Jottings, Ramblings And

Biography :

Jottings, Ramblings And Commentary On Life

For those who judge a book by its cover, Oliver Duff’s Shepherd’s Calendar and Alan Marshall’s This is the Grass , would have nothing in common. But New Zealander Duff and Australian Marshall share a common ability to record what they think in a thoughtful, objective manner. Our two other offerings come into a different category.

C Hepherd’S Calendar Is A

collection of diary items that have been published by Duff for years in the New Zealand Listener under that heading. They now make a bedside book for browsing, for the items range far and wide—from cricket to dogs, from letter-writing to cows, from the ethics of stealing mushrooms to the reasons why cats leave home.

Duff’s commentary on life—and he is physically although not mentally aged now —is original, warm and fascinating. His commentary written one Anzac Day—the day on which Australia, New Zealand and many Pacific Islands remember their war dead—is a fine example of his depth of feeling and thought (see panel).

Not the Whole Truth Yet Duff says he has not always written the truth. He cannot write the truth, he says, for “every man, however he lives, has experiences which he does not, can not and should not report. If he lives among animals and by animals he has ex periences which are too brutal, too bloody and too nasty to share with others in the pages of a family journal. And if, in addition, he has a mother or a wife, a sister or a simple Christian friend he will hesitate to hurt them by a too ruth less exposure of himself as he really is. . . . Over and over again I have had to decide that honesty is not the best policy—if honesty is the whole truth and nothing else. But I have been honest to the extent of trying hard to tell no lies. I have not tried to be honest to the last of pain or the last drop of blood”.

Alan Marshall’s best known work is “I Can Jump Puddles”. This is the Grass is the story of his youth in a Victorian township and m Melbourne during the depression.

Crippled by polio and on crutches, he finds it difficult to get work, or even any understanding of the

problems of a cripple. Eventually he comes to realise his problems are due in some measure to himself — that he has to force himself to participate in the life around him, instead of becoming a mere on looker.

His observations from the sidelines are the best of his book—and it was obviously this training in observation from the sidelines that made him a better writer in adulthood.

Marshall on Boarding Houses: “The boarders did not discuss their work with each other. A man’s importance was in proportion to his silence about work. The salary or wages they received was a guarded secret, the discovery of which would lower their prestige and place them at the mercy of those more highly paid. The suggestion cultivated was that they were all highly-paid people with positions of responsibility.”

On Other People’s Views of Cripples: “The emotions they ex perienced when looking at a cripple hurt them, roused a primitive fear of a suspected deterioration in their own bodies, and they rid themselves of it by the release of a spoken compassion. They sympathised from a position of strength, increasing their respect for themselves by declarations of understanding and concern, believing these emotions sprang from their unselfishness and kindness, not for self-protection”.

On a Woman Pubkeeper: “Flo Bronson was a stout woman who gurgled with laughter even when dis cussing serious things. As I got to know her I learned her laughter had little to do with happiness. Once she had been wealthy, owned a big hotel at Bendigo, had shares in a racehorse and travelled round in a car to all the big race meetings. It was the laughter born then that re mained with her now. Aimed at giving an impression of gaiety and vivacity when she was young and men attainable, it accompanied her into middle age, a habit which might

once have charmed but now left men unmoved . .

The disorientated ramblings of Alexander King are an acquired taste. Those who have acquired it through Mine Enemy Grows Older and May this House be Safe from Tigers, will probably be able to digest the third volume of his memoirs.

Those who have waited for part three, before they begin, may need the help of a literary digestive tablet to break into I Should Have Kissed Her More.

At this stage of his quaint life, memoirist King is a drug addict— which may or may not account for some of the volume’s zaniest passpages. Otherwise it consists of his comments on life in general, the part he has played in it, and more particularly, the description of the long string of women he has known— not necessarily sexually.

Some reviewers find King’s fantasies brilliant and fascinating; others (including this one) find him merely boring. In literature it is on par with the painters who produce masterpieces by squeezing seven tnbpc nf QccnrtpH o u •!? assorted paint on a hunk of building board and then run back

and forth across it in a kiddie-car.

It’s probable that the Romans went in for this sort of caper just before the onset of their Dark Age.

To switch from King to Australian author lon L. Idriess might be re garded as an exercise in leaping from the sublime to the gor’blimey.

Idriess has written over 40 books in some 30 years, on just about every facet of Australian pioneering life and could, with honour, quit— but he shows so signs of doing so.

In My Mate Dick, he returns to the days of his youth, before World War I, when he and Dick went prospecting around Cape York, The story has the merit of telling some of the history of this area— including that of Cooktown and the adjacent gold diggings which were the earliest jumping-off places for early arrivals in Papua; and describ ing this still untouched area, which except for the discovery of vast bauxite deposits at Weipa, is almost unchanged since Idriess and his mate Dick went that way. (shepherd s calendar. Angus and Robertson. 27/6. this is the grass.

F - w - Cheshire. 21/-. 1 should have KISSED HER MORE, Heinemann. 26/-. my MATE DICK. Angus and Robertson, 27 6. »