Roderick Finlayson (1904–1992), storyteller and prophet, was one of the pioneering New Zealand writers who emerged in the 1930s. Vincent O’Sullivan once described him as ‘our first writer to move with any ease or authenticity among the most vital traditions this country has’. Brown Man’s Burden, his first and best-known collection of short stories, was published in 1938. His friend, the Australian poet Bruce Beaver, called him a ‘maker of stories about men and women in unremarkable, comical, tragical situations’ who ‘once lived with the Maori people as an adopted son and now chronicles the comedie humaine and that of the Pakeha, nervous usurper.’ His story-telling was direct and unsentimental in its sympathy for the inarticulate, the foolish, the poor and the dispossessed. Years ahead of its time, his prophetic voice was raised on behalf of the environment and race relations in a stream of polemical essays, articles and letters.
This long overdue biography of Roderick Finlayson draws from his unpublished memoir, ‘Scenes from a Writer’s Several Lives’, and from his correspondence with his friends D’Arcy Cresswell, Frank Sargeson, Bruce Beaver, James K. Baxter, O. E. Middleton, and the Greek artist Lydia Sarri.
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A Man from Another World
This is an enthralling book, which shows the early twentieth century foundations of NZ literature as well as the gradually maturing storytelling art of Finlayson. The relationships with Sargeson and Cresswell are superbly disclosed and documented. It was great to discover that while Cresswell's own poetry was not particularly distinguished he was a discerning evaluator of Finlayson's gifts and deficiencies. A great read. I couldn't put it down.
