NEW ZEALAND LITERATURE McCormick’s Centennial Survey Revised

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28974, 15 August 1959, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND LITERATURE McCormick’s Centennial Survey Revised

[Reviewed by

H.L.G.]

New Zealand Literature. A Survey. . By E. H. McCormick. Oxford University Press. 173 pp.

Here is a book many New Zealanders will want to possess as a useful guide and reference book. It is a revision of Mr McCormick’s “Letters and Art in New Zealand,” which was one of a series of books published by the New Zealand Government to mark the Centennial of 1940. The literary sections have been either revised or rewritten, the sections on art have been cut out, and new material, comprising almost a third of the whole book, has been introduced to bring the survey up to the end of 1957. A full appendix listing specific references to quotations appears in place of the former note on sources.

Mr McCormick is a capable and competent student of his subject. And his book should send many readers who do not know them already in search of some of the works of interest (occasionally even minor masterpieces) that have been written in, or about, this country:—for instance, d’Urville’s narratives of his two major expeditions to New Zealand, “second only to Cook’s in breadth of scope and historical interest;” J. S. Polack’s lively "New Zealand: Being a Narrative of Travels and Adventures” (1838), filled with hair-raising anecdotes, execrable puns, and malapropisms; Charmer's novel “Philosopher Dick,” or Lady Barker’s delightful books on station life, to supplement Wakefield and Grey; or “The Life History of Capt. W. J. Barry Written by Himself” (1879), for a glimpse of “Life on the gold-fields in all its extravagant diversity;” Alice F. Webb’s sketches of rural and small-town life in the early years of this century, or the Northland novels of William Satchell, as examples of the work of New Zealand-born writers who did not emigrate like their more brilliant contemporaries, Pember Reeves and Katherine Mansfield; Frank S. Anthony’s “Me and Gus” or “Follow the Call” for humour in the vernacular; and, above all, “Tutira” by H. Guthrie-Smith, the Thoreau of New Zealand literature; and the poetry of Fairburn, Curnow, Ursula Bethell, Eileen. Duggan and many others.

The literary atmosphere of the various periods in the development of this country is well described by Mr McCormick too. And he rightly stresses the division of allegiances, both personal and literary, between the New Country and the Old which runs through all New Zealand writing. It ranges from the pathetic tones of Mrs C. Evans, the “exiled gentlewoman” novelist of the ’seventies: "Thinking of the mighty waste of waters which separates me from the home-country, I feel tempted to exclaim, ‘Oh, mighty ocean which divides us, hush your roar awhile! Oh, wild winds, ceasd to moan! and let them hear my voice in England!’ ’

to Denis Glover’s confidently assertive note in the ’thirties—--1 do not dream of Sussex downs, Or quaint old England’s quaint old towns: I think of what will yet be seen In Johnsonville and Geraldine. Mr McCormick has his weaknesses however. When he is writing of contemporary New Zealand literature he is often absurdly solemn and pretentious. “A favourite theme of Auckland verse,” he writes, “is the metaphysics of the married state, common forms of poetic utterance are the connubial compliment and the filial invocation;” and, of another Auckland poet, “He is, in short, an exponent of that poetic Esperanto known as the international style.” He may be right in proclaiming that in present-day New Zealand writing “a new accent is becoming audible, the native accent of New Zealand.” But it cannot fail to be obvious to the unprejudiced that he includes as worthy of mention several contemporary works, particularly novels, that would certainly not merit inclusion in a survey of the literature of larger and older countries.

Mr McCormick occasionally loses his sense of proportion, too. in his references to earlier writers. Why, for example, the “ominous” figure of Julius Vogel? There was certainly some vulgarity in Vogel’s vision of the material progress lying ahead of New Zealand, and a characteristically Victorian naivety about his optimism. But a materialistic outlook was also the basis of the radicalism of the ’thirties, and there was a naivety a good deal more ominous than anything in Vogel about the trust in Communist propaganda that was characteristic of many of the writers of the ’thirties, however accomplished. Better perhaps Vogel’s outmoded vigour than the constantly destructive criticism, the pallid liberalism, or the, “ivory tower” escapism of many of his decadent modern successors.

Mr McCormick is possibly too close to contemporary New Zealand writers, and his general attitudes too similar to theirs, to be able to view them with a proper detachment.