did it once. 55 7· The Literary Fund could perhaps give more than one yearly award, if it had the money to do so. An award for poetry, another for fiction, another for some other form of letters, always supposing that work was produced to merit it. 8. The Broadcasting Service spends a great deal of money on music, and on bringing musicians from other countries. It is not surprising if writers feel neglected, and ill paid. Some may say the good writing is not produced, but the way of the writer, even when published and well received, is strewn with difficulties which the recent conference only hinted at, and which there was not time to discuss, if indeed the appropriate session was well handled. 'The Writer's Market' was one of these. Though writers may like to stand on their own feet, it is inescapable that creative writing is a hopeless way of earning a living. Some at the conference urged the forming of a Writers' Fellowship, but this is not prac- ticable with a small population. The problems of different types of writers vary so much that too much work would fall on a few voluntary shoulders. Yet some co-operation between writers in their own categories seems desirable. It is urgent for novelists, for example, to find some way of dealing with import controls, the variation in royalty rates between England and Commonwealth countries, and the unwillingness of our booksellers to support New Zealand writers. There should be, too, a place in New Zealand now for a good literary agent, who could handle work for distribution both here and overseas. Many problems, such as those of taxation, would then be taken care of.

BRUCE MASON

I (a). I can give no clear answer to this. I try to work regularly, daily, but I tend to work in terms of pages rather than time. I seem to do my best work in desperation, or in odd moments, like waiting for a bus. (b). I make the time I need, and the work seems to be unal- tered by whether the time is broken or continuous. For myself, I think I prefer broken stabs at it, welcoming every distraction. 2 (a). From April 1958, I have been entirely dependent on writing of various kinds for a living, and in the nine months of this year that I was present in New Zealand (I was absent from the country 56 from October to December) I earned a gross income of £795. This was made up from a salary from the newspaper which employs me as dramatic critic, the same arrangement with the New Zealand Listener, a regular column, plus intermittent reviewing, broadcasting of all kinds, from talks, appearances on panels, acting in broadcast plays, and special commissioned items, like intimate revues of my own devising. (b). My best piece of sustained writing is the play The Pohutu- kawa Tree. This was the first production presented in the Workshop Theatre of the New Zealand Players Theatre Trust, and Richard Campion and I produced it jointly. The play was presented there in two seasons, one of four performances, the later one of three, and in November of that year (1957) it was presented in Auckland for two performances. I received not one penny in royalties, nor any fee for eo-production. The following year, 1958, my play Birds in the Wilderness won the Auckland Festival playwriting competition and was presented there, in my production for the Festival. The Auckland Festival Society paid me a fee of £50 for the production, and ID% of the gross takings as royalty, which amounted to something over £100. The New Zealand Players Theatre Trust asked for an option on the play, which I gave them, and then some weeks later asked to be released from the option, but paid nothing to me for the privilege. The Pohutukawa Tree was later presented on B.B.C. Television, on October 18th 1959, and my fee for this, less agent's commission, was £150. The play has now been accepted for broadcasting by the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, but the fee has not yet been fixed. 3· I was abroad from May 1943 to November 1945, O.H.M.S.; from May 1949 to October 1951 at my own expense, and from September to December 1958, on a visit to the U.S.S.R. Half of my air fare was paid by the Soviet Government through its Ministry of Culture. I would not care to go abroad again on a fellowship, but would prefer to be working at some project like say, producing a play or giving a dramatic recital. I find the glorified tourist role that sometimes is one's lot on fellowships, infinitely tedious. 4. As stated, I am a free lance writer, devoted to living on my energy and wits. From 1951 to 1958, I was a public servant, five years public relations officer for the New Zealand Forest Service, and later a senior journalist at Tourist and Publicity. They have neither helped nor hindered my development as a writer, if there 57 is any to report, except that the jobs were not sufficiently taxing to absorb all my energies. 5· I accept every commission to review, because there is money in it, and for no other reason. Stimulating? It depends on the work to be reviewed. (a). The N.Z.B.S. has already been generous in commissioning work from me, notably three intimate revues, Wit's End and The Rite of Spring for each of which I received £so; the last, called tentatively Shall Brothers Be, a Christmas revue, is not yet completed. (b). No. 6. Yes, I should welcome the chance to have say, plays commissioned on some set theme. Here the N.Z.B.S. could do far more than it does. They make no attempt to solicit scripts, ostensibly because they don't want to have to ask for an author's work and then reject it, but this seems to me a lazy way out, to leave it entirely to the initiative of the author. It was only, for example, on the personal representation of the Director of Broadcasting that I finally submitted The Pohutukawa Tree to the Productions Section, as it had been made clear to me privately that the theme and situations of the play made its acceptance unlikely. There have been two major playwriting competitions recently, the Southland Centennial, and the Auckland Festival. It seems to me, that if the N.Z.B.S. was doing its job, they should have read every script submitted. 7· Simply by more of what they are doing now. 8. Larger fees.

R. A. K. MASON

I. My experience seems to me too much an individual matter to justify validity for generalization.

2 (a). Perhaps a fiver. (b). I have often contemplated but never completed a piece of sustained writing. 3· At various times in the last thirty-five years I have visited or lived in most countries which are neighbours to ours-Pacific Islands, Australia, Indonesia, Far East, China. I travelled for the most part at my own expense, but with assistance from such 58 varied sources as the Mau (National League) of Samoa and a group of company promoters. I should certainly like to visit India to see at first hand why its peasants are so poorly off while the Chinese are flourishing, also to re-visit Bali, to study their methods of land utilization, from which we might learn at least the elements of that art. 4 (a). Landscape gardener. (b). Trade Union officer. (c). Both kept me too busy to leave any spare energy for writing. 5 (a). Yes. (b). I did a fair amount of broadcasting before the Government took over completely and even subsequently, when the local W.E.A. was in its prime. In the last twenty years or so, I have had three offers from the N.Z.B.S. and accepted two. Of these, one was highly special; the other was part of a series 'The Making of a Poem'. The latter was in the last few months. The general conception was quite good, the payment adequate and Mr Boswell's recording arrangements at rYA "excellent. I should welcome any similar offer. (c). In regard to existing literary magazines, the wonder to me is that they do manage to exist. There is a reciprocal obligation between writers and such magazines. At the moment, I feel that I should have done more than I have to help: until that onus is met, I cannot ask a magazine to do more for me. 6. This question is hardly clear to me; it brings in too many art- forms, each with a somewhat different rationale. Presumably its crux is to ask whether I approve of commissioning (a) poems (b) plays. My answer to (a) is that I cannot recall any successful system of commissioning poems (and I doubt if Landfall can either). In regard to commissioning plays, the position seems to me quite different. Traditionally, this has proved a successful method. Local experiments have been justified and could well be extended, particularly by the older dramatic societies, which have funds and facilities. 7· This question contains some very wide implications that cannot be dealt with in short space. Even on simple aspects, I should want to know more before committing myself. For instance, when the Writers' Conference asked for more, was the decision based on sound and considered evidence-or was it just a case of the good old New Zealand conference habit of saying at a 59 certain stage 'Now let us see if we can gouge a few more quid out of the Government'? And the man who cannot manage to take a year off on a grubstake of £soo-is he a real man or just a myth? If the first, and real hardship is involved, then certainly the case should be met by a supplementary grant (as is done, I rather fancy). Sorry I cannot be more enthusiastic about all this, but what little I know of the writer's craft I learnt in the early twenties. (For those who like over-simplified economic explanations, my first publications coincide neatly with the slump of 1923-4.) One lesson learnt in that tough school is that the fundamental ambition of the New Zealand state is to ensure conformity and uniformity by fair means or foul. That lesson has been well reinforced by subsequent experience. Nothing in my experience conduces me to the belief that a wide extension of patronage by such a state can provide the necessary conditions for stimulating a literature.

0. E. MIDDLETON

I (a). At least twenty to thirty hours a week. (b). (Answer to all questions) Varies.

2 (a). Approximately £so. (b). Perhaps 'A Married Man', perhaps 'The Collector'-but who am I to say? Virtually nothing. £8. 3· Twice, for approximately a year each time. The first time as a seaman. The second trip overseas was made possible by a bursary from the New Zealand Government. Yes, immeasurably. 4. My writing, occasional casual (manual) work and the care of a few acres of land. Too many past jobs to list. All have enriched my understanding of fellow-workers, fellow-human-beings. I consider my working background inseparable from my development as a writer. 5· Never book-reviewing! Occasionally research done for a radio talk leads one into strange and unexpectedly stimulating ways. (a). Yes, and other writers too. r. By ceasing to use third-rate imported stories and plays, and by trying to use as much original New Zealand material as possible. 6o 2. By adopting a more imaginative attitude towards talks and stories, their subject-matter and method of presentation. 3· By setting up some kind of tribunal to which a writer might appeal if and when work to which he had devoted much time and thought were capriciously rejected. 4- By acknowledging the fact that writing has become an honour- able (though ill-paid) profession in this country and by granting writers at least the same opportunities as those given to teachers, university lecturers, journalists. 5· By making realistic payments for work of superior worth or quality. 6. Difficult to answer. 7· By establishing at least one but preferably two or more annual Fellowships or Scholarships expressly for overseas study or travel. 8. Difficult to say.

E. H. McCORMICK

Note: I return the questionnaire, having answered it to the best of my ability, though with some reluctance. I doubt whether there will emerge from the enquiry anything we don't already know; this persistent concern with the condition of the New Zealand writer suggests to me the pulling up of plants to see whether the roots are growing.

I. Neither part of this question has much bearing on my present situation : in recent years I have had virtually all the time I need. My failings and shortcomings are not due to lack of time.

2 (a). I keep no record, but I would say about £12o (in a most exceptional year). (b). The Expatriate. Nothing, compared with £roo for Letters and Art in New Zealand and about the same for Works of Prances Hodgkins. 3· Four times; between eighteen months and two years each visit. Once at my own expense; once with the help of a scholarship (I paid my own fare); twice at the Government's expense (in the Army). Of course travel is stimulating-like alcohol. 4. None. University lecturer; cleaner. I may discuss this question 61 in an article one day; to put it briefly here, I find it impossible to do much serious writing while holding another job, whatever the nature. 5· No. Merely distracting. 6. No. Commissions are the bane of my existence. 7· It should certainly increase the value of the Scholarship to enable a writer with normal responsibilities to hold it. I suppose other grants could be increased. 8. It might be a good idea to leave them alone for a while to scribble away in their baches and bedrooms.

BILL PEARSON

I shall answer questions I and 4 together. For six years I have been teaching English at the University of Auckland. Given the overcrowding and understaffing of New Zealand universities and the special local problems of Auckland University, and given the fact that my interest is in writing fiction, this has meant that from March to December each year I have had no time to write or to think of writing. A writer of fiction needs first a spell of loafing in which the preoccupations of his job can be shed and in which experience will sort itself out into some meaningful shape so that a plan for a novel or short stories can be made. After that he still needs a period free from crises and ephemeral preoccupations in which a beginning can be made. It is only when the main directions of the novel are foreseen and a few chapters have been written that he can be assured enough to take it up in free hours and leave it during working hours. The university does not leave one these free hours, and in the haphazard few hours one gets one's mind is ticking over to an unproductive tempo. At the end of the year one wants a mental rinse and it is only in January and early February that one can get down to something. For the past two years I have used this time in revising a novel originally finished six years ago. I do not find, what I used to fear and what some writers commonly think, that the academic life is itself fatal to imaginative writing. But the writer who is employed in a university, however much effort he puts into his teaching and his research, must be prepared to keep some part of himself out of it: if he 62 wants to write with his whole mind, he has to keep a part of his mind disengaged from his academic work. Nor have I found what I used to fear, that for a novelist, university work over-restricts one's experience of life and people. It does tend to limit one to city life and to the more 'managerial' levels of society. Nevertheless it is through university associations that I have met people such as trade unionists, churchmen, professional men and businessmen, and that I have visited Maori communities. When I was younger I had a variety of short-term manual jobs and for eighteen months I was a supply teacher in London County Council Schools; they all provided experience but they all left me physically too tired at the end of the day. I think the best job I had, from the writer's point of view, was teaching in a rural primary school in New Zealand. One had a lot of spare time, and there was the prospect of moving on every few years to another district. But this was probably a young man's view of it, and if I were at it now, I should probably have some complaints. The novel I mentioned I began ten years ago. After two and a half years I still had only three chapters written, because I had most of the time put it aside to make way for post-graduate study. When that was over, I wrote a further fourteen chapters (about Ioo,ooo words) in two months, working full time till my bank account ran dry. After that I couldn't get ahead, not only because I was teaching (in London), but because the logic of the plot's development led to a blind alley or to something that was beyond my solving. When, over a year later, I used a summer vacation to re-orient the plot, I found I could take it up and go ahead with it whenever I had the time and I finished it, discontinuously, in four months. The ending was wrong, however, and two further revisions, years later, occupied two periods of about a month in summer vacations, not so much in re-writing as in thinking it out again. Most of this novel then was written on days when I was free, either because there was still money in the bank, or because of school holidays or because London County Council had no work for me. Some days I sat around and read newspapers or messed about and wrote nothing because I do not take to a pen willingly. One good day I got onto the track and wrote five thousand words: I don't know how long it took, about five m six hours in all, I suppose, and I remember going to the pictures in the middle of it. As far as development as a writer goes, I think a writer develops only as he writes and from what he has written. Novels are major 63 works and the intervals between them may be long; in such an interval, the writer may have matured and become wiser as a man, but as a writer he will mainly have developed from his experience in coping with the technical demands of his previous novel.

2 (a). £ro from Landfall for 'Fretful Sleepers'. (b). My novel, but it hasn't yet reached the stage of earning anything. 3· Three times; twice in the forces, and once on a post-graduate scholarship to England. All trips were stimulating, and they enabled me to see New Zealand in comparison with other countries or in relation to the major social developments of our times. It was the difference in atmosphere between London and New Zealand that generated 'Fretful Sleepers' and I couldn't have written it in New Zealand. Most of my novel was written in London. 5· I find it worth my while to get to the bottom of why I am moved or not moved by another New Zealander's novel or short stories. Most other reviewing would be hack-work and I usually avoid it. Even so, I dislike reviewing and always keep editors waiting. Thus neither N.Z.B.S. nor the literary periodicals could help me here. 6. I find it hard to imagine anyone anywhere (let alone New Zealand) who might commission a specific novel or short stories, or (if they did) whose conception of what was artistically demanded would be likely to tally with mine. An editor's commission of a short story, without specification of subject or treatment, would be helpful to a writer of short stories, if he could pay enough. But in New Zealand this is unlikely. 7· I would suggest that the amount of the grant be substantially increased and a number of fellowships similar to the Burns Fellowship be offered in order to support writers with work planned but unwritten. Such fellowships should, of course, only be awarded if the projected work seems likely to justify the award. Literary Fund Committee assessment of the grant- worthiness of a work, projected or completed, implies of course the possibility of censorship. But this is unavoidable once we concede the desirability of a State Literary Fund. Even without it, however, at the threshold of the publishing house there is already the unobtrusive censorship of the publisher's reader, based not on a concern for public morals or political stability, but on 64 saleability. The writer whose themes, assumptions or attitudes are too revolutionary, hostile or distasteful to the members of the Fund Committee or the community they are selected from, must resign himself to having to write and get published without their help. 8. The main help a writer wants is freedom from the need to earn his living while he is actually engaged in writing. A writer of fiction is likely to need more time than, say, a poet, since his work is bulkier and needs extensive planning. Further, the bulk of his production makes it more costly (and thus more risky) for a potential publisher. The State Literary Fund does already subsidize the publication of novels and books of stories. I would suggest as a preferable scheme, that the Fund should simply guarantee publishers against loss if they publish works which the Fund Committee thinks worthy. Thus if the publication is able to pay its way, the Fund would be able to assist another Writer who might not sell so readily.

MAURICE SHADBOLT r (a). Four to five hours daily; thirty-five hours a week. The minimum necessary to produce two to three thousand words in a week which still later may be revised out of recognition or even totally rejected. (b). Thanks to a combination of rather peculiar circumstances I have been getting most of the time I need in the past year or so (though never with the certainty of enough clear time ahead to tackle more ambitious work). But this isn't likely to last; the end is already in sight. Previously I found it possible to write one or two hours each evening after a good day's work. But whether I'll be able to work like this again is a matter for conjecture. I work best in the mornings.

2 (a). £425 (three-quarters from a story sold in the U.S.A.; most of the rest from a publisher's advance). A freak year. £100 or less would be more typical. Though wistfully and perhaps not irrelevantly I remember living like a king in Bulgaria for six weeks on the sale of two or three stories there (money which couldn't be taken out). (b). Too difficult to answer. 3· Abroad for first time; after two and a half years away, am returning in month of answering questionnaire. At own expense. Of course it stimulates me as a writer to travel. As often and widely as possible. But that doesn't mean I don't want to live and write, most of my life, in New Zealand. 4· At present no job, beyond my own work and sometimes casual journalism. Film-making-particularly the travel, and creative and visual stimulation involved-in fact helped a good deal. Other work, including most journalism, tends to drain and deaden. 5· Possibly; with reservations. The creative writer shouldn't have to rely on criticism to make money; after all, his own work is more important than anyone else's. And if it doesn't make him money I can't see-apart from the possible value of arguing his own mind clear about something-what earthly use criticism is to him. So:- (a). The N.Z.B.S. could pay enough to make it worth while to write and review for them. Contempt for creative and intellectual work is understandable, even if deplorable, in New Zealand; in the N.Z.B.S. it is inexcusable. (b). Existing periodicals could pay andjor pay more. Unlike the N.Z.B.S., it's not their fault they can't. 6. No help at all, if this implies being asked to undertake work other than my own. But I'd probably do it just the same-to eat. Particularly if it were a film or radio script on a subject really close to my heart. But not if it implies producing work to schedule on conveyor-belt principle. 7· It could offer three or four such scholarships annually. It could also increase their size. (How long can one live on £soo anyway?) It could, by watching the literary magazines, award smaller grants at its discretion to young writers who might have produced only one or two good stories-the recognition might help as much as the money. Though the money, believe me, would help too. The Literary Fund Committee naturally tends to watch for, and to reward, novelists. A lamentable fact, since so much of our best prose is in the short story. The story-writer, one way and another, gets the wrong end of the stick; novelists-even first novelists- have at least begun to get somewhere. A story-writer might plod for years without finding a publisher for a book, and the recognition, financial and otherwise, that such a book might ultimately achieve. Since I've published a book of stories and am currently attempting a novel, I'm grinding no axe. (I should stress that 66 without unexpected Literary Fund help, my first book mightn't have seen print for two-three years, if then. But I've been luckier than most; that's all.) To survive as a writer anywhere is difficult; in New Zealand it's a nightmare-a paradise for amateurs, but a nightmare for anyone who takes writing seriously enough to want to work at it full-time. Each member of the Literary Fund Committee should silently remember the fact-in case it should be obscured beneath detail-whenever the committee meets. New Zealand literature-in the recent past, anyway-resembles nothing more than a cemetery where brilliant and promising first books stand up like tombstones under which exhausted and depressed writers have been laid to rest. Only an idiot would suppose that the Literary Fund could have solved all their problems; but they might better have been able to solve them had they been given some respite from the problems of the everyday world. For let's not kid ourselves. The question whether or not a major prose talent can survive in these islands has still to be answered. So far our brilliant beginnings have only ever been beginnings and it is impossible to predict-until, for example, we see what happens to writers like Ian Cross and Maurice Gee-if we will ever have anything more. We have good poets (though I'm not talking about those) and some exceedingly accomplished minor prose talents; but we'd be fooling ourselves if we imagined we had nursed anything more than that. Writers can't be made, but they can be given a chance to develop; and it should be taken for granted that the future of New Zealand literature will depend only partly-maybe only fractionally-on the Literary Fund. But it can-again, let's not kid ourselves-play a part, and a fairly important part at that. It should be able to do a lot more than it does at present. That's why all this presupposes the Literary Fund having more, a great deal more, than £2ooo a year. Much as I dislike the idea of artistic colonies (though, frankly, I can write anywhere) a beach cottage or two might help too. 8. Universities could help more. Otago, with the Robert Burns Fellowship, is like a bright island in a bleak sea. Writers who struggle along full-time would also be helped by part-time lecturing, or tutorials. Particularly when (and if) New Zealand literature is no longer considered beneath contempt as a subject for serious study in New Zealand universities. Daily newspapers might also help if they increased their fees when (and if) they no longer consider New Zealand writers beneath contempt as regular contributors to their literary pages. KENDRICK SMITHYMAN

It has been, I suppose, chiefly a feeling of embarrassment that has hampered me as I tried to answer some of the questions. I am not a 'writer'; I am a primary school teacher. That is what I have been and is what I am likely to remain because I have no university degree or even the number of units needed for a B certificate. I disqualified myself because university work and writing could not be reconciled; in theory, one of my associates can help himself towards his degree by answering a question on what I have written. The emoluments follow, to him. and the jobs to which I cannot aspire. Has schoolteaching helped or hindered. I cannot say that it has helped the pseudo-writer. Has it hindered-after all, nine to three, you know, and all those holidays? That was what I thought. But one gets involved, and tired. Tired by the day and the cumulation of days, and involved with- shall we say, diffidently ?-conscience? If not conscience, then, with the concern that the job shall be at least interesting in some way. Much out of school time is taken up simply by the reading I have to do: children's fiction (because I supervise the library), adult reference and children's reference material (because of the extra social studies I teacb ), and an often unprofitable professional reading particularly occasioned by my main occupation, classes of lower ability, children with retardation, behaviour difficulties, or remedial cases. This group entails a great deal more preparation than I used to do or to need. And also, there is my family, whose existence does have some influence on working conditions; I have three sons, my wife is arthritic, and until recently I have had my aging and ailing father. I cannot say how much time I need to do my best work; I do not know what my best work is, any more than I know how much I was paid for it if I was paid. I do not know how much time I get but I guess it is broken time, but whether I get that time broken when I could be working at my most efficient I have never found out. Would it stimulate me to go abroad occasionally? There have been times when I felt it would. I have been out of New Zealand once, to Norfolk Island while serving with the R.N.Z.A.F. It did me good, in some ways. I should like to see other countries than this one, but I have not seen my own country yet. Being provin- cial, I should like to know more of New Zealand; I should like to be able to afford a car a shade better than the jalopy that I 68 have still not been able to buy and could not maintain, I should like to be able to get out of my suburb once in a while. What I have earned from writing would not go far toward travel "of any sort-£25 is probably the most I ever got in a year from radio, writing, or lecturing, and that would have been an exceptional year. The time spent in earning that should have been spent on the house, which needs it, or the garden, which repays it. As for payments for work I consider less important: in more stupid or highminded moments I considered that even with my very limited talent my 'importance' was my writing, and everything else was less important. I am now very doubtful about the truth of that. The Broadcasting Service I have had some dealings with, which for the most part I sought; the Service's enthusiasm was not remarkable, and we seem tacitly to have agreed to sever relations. How could the N.Z.B.S. help the writer? Commissions, perhaps, but I cannot consider them; employment could be the answer or an answer if arranged on terms suitable to both parties. But my impression of the Service is that it is rather complacent, self- deluding, possibly parsimonious, and that it needs to perform a suitable action with its finger. A more flexible administration of the State Literary Fund may be desirable, but I know little of the Fund and its ways. I would however suggest that publication grants be remitted to the writer concerned rather than to publishers. A larger grant, yes; and the Committee could even move itself quietly to see that the Grant was used up. The risk of nepotism is negligible. A £500 scholarship is no use to me, if it is supposed to be for a year.

C. K. STEAD

I. A poem, if it is any good, chooses its own time of arrival and doesn't tolerate interference; it ought to be tougher than the will of its society.

2. About £55, which included an award. 3· Once. One and a half years in Australia, teaching in a university; two years in England on a university scholarship. Yes, I should like to go abroad often. 4· At present: university teacher. Past: student, a variety of 69 vacation jobs, teacher trainee, postman, university teacher. I am not aware that these jobs have helped me in any way as a writer; but I suppose in some obscure way they constitute 'experience'. 5 (a). Poems of mine have been read on the A.B.C. and the B.B.C. None has ever been read on the N.Z.B.S. Of course, N.Z.B.S. standards may be higher. (b). No. 6. I should like to be commissioned to write a play. This simply means I should like to write a play. 7· I doubt the capacity of the State Literary Fund to refine a writer's sensibility, improve his intelligence, or increase his understanding of his society and his craft. I don't think-as Fair- burn seemed to--that patronage leads inevitably to corruption of the writer. But I don't think the material problem is the real one, or that the real one in New Zealand is soluble now or in the near future. 8. I feel inclined to answer 'nothing'. Perhaps I ought to have a more delicate conscience on the subject of writers' problems. I know that some-especially some prose writers-face appalling difficulties in trying to get their work written. But I am incapable of thinking of 'writers' as a group requiring help. One likes to think that in one way or another the toughest will always survive. The characteristic plant of the desert has a smooth, tough surface, vicious spines, and a capacity of retention which allows it to draw endlessly on sparse rainfall. As such it is limited in size, beauty and usefulness. One can say of it, however, that it is alive where nothing else is. Commentaries

A. R. ENTWISLE Nuclear Disarmament: Another View

IT IS important that the case for unilateral action, as presented by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, should be re-examined from time to time in the light of new developments and alternative policies. For this reason alone, therefore, we may be grateful to Mr Wayland Young, whose Strategy for Survival (Penguin, 2s 6d) affords occasion for such a scrutiny. Mr Young presents an adroit, at times somewhat smart argument for what he describes as a 'more whole-hearted version' of the non-nuclear club. He asks that Britain should take a major diplomatic initiative to secure agreement among all countries of the world, except America and Russia, that they would neither produce nuclear weapons of their own, nor accept them, even in joint possession, from America and Russia, that they would not provide strategic bases to America and Russia, and would accept the stationing on their soil of American or Russian tactical nuclear establishments only in return for a public declaration that nuclear weapons would in no circumstances be used first. The maximum size of the nuclear weapons held by these establishments would be negotiated between the non-nuclear club powers on the one hand, and America and Russia on the other . ... At the same time the Western powers, acting through NATO and if necessary other alliance structures, should build up their conventional forces to match those of the East. I have italicized the lines indicating the difference between Mr Young's proposals and those of the British Labour Party and the T.U.C. published in June 1959. Mr Young's main objection to the latter is that to leave members of the non-nuclear club free to accept bomber and 7I rocket bases on their soil, or to enter with America and Russia into joint possession of nuclear weapons, is to leave the existing 'threat-structure of mutual annihilation' untouched. He suggests therefore that the risk of nuclear bombardment on the allies of the two leading powers be reduced by drawing rocket and bomber bases back to American and Russian territory. He would not however press for a total ban on the possession by non-nuclear powers of nuclear weapons, since this would leave NATO at a disadvantage. It would require only limited use of nuclear weapons to enable the Russians to overwhelm the inferior conventional forces of the West. Accordingly his scheme provides for retention by the non- nuclear powers of the right to accept American or Russian tactical nuclear establishments, subject to the public undertaking already mentioned. He implies that the need for them, from a NATO viewpoint, would disappear when the West had built up its conventional forces to parity with those of the East. The effect of all this, Mr Young believes, would be first 'to subtract a certain area of the world from the threat-structure of thermo-nuclear retaliation'; secondly, and because of this, it would give UNO time to produce that general agreement on disarmament without which 'we perish'. I cannot pretend in so brief a summary to have done full justice to Mr Young's case which is argued persuasively from what appears to have been a careful study of event and opinion. It is an attractive case, and the source of its appeal is easily seen. To begin with, it offers a new field for diplomatic effort. Turning from the hopeless task of persuading the two giants to disarm themselves, we now seek their aid in disarming others. This, as Mr Young suggests, involves the kind of adjustment of ends and means that is traditionally acceptable to democratic thought. If complete disarmament is denied us by a conflict of some American and Russian interests, let us exploit their remaining common interest in an exclusive nuclear club to win partial disarmament. This lends the proposals their air of practicality. As Mr Young says, it is Utopian to try to stop the arms race in full career. Even if that could be done it would involve grave risk of upsetting such international stability as has been achieved. The immediate task, he suggests, is that of applying brakes to our headlong progress; and this means thinking largely in terms of abstention and exclusion, until the powers have developed sufficient confidence in each other to engage jointly in bolder positive measures. 72 Another advantage of the policy, for me, and relevant to this question of trust, is that, in Mr Young's words, it 'would demand inspection neither of America nor of Russia', but 'only of those states which have a nuclear industry, or Russian or American troops stationed on their soil, or whose armed forces appeared to the naked eye to be behaving in such a way as to suggest that they were clandestinely receiving weapons from Russia or Amer- ica'. Mr Young seems to me to establish his point that inspection outside the boundaries of America and Russia is for various reasons less difficult than it would be within them. All this admitted, I yet found that the argument left me un- convinced. I suspect moreover that Mr Young has not fully convinced himself. The most obvious criticism is that this and the 'official' non- nuclear club policy have both appeared too late. Had either been develej?ed before de Gaulle's rise to power it might have tempted France as offering partial release from the conflict of claims between NATO and Algeria. As things are it seems unrealistic to hope, as Mr Young does, that the technical difficulties she is encountering will deflect France from her determination to become a nuclear power. In this connection Mr Young's alternative suggestion is not even plausible. 'In the last resort', he says, 'it might even be worth waiting [to launch the non-nuclear club project] till France had tested her first nuclear weapon and shown her "might" ', in order that she might share with Britain the credit for sponsoring the policy. Bearing in mind current strains in the Franco"West German relationship, is it conceivable that, having watched France's recovery of lost status by way of the nuclear club, West Germany will forgo the advantages of membership? And China? Mr Young admits that a pre-requisite of his policy must be the admission of China to the United Nations. Thus before Britain can even broach the question of a non-nuclear club, she must persuade the United States to reverse direction in the Far East. But supposing this miracle to have occurred, and leaving Dr Adenauer aside for a moment, what prospect have we of obtaining the agreement of at least twenty states to an act of renunciation in time to make that act worth while? Even Mr Young admits that 'all this would take years', and in fourteen years of disarmament effort the existing nuclear powers have achieved nothing. But in many ways the task Mr Young sets the world is a deal harder than that facing Messrs Eisenhower and Krushchev. For 73 instance, not only are there more governments and interests involved: more than one kind of non-nuclear club may be needed. There is an obvious difference between those neutralist powers who will have no truck with any nuclear weapons, and those members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact who are to be free, under Mr Young's dispensation, to accept tactical nuclear establishments. Mention of tactical nuclear weapons raises another question. Why should Russia accommodate NATO by accepting this provision concerning such weapons, the whole point of which is to assist in restoring the balance of conventional power? Admit- tedly both East and West have cause to regret that the balance was upset after 1945, and that in consequence the West was led into increasing reliance on the so-called nuclear deterrent. But to restore the conventional balance in Europe can bring. no relief unless it is accompanied by the dismantling of NATO-and even to do that, since it would leave Western military power a mere formless aggregation, would probably be useless. On the other hand to strengthen our conventional forces within the framework of NATO is to leave Europe still open to the danger of escalation, because at the heart of NATO, as of the Warsaw Pact, is a great power's nuclear stock-pile. In any case the democracies cannot in 'peace-time' achieve conventional parity with the Soviet bloc; and any attempt to do so could only add zest to the arms race. Mr Young is talking nonsense when he says that 'We can pitch the standard of material life of our troops at whatever level we choose'. Every army has known its Valley Forge-but only in war-time, and not often then. During 'peace-time' democratic governments may not, totalitarian governments dare not, allow barrack life to fall too far short of what Mum would provide. I have discussed Mr Young's proposals in the terms he himself employs both in presenting them and in examining alternatives. But to use these terms is to accept limitations on thought and action which lie at the root of our failure to achieve a disarmament settlement. Mr Young appears to sense this in his discussion of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He argues that the C.N.D. policy of unconditional disarmament, coupled with expulsion of American nuclear forces and bases, is less likely to reduce the war risk than his own suggestion for nuclear disarmament under the conditions I have summarized. I think he fails to make his case, and his lame tribute to the C.N.D. as a radical movement whose prime function is to keep the moderates awake suggests awareness of this. 74 The weakness of his argument consists in its failure to meet three essential requirements: I. That regard should be had to the time-factor. 2. That action, to be effective, must wrest the initiative from the Soviet bloc. 3· That the Western alliance should be strengthened. It will no longer do to characterize the demand for unilateral nuclear disarmament as mere extremism. Bearing in mind the essential conservatism of democracy, it is in any case reasonable to ask the West to restrain its appetite for debate, and try to know its own mind. But as things stand ml).ch more is needed than is suggested by the mere opposition of evolutionary and revolutionary opinion, and this the C.N.D. provides in the shape of qualitative differences of thought. Mr Young, like most of our political leaders, is preoccupied with the scale of destruction that threatens us. Those who favour unilateral nuclear disarmament are concerned not only with the scale, but with the possible imminence of disaster. Here is no question of panic. Simply, the knowledge that fourteen years of disarmament negotiation has resulted only in adding perhaps 75,000 nuclear bombs to our store seems to justify the unilateral- ists in their belief that time is running out. And there is little sign that any government is giving enough thought to this possibility. If time is running out Mr Young's leisurely process of sounding, putting heads together, and seeking a compromise cannot be taken very seriously. To return to a point raised earlier: how long does he suppose it will take Britain to win over the United States to recognition of China? And how much longer before China agrees to renounce the Bomb? Here then is a matter of conscience, touching the survival not of democratic institutions merely, but of humanity itself. If any member of the Western alliance believes that NATO policy endangers that survival she is not only free, she is in duty bound even to contract out of the alliance if necessary. She ought certainly to use every possible means of changing its policy as quickly as possible. For Britain, as the most vulnerable member of the nuclear club, interest marches with duty and means with both. She has it in her power not only to renounce nuclear weapons, thus rallying neutralist opinion behind her and checking Communist expansion, but by doing so under certain conditions to change the tenor of NATO policy. Moreover, in acting thus she will deprive 75 the Soviet bloc of the initiative which has lain with it since I955· It has lain there because, being totalitarian, the Soviet government is relatively untrammelled in reaching a decision. In this respect it will have the whip-hand of democracy so long as the latter is compelled by its nature to base decision on consent, without means to obtain that consent speedily. This is no new situation, but in the past it has been possible to end it, whenever the very survival of democracy seemed to be threatened, by digging in our toes, as at Fort Sumter and Dunkirk, and gambling even the institutions we sought to defend. Now however we cannot change the situation that way because we should have to stake more than our 'way of life' on the result. This is the virtue of unilateral action that, by ending the squalid horse-trading within NATO it can both take care of the time factor and take over the initiative. Supported by measures for holding NATO together it can even awaken the Americans to what must be the real point of any effective policy. That point is that primarily it is not the Russians but nature herself we are up against, and we play into nature's hands by conducting our affairs on a level dictated by political primitives in Moscow. Above all else we have now to concern ourselves with human survival, remembering the while that a factor in this concern must be the fundamentalist urge of the Marxists. Care for NATO is therefore as essential to sound unilateral policy as it is supposed to be to that of our present leaders. More so apparently, for under their hands NATO is falling apart. What is needed however is not more, and more efficient, means of physical destruction, whether conventional or nuclear. It is the Russian fear of it as a purely military mechanism that has made NATO, with the Warsaw Pact, such a liability in disarmament negotiations. What is needed is that NATO should be provided with weapons-of economic pressure, propaganda, and non-violent resistance-appropriate to the kind of war in which after all we are already engaged. This would not wholly remove the shadow of destruction; the use of any weapon involves some danger of escalation. It would however raise the odds against catastrophe higher, and more swiftly than the policy Mr Young proposes. T. E. CARTER The Report on the UniveTsities

The existing institutions are not yet in a position to do effectively the work currently required of them and they will not be in such a position until salaries have been adjusted, numbers of teaching staff increased, and needed buildings, equipment and research funds provided. (p. 93). FROM the Universities' point of view this would seem to sum up the Report of the Committee on New Zealand Universities which appeared in January. Someone critical or obstructive may well point to the L3.ck of substantiation and concrete examples, to the repetitions and inadequacies in layout which are clearly a result of the haste with which members had to work. To anyone of good will, prepared to accept the authority and impartiality of the Committee, the Report is unambiguous. Local spokesmen may lament that the Committee was somehow misled about the urgent need and the obvious site for a new medical school or sub-standard University, but these parochial regrets should not be allowed to call in question the unequivocal statement informing the whole Report: . . . we feel that the New Zealand universities and colleges are facing a crisis of the first magnitude, which the existing mach- inery is no longer effective enough to help them meet. (p. ro8). It is, and was, all so manifest. In Landfall no. 51, Dr J. G. A. Pocock made the point that this country 'has only a limited need or use for intellectual excellence of any kind'. The Committee, whose task was apparently not only to detail the inadequacies of our higher education but also to encourage authority to take remedial action, has softened the absence of the 'pursuit of excellence' to a gently ironic reference to the pioneer tradition. But later in the Report this aspect is taken up again, when University Entrance and the function of the Post-Primary schools are considered. The Committee, sympathetic towards the Education Department in its difficulties, whilst confessing to a certain ignorance of the New Zealand situation is nevertheless pertinently critical of the curriculum and qualifica- tions of Entrants : We must say, however, that we are disturbed by the high 77 proportion of pupils who offer neither mathematics nor a foreign language for University Entrance. (p. 34). and: ... We wonder whether, without distorting the social purposes of post-primary education, the system could not be made more challenging, particularly for the ablest pupils in each stream at the schools. (p. 35). Following up this question of extending the brighter pupil when he arrives at the University, the Committee has a deceptively simple and eventually far-reaching proposal, which may also reduce the appalling wastage. It would be an answer, along with the counselling services recommended, to the shortcomings due to student immaturity and the inadequacies in the school-university link. The Committee's solution would seem to be that the Univer- sities should, after examining their consciences, their courses and their objectives, introduce a preliminary year; thus creating, or rather accepting what is already a fact for 75% of the students, a four year bachelor's degree. The Scholarship winner and possibly the pupil who had gone through the Upper Sixth would have cred- ited to him some or all of the subjects in the first year. If the staff is available, this suggestion has much to be said for it, allowing the Universities to do the sixth form teaching, which they have so generously criticized in the past. It is not worked out in detail but rather thrown over to the Professorial Board for development. If the Universities do not adjust themselves to the level of the post- primary product and reduce the present incredible failure rate, they cannot expect much sympathy for their aspirations in pursuit of excellence. The Committee is not asking the Universities merely to lower standards, but to be adaptable to the average and the outstanding. Running through the Report is an implied comparison between the reality-New Zealand as it is at the moment, and a vague New Zealand of the future, prosperous, efficient and industrialized. New Zealand as it is at the moment is indicated by our very vocabulary; here a student attends 'Varsity, a word with all the pretentious overtones which the architecture deserves; he has probably had his secondary education at a 'College', and rather than let him live in a hostel, he is nowadays shepherded into a Hall of Residence-the language of commercial radio giving an epic gloss to our every action. New Zealand as it is at the moment is shown by the physical deficiencies, the ad hoc decisions and last minute staving-off of disaster (the bonded student is an 78 example), a lack of prescience by authority, a peculiar centraliza- tion which plays off one centre against another, and above all the absence of an informed public opinion. Comparing the reality with the recommendations in the Report, it is apparent that neither the Government (by which one means that complex process of Public Service foresight and political prudence which results in legislation) nor the public has ever really needed a University. A 'Varsity is quite good enough, with the student somewhere between the self-made man and the juvenile, supporting himself with a disguised child-allowance, and graduating, if a part-timer, after an average of eight-and-a-half years, at a level, as we know, where he is often just starting to appreciate the Reader's Digest. A night-school, in fact, except for the blazer. This picture is unfair in two ways. First, any institution can be made to appear contemptible and these earnest Philistines are precisely what our society seems to require as lawyers and accountants, in schools and the Public Service. And second, the Science Faculties are already rather different. In them, 1 think, there is something which in its full-time student and its attitudes approximates to the twentieth-century British University, something which forms a bridge to the University of the 197o's which the Committee's proposals are designed to bring about. (The Committee dismisses, by the way, as misleading and indeed irrelevant, the assertion that we are somewhere between the British and the American University systems, with its implied corollary that we avoid the evils of both.) In Science Departments, then, we have in miniature the em- phases the Committee makes : the full-time students, the teacher, through his research stimulated and stimulating, the growing post-graduate schools-all those things which are beyond the requirements and means of a pastoral economy and yet seem inseparable from a University in a technologically developed society. How do the Sciences get away with it? Partly, of course, because the contrast of a pastoral economy and a technologically developed one is not accurate. New Zealand has managed to combine the two. And partly because, even in the purest scientific research, there is a hint, a fascinating possibility of practical application which can be sold to the layman. In other words, Science is useful. If we ever get real Universities, it will be because they are useful. And if I understand the Report correctly, it is saying that the Universities must be prepared to offer the vocational and practical. They are not something God-given and absolute; they are a public utility, which must adapt itself con- 79 stantly to a changing society, 'sensitive to the "legitimate" academic needs of the community'. However vocational the course-accountancy, pharmacy, brewing-the intangibles of a University education still persist. There is a host of points which offer themselves in the Report for comment-the students themselves ('too many students are now living under substandard conditions'), the penal approach of the Report to the system of the part-timer, the limited sums recommended for undergraduate scholarships, the quite astonishing sum with which the Department of Education is failing to attract enough teachers, the generous attitude towards graduate students, buildings, the swing of power from the Councils to the Professorial Boards-but the crux of the whole Report is the new University Grants Committee. At no point are the Universities to be directly responsible to the Minister of Education; the Department is no longer even to undertake the bulk buying of equipment and furni- ture, and even on the Entrance Board it is not in a position to out- vote or overrule the representatives of higher education. The Grants Committee virtually becomes a Department of government in its own right, taking over the function of the Department of Educa- tion as far as the Universities are concerned. Their submissions to Government will admittedly go through the Minister of Education but in his capacity (the Report implies) as Minister for the Univer- sities. Successor to the non-teaching, almost purely administrative body known as the University of New Zealand, arbiter between the Universities and heir to the problems adumbrated but unresolved by the Committee of Enquiry, the Grants Committee is also to be the centre of a peculiar triangular tension formed by the University, the community and the Government and Treasury. Knowing the needs and potential of the University, responding to the development of society and the national economy, it must interpret, reconcile and present to Government the future developments and financial requirements. The Grants Committee is the great question mark. It is a British institution based on a preparedness to compromise and a belief in academic values. Both these presuppose an informed and coherent middle class. In the absence of such a force in New Zealand, one wonders whether successive governments will have the courage and wisdom to trust the integrity and competence of the new Grants Committee. One hopes so. On this depends whether the bridge from the 'Varsity of the fifties to the University of the seventies will be crossed. On this, too, depends the pattern of New Zealand's future. 8o JAMES BERTRAM The Wide Open Cage

IN a workshop production in their tiny studio-theatre in Drummond Street, Unity Theatre last November presented a new three-act play by James K. Baxter, The Wide Open Cage. The producer was Richard Campion, and the performance was hailed by our most experienced drama critic as 'the most exciting night in the theatre' of what has been, for Wellington, something of a vintage year. It is clear that New Zealand drama, like the novel, has lately gained a strong new impulse. The success of Ray Lawler's Doll may have acted as spur; the English television performance of Bruce Mason's The Pohutukawa Tree last October, following upon a London Repertory performance of another Mason play, has since provided some tangible outside recognition of accomplishment. Miss Stella Jones's The Tree (which I missed in its N.Z. Players production) seems to have made a real impression in this country; Allen Cumow's Moon Section arrived in Wellington just after the very engaging student performance of Mr Baxter's jack Winter's Dream. Sarah Campion's classification (in Landfall last September) of Moon Section as 'the first considerable New Zealand play written about the country, its people, and their attitudes, by a New Zealander' is certainly open to challenge-though the writing of Moon Section may have preceded that of The Pohutukawa Tree, which had its first workshop production by the New Zealand Players in Wellington in August 1957. But priorities are unimportant. The really interesting comparison would be between The Pohutukawa Tree, Moon Section and The Wide Open Cage-three characteristic experiments of which the first is the most theatric- ally effective, the second the toughest intellectually, and the third perhaps the most explosive in treatment and style. Superficially, Mr Baxter's new play (of which the first act has already been printed in Numbers ro) is a sort of New Zealand Lower Depths-a gathering of generally disgruntled, unsatisfied characters in a bach behind a Wellington boarding-house, where the tolerant pragmatic personality of Jack Skully offers something to each of them in their vain quest for personal fulfilment. Skully himself-ex-sailor, pensioner, natural man in the self-reliant New Zealand tradition-is clearly a congenial figure in Mr Baxter's 81 personal mythology, as is the half-caste Irish-Maori Norah who is living with him, a sailors' girl since she has broken away from the restrictions of a Catholic orphanage and challenged social conventions. Skully's landlady wants to reclaim him from Norah; a Redemptorist priest wants to reclaim Norah from Skully; the destructive element lies in Ben Hogan, another of these failed priests who have been so thick on the ground since Joyce made one his hero. Hogan is a mindless and more violent Stephen, an alcoholic ex-convict who remains (inexplicably) Norah's only love. Shaken by Hogan's sufferings in the DT's, she makes her confession to Father Tom and returns to the fold, leaving the way clear for the forces of evil in Hogan, who fairly promptly takes his cue and bashes Skully's head in with a whisky bottle. On the fringe of this sombre and distinctly Manichean contest hover two painfully gauche but not unappealing adolescents, who are left to draw what conclusions they may from low life in the capital city. Such a description may suggest unrelieved squalor and gloom. There is however a good deal of breezy vitality in the first two acts; and there are some scenes of genuine comedy. A feature of the writing is the extreme frankness of the language-often, I felt, this was dramatically inappropriate, and would certainly be offensive on the public stage. But I am assured that these shock tactics fully captured the restricted audience on every night except the one I chose, when audience reaction was virtually niL I was later told that my own audible scribbling of notes had uncomfort- ably suggested that I might be a police spy, taking down the forbidden words. The Unity production, it should be added, was a model of casting and technical competence, with the exception of some unfortunate sound effects. Mr F. M. Renner's Skully was authentic and convincing on a perhaps too even practical level. Mr Thane Bettany brought great virtuosity to the macabre grotesque of Hogan-his DT's were positively frightening, and on the night I saw him an excess of enthusiasm in bottle-crunching coated his right hand with so much real gore that his sign of the cross over the body of his victim created a more-than-Elizabethan shiver. But the unforgettable performance came from Miss Mary Nimmo (whom I had last seen as the adolescent Queenie in Mr Mason's The Pohutukawa Tree, where her quiet sincerity was rather over- whelmed by the more powerful acting of Miss Hira Tauwhare). In The Wide Open Cage Mary Nimmo, who has fined down physically and gained a rare beauty of poise and movement, had a part to extend the most experienced actress. This is cut out of 82 sheerest melodrama-the good-hearted prostitute who defies the priest, flaunts the banner of racial pride, comforts suffering humanity, and finally confesses to the murder of her own child. To make such a part credible was a triumph; to make it aesthetically pleasing, a tour de force. Unity Theatre, as is their custom, held a critical discussion on the play in which I took part, where we heard something from the author, the producer, and others concerned in the production. In a somewhat formal critical examination I suggested that the play lacked unity of action: the plot was episodic, there was not enough inevitability about its tragic outcome. While some of the characters were really interesting, Skully (who is central) did not develop, and did not act but was acted upon; Hogan was paste- board; Norah-the character with greatest dramatic possibilities- really deserved to be the centre of her own play. The language had eloquence; but since the basic speech was New Zealand colloquial, deliberately lowered in tone, the injection of poetry in a number of carefully calculated images had a somewhat artificial effect. The quality of thought revealed was not impressive: much of Skully's philosophizing was cracker-barrel; the failure of Hogan to supply any intellectual stimulus was deeply felt. The play did offer moments of spectacle-Hogan's drunken entry wearing a lavatory seat as collar, Norah's dance with the skull, the various tableaux and groupings of the last act-but these were too often melodramatic. Above all, for a tragi-comic 'slice of life' of this kind, one was never made aware of any social or accumulated pressure behind the situation: all the tension and conflict had to be built up from within the characters themselves, in their casual relationships. If it is not unfair to quote here some of the comments provoked by this rather academic analysis: Mr Baxter himself indicated that he had rejected the idea of a neat plot in favour of a scheme -satisfying to him poetically-of the eclipse of the forces of light by the forces of darkness; that his approach was psychological rather than sociological; that he had intended to present compul- sive characters, acting compulsively; that he preferred Strindberg to O'Casey; and that Aristotle was out of date. Mr Erik Schwimmer warmly defended the play as myth, or as modem morality presenting various stages in the life of man: the themes were metaphysical, the pattern was emotionally satisfying. Mr Bruce Mason claimed that the play had made its effect, and a very considerable one, in the theatre-to this extent it was clearly a better play than Moon Section which (whatever its other virtues) 83 failed as drama. Miss Nola Millar, while admitting the challenge to certain taboos of the stage and questioning some of the material, felt that the play was perhaps 'more of a piece', more nearly a good play, than anything else we have had in New Zealand. And so on, and so on. I do not wish to claim the last word in what should be a continuing debate. Nor do I Wish to enter into an argument as to the propriety of presenting a full Catholic confession on the open stage-though I hope Mr Baxter will reconsider this; it certainly offends me, as a non-Catholic. The Wide Open Caae has the disturbing and perhaps valuable quality of exposing areas of experience most New Zealanders prefer to conceal, if they cannot evade them. The general feeling at Unity was that this trial run had tested a dramatic talent which offers solid material to producer and actors; that the production itself had been rewarding to all concerned; and that-whether Mr Baxter's statement in the play is coherent and valid or not-he has his own very lively and arresting way of making it.

G. R. MANTON Greek Plays in Dunedin

DURING the past three years Rosalie and Patric Carey have presented in Dunedin five single Greek plays and one trilogy, and two more productions of single plays are promised for 1960.1 Several performances have been given in the open air, the rest in theatres and halls of various sizes. Audiences have ranged from as few as twenty to between two and three hundred. The motive behind these productions is not an ambition to present Greek theatre merely for its own sake. Patric Carey believes that for an experimental theatre Greek drama provides both a steadying influence and an inspiration, and that by return-

1 March 1957: Euripides, Medea (translated by Robinson Jeffers); February 1958: Aeschylus, Oresteia (abridged and translated by Sir John Sheppard); January 1959: Euripides, Trojan Women (translated by Philip Vellacott); April 1959: Sophocles, Oedipus and Antigone (translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald); December 1959: Aristophanes, Frogs (translated by Dudley Fitts). Projected for 1960: Euripides, Alcestis, and Aristophanes, Birds. 84 ing again and again to the Greeks his players and his audiences gain an increased awareness of the meaning of theatre and are the better able to respond to the best of all periods, including the work of a Beckett or an lonesco. It is against the background of this long-term policy that the achievement of the Careys will eventually have to be understood and judged. Yet these productions have in themselves served to show how much theatrical value there is in all the Greek plays so far selected, when they are interpreted sensitively and with restraint. With no permanent theatre and no facilities for elaborate settings, each production has of necessity made demands on the imagination of the audience which are consistent with the simple conventions of the Greek theatre. Most of the accompanying music has been specially written by composers working in close collaboration with the producer. The first production, Medea, in a garden setting, opened with a faultless performance by the nurse. The much-abused prologue of Euripides served its purpose. We were in Corinth, but with Colchis never very far removed. From that moment the play never flagged, not because the leading part was taken by an experienced and powerful actress, but because the words of a very moving translation were allowed to speak for themselves. No other performance has remained so memorable, with the possible exception of the second play of the Oresteian trilogy, Choephoroe. Oresteia as a whole, even in an abridged version which reduces it to little more than two hours of playing time, makes heavy demands on a non-classical audience. Yet in this performance of Choephoroe, perhaps because the chorus was so skilfully handled, there was no barrier. Eumenides on the other hand, with its fusion of primeval symbolism and up-to-date legal procedure and its religious and patriotic fervour, has little of the direct emotional appeal of the two preceding plays, and the producer failed to provide the audience with the necessary transition at the beginning of the play.2 It would not be difficult to single out scenes from all the plays in which poet, producer and cast seemed to be working in perfect harmony, nor again to find fault sometimes with the interpretation of a character, sometimes with over-elaboration of gesture or

2 At the end of Choephoroe Orestes runs from the scene, his brain filled with the vision of the Furies. At the beginning of Eumenides the Furies have taken corporeal shape but Mr Carey failed to make them visible to the audience until after the ghost of Clytemnestra had appeared and addressed them. The audience was left to sort out too much for itself. 85 movement by the chorus, sometimes with a too obvious and distracting use of music recorded on a tape. What remains is the memory from almost every production of the direct impact of a simple dramatic theme. Patric Carey draws on experienced actors as well as young students of the Theatre Academy which he runs in partnership with his wife. His success in welding a homogeneous production out of such material may be due to two factors. In the first place he understands amateurs: he knows that you can train an amateur and that you can show him what you want, but that there is a point beyond which you cannot .produce him. In other words the skill lies rather in casting than in drilling through rehearsal. And in spite of the last minute setbacks and uncertainties about actual staging, his casts seem to work together with an extra- ordinary smoothness. The other factor is Mr Carey's singleness of purpose. No effort is spared to achieve what his intuition tells him is dramatically and aesthetically right. But intuition has its drawbacks. There is a danger, especially when a producer is working constantly with the same group, that they may develop their own conventions and mistake them for the conventions of the Greek theatre. This is not to say that a producer should not allow himself a good deal of liberty in presenting a Greek play. But if Greek drama is to remain a steadying influence and an inspiration in an experimental theatre it must be studied as near as possible to the source. It must not be forgotten that Antigone was not composed as a sequel to Oedipus, and that the chorus of Oedipus did not represent women but male citizens. These are reservations of which the Careys may well be aware To say that without these productions Dunedin's theatrical life would be dull indeed is an understatement. They would be distinguished in the life of any city, and there are signs that, in the long run, the Careys will succeed in contributing something of more lasting value than an occasional moving production.

86 Reviews

THE NEW ZEALANDERS. Maurice Shadbolt. Gollancz. I8s. THE STONE AND OTHER STORIES. 0. E. Middleton. The Pilgrim Press. I2S. 6d. THESE stories of Maurice Shadbolt's are so good in so many ways that it is a delight to read them. One is struck almost at once with the range of the author's sympathies and understanding; for Mr Shadbolt is mercifully determined to be the author, not the subject, of his stories. In his first story, told in the first person, he presents the situation of a young girl on the brink of Womanhood, groping towards love; and in another he has convincingly explored the plight of an aging man grasping back at love from the grave's brink. There are women growing frantic as youth fades, boys who are blundering or brutal, Maoris and farmers, artists, poets, working men and business men. They are nearly all contemporary New Zealanders, and they behave and speak not merely in character, but to the point of the story. Each of these stories has a planned meaning and direction. To illustrate this we may consider the shortest of them all, 'Thank you Goodbye'. An episode is related with ease and the conversation and gestures are almost idly supplied, so that the 'design' (to employ a useful ambiguity), is tactfully involved in the detail. Yet it is the achievement of the story to get something painful and indeed tragic said about the present predicament of humanity in general, at the very moment when it is being most faithful to the particular crisis. It is this relevance of Mr Shadbolt's stories which, when successfully managed, constitutes their distinction. He sees and shows us the wider allusion in the situations he has chosen. Actually I suspect that he sometimes proceeds the other way round, and from the wider idea works down to a representative case. It is clear, in any event, that he looks upon this country with an educated intelligence and with an awareness of its history as strongly developed as his observation of its forms and manners. In almost every story the characters come in trailing their past, and it is the problem or the pang of coping with the altered present that produces the crisis. In such cases what I have called the relevance of the stories (which are particular) arises from this reference to a past which is common to us all. These people have been affected by catastrophes which in this century have befallen the whole world. Thus in one story after another the situation is at once social and personal. 'After the Depression', for example, is as socially connotative as it is personally precise. This leads me to remark on the dangers implicit in this sort of 87 bi-focal examination of the human scene, dangers which Mr Shadbolt does not always escape. Sometimes the author is reluctant to allow the story itself to suggest its relevance. For example, 'Knock on Yesterday's Door' hardly survives as a pure story at all. Somewhere within the period context there struggle a pair of private lives; but the human actuality hardly scrambles into recognition above the social ciphering. If it does so it is by the strength of the author's exposition rather than by any force generated in the characters. Another story, 'Play the Fife Lowly', is far more successful; for here the characters grow up strongly in the present and take over the situation. Their pasts are related only, it ·seems, because they have led to this evening of crisis. And just as in 'Thank you Goodbye' the words of the waiter randomly falling explode into crucial meaning, so the song in this story magnificently establishes the whole idea. The strengths and weaknesses of this collection are best studied in 'The Woman's Story'. We begin with the 'idea'-an idea which alone would justify the general title: the escape from a childhood, tied to the apron strings of the Mother Country, into a young adulthood of our own. The growing up of the heroine is the growing up of our country. The myth is admirably conceived. But the transforming of the myth into story has sometimes proved awkward, and at times we are unpleasantly aware of the ambi- valence. The high school boy who is so expert with the cricket ball becomes by a jarringly commonplace forward reflection the thrower of a grenade which will 'blow off his hands and most of his head on some Middle Eastern battlefield'. Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Douglas Social Credit, the Spanish Civil War and Munich are names scattered through the growing local story. They set the time by the outer world's clock. But then suddenly the private story grows imperative. There is a dazzling and energetic description of a midnight picnic full of private desperations. Here, in the hectic beach party and the sexual fulfilment of the heroine we seem to have entered another mood and mode of story altogether.The actuality is so strongly and feelingly realized that the mythic quality is violated. We have lost the displaced English girl, not for a New Zealand girl, but for a homosexual girl. The earlier perplexities change their nature in the retrospect. They are not symbolized but replaced by an entirely private dilemma and by the very ecstasy of the self-discovery. These stories are almost all in the same key : they are stories of frustration and bewilderment, of people meeting and parting without understanding. The endings are usually mellifluous and melancholy : But there was only the rain; the rain needling the glass, ·bleeding the bright image of the night city. 88 or The wind grieved through overhead wires; it slapped and rustled, nipping them with cold ... 'No,' Helen whispered. 'Don't say anything at all.' The New Zealanders is the work of a gifted writer. Mr Shadbolt is entranced by life and by language and brings a critical intelligence to both. There is already sufficient complexity in his characterization (e.g. in 'Maria' and 'The Waters of the Moon') to suggest that the prevailing moods of his future stories will become more and more subtly distinguished. The Stone and Other Stories, by 0. E. Middleton, belong to a quite different tradition from those of Mr Shadbolt. The writer's interest centres not on the complexity and variety of the human mind or of human motivation but upon the simple impulses and the nearly inarticulate emotions of uncultivated people. The writer is at pains in this type of story to reduce his own stature, to approach his unpretentious subjects on their own level. The language of narration is carefully matched to the subjects and the settings: One wag reckoned he had a girl up there . . . . a crumb slipped down the wrong way and made him choke and he had to drink a big swallow of milk . . . . The method involves a close fidelity to idiom and to topography. Mr Middleton's use of vulgar speech is as authentic as a tape- recording made while sheilas were just within hearing: You better get some shut-eye fleeco. These boys will be rearing to go in the morning .... There'll be wool for bloody miles .... He said he wouldn't get any sheep dagged sitting there drinking piss. Alongside the sentences quoted earlier, drawn from Mr Shadbolt's stories, these extracts exemplify the strong differences between the two approaches to fiction. The first seeks to enrich and interpret. The second seeks to reduce and record. Mr Middleton's prose is built out of Maori borrowings, occupational slang and native plant-names into a necessarily disinfected vernacular which asserts on every page the Kiwi provenance of these stories. Yet his real quest is for the gleam of the human spirit where it breaks out (sometimes improbably) above the crude creature movements. Among the shearers the hero of 'The Stone' comes upon Dan who 'would drive staples into the tough honeysuckle and talk about Plato and Nietzsche and Goethe'. In 'First Adven- ture' the little boy hero has a mute sensibility unshared by his coarser-grained brother: 'There was no mystery in it, no injustice, for Don .... But Billy brooded over what they had said ... .' The hero of 'The Corporal's Story' knows the poems of Matthew 89 Arnold, reads learned works in the recreation hut, and plays chess with the padre (whom he rebukes for saying 'By Jove'). And in 'A Married Man' we are told, of the men working in a cooperage, that 'underlying all their knowing laughter and bawdy stories, and belying them, was their serious concern for children.' Some- times this quest of Mr Middleton's leads to smugness, sometimes to sentimentality. But in 'A Bit of Bad Luck' there is a dumb pathos which, if unremarkable, is strictly 'on the level'. And indeed the best of Mr Middleton's insights occur when the primitive response is the pure and true one. Here he is not awkwardly placed above the material he works with, trying to write down to it. To perceive, as one character does, that one shouldn't put meat in one's mouth unless one is prepared to kill the beast with one's hands is to perceive a radically simple truth. To acknowledge death and assuage grief by burying one's own lost child is a purer response than more sophisticated people could manage. The instinctive respect of the boy (in 'First Adventure') for a bundle of discovered Maori bones is another example of this primitive insight. And reading 'A Married Man' one can forgive the author his imposed limitations of style and his oppressive fidelity to scene and speech when one feels the sympathy and sincerity which pulse through the last of these five stories. R. A. Copland

A GUN IN MY HAND. Gordon Slatter. The Pegasus Press. 15s. FEAR IN THE NIGHT. Errol Brathwaite. The Caxton Press. I5s. DEAR MIRANDA. Guthrie Wilson. Hutchinson. r3s. 6d. OuR UNEASY nationality has long hindered New Zealand writing. Frightened of appearing gawky and awkward to older eyes, of losing the favours that children earn by being polite to grown- ups, we have tried to postpone our adolescence (the sneers about the self-centred crudity of the Australians have been a warning) and linger in a cultural infancy. Gordon Slatter is affected by no such inhibitory influences, however, and with his first novel, A Gun in My Hand, gives our writing a good shove towards its adolescence, and for that alone he deserves applause. John A. Lee was the last writer to be so vigorous in his shoving-to no real effect, however, because New Zealanders grabbed hold of Mummy's apron strings and held on for dear life. We won't be so timid this time, surely. Mr Slatter's significance is that he has accepted the place and people about him as his proper concern and harnessed his colonial vitality and zest in his writing. He is one more of Mark Twain's grandsons, then : The old codger I noticed earlier telling everyone he was just leaving, definitely going, promised the wife, he's holding up the wall and talking seriously to a big chap with red face and red hair. -Told 'em straight I did. You clean out them pipes I said and you'll ruin it. They're matured, see? You know, sorta coated with vittamines and hops and things. You'll knock the bloody taste all to hell I said. Grandfather still has much to teach Mr Slatter, of course, and would no doubt welcome the chance to give him a stentorian lecture for manipulating with fairly obvious strings a character well capable of making his own way to his own end. But Mr Slatter can read his own lessons. A Gun in My Hand has not got a very sturdy fictional structure. Ronald Sefton, a returned soldier with an acute war neurosis, returns to Christchurch from the North Island to attend his battalion's reunion: he carries a gun (in his pocket, most of the time) which he intends to use on the man who saw the war out in safety at home and married the girl he, Sefton, had loved. This Tve-got-a-gun-and-I'm-going-to-use-it' theme is maintained right throughout the twenty-four-hour span of the book (although Sefton's idea of a victim changes), in which time the reader is given impressions of New Zealand (booze, racing, rugby, suburbia, returned soldiers) and flash-backs to Sefton's war exper- iences and young manhood. The writer reaches pretty much the same conclusions about the New Zealand attitude to war that Guthrie Wilson did in Brave Company. Mr Wilson's narrator, Lawyer, remarks of a man he much admires, 'Hadfield is as near to being a hero to me as any other man I have known. By that, I mean he is a very good soldier.' Mr Slatter's narrator, Sefton, has a hero, too, a paragon of all male virtues, of whom he says, 'He was a soldier born.' Lawyer says, 'Two things and two only are vital. Love and war. And the greater is war.' Sefton is not quite as sure as Lawyer, however, and asks, 'Love or war, Which is the greater?' In his occasional hymns to masculine mateship, Sefton finds common ground with some of Frank Sargeson's characters-on the battlefield, of all places: he wonders whether the love of a woman for a man is greater than the love of 'a soldier for his cobber' and, on another occasion, recalls an incident in which his hero took care of him when he was drunk, 'He called me Dig. I was one of the digs. The nicest thing anybody ever said to me. I'll never forget that.' But what Sefton is reallv eloquent about is New Zealand. Life at any level or gradation within our single middle-class annoys him, and he can snarl about it with the vehemence that marks him as an antipodean Jimmy Porter. 'This dull land where The Slump was the only thing that ever happened to some people .... where life is so flat, stale and 91 unprofitable. . . . where rugby is a religion and the race track a shrine and the five to six pub rush Communal Living.' Mr Slatter uses the novel as a kind of hold-all into which he pours everything that has been bubbling about in his mind for the past twenty years, and it is his own performance in tossing so many things off his chest that carries off the book, even though one may regret that Sefton is reduced to being the author's dummy in the process. Whether snarling, lyrical, sentimental, cynical, tough or just plain mixed-up, the author is usually good value. He cares passionately about New Zealand and, coming twenty years after the introduction of social security, the masculine protest he makes at the essential dullness of secure lives surely has a significance quite outside any literary consideration. The fact that New Zealanders are buying the book eagerly must heighten this significance. The many refinements and extensions of vernacular writing offer the colonial writer ways of giving his story a suitable texture and a dimension of reality which otherwise would be lacking. At his best Mr Slatter achieves some excellent results with it: a type of boozy New Zealander lurches out of his pages, and the reader must grin (or frown) in recognition. To use his own terms, Mr Slatter writes like a good side-row forward: he's fast, very strong, always hunting the ball, able to handle it well enough when he gets it-and he is really deadly in his tackling. A referee will find him infringing more than once, but the crowd will forgive him his sins (provided, always, that they want his team to win). I'm all for Mr Slatter's team and will boo any referee who uses too much whistle on him. The value of a writer knowing exactly what he is writing about is clearly demonstrated by Errol Brathwaite in his first novel, Fear in the Night: 'For the time being he did not switch on the amplidyne motors under the seat, considering that it would save considerable power if he cranked himself around with the manual traverse, thus restricting his current consumption to the few milliamperes drawn by the reflector light.' Ex-Air Gunner Brath- waite delights in this kind of writing, but keeps it within the bounds of fictional propriety. His story concerns an R.N.Z.A.F. Ventura bomber that makes a forced landing on a deserted airstrip in Japanese territory; its crew have only a few hours to make repairs before the arrival of an enemy patrol. He switches his means of perception of the ensuing action from one member of the crew to the other, with neat changes to the progress of the approaching enemy patrol to maintain and heighten the suspense. Though his flash-backs smack just a little of padding, he controls his effects very well and writes without any huffing and puffing. There are no literary pretensions about Fear in the Night but his craftsmanship suggests that Mr Brathwaite is capable 92 of writing more novels to follow this promising beginning. Inci- dentally, it is hard to understand why this book received a Literary Fund grant. It would not have had the slightest trouble in finding both hard-back and paper-back publishers in England. Mr Guthrie Wilson, I believe, is New Zealand's most under- rated writer-by our current literary standards, that is. In a land where amateurish craftsmanship and a rudimentary appreciation of technique are too often assumed to be the hall-marks of a serious writer, his technical competence has not had the appreciation it deserved. In fulien Ware and Strip jack Naked Mr Wilson did better work than he was given credit for. However, his latest book, Dear Miranda, does not help my case at all : Mr Wilson tries light comedy and fails-but at least he fails in a tradesmanlike way. Like Dan Davin in No Remittance he shows signs of having been misled by Joyce Cary's apparent ease in achieving results by having a first-person narrator casually reminiscing about his or her life. The ease of this method is all on the surface, however, and unless the writer really knows what he is about, and is working like blazes underneath, the reader soon realizes that he is in shallow waters. Dear Miranda is shallow, and not particularly funny. It is to be hoped that Mr Wilson can rid himself of the compulsion to write a lot of novels, and instead devote his time to a book that is worthy of his talent. fan Cross

COAST TO COAST. Australian Stories 1957-58. Selected by Dal Stivens. Angus & Robertson. 21s. WEST COAST STORIES. Edited by H. Drake-Brockman. Angus & Robertson. 2os.

IF A New Zealand reader had no other Australian book on his shelves than these two collections of short stories, he would still be face to face with the abundance, freedom and assurance of the Australian short story, in comparison with the scarcity and nervousness of our own. The more Australian short stories I read, the more I am impressed by the relaxed and unselfconscious manner of the Australian short-story writer, when he is at his best. I should go so far as to say that if a New Zealand short-story writer were to neglect the study of the Australian story, it would be equivalent to neglecting the study of our own; it might even be more serious; for across the Tasman they are bringing in a fine harvest from land that with us is still being cleared. This is not meant to imply that good work has not been done here, as it has, of course, and is still being done; nothing could replace our own; but there is not very much of it; the Australian work is at once a rich addition and a challenge. 93 These collections give an isolated, but very fair illustration of the kind of story Australian writers are winning from situation and character similar to our own (so like, and yet so unlike), and the use that is being made of the language of city and bush. Most of the stories are about ordinary folk, working men and women, coal-miners, gold-miners, farmers, new Australians, fishermen, housewives, mill-workers, teachers. The reader becomes aware of heat, fine-weather, space, and, most of all, of life lived out-of-doors. There is no story with sufficient poetic depth to amaze the reader, or to wake a change in his mind, with the power of great art; but the Australian story is in a very state; it is from this kind of abundance and ease that great wntmg at last emerges. Among the stories in Coast to Coast that have power enough to linger in the mind after they are read are : 'Good as Ever', by Frank Hardy, a story of a coal-miner and his family, an intimate domestic study that could hold its own beside some of the tales of D. H. Lawrence, and which contains a masterly description of a fight between two men; 'Grandfather Tiger', by Mena Kashmiri Abdullah, remarkable for its warmth and gentleness, a tale of a little Indian girl's first day at an Australian school, not a bitter tale of colour bar, a tale of acceptance, of a child's wisdom, part instinctive, part cultural inheritance ('It was horrible, horrible!' said Joti. 'There are no friends there. They think I am black- people. They laugh at me, and I hate them.' 'Ha!' said the Tiger. 'I thought that might happen.' 'Then what am I to do?' said Joti. 'What am I to do?' 'Accept,' said the Tiger. 'And they will accept you. If you run you will fail. If you fight you will fall. You must only accept.'); 'Conflict', by Chris Gardner, a moving little tale of a humble half-caste aborigine couple and their fair-skinned educated son; 'Those Green Trousers', by L. J. Blake, really funny; 'Among those Present', by Les Robinson, in Which a very intelligent rat gives evidence at an inquest, is a leap of the imagination that is quite brilliant. In West Coast Stories there is a delightful tale about an old-man kangaroo, 'Encounter', by James Pollard, this time not from the point of view of the hunter, instead, the most sensitive sketch of a kangaroo that I have come across since D. H. Lawrence's kangaroo poem, ('He crawled a few paces, setting his paws to ground and gliding his long legs pace by pace beside them.'). The West Coast collection is more uneven; it seems inevitable that dullness and the commonplace should creep in; but good stories are to be found there, all the same-'Short-shift Saturday', by Gavin Casey, a well-sustained long short story that runs deep, below its seemingly casual surface; 'Full Cycle', by Lyndall Hadow, a farm story of considerable power, reminiscent of some of the work of H. E. Bates. Another story that recalls the sensuous farm drawings of H. E. Bates is 'A Clear Case of Self-defence', by E. A. 94 Gollschewsky, in Coast to Coast ('She always thought of earth as something hard and unyielding as frozen flint, whereas this Australian scrub ground was so warmly rich and friable that everything grew wild in it.'). There are twenty-four stories in Coast to Coast; twenty-four in West Coast Stories; there is not room here for detailed examination; a New Zealand reader would soon discover for himself that we have a great deal in common with Australia in material, but not in manner or mood (I should except Gaskell and early Sarge- son); this realization in itself helps us to see our own work more clearly. The study of Australian fiction seems to me to throw so much light on our own that I should like to see Australian books in New Zealand given more prominence, for example, reviewed more often, and, if possible, brought forward in our libraries as being of special interest to New Zealanders. In particular I should like to see Australian fiction in a section of its own, beside New Zealand fiction; it has been my experience that, unless one has the name of the author (and few are well known here) Australian fiction is hard to find. Ruth Dallas

POEMS OF DISCOVERY. William Hart-Smith. Angus & Robertson. r6s. HEROES AND CLERKS. Philip Mincher. Wellington: The Handcraft Press. 6s. MR JOHN PREss has recently produced a learned and interesting volume on obscurity in poetry; and long before him, Mr Eliot sensibly described the terms within which obscurity was per- missible, and rightly drew attention to the fact that obscurity is at least partly in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, the casual reader who still accuses twentieth-century poetry of obscurity is not wholly without a case. The general and underlying impetus of symbolist techniques, with their shift of emphasis to oblique statement, the later back-reference to metaphysical and other poetics which allowed a wide range of relatively unfamiliar material from the sciences to be used, the more recent insistence on explicative techniques in criticism and the consequent deep- rooted suspicion of the 'affective fallacy'-all of these have tended to favour a poetry that does not make too many concessions to the reader. The result has been necessary and valuable, but it leaves certain problems of communication unsolved. One might perhaps say that whereas a hundred years ago, or even forty years ago, the poet's problem was to avoid the banal, now things have swung the other way, and the problem is to achieve lucidity. Mr Hart-Smith is one of those who have chosen to be lucid. He prefers the short lyric (though perhaps as part of a sequence), 95 the short line, and the image compressed in a manner that suggests the technique of the Imagists themselves. His laconic delivery does not always solve the problem, and that appears here in half-a-dozen poems mainly about Maoris (e.g. 'Conversation Piece') where the effect of simplicity does not avoid the danger of patronizing the subject. (Compare these with a poem like 'Spears', which is casual in tone, but which moralizes on the aboriginal's skills instead of sentimentalizing over his foibles.) But quite often it enables him to keep the verse taut and energetic, and the effect suggests something of Roy Campbell-without the panache, but with a wit and assurance which is his own. The core of this book remains the Columbus sequence which was first published here by Caxton over a decade ago. The groups of miscellaneous poems are perhaps more uneven, though they include such things as 'Poseidon', with its finely-turned conceit of the sea-horses, 'El Dorado' which uses a piece of his South American material with a deft modern parallel, 'Raureka', a good Maori poem, and another sequence, 'The Lyre-Bird', with an early Australian setting. The best of these do not move very far from a central theme or image, that of the nomad, the voyager, the discoverer. The title, one finds, is entirely apt: it is the myth of discovery, or even more of seeking to discover, which Mr Hart-Smith uses to give coherence to his groupings of terse lyrics. Nearly all the best poems are about discovery in this sense- Columbus seeking Cathay and Cipangu, Maoris venturing for greenstone, Australian convicts going crazy after the earthly paradise. Always behind the search lies the image of a lost innocence or Good Place, which is the real goal of all discovery, and which forms the perpetual and ironic contrast with what is actually found. The Christopher Columbus sequence has, I think, suffered in esteem to some extent because it seemed to be a wilful exotic. Yet seen in the context of this collection, it is just as much a New Zealand poem as Arawata Biii; and one sees more than ever that Columbus is inevitably, for Mr Hart-Smith, the great myth, centering all the others. He displaces Cook, whom one might expect to find in the centre-perhaps because Cook found much but (as far as one knows) dreamed little. Hence Mr Hart- Smith's fundamental pattern is that of the twofold nature of the voyage, finding the dream within and the continent without. Isn't our map of the Pacific still haunted by memories of the fabulous voyagers-Dante's Ulysses, Gulliver and the Mariner, Ahab and Nemo? Mr Hart-Smith's Columbus is relevant to us here because he serves as a kind of paradigm for them all. The journey to the East becomes (as in Mr Curnow's poem) something different, something Nobody counted on. 96 Discoverer of an unknown continent, Columbus cannot abandon the dream, led on by the drowned woman with almond eyes, Prester John and his attendants who turn into 'three stately cranes', an Indian word that sounds like Kubla Khan, legends and sailors' yarns. Yet his failure in the quest, by setting a limit, saves him- That isthmus which he failed to cross before he will not traverse now, for Mercy placed it there to stop his mind sailing a Pacific of despair. In the end, it is reality that protects us from the dream. Perhaps that is why, in the sequence, Mr Hart-Smith's reality is indicated, often successfully, with laconic precision-fragments of the letters or documents run into prosaic verse, a touch of colour, a single significant detail or effect, like the light of torches on the beach writhing across the water, or the hairs on the wrist pearled with dew in the fog, or the golden beach nibbled by the sharp white teeth of the sea. It is not a demonstrative poetry, but expressive, as a rule, because sharply defined. An apt contrast is provided by Mr Philip Mincher's Heroes and Clerks, which leans the other way, towards a more personal and oracular manner. This has greater surface richness than Mr Hart- Smith's, but the danger of a good deal of it is indicated by the romantic imprecision of a stock diction which favours words like heart, blood, bone, ghosts, tears. It can produce passages as bad as Till you bemoan my soul's offence In prickling consummation And claw blood's saintly impotence Within the head . . .. It also allows for a quite successful poem like 'Body and Soul', which, however, moves a different way, towards a tight irony. But the best thing in the book is 'Barlow', a terse narrative poem of an incident in the Maori Wars. This is different from Mr Mincher's usual manner, and closer, m fact, to Mr Hart-Smith's; and it confirms very clearly what Mr Donald Davie has recently demonstrated in a remarkable sequence, The Forests of Lithuania- that the narrative poem is a way out from the impasse of a purely personal expression, whether of thought or feeling. Mr Davie's argument probably applies in this country just as much as elsewhere-poetry needs to win back some of its lost territory from the novel. And after all, there have been attempts already: one recalls particularly Mr Baxter's 'Cressida'. The crux of the problem is perhaps to determine how far the narrative poem can now aim at anything like the fullness and explicitness of normal prose narrative. The chances are that it cannot, and must tackle its story allusively, and is thus best 97 served by a story which is already familiar. Mr Davie's poem, for example, is a series of allusive variations on Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz. And Mr Hart-Smith's Columbus sequence (as Mr Bertram pointed out in an early review in these pages) has the advantage of familiarity; major events such as the fall of Granada or the first return or the disgrace of 1500 can be given equal weight with the Sargasso crab, the dead Indian and the horses of the sea. The result makes no attempt at the epic, but is informal, personal, often fresh, sometimes moving. After ten years' acquaintance, it wears well, and there are several other things in this well-produced book to keep it company. M. K. ]oseph

THE BEST OF WHIM-WHAM. Paul's Book Arcade. 8s. 6d. AN AUDIENCE of two hundred thousand every Saturday, a verse a week for twenty years; what would one offer, what has poetic form contributed as whim-whams to that gigantic goose's bridle by which our press draws along public opinion? Large questions which must have wry-voiced, low-keyed answers or the audience would go by, the editor leave the bridle undecorated. Here are seventy-four of the answers (a lot of verse for 8s. 6d. these days) taken from the last decade. They read better in gulps of half-a- dozen than alone. They are funnier aloud and in company than taken in silence. What grows in reading them over to oneself is respect for their construction. The timing is persuasively neat and often comically ingenious in itself while the use of words is always a model of craft. The poet's answer to his opportunity has been to implant cells of good writing in very corrupt society. What comes out about New Zealand in the nineteen-fifties is neither as surprising nor as charming as the language that pins it to the page-'A Society neither Up nor DownJWith a puzzled Look on its Face, Sir.' Exactly. Not only puzzled about what it is, but what it is for and where it is going. We could not have employed Two Syllables more void Of Meaning-to express our Mind! The aptest Motto we could find Was 'Onward'. That was not only the motto of the country, it was the motto of the Labour party which dominated the fifties, negatively, by virtue of being the last party to have had a political programme. That programme was welfare. Whim-Wham's little world is the world that welfare built. Even if global prosperity was necessary to make it work, it is the welfare state and its conductors that 98 intend to take the credit. Whim-Wham gives it to them- perhaps over-generously. A Family Benefit patched my Pants When I was a growing Lad, And bought me a Milk Shake now and again And all the Comics I had, And little I cared that a Rubber Stamp In Wellington was my Dad. Its imprint is on the dangerous inanities of the politicians, the Boords and the Algies, on the 'factors' of 'silver-tongued Sid' and on 'the great Scaling Machine' and 'The Education Squad'. Comic light verse is inherently critical and usually critical of society and thus of its politics. Elsewhere political criticism implies radicalism, either of the 'go back' or the 'go forward' variety. But Whim-Wham, like his readers, cannot tell one New Zealand party from the other nor spot where our Departments end and the Government begins. He is left as an a-political indi- vidualist pointing out the prominent clowns in the lonely crowd of good jokers. Whim-Wham is not criticizing this society and these politics in the light of alternative politics or other possible social institutions. There is no local basis for doing so. Instead he registers dislike of the unstated premises and the only-too-frequently stated conclusions about 'our way of life'. New Zealand's Important People become so by perpetually rephrasing the obvious and praising the accustomed. Their trade is gilding the lily, not cultivating hybrids. So Whim-Wham judges their gilt by its thickness and pokes fun at their sloppy brush strokes. Fundamentally, however, it would seem that Whim-Wham simply has no taste for lilies. Our nominally-equal, ungrammatical and supposedly well-faring society fails to convince and barely amuses the poet. To put it another way, light, comic verse differs from poetry, among other ways, in deriving a lot of its force from outside itself, from outside, that is, of the power of its own form and the strength of its particular insights. Light verse is like a spear. The point is language, the sharper the words the more easily it enters. But the whole will not have much carrying power nor penetrate far into the target unless the point has a long shaft of argument behind it. Light verse is essentially purposive. The humour and above all the wit proceeds from the sudden and condensed fashion in which we grasp the entire contrast between the situation as it is and as it ought to be. We are partly persuaded of that 'ought' by the contrasted 'is'. For the rest of our consent to that 'ought' we must look outside the poem to some more or less well-organized and widely-known theory, attitude or programme. Light verse borrows much of its positive thesis in order to strike harder into the antithesis. Whim-Wham inhabits a beggarly 99 country in which to borrow a positive thesis. If perhaps a third of these verses have a sameness about them, if the Welfare State and Equalitarianism get a drubbing without showing much blood, the fault is in our remarkably uniform opinions. If instead of one political party in two divisions we had a meaningful two-party sytem or if we had defined classes or deep social disagreement then Whim-Wham could play one group against the other or choose a side. Alas for satiric bite; our filleted, homogenized community as yet offers no disputed bones to chew on. In one unusual verse Whim-Wham does detect the beginnings of true differentiation. On the one hand: Their Lounges are lavish, their Terraces spacious, Their Living is What they are apt to call gracious; They take 'Homes and Gardens', they cultivate Cactuses, They engage in French Cooking and similar Practices; On the other : With their Prison-size Windows and Curtains of Lace, Their Catacomb Hallways, their Murder of Space, Their Cellular Rooms, their Upholstery sordid, Where the Spirit is stifled, the Eye unrewarded. As between the two he takes the second and simpler, where life remains vivid. But this preference is not altogether consistent when we remember that it is New Zealand's continuing measure of inequality which makes differentiation inevitable and when we remind ourselves that 'gracious living' is the normal aim of the inhabitants of cellular rooms. The simpler, average public also gave their importance and their vocation to our censoring, materializing, equalizing busybodies whom Whim-Wham attacks. Sometimes he appears to blame only the leaders and the experts, the Hollands and the Beebys; sometimes he picks on Jokerdom at large. In only two cases do I think the social criticism cuts as deep as such a skilled hand would in Europe or the United States. In both cases the comment is built on a quotation from a sociological observer. 'Pioneer Stock' derives from Dr Sutch and I would disagree with Whim-Wham and agree with Dr Sutch that there were not many 'Upper Dogs' to cross with 'the Under Dogs' and that it was rather a case of practically everyone going up a peg than of 'Some went up and Some went down'. The other instance, 'Home Truths From Abroad', gets at the heart of things New Zealand. By every succinct adjective the poet answers 'I shall, nevertheless' to his question : Who are We :to impeach,, in Language summary, Those nursery Smells, that stifling Dad-and-Mummery? Suburban We, incorrigibly, innately- lOO Decades before Dr Mead castigated America's new suburbanite the decent joker here was Doing It Himself for home and family. New Zealand is not given over to 'Mom' but to 'Mum-and-the-kids'. Trim little Mum and baby-minding Dad Can multiply all right, but cannot add. They certainly cannot add the answer to that hard question: Why? So onward we go with everything from the basic wage to the Committee on banned books circling sedately and protectively round this nucleus. The columns of the New Zealand Herald and the Press are no place to try to explode it. Meanwhile Whim-Wham pinpoints the sillier self-contradictions in the system and records the cracked notes amid the hum of self-congratulation which hangs above 'Godzone Country'. 'Cap- tain P. Spens' is a minor masterpiece on paying the cook as much as his master. And consider the value of having discovered 'Overseasia', the land where standards are which we should copy, but from which no visitor must come who does not totally admire us. Having much experience in spotting the aimless and the value- less hereabouts, Whim-Wham detects much the same in larger scientific spheres. As the rocket descends on another planet : 'Downwards and backwards and round in a Circle, Humanity speeds to its Goal.' These pieces prepare one for the most serious verse in the book. The poet cannot accept what the generals, some scientists and most politicians assure us is the beneficence of the bomb. 'Nothing In Particular', 'A Bomb of One's Own', and 'After The Fall-Out' give form and clarity to the doubts of thousands. Nor did Sagittarius or Reginald Reynolds ever contribute to the New Statesman a more astringently sane comment than 'Got A Match ?'-which reached Fendalton and Te Kuiti. Here the positive, peaceful thesis can be assumed as against the psychotic suggestion that the consequent economic lift would be worth a small war. Whim-Wham's verse bites in, his thought strikes home. Only a bit of a Fire in the Fern, Well clear of the Forest Giants: We'll check the Blaze as we watch it burn, With a U.N. Foam Appliance. In that last line we have the quality of this book. Foam appliances are notoriously small and inadequate for a big blaze. Moreover, they gush. If one is lucky they do the job and if one is not.... This book is full of such felicitous touches. The author loves the language and his works are a continuing witty lesson in how to use it. If there were not half-a-dozen other good reasons for buying The Best of Whim-Wham it would still be worth the price just to see how well he employs words to pillory those who abuse them. IOI -I speak, I utter Vocal Sounds (Other than of Approval) on this Matter. The barbarous Clatter Of technological Hottentots conversing In Pigeonholers' English sets me cursing. Bring me my Maledictaphone! Ready? Right- Men's Anglo-Saxon (Other than polite)! Robert Chapman

NEW ZEALAND POETRY YEARBOOK. Volume 8. 1958-9. Edited by Louis Johnson. The Pegasus Press. 10s. 6d. WITH the publication of this volume the Poetry Yearbook all but completes a decade of vigorous and useful life. By his admirable zeal and energy the editor, Mr Louis Johnson, has done for New Zealand poets and poetry readers a service similar to that of 'Eddie' Marsh for the 'Georgians', and without Marsh's private resources and comparative leisure. The number of different poets published during the period, a hundred and four, is remarkable for so small a population, even allowing for the proportion of writers who perhaps did not merit inclusion and those who appeared but once and may not appear again. It is not the least part of the value of such an annual collection that the one or two good or competent poems which many people are capable of writing, and which would otherwise never see the light, are gathered up and preserved. These isolated lyrics are worth pre- serving for their own sake, and it may be that they provide the necessary undergrowth in which the bigger trees take root and grow. In his sensible and modest introduction Mr Johnson laments the lack of critics and criticism, and says that New Zealand writing suffers badly in consequence. I think he is mistaken. Poetry at present suffers everywhere from too much rather than too little criticism, and I am glad that New Zealand is still free from its smothering incubus. Our poets are better off without a parasitical swarm of professional critics waiting to settle on anything they write. Leslie Stephen wisely said, 'I think as a critic that the less authors read of criticism the better', adding this advice to his young friend Thomas Hardy: 'You, for example, have a perfectly fresh and original vein, and I think the less you bother yourself about critical canons the less chance there is of your becoming self-conscious and cramped.' The poems in this volume are at least not self-conscious and cramped. Whatever the reason, they have an uninhibited vigour which is stimulating to one oppressed by the tired intellectualism 102 of so much English verse today. As for the matter and manner of this and other volumes of the fifties compared with earlier collections, I cannot myself feel much interest in the questions raised by the editor. Change, if any, has been slight and insig- nificant, as might be expected in so short a period. There has been, I think, some withdrawal (perhaps temporary or incidental) from the physical environment, and this I regret; Denis Glover's 'Peraki', Pat Wilson's 'South-East, Tauranga' and Paul Henderson's 'Rain Forest, Cascade Creek' are almost the only landscape poems in the book, and they are among the finest. I am sorry Ruth Dallas is not there to reinforce them with her quietly intense observation. Of the poems by newer writers, several of whom show some merit or promise, the most interesting to me are those of Gordon Challis. 'The Iceman' reminds me of Theodore Roethke or Ted Hughes in the knifelike sharpness of its vision, as of early childhood or convalescence, and all four of his poems are impressively original and assured. I do not agree with Mr Charles Doyle (who contributes an article on recent New Zealand verse) that he is too absorbed in technique. Among the established names I am delighted to note the remarkable progress in skill and clarity of Pat Wilson, already mentioned, Kendrick Smithyman and W. H. Oliver, in whose work I am approaching that happy state of confidence, long since reached with Glover, Brasch, Curnow, Baxter and a few others, which enables one to look forward with pleasure to anything they may write. Mr Smithyman's 'Climbing in the Himalayas' is an astonishing tour-de-force and also something more profound- at either level it is memorable. I cannot too much applaud this poet's patient struggle for lucidity and technical control. To borrow Yeats's fine image, his colt has long strained and sweated urider the lash as though it dragged road-metal, but at last he seems to have found the stable and pulled out the bolt. Mr Oliver's 'Epithalamium' and 'Autumn Fires' ring wedding bell and passing bell in mingled chime, a slow and meditative music which falls hauntingly on the ear. Only the last line of the latter piece seems gratuitous and tacked on, as though the parson had added a moral when the tolling stopped. For the rest, there is a lively prose skit by Brian Bell on too solemn poetry readings; and some translations from the Maori by Barry Mitcalfe. These baleful, almost terrifying heart-cries linger in the mind like echoes from the Greek Anthology: all the melancholy and the sensual music is there, naked and raw as in the passionate youth of the world. The 'Love Song' is magnificent. Brief memorial tributes to the late J. R. Hervey and B. E. Baughan, by Louis Johnson and John Summers respectively, complete a volume which is nicely produced by the Pegasus Press, 103 whose worthy part in this ten-year enterprise deserves its share of praise. Basil Dowling

PORTRAIT OF A MODERN MIXED ECONOMY: NEW ZEALAND. C. West- strate. New Zealand University Press. 22s. 6d. EcoNOMISTS have always been conscious of the clash between the aims of stability and growth, and in New Zealand the alternating periods of boom and slump in exports-and of rapid capital development followed by periods of economy-have made the clash a frequent theme of discussion. In recent years it has become apparent that any discussion of this clash must also take into account the phenomenon of inflation : New Zealand has experienced a persistent rise in prices during the last two decades. Professor Weststrate of the University of Canterbury, in this admirable books, reports in language free of economic jargon the results of a careful study of the characteristics of New Zealand's economic life. He ranges over several fields-the role of government; welfare and equity; industrial relations; insulation against the risks of dependence on external trade-all set against the international background. And there is one subject on which Professor Weststrate's contribution is especially important: the connection between stability, growth and inflation, which is un- ravelled with sense and clarity. There are three aspects of stability considered: stability of employment, of agrarian incomes, and of the price level. The stability of agrarian incomes achieved in recent years is not very impressive despite the complexity of the stabilization schemes which the book describes in detail. On the other hand 'the employment record for New Zealand during the post-war decade is unique, not only in the history of New Zealand, but probably also in the history of capitalist and mixed economies generally' (p. r29). This employment record is one of a continuous shortage of labour, caused in the last resort by the continuous inflation. 'If full employment is not the intentional effect of inflation, it was the unintentional effect, a by-product' (p. r33). Why have prices not been stable? In the immediate post-war years the inflationary situation was inherited from the war and common to most countries, but by I95I it had been halted in most countries. Why in New Zealand have prices persisted in rising? Professor Weststrate points to the large increase in the quantity of money, coupled with an increase in the intensity with which money is used. The main part of the increase in the money supply was credit creation by the trading banks. 'The big increase in trading bank credit may be ascribed to the Government's cheap money policy, strong investment demand, and insufficient I04 savings; not a cause, but a condition for the functioning of these causes, was the insufficient control of credit by the Reserve Bank' (p. 186). Thus the positive, as distinct from permissory, cause of inflation is strong investment demand for the purpose of capital accumulation. The relation between economic growth (which involves a high rate of capital accumulation) and inflation is clear: 'inflation is both a cause and a result of the urge to grow, it is both a stimulus to growth and a growing pain. Inflation and growth interact and keep each other going' (p. 304). In some other respects the book's treatment of the processes of growth and capital accumulation is less illuminating. Attention is drawn to the phenomenon of a high rate of capital accumulation coinciding with a slow rate of growth of real income in recent years. This could be the key to the interpretation of much of New Zealand's recent history, but Professor Weststrate does not pursue the coincidence. Many years ago J. B. Condliffe remarked on the stagnant or declining level of productivity in the years before the first World War-another period of rapid capital accumulation. Between the Condliffe and the Weststrate periods lie almost twenty years of 'depression', with low rates of capital accumulation but with a rapid and persistent rise in productivity. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties New Zealanders reaped the benefits and digested the gains of the preceding period. In a young country like New Zealand where so much of the capital investment has to be in the form of land improvement and extension of transport facilities and communications, not only does investment tend to be bunched in particular periods, but the benefits tend to take some time to accrue. The benefits of rising productivity and higher real incomes come after the heroic eras of investment. If the figures given in this book are correct, New Zealand is now undergoing a heroic era : the mixed blessing of rising productivity is still to come. But Professor Weststrate gives a wide berth to the Scylla and Charybdis of this sort of speculation. Professor Weststrate has chosen a 'portrait' approach: a description and analysis of the economy at a point of time. At times this methods appears to be too limiting: an historical approach would give more scope in the circumstances. But that is a minor and possibly irrelevant criticism. Professor Weststrate has made a permanent contribution to economic studies, and his thorough analysis of not only stability, inflation and growth, but the wide range of characteristics of New Zealand's economic life, make him a dependable guide. Conrad Blyth

105 Correspondence

To THE EDITOR SIR: In your September editorial supporting Dr Pocock, you claim that 'New Zealand has only a very limited need for intellectual excellence of any kind.' If your inference is correct, it cannot but weaken the university's case for increased financial aid. I suspect, however, that it is your own vision of education that is somewhat limited. 'The goal of any educational institution', you claim, 'should be the pursuit of intellectual excellence.' But this surely is to take a narrow view. The goal of any educational institution ought to be to realize the various potentialities of all the existing talents, not simply of a handful of likely first and second class graduates; and it should include raising the efficiency, and increasing the insight, and improving the taste of the less intellectual members of society. In other words, education has a moral, an aesthetic, and a spiritual function; not simply an intellectual one. Moreover such a view of education is not 'something less', but is consistent with the high aspirations of Landfall. Dr Pocock is doubtless correct in his assumption that, under present conditions, our most intellectual students receive less attention and encouragement than they might obtain in overseas universities more favourably situated. This is a matter for real concern. But it is only part-admittedly, a very important part- of our overall educational problem, and needs to be seen in relation to the larger perspective of the community's needs. What is required is a more comprehensive strategy, and a wider humanity, than that envisaged by Dr Pocock. Moreover such an educational policy with its varied aspects would require a Government with the vision, if not the courage, to foot the bill. John Miller

SIR: Dr Miller is accurately following the line of departmental orthodoxy, so much so that one suspects a certain conditioning of his reflexes. First of all, he lays it down that those of first and second-class intelligence, as measured by university standards, constitute only 'a handful'. I do not know how he knows this, though doubtless the proportion of the whole is small; what is more interesting and significant is his instant use of emotive, dismissive and pejorative language, and the fact-which anyone may learn by experience-that this is the instinctive New Zealand response to any proposal which implies as desirable any degree of intellectual vigour or ambition. Any standard whatever is assumed to be too hard for the majority and is met with DrMiller's 106 response; we must be the only democracy in the world which proclaims the stupidity of the majority of its citizens and infers that intelligence is something which need be catered for only as exceptional. I do not know the research or the assumptions on which this doctrine is based. Next Dr Miller implies that because those of first and second- class intelligence are numerically few, their needs are not the most important of those which an educational service must meet. He does not indicate by what yardstick these different degrees of importance are to be measured, but we are pretty plainly to be left with the numerical; because those of above-average intelligence are numerically few, their needs are unimportant in numerical proportion. Here, I think, sir, lies the essential difference between your position (which is also mine) and Dr Miller's. His philosophy is that of democratic atomism; he counts the individuals whose 'potentialities' are to be 'realized', reckoning the value of each individual as one, and from the presumption that the intelligent are always a minority concludes that an educational system must always be concerned primarily with the needs-and with 'realizing the potentialities', whatever this may mean-of the unintelligent. You and I, sir, it seems, think of society and the different human activities, qualities and so forth which it contains as interrelated in a much more complex way, so that the intelligent cannot simply be numbered off to the right and treated as a squad of abnormali- ties, because their intelligence is necessary to the functioning of society. We do not think, consequently, that the moral, aesthetic and spiritual functions of education-however these may be defined-can be carried out without the development of the highest intelligence forming part of their development. We don't think, in short, that intelligence can be treated separately, still less as exceptional; but Dr Miller, because he is using a purely numerical yardstick, apparently does. We follow Aristotle in thinking that there are many criteria which must be applied in deciding what to do in society, that it is the greatest of errors to measure everything in society by one criterion alone, and that it is the peculiarly demo· cratic form of that error to measure everything by the criterion of number alone. Dr Miller seems to be that kind of democrat; he thinks that the importance of intelligence to society can be accurately measured by the number of intelligent persons that society contains, and it is in our inability to accept this as either a good or a sensible view that we differ from him. We think that the unintelligent need the intelligent (just as the intelligent may need the unintelligent for certain things which the latter, and not they, may possess) and that these needs can't be measured by counting people. There is a further difficulty, of a classical political kind. Dr Miller believes in an educational system which shall aim at realiz- IO? ing all human potentialities, or (if this does not mean the same thing) the human potentialities of everyone. It is a splendid and humane goal-until the old political questions of 'who decides?' and 'by what standards?' raise their heads again. Dr Miller, almost certainly, believes in a single educational system co-ordinated and controlled by the state. This implies that there are, in charge of the system and backed by all the power of the state, persons who draw up a complete and exhaustive list of the potentialities of the human character and decide in what order of importance these potentialities are to be arranged. I would call this the definition of a totalitarian society, were it not obvious that in practice the · persons concerned will use the vaguest and least disturbing of criteria in discharging their otherwise godlike task- will endeavour to satisfy everybody by disturbing nobody, will define the different potentialities of mankind in terms as little exclusive (which means as little accurate) as possible, and will discriminate between them by the use of the lowest common factor, in fact by the principle of number. Such seems to me the theory and the practice of our New Zealand educational Utopia, and this is why it presents as far as it can the otherwise incredible spectacle of a Platonic mediocracy. ]. G. A. Pocock

SIR: Some remarks and omissions in the report on the Writers' Conference published in your last number call for comment. In the first place, I certainly did not, as Mr Cross puts it, 'announce' myself as 'a dedicated writer' at the conference. While this was not the first, and certainly not the most distinguished gathering of writers I have been privileged to attend, such a statement-even after the preceding address-would have been presumption indeed! What I did say-and as a good reporter Mr Cross should not need to be reminded-was that I doubted that a journalist (Mr Schroder) was necessarily the best person to instruct a dedicated writer. While the implication was obvious, and I make no apology for it, there were several writers present, and still others absent, who are in the best sense 'dedicated' to their craft. Why Mr Cross chose to quote me out of context is a mystery. He might with more point and truth have referred to the way in which many of those present 'flinched' at my suggestion that writers make a gesture of solidarity with the trade union movement and churches on the All Black Tour issue. If there were any unhealthy signs at the conference, surely this was one. Happily, there was a change of heart at a later stage, resulting in the passing of two related resolutions of which Mr Cross makes no mention in his report (! ). 108 To Mr Cross's question: 'Have we attained such a level of achievement in our craft that we are in a position to complain about the shortcomings of local journalism and broadcasting?' I would answer with an emphatic 'Yes!' -although it is surely, of a level of integrity, rather than of mere technical proficiency, that Mr Cross is thinking. What writer worthy of his calling would have acquiesced in the kind of news censorship imposed in 1959 by the N.Z.B.S.? What honest writer would consent to the practice of news- slanting, fact-twisting, falsification by wrong emphasis and omission which is standard in almost every large newspaper in this country? In the past ten years, what journalist came forward to condemn the colour bar practised in our hotels, barber's shops, cinemas? The nation-wide soul-searching and self-examination which arose out of a spectacular act of discrimination by a Papakura publican resulted not through the zeal of our press in fulfilling one of its social functions-but from the vigilance of one of our writers. Finally, when Mr Cross says 'the only issue that looked as though it could divide the conference involved the game of rugby' he reveals what seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstand- ing of the All Black Tour issue. This issue is concerned primarily with civil liberties, fundamental human rights. The game of rugby is surely of only minor importance to it. Regrettably, some people, including some writers and intellect- uals-and of course, the New Zealand Rugby Council, still refuse to see the issue in this light. Fortunately, a majority of workers and their unions, and, to their lasting credit, a majority of the churches, recognize the real issues involved. 0. E. Middleton

NEW CONTRIBUTORS Conrad Blyth. After graduating from the University of Otago, lectured on economics there until 1953 when he went to do research in Cambridge. Since 1956, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Contributes to English economic journals, and has written a book on economic statistics which is to be published this year. T. E. Carter. Born at Ravensthorpe, Yorkshire, in 1920. Graduated at Leeds, 1947. Teacher of German at the University of Canterbury since 1949. A. R. Entwisle. Born at Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, 1910, educated Crosby Grammar School, Lanes, and Wadham College, Oxford. Bookseller's assistant, market researcher. Became involved it! adult education as a prisoner of war. 1948-55, Further Education Organizer in England and Adult Education Officer 109 in the Federation of Malaya. At present general tutor, Adult Education Department, University of Otago. G. R. Manton. Born at Maidenhead, Berkshire, 1912. Educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and St John's College, Cambridge. Has lectured in Classics in the Universities of London and Sydney; since 1949, Professor of Classics in the University of Otago.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED Historic Wellington. John H. Alexander. Reed. 6s. Sandan. An adventure in creative Education. Rewi Alley. Christchurch: printed at the Caxton Press. Two Plays. James K. Baxter. Capricorn Press. 7s. 6d. lames Mill cm 'Education'. Ian Cumming. University of Auckland, Bulletin No. 54, Education Series No. 1. 3s. Brown Conflict. Leo Fowler. Reed. 15s. Anthropology in the South Seas. Essays presented to H. D. Skinner. Edited by J. D. Freeman and W. R. Geddes. New Plymouth: Thomas A very and Sons Ltd. 42s. The Maori King. John Gorst. Edited by Keith Sinclair. Paul's Book Arcade and Oxford University Press. 25s. The Living Countries. M. K. Joseph. Paul's Book Arcade. 10s. 6d. Antoine Bret (1717-92). A. C. Keys. University of Auckland, Monograph No. 4, 10s. 6d. Hinemoa and Tutanekai and other poems. Adele Schafer. Wellington: printed by the Standard Press. Second Appearances. J. H. E. Schroder. Reed. 12s. 6d. School Enrolment Projections for the years 1959-72. Statement by Hon. P. 0. S. Skoglund, Minister of Education. Presented to the House of Repre- sentatives by Leave. Wellington: Government Printer. The New Zealand Bubble: Michael Turnbull. Price Milburn & Co. Ltd. Ss. From Plymouth to New Plymouth. R. G. Wood. Reed. 22s. 6d. Village Life in Fiji. R. R. Nayacakalou. The Orchestra. Part Two. James Robertson. Post-Primary School Bulletins Vol. 12 Nos. 8 and 9. Wellington: School Publications Branch, Department of Education. Consumer. A quarterly magazine issued by the Consumer Service. Summer 1959. Wellington: C.P.O. Box 2492. In Ostia. Marc Alexander. London: Linden Press. Ss. 6d. Kings in Grass Castles. Mary Durack. Constable. 45s. Problems of Religious Knowledge. Peter Munz. S.C.M. Press. 25s. Oxford Atlas for New Zealand. Students' Edition. Oxford University Press. 15s. 6d. Stay with God. Francis Brabazon. Edwards & Shaw, for Garuda Books, P.O. Box 6, Woombye, Queensland. 18s. The Earthbound and other poems. Charles Higham. Angus & Robertson. 10s. 6d. Is My Slip Showing? Emile Mercier. Angus & Robertson. Ss. The Music of Division. Chris Wallace-Crabbe. Angus & Robertson. 9s. 6d. Australian Poetry 1959. Selected by Nancy Keesing. Angus & Robertson. 15s. New Zealand 1769-1840. Early Years of Western Contact. Harrison M. Wright. Harvard University Press. $4.75. 38s. The Fifties. A Magazine of Poetry and General Opinion. Edited by William Duffy and Robert Bly. Second issue, 1959. Quarterly. $2 p.a., SOc. a copy. Briarwood Hill, Pine Island, Minnesota. Midstream. A Quarterly Jewish Review. Edited by Shlomo Katz. Vol. V No. IIO 3, Summer 1959. New York: The Theodor Herzl Foundation, 250 West 57th St. $4 p.a., $1 a copy. Zehn Jahre Exil. Briefe aus Neuseeland 1938-1948. Karl Wolfskehl. Heraus- gegeben und eingeleitet von Margot Ruben. 1959. Heidelberg/Darmstadt: Verlag Lambert Schneider. DM 18.50 (brochyre), DM 20 (bound). An Outline of Czech and Slovak Music. Part II. Slovak Music. Ladislav Sip. Translated by Margaret Milner. Prague: Orbis. 4,90 Kcs. Religious Digest. No. 22. July-September 1959. Edited and published by K. Ramachandra, Jayanthipura, Talangama, Ceylon. 6 Rs or 9s. p.a. 1/50 Re or 1s. 3d. a copy. PENGUIN BOOKS: Adolescence to Maturity. V. C. Chamberlain. 2s. 6d. Fatal Venture. Freeman Wills Crofts. 2s. 6d. Major Tlwmpson Lives in France. Pierre Daninos. 2s. 6d. The Face of the Earth. G. H. Dury. 5s. Faust. Part Two. J. W. Goethe. Translated by Philip Wayne. 3s. 6d. The Penguin Book of French Verse. 4. The Twentieth Century. Edited by Anthony Hartley. 5s. Poets in a Landscape. Gilbert Highet. 6s. The Hidden River. Storm Jameson. 2s. 6d.. Maxims. La Rochefoucauld. Translated by L. W. Tancock. 2s. 6d. Hypnosis. Fact and Fiction. F. L. Marcuse. 3s. 6d. The Misanthrope and other plays. Moliere. Translated by John Wood. 3s. 6d. A Dictionary of Art and Artis,ts. Peter and Linda Murray. 5s. The Phoenix and the Carpet. E. Nesbit. 3s. 6d. The Little Flowers of St Francis. Translated by L. Sherley-Price. 3s. 6d. The Narrative Poems. William Shakespeare. 2s. 6d. Our Hearts were Young and Gay. Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. 2s. 6d. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. "[ranslated by Brian Stone. 2s. 6d. Destination Chungking. Han Suyin. 2s. 6d. The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. Edited by R. Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd. 3s. 6d. F. H. Bradley. Richard Wollheim. 5s. Yoga. Ernest WooU: 3s. 6d. The Seeds of Time. John Wyndham. 2s. 6d. GRAMOPHONE RECORD: Golden Wedding. Alan Mulgan. Read by William Austin. 33f R.P.M. Long Playing Kiwi Record LD 1. Reed.

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