Peter Smart’s years with ‘Landfall’

Press, 3 April 1982, Page 16

Peter Smart’s years with ‘Landfall’

LANDFALL 140. Edited by Peter Smart. 126 pp. $4. (Reviewed by Richard Corballis)

One of the last occasions on which I saw Peter Smart was a meeting of English teachers held (at Peter’s invitation) in the English Department at Christ’s College. A fairly routine meeting came suddenly to life when Peter leapt from his seat for no apparent reason and took advantage of the startled silence to propose a radical motion of some kind — I forget what. He headed for the door, explaining his proposal as he went, and then simply walked out. The rest of us dutifully took up his idea, debated it earnestly, and were just about to come to a decision when Peter burst back in, weighed down by a tray of coffee-mugs and by some reservation about his proposal which had come to him while he had been waiting for the kettle to boil. Before we had stirred in our sugar we found ourselves starting all over again on an amended motion. I tell this story not just to illustrate Peter’s generosity with coffee, but also to stress how fast and furiously his mind worked. It was typical of him that he should have resigned the headship of the English Department at Christ’s College in order to focus on a new subject (History of Art). That he continued to write and edit a dizzying quantity of books while coping with this transition makes the

point even more strongly. I have heard teachers complain that some of his text-books lacked substance, and a number of academics have been known to grumble in similar term's about the “Landfalls” which he edited from December, 1975, until his death late last

year. They always came out on time (the argument goes), but they tended to be miscellaneous and superficial.

I strongly suspect that the teachers who grumbled about the text-books wanted everything spelled out so that they could run a class without having to think for themselves. That was not Peter’s way. He knew that neither good teaching nor good learning can be done by rote. A successful classroom has its own unique chemistry, and a text-book can do little more than suggest approaches which may generate this chemistry. And so Peter’s books tended to be collections of bright — even preposterous — ideas, rather than stolid instruction manuals.

And so it was with “Landfall.” The journal’s founder, Charles Brasch, once observed that “A scholarly journal on a high level will earn its place, but one that is not aimed narrowly at university teachers and students would have greater value.” (He was commenting on the first number of “The Journal of Commonwealth Literature.”) Peter Smart was likewise concerned that "Landfall” should not become “a dumping ground for the late-night doodlings of academics”; in his first editorial (“Landfall; 116”) he insisted that the journal “must, in the best sense, be popular” and he set out “to woo readers from the feast of distractions which jade ■even the lustiest of appetites.”

His concern to ensure a broad readership led to a host of editorial experiments. He tried giving a different theme to each volume; he tried using guest-editors to “widen contacts and give an important variety of approach”; he tried to make his writers more accessible

to their audience by providing brief biographical notes about them and by featuring interviews with some of the more important ones. He discouraged earnest, academic reviews and then (when C. K. Stead complained) he reinstated them; he instituted a series of literary awards; he tried injecting “a small proportion of ‘imported’ writing which has been written for rather than by New Zealanders.” •

And so on. Many of these experiments were short-lived, but cumulatively they ensured that “Landfall” was always fresh and unpredictable. Variety is still the keynote in Peter’s last “Landfall” — number 140, which appeared (as always) on time in Decemeber, 1981, the month of his death. Young writers (Michael Mintrom, Vivian Hopkirk, Julia Allen) rub shoulders with the big names (Alistair Campbell, Basil Dowling, Brian Turner). Trivia (William Young’s “XYZ Syndrome”) appears alongside some very substantial work (Owen Marshall’s “Father and Son”). There is a centrepiece — not the same thing as a centrefold — dedicated to the work of Vincent O’Sullivan, but the rest of the volume is quite miscellaneous, including as it does poems, stories, criticism of literature and art, reviews and illustrations by a total of 49 contributors.

That this misceljaneity was quite deliberate seems to be indicated by the fact that this "Landfall” contains one poem each by Basil Dowling and Brian Turner. So did “Landfall 139”. Presumably Peter received a batch of poems by both writers and chose to spread them thinly through several issues instead of printing them en bloc.

By a happy coincidence, the. name that recurs more than any other in “Landfall 140” is: Smart. Peter edited the issue; his wife Patricia contributed a review (of Elsie Locke’s “Student at the Gates”); and there is a stimulating discussion of Pat Hanly’s work by their son Jonathan. It is nice to have this very tangible assurance that Peter Smart’s spirit lives on. Those who want further assurance should go back, to “Landfall 129," in which Peter brought together a series of writings about death in order to illustrate the point that one may “climb excitingly through death to more significant life.”