After the Fireworks: A life of David Ballantyne
Bryan Reid. Auckland University Press, 2004. isbn 1 869 40327 4, rrp $49.95
Bryan Reid mounts a case for the re-evaluation of David Ballantyne’s contribution to the literature of New Zealand. Ballantyne is best remembered for his first novel The Cunninghams, a grim and undoubtedly Marxist view of the experiences of NZ’s battler class.
The biography tracks the slow burn of Ballantyne’s literary career—contrasted with his journalistic success—which failed to grant him entry to the pantheon of NZ fiction. Reid, a lifelong friend and fan, reveals the author as a complex man whose battles with self-doubt and alcoholism were commensurate with the state of his flagging literary career.
As a teenager unsatisfied with the state of writing in NZ, Ballantyne looked to the US for stylistic inspiration and found it in the proletarian writing of James T. Farrell. The two men corresponded, were committed socialists and shared a strong dislike for their inherited Catholicism.
Reid’s genuine affection for his subject is immediately perceptible; his personal anecdotes bring a degree of warmth to an otherwise unsentimental, crisp and journalistic text. Though he employs the slightly frustrating indulgence of referring to himself in third person, his work is solidly researched and draws on reviews, literary criticism and an impressive list of sources.
After the Fireworks is a sympathetic testament to a talented but somewhat tragic New Zealander.
Luke O’Callaghan
When faiths collide
Martin E. Marty. Blackwell, 2005. isbn 1 405 11223 9, rrp $57.95
When people speak of strangers, they often resort to slogans. ‘Only marry your own’, the ‘White Australia Policy’. It is also common to compare the most prejudicial account of strangers’ habits with an idealised version of your own. So, after September 11, helpful books on Islam came on to the market, giving implacably negative answers to such questions as: ‘Does Islam respect human rights and women?’ ‘Does the West really have nothing to fear from Islam?’
Martin Marty, a veteran Protestant historian who records this kind of material, also offers the fruit of many years’ teaching and reflection on religious pluralism. His writing is well-argued and clear. Throughout the book, he insists on the importance of complexity. Simple slogans do not do justice to religious difference. Furthermore, they lead to murderous actions by individuals and nations. Marty bases his reflection on the concept of the stranger, and the variety of ways in which they are