This Month's New Reading

Book Reviews by JUDY TUDOR

THIS must be Learn How month.

We have had a book on how to sell your stories to editors; another on how to play golf; and a third on how to dance. All methods, on the three subjects, guaranteed completely painless.

Arthur Murray Taught Me

Dancing In A Hurry

Almost everyone has heard of Arthur Murray who, in the United States, teaches dancing—according to a pop tune of a few years ago— “in a hurry.”

Mr. Murray has opened an academy in Sydney, also. One gathers that the cost of attending same is not cheap, so an invest ment in the book ( How to Become a Good Dancer) , at a modest 19 6 Australian, is worthwhile.

The book contains a set of “His” and “Her” footprints which the aspiring dancers cut out, set out on the floor according to instruc tions contained in the book, and by walking on them become accomplished performers.

As well as the more simple instructions for beginners there are chapters on more advanced sub jects—such as the samba, tango, the Sugar Foot Walk and the Triple Lindy Hop.

There is a section written by Kathryn, wife of Arthur, on Dance Secrets or Etiquette. This tells you what not to do if you would be a social success. As neither Murray has been to the Pacific Islands, where the practice is for the gentlemen to cluster around the bar while the ladies fan themselves and discuss their domestic servants, there is nothing on this particular aspect of the dance. But we are sure that the Murrays would not approve of it, anyway. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd.

Australian price, 19/6.1

Getting Through To

The Editor

Mr. d’Arcy Niland is the author of Make Your Stories Sell, and as he is one of the few freelance writers in Australia who appear to be able to make a living in this way, his advice is worth listening to.

We passed this one over to a member of our advertising staff, William Lynch, who in our humble opinion (shared in the United States) is an outstanding exponent of the art of short-story writing.

Mr. Lynch, however, says that he can make a better living, with fewer ulcers, in advertising.

About Make Your Stories Sell, he says: “It is an excellent book for those who take short-story writing seriously but of no value whatever

to those who write short stories merely as an experiment. If the teachings of this book were followed there would be a lot fewer writers in the business and considerably fewer harassed editors.

“This book proves that short story writing requires a lot of hard work and analytical thinking, two functions which seldom appeal to the would-be writer. Niland himself, while no literary genius, is a good tradesman. This book is for literary artisans and mechanics, but the gifted writer, whose work springs from inspiration and is spon taneously afire, might have little regard for it. As a handbook of short story mechanics it is one of the best I have seen.” (Published by Angus and Robertson. Ltd.

Australian price, 12/6.)

Golf With The Inn-Keeper’S

Daughter

A sort of combination love story and unorthodox instructor in golf, this Out of the Rough, by J. T.

Shaw.

It has already been published in US, and Collier’s Weekly reviewing it said they defied anyone to read it without making experimental swings with the nearest umbrella.

Well, it did not affect the present reviewer so. After a little dabbling, she skipped the golfing bits to see when the narrator would uncover the mystery of the Inn-keeper’s daughter. However, as a love story it is punk. As a golf improver It is probably all Collier’s say that it is.

The hero of the piece, an American, is told by the girl whom he imagines he loves, that she would not consider marrying a man whose golf score was not in the low eighties. He thereupon catches the first trans-Atlantic liner, makes a bee-line for a small village on the Fife coast of Scotland, where he engages the services of a famous professional named Sandy Macgregor.

Macgregor’s methods are un orthodox but apparently effective.

Golfers who would know more about them are advised to buy the book. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd.

Australian price, 15/-.)

The War In North

East Papua

One of the 120 copies of a privately printed edition of Letters from the Papuan Bush, 1942-46, by the late Archdeacon S. R. M. Gill, has been received.

The Archdeacon was a member of the Anglican Mission, and stationed at Duvira Mission in North-Eastern Papua, when the Japanese invasion caught up with

him about mid-1942, and the letters cover roughly the following year—a period of intense interest to students of the war in that particular part of Papua about which little has been recorded.

Most of the Archdeacon’s letters were one-way letters— that is he wrote them (to his Bishop mostly and some to Father James Benson who also had many adventures during the period, was at one time believed killed and finally turned up in a POW camp in Rabaul), then entrusted them to some runner to find their way as best they could to the addressees on the right side of the AlLed lines. There was little hope of a quick reply to any of them; indeed, of any reply at all very often.

When his mission was bombed first, on July 30, 1942, the mission boys tearfully asked to be allowed to go home. Permission was given; and at the same time Gill arranged for the native teachers’ families to camp in the bush. Over the next seven months, all of them took to the bush at various times according to the amount of attention they were receiving from the Japanese.

But their greatest physical danger came from the Allied pilots who evidently believing that the station sheltered the enemy, gave it the full treatment.

Gill’s one and dominating thought had been not to desert his people —yet he reports in a letter on September 23 that he and his small party at Duvira were the sole remaining population—the people had simply deserted him. He says: “. . . the people (other than those under direct Mission influence) see in it only a terrific fight between foreigners on their land, and they are quite prepared to accept which ever party comes out on top.”

Gill, who naturally became much involved with the Military authorities, did not always worship at that shrine although individual members he held in high regard.

He says in one part of his book: “There is grave danger in the Military greatly restricting the power of Civil Administration. If that happens it seems to me that the very foundations on which the whole Native Policy has been so patiently built will be in ruins . . .

We need (as a Governor) a man in direct descent from Macgregor and Judge Murray.”

In another of his letters he says that he believes that the Military Government made a grave mistake in doing away with the Civil Ad ministration. He goes on: “I have not been impressed with some of the things that have been said to me by those who took the old officers’ places. One of them said, ‘The great difference between us and the men we have taken over from is that we are Trained Men!’

My foot! Some of them seem to have been specially trained in getting off rapidly in the opposite

direction as soon as they hear of a spot of trouble.”

Crime Amongst

The Coconuts

The second Polynesian thriller by Juanita Sheridan The Kahuna Killer —is a sort of pseudo cargo cult from the Hawaiian Islands.

Miss Sheridan’s setting is slick, sophisticated Honolulu and the odd doings are supplied by a village of Hawaiians (we did not know any pure Hawaiians still existed) who are inclined to begin a Back to Before Movement.

We do not know what qualifica*tions the author has for writing about Hawaii, but the setting and the characters seem authentic enough and as such are interesting to other Pacific Islands dwellers, some of whom have thought to turn their own islands into imitation Honolulus in order to catch the tourist dollar.

The plot, which is not parti cularly mysterious, is feasible only because it is American. It would not hold water in a staid British community. Playgirls, playboys, Chinese, Hawaiians, Japanese and old planting families all have their part in the story. And there is the usual quota of high powered cars, ditto powered blondes, hard drinking and skulduggery. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd- Australian price, 13/3.)

Dr. Tom’S Problems—The

Davis Saga

Whether they now intend going back to the Cook Islands to live seems doubtful, but in their book.

Doctor to the Islands, Tom and Lydia Davis have produced a story that is interesting to the average reader and could be regarded as literary dynamite in the territory it most concerns—all this notwith standing the fact that Dr. Tom appears to have made his peace with officialdom before the story ends .

When the crusading Davis family arrived in Rarotonga they found a state of apathy, neglect and inefficiency that would be hard to believe were it not for the fact that we have independent witnesses who state that it was so, and that though there undoubtedly is another side to the Davis version, Dr. Tom was instrumental in bringing the unsatisfactory state of affairs to the notice of authority and in instituting permanent re forms. , , The local hospital, as described by Dr Tom, is almost unbelievable.

He arrived to find the floor covered with cigarette butts, the beds unmade, the dishes unwashed. He was hustled past Mrs. Teariki “who won’t last the night, anyway (he later gave her a blood-trans fusion and she recovered) and to “out-patients,” where a sizable crowd already waited.

Dr. Tom was cheered; perhaps his fame as a doctor had preceded him. “Good morning, what can I do for you?” he asked the first patient. And the only reply he got was, “pamati.”

The matron was writing in her little pink book; she tore out a slip and said, “Sign here, Doctor.”

The slip read, “I hereby certify that Uti requires 1 bottle of whisky for GHP. Signed Medical Officer.”

So Dr. Tom learned that “pamati” was Rarotongan for “permit”; and that out-patients consisted almost entirely of “dishing out liquor permits.”

The Cook Islands, of course, like all New Zeealand Pacific territories, are technically dry—liquor being dispensed for GHP (general health purposes only).

Five miles away from the general hospital was the new TB sanatorium. It had been completed only that year. The equipment was good. It had a staff of nine nurses, several cooks, orderlies and groundsmen. But no patients.

The area was known as Black Rock and according to the Islanders it was haunted. From one of the tallest rocks dead souls were supposed to take their departure from the island. TB is the scourge of the Cooks —yet the new hospital seemed to the people just a place to die, and they needed some persuasion before they would go there to do even that.

The book is written in fits and starts by both Dr. Tom and Mrs.

Tom. Sometimes only a short white space occurs between where one ends and the other begins.

Lydia is supposed to be the writer of the family, although, no doubt, many readers will find Tom's offerings more acceptable if only because they have broader scope.

Neither Davis could be said to be the objective type of writer; black is black to them, always; white is white.

Lydia one imagines as a slap-dash creature to whom small details mean nothing even if the larger facts of life are seen clearly. In this way Patrick Twomey, the leper-man, becomes Percy; Ratu Edward Cakobau and Ratu George Cakobau she presents as brothers and Ratu Edward is endowed with some of the background of and accomplishments of Sir Lala Sukuna. Her spelling of Polynesian place-names borders on the fan tastic (Dr. Tom being afflicted by the same disease only to a lesser degree) and their publisher, not knowing better, lets them go.

However, none of these things prevent them describing life and people as they find them and for this reason the book is exceedingly interesting.

Dr. Tom is part-Polynesian and returning to Rarotonga was re turning to the land of his birth.

Lydia is a New Zealander. They

married while he was still a medical student at Dunedin and the book? tells their lives from that moment! on.

After seven years in the Cooks,; Tom decided that it is time fon some post-graduate study. The place that more or less chooses itselfl for this is Boston, USA. The Davis family decided to go there in thein own 45 ft ketch Miru, in midwinter,' using the Roaring Forties for thes 6,000 miles hop, Wellington ta Peru, thence through the Panamas Canal and up the eastern coast oft North America.

The last chapters of the bookJ describe this incredibly uncomfort able five-months voyage. (Published by Michael Joseph, London.j Australian price, 18/9. 1

Christianity—All Kinds

Dispensed

We have received from Kansas, City, Mo., a small book called Ant n Now New Guinea, by Hardy Cv Powers, DD, who evidently is as member of the Nazarene Mission which —although we did not know this —has some missionaries aij work now in New Guinea.

The book is more a description of New Guinea for adherents o;< the mission in the States, than an account of their work in the, Territory.

Dr. Powers quotes freely (witli acknowledgments) from Pacific Publications Handbook of Papm: and New Guinea, from Colin Simpson and from someone calleo; Franck McCune, whom we suspect is none other than our old friemj Frank Clune.

This mission appears to be functioning in about 35 countries so one can understand members' enthusiasm in having adde«j another country to the list.

But God alone knows whar inspires these people to go pepurinr into unfortunate New Guinea— although He is blamed for i because he “commanded his peoplt to go out and preach the gospelJ The extraordinary increase sino the war, in the number of branch of Christianity being dispensed i;i Papua-New Guinea must be comi pletely bewildering to the unfon tunate savage whom these peoph go there to “save.” t In an effort to improve signs, strength throughout the Fiji Group changes being made to the aenan of the Suva broadcasting station r short-wave outlet on 3980 kc/s wir probably result in decidedly poor©reception of that channel in oven? seas countries, for which the broad) casting service was never really in tended The two broadcast-bam outlets on 840 and 930 kc/s shorn.! still be fairly well received at nightr time in New Zealand, especially ir winter months.