Landfall amid breaking seas

Press, 29 August 1987, Page 23

Landfall amid breaking seas

Landfall 161. The Caxton Press, March, 1987. 111 pp. $9. (Reviewed by Tim Upperton) In a country where literary Journals are not renowned for longevity, “landfall” endures as a remarkable exception. For New Zealand’s as-yet-unpublished writers adrift on the seas of anonymity, an acceptance notice from “Landfall” is like glimpsing the white line of breakers on a beach. To be published in “Landfall” is, literarily speaking, to have arrived. For “Landfall’s” readers, especially for new and occasional readers, the contrary may be true. Exploring the March number, one ventures into uncharted waters — and some contributions may leave one feeling completely at sea. Where, then, is it safe to begin? Probably with the short fiction. Fiction writers feel more obliged than poets to stick to the rules, and a reader who knows the rules can get along quite nicely. There are seven stories here, ranging from the weird fantasy of Juliet Whetter’s “All Our Yesterdays” to the glum realism of Murray Clapshaw’s “Giotto Probe.” None is representative, yet all have a ’’Landfall” feel about themMark Jennings’ sparkling contribution, “Canada," deserves special praise: it is short, brisk and packed with inventive surprises. To the poems. Again, the shortest contributions have the greatest immediate appeal. Take “Kids Cost Vast Sums,” from John Paterson’s “Four By Four” sequence (each poem is four lines long, and composed entirely of four letter words): fame wont feed your boys lucy wont keep your bank book full kids cost vast sums,

Laconic, quirky and wise, Paterson’s poems are nutritious fast-food for the

reader on the run. Other poems require slower consumption. One — Robert Sullivan’s “Kiwi Esplanade” — appears not to be a poem at all, but an episodic prose narrative, and another — Clemens Rettich’s “Sown” — reads like an elaborate private joke. Rettich gives his reader too little help. Is obscurity a desirable goal? Is New Zealand’s tiny poetry-reading public not tiny enough? Jostling with the “creative” writers are the writers about creative writers — the critics. "Landfall” critics are definitely not of the “I know what I like” school. Take Peter Beatson, on Patrick White’s “Memoirs of Many in One”: “Internally the text is structured by complex systems of imagery which link the juxtaposed fragments of the external action, imperceptibly articulating its chaos and building up a cumulative energy which by the end charges almost every word placed apparently casually on the page.” Beatson is, I suspect, more

enamoured of systems, especially complex systems, than he is of White’s novel. He also has a knack of making simple notions very hard going. White’s “book is an intense microcosm of a half-century’s drive to express the sterility of inner deprivation through the opulence of an external profusion which is both display and camouflage.” White himself is more succinct: “this jungle of words ... none of the Boobies will investigate me if I plait the branches densely enough.” One wishes he was right.’ Rounding off “Landfall” is the correspondence, where distinguished men and women of letters speak their minds. The tone of this correspondence is acerbic, healthily so; it is clear that New Zealand’s literary community, however small, is not cosy. That such a community exists is also clear; "Landfall” itself is proof of that. For those who want to find out what is being done in New Zealand literature right now, “Landfall” is a good place to start.