If one speaks of art in reference to contemporary New Zealand fiction, that is largely due to the achievement of Frank Sargeson. More than two decades have now passed since there appeared in [the periodical] Tomorrow a series of sketches later collected in Conversation with my Uncle (1936). The contents of that small pamphlet bore the clear imprint of their time and first place of publication: superficially they were 'radical' in their purport, attacking or questioning the assumptions of bourgeois society. But where Tomorrow's contributors usually made a frontal assault on war or capitalist economics or middle-class morality, Sargeson approached them by a method of indirection. An issue was reduced to the simplest terms and set forth in a kind of dramatic monologue; in the title sketch, for instance, monopoly capitalism was presented through the homely image of bananas at a picnic. Besides the moral and political fables, there...