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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Incense to Idols

Incense to Idols

Sir: The most competent reviewer can make a slip sometimes. In a laudatory review it seems to matter less – we can put it down to disordered generosity. But Mr Hall’s review of Incense to Idols by Sylvia Ashton-Warner is neither laudatory nor generous. Permit me then to tabulate his errors.

  • (1) Germaine de Beauvais, the chief character, is neither a nymphomaniac nor a dipsomaniac. If it is nymphomania to have liaisons with five men, or dipsomania to like to drink wine, then Mr Hall is correct and the streets are lined with maniacs. The term for which Mr Hall gropes is probably ‘hysterical psychopath’ – Germaine certainly is prone to hysteria and seems to have at least a very lazy conscience – though the term is clinical, and no more sums up Germaine than it would you or me or Mr Hall.
  • (2) If the disorder is hysteria, nothing could be more likely than a suicide at the dramatic moment in the dramatic place. The main point is, surely, that the suicide coincides with conversions: symbolically, the old Eve must die for the new woman to emerge.
  • (3) If the disorder is hysteria, the attraction of the minister is equally likely. Such women often pursue priests and parsons, impelled by an erotic wish and a desire for spiritual healing.
  • (4) The fact that Incense to Idols has been well reviewed in Time is neither here nor there. I suspect (perhaps unfairly) that Mr Hall has allowed himself to be influenced adversely by overseas praise of the book. A notable example of the same error occurred recently in a review in Comment of Maurice Shadbolt’s The New Zealanders.

It is a measure of Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s success that a reader’s sympathy (Mr Hall’s or my own) can be fully engaged by a character whose emotions are deranged. I hope my remarks will lead your readers to question Mr Hall’s assessment of the book.

1961 (230)