MR. HUXLEY'S SUPERIOR CLEVERNESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 17 October 1925, Page 22

MR. HUXLEY'S SUPERIOR CLEVERNESS.

The industry of some of these post-1 war young men is remarkable. Here is Mr. Aldous Huxley issuing his tenth book at the age of 31 years. A new book by Mr. Huxley is something of an event. Not to have read him is not to be in the fashion of modernity. He is so clever, so daring, so unenthusiastic in the post-war way, which is only the pre-war way with a difference. "Along the Road" is a volume of "notes and essays of a tourist," made in Italy, mainly. He discusses travelling, books, pictures, people and landscapes, wittily and in a style of rare excellence, and ; with erudition that does his years credit. On travel and tourists he is amusing.! The people who travel because it is the thing, call forth some of the best things in the book. Some people travel on business, some in search of health.' But It Is neither the sickly nor the men of affairs who nil Grand Hotels nnd the pockets of their proprietors. It 18 those who travel "for pleasure," as the phrase goes. What Epicurus, who never travelled except when he was banished, sought In his own garden, our tourists seek abroad. And do they find their happiness? Those who frequent the-places where they resort must often find this question, with a tentative answer ln the negative, fairly forced upon them. For tourists are, ln the main, a very gloomy-looking tribe. I have seen brighter faces at a funeral than ln the Plazzo of St. Mark s. Only when they can band together and pretend, for a brief, precarious hour, that they are at home, do the majority of tourists look really happy. One wonders why they come abroad. There is a sharply etched description ' of three young American girls sitting in a Montmartre cafe, stifling their boredom until daylight. On a table in front of them stood three bottles of champagne, but they sipped lemonade •"What stories, I reflected, they would | tell when they got home again! And how envious they would make their untravelling friends. 'Paris is just won- I derful.'" J Mr. Huxley is always very readable, even when you disagree with him violently. Ho thinks, and he can write. He j reminds us, however, of the comment on | Goethe's last words, "More light," that j " More warmth," might have been | better. His cleverness would be better ! for more enthusiasm. He is the "high-1 brow" calculated to make the Philistine blaspheme. He discusses why people j who have good taste in fiction go to bad plays, but what he means by bad plays are plays that he thinks bad. For "His House in Order," for example, he has nothing but contempt. Why do people go to such things when they might be sitting by their firesides reading Wells or Conrad, or D. H. Lawrence, or Dostoievsky? It is the acting, he says, that draws them, "the personal touch, the palpitating human note." There is truth in his explanation, but if Mr. Huxley were a little more human he would know more about play-going. Chatto and Windus publish this book in the attractive form with which their name Is associated, J<

■Mr. Robert Nichols, an English poet and dramatist, has been investigating I the cinema industry at Hollywood for ! the "Times." Here is a piquant passage: "There is, for instance, the legend of the producer who complimented Australians on speaking English, of the studio manager who thought 'Madame Bovary* a story in the 'Saturday Even--1 ing Post,' of the producer who tele- | graphed to Dickens for the rights of the 'Christmas Carol,' of the director i who asked the age of Shakespeare, of I the camera-man who, having met ! Thomas Hardy, expressed the opinion that he was 'a poor fish,' and, most ! calamitous of all, of the studio man- ' ager who had never heard of Cinderella.' , Mr. Nichols quotes an employee as saying of the "office": "They're so dumb in there that they think Darwin is the author of 'Tarzan'." A scenario editor at Hollywood, says Mr. Nichols, expressed himself on the ■ necessary happy ending. "You gotta leave 'em happy. The boy's gotta get the girl and the dough. Lot's o' dough. Leave 'em all dolled up, driving off in a big car." A wise American woman said to Mr. Nichols: "We don't want to grow up. We want to be let play a little longer." The "Round Table" has seldom had ■to deal with so many critical problems in a single issue as in the September number just to hand. The first article is on the "Security Pact." "The Gold Standard" follows up a previous article which attracted a good deal of attention in the March issue. The third article deals with a great world problem, "iQhina," and the prospects of British trade are as much bound up ■ with it as with the adoption of a sound monetary policy. The fourth article, "British Industry and the Future," cornea at an opportune moment. The questions of world competition and unemployment are considered, special attention being given to the coal crisis. If our difficulties 'at times seem insuperable, it is, as the ' writer points out, a useful exercise to turn to the history of the years immediately after Waterloo. But we have more than the past to guide us. A most illuminating account is given in the article of methods which are being tried in America with a view to the reduction of costs and the elimination of friction between employers and employed, experiments which will, no doubt, be taken into account by the Commission which is to inquire into the coal industry. The next article is on the crisis in "Morocco." "Religion and Science in Tennessee" is dealt with by an American writer. In "The Irish Scene, 1925," an Irishman who lives ,in the South-West, the most restless 'corner of Ireland, takes etock of the present situation and freely expresses his views on men and things. English i readers will be interested in the ac- ! count he gives of the Shannon power ' scheme, work on which has just begun with the object of making Ireland as independent as possible of the coal she has hitherto had to import from Great ! Britain. "The Muddle of the Mines," , gives a judicial account of the British coal crisis. The usual articles from the Dominions follow.