"meaninglessness" while extolling Curnow and Smithyman! He is really a bit old fashioned and too restrained, although I enjoyed his book "I was Judas" and some of his poems (ones about Curnow and Frame are good for example), and some of the strange anecdotes he tells (sometimes factual) are like great short stories...well they are. He was always passionate about protesting injustice (he was on the field at Hamilton in 1981) but why the assault on The Bone People? The Bone People is a great novel (so for me I prefer it to anything by Frame (altho it's some time since I read her), Sargeson or Mansfield and I like those writers very much) as are the novels of Lawrence. Lawrence (like Hulme) deals with the truth, with death and life and love. Joyce does also but prettys it all up with his clevernesses* (Lawrence also knew several languages and was well read - but he was working class which was always a problem for many cirtics - but to his credit Leavis saw (rightly) that he was a genius.) I like Lawrence's "We have a responsibility to live." from a man who died far too young of tuberculosis. Aneirin would understand that: he is Lawrenceian *Of course HIS genius was really is Dickensian or Swiftean satiric power, and language innovation. In fact (say) in parts of Ulysses and his Wake both writers have meeting points I feel. But Stead is wrong to critique The Bone People. He sees some