THE PROBLEMS OF A LOCAL FICTION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PROBLEMS OF A LOCAL FICTION

pHE' New Zealand author who sets out to write of his own lountry and people finds himself •ery quickly in a strange new erritory. Fiction is by no means he everyday world, even when it bims at realism; and an imaginary jackground depends for its power in a judicious selection and arrangenent of materials. The English lovelist has behind him long and •arying traditions in character and letting; his point of departure tovard original work can be approached through a region which contains the stock figures, the scenes and idiom of a developed action. Early Influences It is probably true that the New Scalane! novel must go through a period of exaggerated writing before it :an settle down to solid achievement. The newer countries which have had ;heir cultural development since the •ise of the novel in England seem to iharc certain unmistakable qualities of iction. There is too much colour, and i doubtful taste. The writing is manlered, and honest feeling grows quickly nto emotionalism. Instead of drama ;here is melodrama, noisy and sinister; ind the characters arc either wooden jypes which depend for life on the sympathetic imagination of the reader, ir caricatures drawn sharply in black md white. These tendencies are to be found in Australian fiction. Anthony Trollope ,vas one of the first writers to use the Australian scene; but even if the ,-eteran had never landed at Sydney :he influence of his work was bound to lave affected a nascent literature. 'Harry Heathcoto of Gangoil" and 'John Caldigato" are not important novels, by any means; they simply tarry the style and method of the. author into a background that is only accidentally Australian. As in "Geoffrey Hamiyn" and "It is Never Too Late to Mend," their view of Australia is taken largely from the outside. Nevertheless, these books left a strong influence behind them. The second generation of native writers re pi a ..•ed the mid-Victorian convention with a kind of misty idealism that degenerated quickly into sentimentality. With an increasing competence they drew a sentimentalised "outback" peopled by grim settlers with lonely wives, and lean drovers created from the ballads of Lawson and Pa torson. Novels were full of purple passages. "The Bush" became practically the complete background of Australian fiction. The New Kealism In recent years there have been important changes. Henry Handel Richardson wrote a trilogy which, although at first unnoticed, came to set new standards, of serious fiction. Several prize-winning novels were published that showed unmistakable signs of maturity. Australians rightly look inland for the materials of new work, but they seemed suddenly to discover that the country's life is not isolated on outback selections, and that its emphasis is in something more than bush fires and floods and the emotional disturbances of people who live too much alone. "A House is Built" and "Landtakers" gave to the novel a sense of history and a wider background; and in "Tiburou" the country town ceased to lie a main street and a pub, and became something nearer the living heart of the countryside. The old-time swagman was replaced by the drifting nnenujloyed of a new and harsher age;

Tendencies- in Australia

By M. H. HOLCROFT

in the struggles and problems of men like Denny and Blue and the younger Whites there came before the reader a region of the middle west ruthlessly cleansed of sentimental vagueness. With the abruptness of urgent experience the author depicted the unlovely days of change. There was now nothing in the open road of which men might wish to sing joyfully. It was a long and dusty road into an inhospitable country, with police and travellers' tickets to bo thought of on the journey and little chance of work and food at the end. As the work of a young woman, "Tiburon" was remarkable for its energy of presentation, its glimpses of varied character, and above all its emergence from scattered picture and incident into an organic completeness. Within it could be felt the flow and disturbance of life across the Australian countryside. And beyond it, breaking in upon the ■"dusty streets and the sedate residential area and the camping ground for unemployed, there seemed to move the life of the land and the temper of the age. Pioneers Realism in fiction is rarely achieved in a young literature. A new scene can be fixed most quickly by emphasis and exaggeration, and where writers are struggling with the. difficulties of background it is inevitable that they should surrender to the temptations of a national balladry. It is easier to be wistful than realistic. It is not enough to say that the older novelists expressed the influences of their time, political and social, no less than do Brian Penton and Kylie Tennant. There was economic stringency in the old days, and the life of country town and outback selection has never been anything but narrow and hard. But the novelist has to create his

own version of his world, and if ho works where few have gone before him he is almost certain to soften the outline and to give a dreamlike quality of mind to an outer landscape, even though it has oppressed him in personal experience. Those who come after him will work over his materials and reject what seems now to be false or distorted. Time Plays a Part These writers of a new generation may not be essentially better than their predecessors; but they come at a fortunate time, when the spade work has been done, when clearings have been made in the bush and it is possible to look out across the ranges and the plains and discover "their true lineaments. There is an element of luck in the lives of all writers, and time plays its part with them; thrusting them into different ages and leaving them to do what they can with the materials under their hands. These are things which should be remembered in the future when the writers of our own generation in New Zealand come up for critical examination. In the light of later achievements it may be easy to dismiss tho handful of novelists who are now doing what they can to fix the New Zealand scene in fiction. But their task is not an easy one. There are no landmarks for them; in a sense they are latter-day pioneers, and they are sharing a responsibility which may be greater than is now apparent to those who read their books and judge them by the standards of the English novel. Perhaps they are too highly coloured and emotional. There are weaknesses of structure and characterisation. But into them is creeping tho shape and colour of their native land. The confidence and brilliance of writers .who in a future time may surprise the world are now being made possible by those who no doubt will be dismissed lightly as imitative and midVictorian novelists. Literature demands many sacrifices from those who serve it in a strange land.