A New Zealand QEarter!Jr"" VOLUME SIXTEEN 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. Corrigendum. Landfall 61, March 1962, p. 57, line 5, should read: day you will understand why', or even, 'Learn this now, because I First reprinting, 1968, Johnson Reprint Corporation Printed in the United States of America Landfall A New Zealand Quarterly edited by Charles Brasch and published by The Caxton Press CONTENTS Notes 3 Two Poems, C. K. Stead 6 Lily of a Day, Ruth Dallas 8 Notes from the Welfare State, Keith Sinclair r8 Three Songs from the Maori, Allen Curnow and R. S. Oppenheim 20 Two Poems, Michael Jackson 23 Henry Ware, Neva Clarke 25 Composed on a Summer's Evening, Rowley Habib 30 Two Poems, Maurice Duggan 3 I World Enough, and Time, Stuart Slater 35 New Zealand Since The War (6), Leo Fowler 36 COMMENTARIES: Disaster in the Primary School, Margaret Dalziel 49 Townscape, P. M. Hill 61 Stravinsky et al., Royer Savage 64 New Zealand Opera, Jeremy Commons 68 New Plays in Wellington,]. L. Roberts 72 REVIEWS: After Anzac Day, Thomas Crawford 75 An Affair of Men, R. A. Copland 77 Short Story One, E. A. Horsman 79 The Cradle of Erewhon, etc., J. C. Beaglehole 82 Early Travellers in New Zealand, etc., Peter Maling 84 Children's books, Patricia Guest 87 University magazines, R. T. Robertson 90 Correspondence, June Higinbottom, Peter Munz, E. B. Greenwood, G. E. Fairburn 93 Paintings and drawings, T. A. McCormack, John Gillespie, Tony Fomison, R. Gopas VOLUME SIXTEEN NUMBER ONE MARCH 1962 Notes THE Literary Fund does not receive much public notice these days, although it is discussed a good deal in private. It seems to have been quietly absorbed into the accepted scheme of things, to have be- come part of the country's machinery of self-help. Since the Arts Advisory Council was set up, it is also less isolated and exposed. This should be conducive to sober and useful work. Its chief purpose is to subsidize the publication of books which might not be published otherwise. Among its chief difficulties (one supposes) is to decide about certain borderline cases, two kinds of which must come before it from time to time. There is the work by new writers showing talent but uneven or immature, about which opinion may well differ. And there is the work by established writers which although difficult or not wholly successful (but opinion may differ about this too) probably ought to be published, either because any work by the writer in question is of interest, or because publication of that particular work may be important in his development. In such matters no committee (and no individual either) will always make the right decision; there is still an important place for the publisher with convictions, who is ready to lose money (and perhaps win reputation) in order to bring out a book he believes in. The list of new books sponsored by the Committee of the Literary Fund which went out of office last August at the end of its three- year term is no doubt unexceptionable, but it is deadly safe (this is of course no reflection on the books themselves). Here it is. Fiction, Some Are Lucky by Phillip Wilson, Fear in the Night by Errol Brath- waite, A Gun In My Hand by Gordon Slatter; plays, The Tree by Stella Jones, The Pohutukawa Tree by Bruce Mason; poetry, The Living Countries by M. K. Joseph, Poetry of the Maori translated by Barry Mitcalfe, Collected Poems by R. A. K. Mason; a study of Wil- liam Satchell by Phillip Wilson; The West Coast Gold Rushes by P. R. May. The same Committee subsidized reprints of five novels and one other book. There is nothing here (both plays having been well proven on the stage) which a good publisher would consider dangerously speculative. It may be that nothing of the sort turned up in those three years; we cannot tell, not knowing what work came before the Committee besides that which it subsidized. But now and then the bush telegraph reports that some work seemingly 3 speculative (in this sense) has been refusedc a grant, and since such reports are unlikely to be always wrong, they cause disquiet. The Committee makes its decisions in good faith, without doubt. But, in the case of fiction particularly, might it not put more trust in the judgment of the responsible adventurous publisher with a reputa- tion at stake? It puts such trust-it is bound to-in the judgment of editors, who ask for a grant for their journals as a whole and not for particular items in them, and whose reputations stand or fall much as a publisher's does. The Committee might feel freer to trust such publishers more if it were to adopt a practice which has been urged on it before and against which no convincing argument has been advanced, namely, insteadofmakinganoutrigMgranttoa publisher for any given novel (and perhaps any other book), to guarantee him against loss up to a specified sum. This would encourage the more adventurous pub- lishers while ensuring that none made extra money out of clear successes. It would have been juster if for the two novels in the list above the publishers had been guaranteed against loss and not given outright grants. Grants to an overseas publisher, if justifiable at all, should be made on the same basis. But big English publishers do not need New Zealand help, and one must question those earlier grants to Alien & Unwin for books of verse by Eileen Duggan and Ruth Gilbert, and now one to Oxford to reprint H. K. Kippenberger's Infantry Brigadier-for the latter, as acknowledged in the reprint, the R.S.A. also raised money. During its three years of office the last Committee spent about £6,200 (less than its annual £2,ooo in one full year, more in the other). Nearly £3,500 of this went in grants towards cost of publica- ion (for new books, for periodicals, and for reprints); more than £2,400 in grants to writers (in awards, in direct grants not includ- ing the Scholarship in Letters of £500 a year, and through period- icals, assuming that not less than one-third of the grants to period- icals went in payment to contributors); and £300 in grants to P.E.N. for the last Writers' Conference and to the New Zealand Women Writers' Society to subsidize its bulletin. If, in future, Committees of the Fund were to make fewer large outright grants to publishers and instead to guarantee them against loss, they should be able to subsidize more books, to make the present awards more substantial, and to make more direct grants to writers. But, it will be asked, what about writers of best-sellers? The grant to Barry Crump to enable him to write his second book caused much surprised and indignant talk, after the huge success of A Good Keen Man. The grant was made, it appears, on the strength of galley 4 proofs of that first book, before its publication. Then why did the Committee not defer a decision until its next meeting, foreseeing a best-seller? The argument is inconclusive. No one wants the Com- mittee to be niggling, no one should grudge Mr Crump his success, and one or two successes in New Zealand will not make a writer's fortune. But if they should, why not? Is it wrong for writers to be successful? Clearly, the appearance of best-sellers here will now have to be allowed for. There is no evidence yet to suggest that, as some oracles pre- dicted, the help which the Fund can give is sapping independence and promoting timid conformity among writers. Such evidence as exists indicates rather that the Fund's support is allowing writers (and periodicals) to develop freely in their own way. Argument over the Committee's work will go on, as it ought to. While the Committee must be able to work in privacy, lists of its grants are properly made public a few times each year and need to be scrutinized. An earlier Committee was unlucky in making grants (in 1958) for two books which have not appeared and will not appear; grants are now made only on publication-and this may help incidentally to make publication a little quicker: at present it is often so slow that the name 'publisher' becomes a jest. Members of the Committee of the Literary Fund are, as noted, now appointed for a term of three years. A few members of the present Committee have served for several terms and probably all should be eligible for reappointment once at least; some continuity in the Committee's work is necessary, but perhaps no member should serve for more than two terms on end, without a break. Continuity would be ensured if the whole Committee did not come into office in the same year. Continuity can be overdone, however; the present chairman, Professor Gordon, who was appointed to the Committee on the nomination of P.E.N. when the Fund was set up in 1947, became chairman in 1951, and has remained chairman ever since, should be granted a long rest. Literary criticism has been little practised in New Zealand except in the short spurts of reviews. A sustained piece of criticism is still a courageous undertaking.