Conversation in a train and other critical writing

the long version

"Frank Sargeson wrote fiction over almost half a century. During most of this time he also wrote occasional criticism. In form this varied from book reviews to imaginary dialogues, addresses at meetings or on the radio, opinions expressed in interviews. In subject matter he ranged widely, from appraisals of individual writers to mote general issues of literary form and content and the social milieu from which they arose. The relevance to his own fiction is usually apparent. Wriers considered include D.H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Lawson, Rolf Boldrewood and Olive Schreiner, besides fellow New Zealanders as Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, Dan Davin, James Courage, Bill Pearson, Ronald Hugh Morrieson. He was particularly concerned with the societies which rew on the nineteenth-century European colonial frontiers, and with the writers they produced. All his opinions bear the unmistakeable mark of his own cast of mind. ..."--Book jacket.