The staying power of

Books

The staying power of a 'literary lion'

Leaves of the Banyan Tree. By Albert Wendt. Published by Longman Paul, Box 4019, Auckland (NZ and Pacific rights). NZ513.95. To be pub lished in A ustralia October 3 by

Penguin Books (rights outside

NZ and the Pacific). $A 17.95.

Isbn 0 7139 1338 X.

Some years ago I interviewed Albert Wendt. He was in New Zealand to publicise the launching of his first novel, Sons For the Return Home. In the article I wrote following our conversation I called him a ‘literary lion’. I was impressed with his presence, his intelligence, his confidence and his lack of cant. He knew he was good. He wasn’t boast ful about it, but he accepted it the way a handsome woman accepts her good looks. More than that, I was impressed with his literary versatility. He wrote short stories that were poignant and evocative. His poetry was direct and lyrical.

And now his first novel, so right in every detail. Not only was it finely written (Wendt like many poets is a precise and often inspired writer of prose), it was technically adroit and

sophisticated.

Albert Wendt told me that he had a passion for movies.

He wrote Sons virtually in the form of a movie script, with short takes and an emphasis on movement both physical and inside the characters. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the book translated so well into a movie.

First novels of excellence are not so rare. What is rare is sec ond, third and fourth novels of excellence. One of the ques tions that Sons raised was whether Albert Wendt could maintain his form. Was Sons good because it opened up a new theme in Pacific writing?

Did its power come from the fact that it was so clearly based on the writer’s experiences?

This is not to suggest that it

was strictly autobiographical.

Nothing annoys writers so much as being accused of

writing an autobiography when

what they write about is clearly rooted in their own experience but transmuted in their imagin ation, given extra dimensions and wider implications. De spite this, there was the feeling that Sons might have been a lit erary fire-cracker, brilliant, sensational perhaps, but incan descent only for a moment.

This was never my feeling.

At the time I could sense that Albert Wendt was a writer who would last the distance. He had dedication, talent, and, luckily for him, a great deal to write about. There is something mir aculous in the fact that Samoa’s first novelist was good. How unfortunate it would have been if someone less expert had opened up the themes that Wendt is now developing.

This has not happened.

Wendt has gone from strength to strength. Leaves of the Ban yan Tree is his third novel. It follows a collection of poetry and Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree, a collection of short

stories. The theme in all these works is Samoa itself that proud, insulated, vigorous,

intelligent, tough group of

people and their hard land: how they are coping with change, change from the out side world and change that is penetrating the very fabric of

their society.

This is a large theme, am

bitious perhaps. It is the basis of Leaves of the Banyan Tree.

For my part, I believe that Wendt has succeeded totally. I remember him telling me that he did his writing often in bed, with his children scrambling over him. He also said that it was sometimes difficult to con centrate on his writing when he had so many other tasks con fronting him. He is, after all, not a pale proseur. He is a man of action, a distinguished teacher and administrator, an inspiration to writers all over the Pacific to put pen to paper.

Given all this, his achievement with Leaves is staggering.

The book succeeds on a number of levels. Asa narra tive describing the rise of

Tauilopepe, a capitalist entre

preneur, it is entirely gripping.

I had the experience that Dickens, Somerset Maugham and other masters of plot pro vide when I felt I had to keep on reading once I had started.

I wanted to read the book in one gulp yet resented the fact that the faster I read, the more quickly I was coming to the end.

But the novel is more than

just a good read (although to

achieve that is worthy of praise in these days of plotless novels that are often nothing more than jumbles of words). Wendt explores his larger theme with cunning and wisdom. The vil lage of Sapepe, where most of the action takes place, becomes a metaphor for Samoa itself, Old is confronted with new; good with bad. The villagers are forced to make choices.

Success breeds failure. Is the so-called progress any progress at all?

Tauilopepe, the upwardly

mobile central character, early on in the novel ponders this di lemma: ‘He found he had grown afraid to change what was: change might prove disas trous for him and the wife and children he loved; it was safer to remain part of the ritual, part of tradition, like everyone else.’ The banyan tree, which

was centuries old, represented this tradition.

But when Tauilopepe de cided to strike out against the old ways, he planted a vast plantation and called it Leaves of the Banyan Tree.

No matter how much life changed, somehow the old Samoa would survive, just like the banyan tree with ‘its ten tacles rooted firmly into the earth, and casting an eerie trembling shadow which seemed to frighten the sur rounding bush and the valley

itself.

Spiro Zavos.