When plans gang agley

see an anthropologist

Many of the executors and critics of Australia’s endeavours in Papua New Guinea will agree with Robert Burns’ observation that the best-laid plans do often gang agley. It surprises, therefore, that little use has so far been made of the knowledge gained by anthropologists about the country’s traditional socio-political structure.

As Professor Lawrence points out in the introduction to this collection of 13 essays by reputable social anthropologists with field experience in Papua New Guinea, the traditional political systems are the background of modern politics. To understand the forms and processes of those systems is a prerequisite to some understanding of the country’s emergence as a modern political entity.

The existence of many hundreds af autonomous and highly ethno centric groups, often hostile towards their neighbours, has led many Dbservers to assume, that New Guinea’s societies are anarchic. In lis foreword, Professor Berndt dis putes this, stating that leadership is evident from the activities of “Big Men” and in cargo cults, which le sees as a political type of enter prise focussed on controlling both luman and economic resources.

Unlike Western society, with its ncreasing bias towards secularism ind its compartmentalisation into ;epa r a t e systems, each with a

specialised function, New Guinea’s many societies are made up of people who do not distinguish between the supernatural and natural, and with exactly the same groups or persons in specific relationships to each other carrying out all economic, religious and political actions.

It follows that the New Guinean’s traditional concept of justice and his view of the individual’s rights, privileges and duties greatly differ from those of Western man. The growing number of problems in the administration of justice based on the Queensland codes, and the difficulties encountered by New Guineans when undertaking modern forms of busi ness organisation such as companies and co-operatives, would not have surprised anyone who has read books like this one.

While Politics in New Guinea con tains some essays which are too tech nical for anyone except the profes sional anthropologists, there is also much of value to the general student of New Guinea affairs and, above all, for Papuans and New Guineans concerned with the political admini stration and government of their country. To quote Professor Berndt, within this book is mirrored some thing of that heritage upon which a broader New Guinea identity could be built.—Harry Jackman.

(Politics In New Guinea. R. M.

Berndt and P. Lawrence, editors. Univer sity of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, W.A., 1971. $10.50).

Are there

no Island

novelists?

Papua New Guinea’s bright young men, the angry ones, the Black Power crusaders and those with just some thing to say are beginning to come into print. Already a novel or two of note have appeared, and much other writing.

Nigeria, in its first full flush of nationhood, before dreams and hopes and lives were shattered with the civil war, had an imposing and grow ing list of young writers, but with hardly a crusader or a protester among them. The years 1964-65 were the vintage years. Nkem Nwankwo, Chukwuemeka Ike, Camara Laye and Wole Soyinka were an imposing quartet.

There are emerging nations in the Pacific, outside Papua New Guinea.

Western Samoa became independent on January 1, 1962; Fiji nearly nine years later with Nauru, smallest of the lot, in between. Where are their writers? Nothing of note in the world of letters has come from any of them.

Perhaps, when the Fijians have settled down to being independent and have discovered that independence has no more a magic wand than colonialism had, writers may emerge—in English, or Fijian. Until they do the Islands will remain woefully short of modern, indigenous literature.

These thoughts are occasioned by some new releases from Fontana in its Modern Novels (paperbacks) class, reprints of some of the Nigerian writers of the middle 60s. Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters is a good example of the standard of the young African novelists’ offerings. They are all, or seem to be, university trained, word perfect—in fact tight with a surfeit of rhetoric, with a plot swad dled in words, but imposing. I once spent Christmas in the English Lake District in the company of a young Ibo. He whiled away most of the time reading the English classics and spoke like them. Later, he wrote letters to his host. They were wordily perfect like these novels.

But with Soyinka, or Nkem

Nwankwo with his Danda, words don’t ruin their books. Both The Interpreters and Danda are moving stories of life in Nigerian schools, colleges, universities, villages and even night clubs.

Soyinka writes of five people and their involvement in religion: not a “holy” story, but drama, bawdy humour and love. Danda tells of village life and a young rebel who sets the community by the ears with his escapades. To the student of African life, or of sociology there is much of value in both books—as there is in others by all the Nigerian authors. The reader for pleasure may find an irksome obstacle to easy read ing—the liberal sprinking of native words and phrases through the text with a glossary at the back. Without a constant reference to the glossary, there’s much that escapes the reader —and who wants to read for pleasure and have to use a dictionary?

One thing the Nigerian author makes plain. People are the same all over the world, white or black and in

between.

JC.

(THE INTERPRETERS, by Wole Soyinka.

Fontana. $l.lO. DANDA, by Nkem Nwankwo. Fontana. 95c.)

Anyone for tennis?

Lawn Tennis the Australian Way is an introduction to tennis which might prove useful in getting some Islanders into the South Pacific Games squads. Twenty-two past or present Australian tennis stars, and two tennis writers, each contribute chapters on their specialities. Jack Crawford, for example, who had one of the greatest forehands in tennis, writes on “Attack on the Forehand”; Rod Laver, the world’s greatest left handed player, writes on “The Left handed Nonsense”; and Australia’s newest star, Evonne Goolagong writes on “How to Practice-Properly”. The fundamentals are covered and there are many useful hints, helped by numerous drawings. It’s a pity the many photographs aren’t as useful, but most of them have been dragged in by the short hairs to make the text more decorative. That kind of pictorial approach should be restricted

to the coffee-table books.

ST.

(Lawn Tennis The Australian

WAY, edited by Jack Pollard. Lansdowne Press. $4.95.)