A Note On Sargeson's ‘The Hole That Jack Dug’

Authors

  • Harry Ricketts

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26686/knznq.v2i2.611

Abstract

Why did Sargeson make Jack Parker’s wife an avid reader of Hugh Walpole?

At first glance, the reason seems obvious enough. Walpole, the highly popular, sentimental middle-brow novelist of English middle-classdom, is just the sort of writer snobbish, pretentious English-born Mrs Parker would read. Simply another small, but carefully selected, detail in Sargeson’s rather bitchy presentation. After all, he could have allowed her to be a reader of E M Forsteror Virginia Woolf; but that would have given her real pretensions to taste, sending the wrong message to the few readers who would have got the point of the literary reference.

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Author Biography

Harry Ricketts

Kōtare cover image for v. 2. n. 2.

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Published

1999-06-06

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (1999): Kōtare : New Zealand Notes & Queries

Section

Articles

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