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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37 No. 3. March 20, 1974

Would the reviewer like writers to subordinate literary considerations to political and propagandising ones?

Would the reviewer like writers to subordinate literary considerations to political and propagandising ones?

Dear Sir,

Roger Steele's assessment of Tangi (Salient March 6) says more about the reviewer than the book. It is one of the most arrogant and presumptuous pieces I have read.

So, a Pakeha journalist can say that a Maori author "lacks Maori insight" and knows little "about Maoritanga and the real solution of the Maori people today". (What is this "real solution"? I hope Mr Steele will share it with the rest of the world, particularly his apparently less enlightened Maori countrymen).

What unmitigated rubbish. One of the strengths of Ihimaera's work is that he writes about things he knows. This is what gives it authority. He doesn't pretend a knowledge of generalities like "Maoritanga" (a Pakeha-invented concept aimed at homogenising Maori things). He writes about Rongowhakaatatanga, his own area of experience and competence.

Steele's complaints that the author invites people to "forget politics", and that the work "suits the interests of a small section of society, the middle and upper classes", are equally revealing. Would the reviewer like writers to subordinate literary considerations to political and propagandising ones?

Well, the persecutors of Alexander Solzhenitsyn make the same demands that authors bend reality as they know it to suit the objectives of ideology.

Roger Steele's patronising manner ("I respect and cherish the Tangihanga as an institution") and his unfamiliarity and rejection of Maori idiom ("obsidian splinters at my heart" and so on) are also distasteful. He judges the work not only from a political point of view but also from one of assumed cultural and linguistic superiority.

I had hoped the days of such lofty condescension were over. I am dismayed that they are not.

Michael King,

Wellington Polytechnic.

["Real solution" was actually a typist's error where I had written "real situation" —Ed]