“Sundowner”

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29850, 16 June 1962, Page 3

“Sundowner”

Shepherd’s Calendar. By Oliver Duff (“Sundowner"). Paul's Book Arcade. 253 pp.

Essay writing has been a popular form of writing for moralists and critics from the time of Bacon down to Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton. In modern times essays of the kind written by Charles Lamb or E. V. Lucas have gone out of fashion. The cultivated, consciously literary essay, full of allusion, has disappeared. Yet the essay as a literary form has not gone completely; rather has it changed in style. In the last two decades a new mass of readers has developed —readers who have not a great deal of time on their hands, but who are as interested as ever in other peoples’ opinions and reflections. They have stimulated a demand for short articles of good quality, articles to inform and at the same time entertaiq. For many years “Sundowner” has delighted readers of the New Zealand "Listener” with a series of weekly dairy records, each a little essay in itself. "Shepherd’s Calendar” is a collection of these articles. In each entry the author selects something that has happened to him or that he has noticed

in connexion with life on his farmlet near Christchurch; he comments upon it and relates it to a wider pattern of thought or observation. All the entries are not uniformly good, and often the commentary is far from profound. Yet this unevenness merely adds to the thoughtprovoking quality of the collection as a whole. For the author, though gracefully fluent, is never glib At his worst he is never superficial At his best his observations are acute, direct, kindly and original. Oliver Duff (a former editor of “The Press”) is a genuine lover of nature, of homely farm animals, of birds, of dogs. “Cows support me. and trees comfort me.” he writes on page 251, and throughout he transmits to the reader his own enthusiasms. But he is just as interested in men and manners and in ideas, new and old. and whether he is writing of fleas or friendships, of rabbits and goldfinches, or eating with your fingers, of Professor Sinclaire or cynicism, he writes candidly, wisely and I with warm sympathy. The ef-| feet is to widen the reader’s own horizons while entertaining him. and to deepen tolerance and understanding. Throughout, the author remains a born New Zealander interested in the New Zealand scene, and his fellow countrymen.