ABOUT TRASH.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 133, 8 June 1925, Page 3

ABOUT TRASH.

WHAT SCHOOLBOYS READ,

IMPOSSIBLE ENDLESS TALES.

THE -SMART" FLAPPER'S FARE.

(By PETROL.)

II is no new cry that it is dangerous to allow young people the facilities for reading trashy literature. Kver since tlie means of cheap printing became known there lune been journals that pandered to depraved or misguided tastes, there has always been a supply of what was not healthy, nml. since that supply continued, the demand must have been on a scale that made publication profitable. Any school lioy will tell you that there is available for his consumption a mass of cheap published matter that is written s,,lclv for tlie entertainment of the juvenile mind. In this flood of printed matter that flows frnni the great publishing houses overseas there is much that is merely humorous. innocent of evil suggestion or taint of any kind, the stories dealing chiefly with "schoolboy characters, who have thrilling adventures among themselves. A favourite form of rending among intelligent schoolboys is that offered by certain syndicates, who publish a booklet each week, in which the same characters live and move from year to year. never growing any bigger or any older, always living in the same studies, always silting in the same class, under the same poor old musters, who never die. and whose habits neve- change. This is great still!'. The other day the writer happened to pick up one of these novelettes from a bookseller's counter, anil lie wns surprised to find that the self-same ' school heroes, whose exploits delighted , him us a boy, nearly twenty years ago. _ were still living vigorously in the pages , of the publications. There was the j ridiculous fop. with bis classic pnso and ( monocle, the rotund glutton, who , devoured jam tarts by the dozen — in , each and every weekly story —the same _ sly. deceitful bounder, the same big bully anil, of course, tlie same coteries of always honourable, upright ami manly boys, win, excelled nt games. played outrageous pranks, thrashed the bully. slink together like glue, were sometimes victimised by the big bounder and his following of lit Lie bounces, always ' emerging triumphant in the cm], how-1 ever, and who showed conclusively, before Hie last page was turned, that every , week, in every way. it is better to be a good hoy than a bad one. The World of Crooks. Apart from the fact that it is an litter waste of time t„ read such slur! consistently, there is little that can be said against this class of "literary" entertainment. Boys who indulge in it—especially the sons of working people—get a false idea of the lives and outlook of the sons of Kngtish gentry, but they probably grow out of that. There is quite another type of booklet, however, and this too is published weekly. Much more sinister stuff is this, witli its talcs of criminals, gangs, secret societies and crime. Written by men who work for syndicates that wholesale these talcs in hundreds of thousands, distributing them to the ends of tlie earth, all these impossible publications have the same general charucterestics. There must be murder, and suicide, robbery under arms, houses of mystery, kidnapped girls, crooks who never reform and are never caught, crooks -who go on being crooked until they are caught, stupid policemen who never score, cunning men who control "tlie underworld"—whatever that is: — and. of course, great detectives, who never by any chance sleep or rest, but who rush from clue to clue, from story to story, ever on the move, tracking down the Master Mind of the I'nderworld with that lolentlcssness known only to the readers of this particular brand of literature. One feels sorry for the great detective, lie must always be Blake, Burke, Brent or some such 11:11110, and he must always capture the entire gang—except the Master Mind of the t'ndenvorld and his two lieutenants (sometimes twin brothers), who must be saved to get more crooks together, ready for next week. All this cut-throat, secret-spring-door junk is likely to give the young reader an utterly false conception of life, and to turn his mind in the direction of crime and violence, with tlie "Master Mind of the Underworld as bis ideal. Low Life in Print. Again, there is another type of cheap journal that has different objects. It supplies the demand for talcs of lowlife—no other term can be used. These publications are seldom bought by the I people who know all about the gentlemen described above. They are snapped up by a class of reader that cares nothing for master minds and Jexted Blakes. Xo, what they desire is a hideously caricatured reflection of life, I ' in which base men, who smoke more cigarettes in a day than the schoolboy [ (hero consumes meat pies, track down I , beautiful girls, innocent girls, -who are struggling tor a living. This sort of .tiling goes on for whole chapters. The ! base men arc always polished, immacujlate. and they keep tracking for about ■ eight chapters, while the struggles of tbe beautiful inline,mt girls become weaker. Chapter nine finds the l.piiutiIful innocent girl in a compromising situation, with the linsc man master. Sndjdenlv tiie hero appears as hy magic, the base man is sloshed on the jaw. and all ' ends happily. "Spicy" Yarns Popular. i Still, this is very old-fashioned Fluff. Modern girls win. arc really '-smart.'' '■educated" and "not stodgy." don't waste time with it. They like snappy stories al,mil house parlies, adventures on trains, love affairs of ultra-modern American lluppers who know how t„ deal with ihe lillra-liioiliTii youth when he ■attempts to spoil the fun I.v suggesting .something thai the tolerably clever writer manages lo express in so many , sentences if not in actual words. All sorts of people read these stories. They 'leave a nasty taste in tlie mouth if one j is accustomed lo decent reading, but to I the tlapper mind, doubtless, tiiey are very fascinating, and to the mind of the ' girl-struck youth not long away from school, they arc "great dupe" and "hut 1 stuff, my word!" Sum,, of these tales .present vice as virtue, ami virtue vice ; Silly girls who decide t., give up bei«----•good. :>.< a profitless, ideal, and win, try ; being naughty, are shown as clever, fascinating creatures, who have the best of it nil the time while tales ~,' couples who sin arc si. c mon as t,, have lost 'their "pep" for the average reader of this literary brummagem Kroni cover to envoi- siu-li publications nre filled with .stories letters and doggerel, not only suggestive, bin unashamedly imiimrai. i ' One can go ami buy llicni at almost any booksellers They an- read, sometimes

openly, more often surreptitiously, by thousands of young people, and the effects of a protracted and regular course of indulgence in such unhealthy stud' can only result in a weakening of the moral sensibilities as to what is right nnd what, is wronp; The pity of it is that s„ much really good literature goes unread.