Few delights among N.Z. stories

Press, 25 February 1989, Page 27

Few delights among N.Z. stories

Short Stories From New Zealand. Selected by Alistair Paterson. Highgate/Price Milburn, 1988. 174 pp. $17.75 (paperback). (Reviewed by Agnes-Mary Brooke) A current phenomenon of New Zealand writing is the considerable discrepancy between the stories or verse which a reading public finds enjoyable or meaningful, and the stories or verse praised and featured in doubtfully-named "literary circles.” It is the latter which often have the intelligent reader laying a book down in puzzlement and wondering what is wrong with him or her. Most readers like a good yarn, or a

story which leaves something to linger on the mind. It tells us something worth telling about some aspect of people, their interaction, and their environment. Yet some of the short stories that win competitions, or are featured in regular publications, are contrivedly unpleasant, or so unmemorable, that readers begin to doubt their own judgment. Hang in there. If you decide that this collection is made up of largely mediocre stories, and you are trying to figure out why they were published, you will not be alone. It is difficult to be persuaded that most of these stories would interest anyone except their authors.

There are exceptions. Owen Marshall’s "The Paper Parcel” is a competently-crafted piece about the mingling of adolescent expectation and fantasy. Alan Wagstaff’s “The Rescue” stands out as a well-written, thought-provoking reminder of the barbarism inherent in the practice of celebrating Guy Fawkes night. “The Last of the Invisible Sharks,” by John O’Brien, is largely well-written, but ends in bathos, rather than the humour intended. There are others, easily forgotten, descending to the incredibly naive “My Uncle Hugh,” by Helen Watson White, and Peter Stewart’s “A Bitch Called Fly,” a parody of a “typical New Zealand” back-country story, complete with lashings of schmalz, and lacking only ghost-riders-in-the-sky. Of cause for more concern was Graeme Lay’s “Baksheesh,” a sentimental story about an English teacher indulging in a bit of situation ethics— which usually combines a tricky situation with no ethics. This happens here, when a particular pupil fails an English exam. It is dismaying that the author apparently fails to recognise that a persistently-failing pupil, who is actually working her heart out over a whole year to pass an English exam, probably has a teacher who cannot teach for toffee. This was one of the few short stories that did have something to say, a reminder of the real issues of feminism, not the myopic, petty claims made in a soft society. So it was a pity that Lay’s grammatical mistakes were not corrected in editing. Errors in other stories were also allowed to slip by. Elsewhere in the book, writing featuring Maori terms without a glossary is not only discourteous, but can look ludicrous. For instance, “Her puku squirmed." This collection of stories shows signs' of haste in production. It substantiates the criticism that too many New Zealand short stories are boring, dreary, and pointless. The praise sometimes given to authors with little to say is beginning to take on the trappings of a media industry. I cannot believe the reading public is getting the writers it deserves as distinct from writers cosily promoted by other writers.