Emancipating language and message

Press, 9 May 1981, Page 17

Emancipating language and message

All the Dangerous Animals are in Zoos: Twelve New Stories. Selected by John Barnett. Longman Paul, 1981. 174 pp. $9.95. (Reviewed by Patrick Huston) Nearly every New Zealander has a crack at writing a short story sometime in the first 50 or 60 years of life. Most often, the story is suggested by a zealous teacher anxious to fan the dormant literary flame lurking in the New Zealand adolescent. That there has been a good deal of success in this direction, is evident by the vast quantity of writing in this country that concerns itself primarily with adolescent fumblings. This latest collection of short stories is no exception. Five of the stories deal with adolescence. Five of the remaining seven concern post adolescents growing up in, or at least growing through the hostile adult world. And yet the collection surprises because of its over-all impact and freshness. There is a new look about the collection that is unexpected. Perhaps the difference lies in the language. Almost without exception, the stories ride into the eighties on a waye of emancipated four-letter words. The highly coloured, albeit repetitive, vocabulary of the average New Zealand citizen is recorded faithfully, albeit repetitively, in black and white — a surfeit of emancipation that is apt to overwhelm the reader if taken in too large a gulp. In the content emancipated youth, emancipated middle class, emancipated suburbia, all feature heavily. There is no time for messing about. If it’s got to be said, it's got to be said. . . and said. . . and said. One good thing is apparent. The Depression of the Thirties is quite dead — not even a mention in passing. All those endless portrayals of life on a scrubby farm, or life in a scrubby three bedroom house — not even a wink of recognition. Bruce Slewart leads the revolution with “Broken Arse”, the story of Henry, a prison inmate convicted of child abuse. It reeks of verisimilitude. The. language is spare and harsh. Images of the cold steel world of a kiwi jail slam themselves at the unsuspecting reader in an unceasing parade of full frontal and side profile word shots. The story line contained within the uncompromising inmate language is satisfyingly tight. The desperation, love, hate and anger of prison life is revealed. The story never falters. By contrast, lan Wedde’s “Snake” exudes an unsavoury whiff of forced intellectualism. The story is obtuse and difficult to comprehend. Introspective cobs of half-realised inner monologue leave the reader groping for something tangible on which to pin his (■ndmtifflftmg. Michael Morrissey and ®e both represented in the

collection. Their stories evoke a sense of a New Zealand time and place, but as with Wedde, a type of academic self-indulgence places a barrier between the reader and what each story has to say. The long passages of dialogue between the man and woman in Morrisseys “This is New Zealand,” reveal his accute ear for this country’s speech patterns, but the man they reveal, a writer caught up in the desolation of not writing, is so pompous, shallow and falsely intellectual, that the reader is inclined to hasten to the story’s end in the hope that he may find the man suffering a slow and horrible death. The statement is lost in the fever of flickering pages. The liberating process presently afoot in this country of chauvinist pigs, is stretched to the limits by both Graeme Lay and Bill Bauer who choose to write of women facing a crisis in their lives. Bauer’s story is concerned with a young woman coping with the first heady drops of overseas experience. Not London or Europe, (another first for this collection?) but winter-time New York. A simple story with no new insights into the process of the experience, but what is written is believable. C. K. Stead has chosen the adolescent thing as the theme for his story, "A New Zealand Elegy.” It is very believable. A boy, 16 and sensitive, fizzing gently at the bung, living next door to a beautiful, warm, sensual, voluptuous, accessible female whose husband is conveniently manoeuvering with the army, finds that a more adult concept of the world does not necessarily bring greater comfort or understanding. Because of Stead's sophisticated (re)telling of the tale

however, the pathos inherent in such a situation, is made both real and memorable. The three woman writers included in this collection are Yvonne du Fresne, Beverley Dunlop and Patricia Grace. All their stories involve childhood and all set in motion that barely definable nostalgia that accompanies well told stories in this genre. "The Dream Sleepers” by Patricia Grace, epitomises the delicious’ red cherry that gilds a rather commercial cake for this reader. The compressed images, the heightened use of language, and the deft sure strokes of characterisation set it apart from the main collection. “The houses sit on their , handkerchiefs, and early in the morning begin to sneeze. They do not sneeze in unison, but.one at a time, or sometimes in pairs or threes, sometimes in tens or dozens. The footpaths and roads beyond the borders of the handkerchiefs quicken with the aftermath of sneezing.” This is similar to that same slow awakening in Katherine Mansfield’s “At the Bay.” The people who move with quickening intensity throughout the dull, exciting, boring, challenging day, take on almost complete identities by the writer’s use of an inspired word or single line Pele suffers a kina. A new hair cut. He sums up his reaction to the endless teasing at school with, “Smart you. Fil formers.” The scenes within the school are perfect. Not a word is wasted and above it all glows the warm feeling of belonging. Not in the dry school world perhaps, but in the real world of people and things. Or is that the dream world? The world of the dream sleepers? ___