This Month’S New Reading

I Louts Becke Back

I In Circulation

F)R 30 years or more Louis Becke’s By Reef and Palm has been listed as “out of print”, and Becke himself—l9ss is the I centenary of his birth—has become I something of a legend.

Of the 14 stories in By Reef and [ Palm, one or two (notably The I Chilean Bluejacket) appeared in I South Sea anthologies in the between-wars period, but the I complete volume, first published in : 1894, has not been reprinted since 1916.

Now comes a new edition, including the introduction written s by Lord Pembroke in 1894.

“It is open to anyone to say that I these tales are barbarous and what [ Mrs. Meynell, in a very clever and [ amusing essay, has called [ ‘decivilised’ ”, comments His Lord ship, adding impishly: “I never can I think of a world from which {everything was eliminated that did [ not commend itself to the dainty [ taste of herself and her friends I without a feeling of impatience I and suffocation.” [ Some critics have complained that By Reef and Palm, Becke’s rbest-known work, is a somewhat {fragmentary collection, a sort of framework on which he might have built a sweeping saga illustrating the conflict between Pacific Islands cultures and European influences in the last quarter of the 19th century.

There may be something in this but it does not alter the fact that the 14 stories (most of them very short) gain in emotional by the author’s astonishing gift for condensation. [ Again quoting Lord Pembroke, the tales are “often cynical and brutal, sometimes exquisitely tender rand pathetic.”

They are steeped in the tropical Island atmosphere of clear sunlight and blue sea, but they make no concessions to the sticky sentimentality and false illusions that lesser writers have developed in travesties of the romance that still attaches to some of the remoter corners of the Island world.

In the course of Sydney-born Louis Becke’s vividly adventurous life, he ranged through almost every part of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. His stories are the products of clear observation by a poet who dealt in realism, and he tells how men and wome», Islanders and Europeans alike, are often odd mixtures of nobility and savagery.

Perhaps his Islanders, on the whole, emerge as the finer of the two sets of conflicting characters, but that is not surprising. In Becke’s day samples of the scum oi Europe and America were still virtually free to make what havoc

they would in isolated Pacific communities.

In the mid-20th century, it is probable that Becke’s terse sharply-etched style wMI have most impact on readers who know the

Islands intensively and extensively.

Becke did not write film-scripts or tourist-folders, and he did not waste time on descriptive frills His tales stand on their own feet as clear-cut stories, but the reader who understands the background whether it is a Samoan beach village or an atoll in the Gilberts will catch something elusive that lurks in the mingled beauty, adventure and brutality of By Reef and Palm. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 13/6.)

London-To-Sydney

Crime Trail

London to Sydney, with some hanky-panky at Colombo and something nasty on B Deck to add colour to the voyage more excitement at the Australian end, and a great deal of American idiom as flavouring—such are the ingredients of Mark Corrigan’s new thriller, The Big Squeeze.

A secret agent’s work, says Mr.

Corrigan, is not concerned exclusively with beautiful dames luring saps to destruction. It is rather a case of “no glamour, but plenty of danger and his bank balance dwindling as he props up his inadequate pay.”

All very disillusioning, but despite these harsh facts of a secret agent’s life, Mr. Corrigan’s agent gets about a great deal. A very great deal indeed. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 13/6.)

Second Series By

Bishop Sheen

rtE indefatigable Bishop Fulton Sheen’s New York television series, Life Is Worth Living, is the source of a second volume of talks.

At once profound and witty, tolerant and terse, the 26 chapters of the new book range from such subjects as the philosophy of Communism and the “liberation of sex” to the inferiority complex and the problems of “How to Talk” and “Why Work is Boring”.

Bishop Sheen undoubtedly has a way with him, plus a sense of restrained drama. Even his ability to stir up controversy and, at odd moments, criticism, is used persuasively. (Published by Peter Davies, Ltd., London. Australian price, 15/6.)