AUTOBIOGRAPHIES WRITERS REFLECT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 3

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES WRITERS REFLECT

A Kind of Magic. By Edna! Ferber. Gollancz. 335 pp. Edna Ferber loves the, United States—“this fantastically rich and spectacular. I this gorgeously electric and vital country.” Writing of the! land of the free and the home of the brave, draws from her fervour and devotion characteristic of the generation which enjoyed success following the tribulations of parental immigrants to the United States. Autobiographical, the book records early struggle, special happiness. the war, travels, and people who impressed her. Those who admire her published work can read of the human experiences and mind impressions that sparked the best sellers like "Giant” (Texas), “Show-boat" (New Orleans and the Mississippi), “Cimarron” (Oklahoma), and “Saratoga Trunk.” The book is intentionally haphazard but reminiscent in parts to a degree of tedium, and it is especially difficult to abide with the author through the interminable gestation associated with seeking, finding, building her dream home in up-State Connecticut. The book will appeal to those who, like the author, know America and her people, but in all of it the author’s wit. perception, and vitality provide fascinating reading, even if parts of the book only are selected at random. Her objective throughout her working life —Miss Ferber is I now 76—was to produce 1000 words for every day of the week. Consequently, the integrated chapter on writing—“compulsive and dedicated writing is the most purely creative and the most enduring of the arts . . .” should appeal as an excellent exposition of tlie art and craft of a great writer. Instead of a Letter. By Diana Athill. Chatto and Windus. 224 pp. In the first chapter of her autobiography, Miss Athill recalls how, at the end of a long, calm life made happy by the love which she bore for her children and grandchildren, her grandmother asked the startling question: “What have I lived for? Do you really think it has been worth something?” Pondering this question in terms of her own experience, Miss Athill has set out to discover why it is that, in spite of failures and losses such as her grandmother had never been called on to endure, she has still found life very much worth while. Outwardly, her life has been uneventful. Much of her very happy childhood was spent in her grandmother’s East Anglian estate at Beckton Manor. In 1936, at the age of 18, she went up to Oxford, where she became engaged to Paul, an intelligent and high-spirited young man who left her shortly after the outbreak of war. There followed many sexual encounters, largely sterile, and accompanied by much loneliness and an increasing sense of failure. After the war she became a reader on the staff of the newly-founded publishing firm of Andre Deutsch, and in 1958 she was awarded first prize in “The Observer” short-story competition, an event which marked both the beginning of a promising literary career, and the recovery of some of her natural buoyancy of spirit. Looking for something of positive value with which to answer her grandmother’s question she was able to take comfort in the knowledge that “I have written a little and I have loved.” In addition, her rich appetite for experience has made life meaningful for her. “It is in the existence of other things and other people that I can feel the pulse of my own: the pulse. Something which hums and throbs in everything, and in me.”

Miss AithiU is a very honest writer, revealing her most intimate experiences with unselfconscious frankness. Yet the book as a whole does not leave the impression that anything very worth-while has been said. It is not that the experiences themselves are necessarily uninteresting, but that the author has failed to make them very significant for the reader. The most vivid chapters are those which record the decaying world of the gentry in which she was reared. Her grandmother, in particular, is a most vital character, in whom the virtues and vices of a whole class are crystallised. She would, one feels, have made an excellent character for a novel. Home from Sea. By Joy Packer. Eyre and Spottiswoode 251 pp. Joy Packer’s readers will welcome this book which continues the story of her life from the point to which it was carried in “Apes and Ivory.” After her husband. Admiral Sir Herbert Packer, had retired from the Royal Navy towards the end of 1952, they decided to put down roots and settle in Cape Town, where Joy Packer had herself been born and brought up.

A writer of sensitivity, Joy Packer is a reporter gifted with intelligence and com-mon-sense. She finds people and the moving currents which direct their lives even more fascinating than places, Her narration of dramatic developments in South Africa enthrals. She comments directly from the mind and heart on apartheid, the attempt on Dr. Verwoerd’s life, the reception of Mr Harold Macmillan's* "winds of change" speech, the Stanleyville tragedy, the coming into being of the Republic, and of the Union's decision to leave the Comomnwealth. She reflects upon all these and other events with a lively appreciation of the whole background and gives the reader an insight also into affairs to the north, where the growth of intense nationalism has led to the emergence of new African states. She reports fairly the divergent viewpoints of those involved and while she sees clearly the terrible dangers ahead in South Africa, she does not pretend to offer easy solutions. These events are shaking her country to its foundations, and she shares

[with her readers "the feel of I a dangerous decade." She shares too her own personal tragedies, hopes and anxietI ies and the simple philosophy that is the outcome of a wide : experience of living. ' Tins is indeed a colourful narrative, simply and sincerely written, well-informed. I lucid and instructive. Ma and Pa. By Ruth Lindsay. I Ure Smith. 229 pp. Everyone, it has been said, can write at least one story of human interest—the story of their life. A gift for writing is, however, an essential qualification for the job, and I this atribute the author I possesses to a high degree. In a series of thumbnail sketches she has brought to life the circumstances of her youth in a Sydney suburb. Her parents had emigrated from England some two de-f cades before tire beginning of the century, and their most treasured possession was an oleograph of Queen Victoria —a deeply venerated figure to them both. The virtues and weaknesses of Ma and Pa | are set forth by the author] with such loving skill that tire reader feels a personal interest in their adventures and vicissitudes. Pa's weakness for the bottle was a determining factor of tlieir existence, for while Ma, that practical, bustling little body, “just an inch taller than the Queen” had to cope with the problem of bearing and riear- ■ ing nine children, Pa. who was a good enough worker in the building trade, was apt to go on the booze at unpredictable intervals to the detriment of the family fortunes. Ada. the eldest girl, though 'early betrothed to middle-aged, fat Dickie who had been an admirer of her mother's, was inclined to court romantic adventures, and only escaped parental vigilance by summarily running away from home and marrying a farmer from the outback. Pa's essays to make a “rustic suite” of furniture from local timber, as well as an entirely impracticable cot and an alarmingly unsafe pram for the last joined member of the family served to add to Ma's worries, which were not alleviated by the solicitude of a rich neighbour, who visited her frequently with offers of dripping and good advice. But the butcher was a stout and dependable friend, while Dickie, absolved from his vows to Ada, reverted to his early tenderness for Ma, This solid affection was to stand her in good stead during the last distressing years of her marriage when Dad abruptly deserted her to try and make his fortune in New Zealand—returning penniless and ill, to die as improvidently as he had lived. The minutia of the family’s daily lives, whether comic or tragic, are never dull, and these simple annals are of the stuff of real life. Disturbing Element. By Xavier Herbert. Cheshire 271 pp. Xavier Herbert’s childhood was spent in the outbacks of North Western Australia where his father was an engine driver who had taken up that occupation after seeking his fortune as a golddigger. Whenever Xavier worried his parents to the point of exasperation, his father would roar at him “You Disturbin’ Helement.” From this piece of paternal castigation the book derives its title. The family relationships whether between father and mother or between Xavier and his parents, were often strained, and there is a harshness in his writing about them. He writes with more understanding of his older step-brother and stepsister and younger brother. Xavier was 12 when the family went to live in Fremantle. There he attended the Christian Brothers’ College until 17 years of age, when he left to study pharmacy and qualified as a chemist. At the age of 23, much against his parents’ wishes, he decided to study medicine, but soon abandoned this course to take up writing; and at this point his autobiography ends. It presents its author as a hard-boiled character who has had more than a taste of adventure when it come to affairs with women. These affairs he recounts with a garrulous abandon much like an old man smacking his lips over the amorous exoesses of his youth. Whether the reader will relish it all is questionable. When writing of his school days the author recalls his defiance of authority and appears to take a venomous delight in caricaturing his old teacher, “Grassoppie”—as he calls him. But here again he rather overdoes it and there is a harshness in his treatment of “Grassopple" that repels the reader. The book has nevertheless a raciness and fluency and something of the ruggedness that has characterised its author's earlier works. The Embossed Tea Kettle. By Hakuin Zenji. Allen and Unwin. Illustrated. 196! PP. The author always had in] front of him while he was' writing a little pot for brew-| ing his tea. On the tea kettle] was embossed some mystic letters. The book is an expo-| sition of Zen Buddhism as' accepted in Japan in the] eighteenth century. It con-i sists of letters to a lord, a I monk, a nun, also sermons to! his peasant parishioners. The' ■book is translated from the] (Japanese by R. D. M. Shaw, |D.D. Zen Buddhism has I many disciples and advocates (even in the Western world. It holds that contact with “reality” is by direct intuition. Non-attachment to the things of time and sense is necessary for the experience of one-ness with reality. The i chapters read easily even if ! the subject matter seems reimote from Western ways of | thinking. The advocates of Zen Buddhism believe that it I iis the basis of all true creeds.! This is special pleading, and' while it cannot be proved, itj does add something to the; basic meaning of religion; which is communion with! God. I 7)