WHAT THEY READ.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHAT THEY READ.

CHARACTER AND BOOKS.

THE WAT OF ESCAPE.

(By REMA STANHOPE.)

Last year I spent my Christmas with a household of long-neglected relations. I had made arrangements to go camping, but they fell through; I could not -face the prospect of spending those supreme days in a boardinghouse; so I wrote to Joe to ask him what he was doing. He replied that he was going to Aunt Kath's, that they were a very jolly crowd, and would give me a hearty welcome if I cared to come too. There followed a rough but attractive enough description of the various members of the family. In the end I accepted. Joe got on the train some distance down the line. "It's great to see you," he said. "It's years since we had a Christmas together." "Yes," I agreed, with wistful memories of the old times when uncles, aunts, and cousins all gathered round our family table. "I've become a truant to the old crowd. But I confess I'm a little (ervous about these, not having met any of them." "You'll be all right," he assured me. "They're the most homely, good-hearfed people under the sun. Only take care of your first impressions. . . Presents all round ?" "Yes." "That's good—they're sticklers for the old-fashioned Christmas ideas. What have you got?" v "Books. I got them in a lump at the shop; it sounds lazy, but it saves a lot of bother, and I suppose they'll suit country folks." "I should- say so—they're reading mad. What sort?" "All sorts, according to their different characters." Books for Grandma. Joe's faintly patronising smile turned to a broad grin. "Amplify that statement," he suggested. "For example, grandma?" "Old ladies are easy enough to suit," I returned confidently. "A new Ethel M. Dell—" He laughed. "You'll get shot if you offer her that, my dear. If you'd bought a detective yarn with plenty of gore, a Connington, or an Agatha Christie, or something in the Sydney Horler or Sax Kohmer or 'Dracula' line, it might have been all right. But Ethel M. Dell. You'll be doomed for ever in her sight." "But why—you told me she was the dear, sweet lady they make jokes about in 'Punch.'" "Yes, in real life. How long have you been in the book shop?" • "Only two months," I admitted, " astonished at this sudden turn in the conversation. "When .you've been there six months you'll know why: Has it never occurred to you that, people make up in 'the books .they read for the things they lack in their lives? Grandma, for example, has had the simplest, sweetest, most sheltered of careers; she,has.never, been* seriously in danger or paralysed by horror; so she makes up for it by reading all the wildest crime novels 6he can lay hands on. I suppose this love of shudders is a survival of our savage days, when life wasn't . life unless steeped in fear; and the more you repress an instinct the more inevitably must it break out somewhere else. Grandma's life is the very antithesis of the books she reads. Get. me?" "This is all new to. me. Do go on." "Well, let's consider your Ethel M. Dell book. You might safely try it on Norma, I think. She's big and jolly and sporty, and everyone likes her immensely without ever thinking about it, and all ihe boys consider her a good pal to such an extent that it never occurs to them to make love to her., Not- that she craves romance; . she gets along fairly well without it, because she has all she wants in those tuppenny novelettes—the things with front-page pictures of the handsome hero clutching the fair damsel to his heart, blissfully unconscious of the venomous glances from the dart:, beautiful villainess concealed behind the curtain. Yes, I think you could offer her the Ethel M. Dell, if you have another that would suit gr» idma." "There's one by new man named Holt." > "H'm, don't know him. Plenty of horrors ?" "I think so." "It ought to do. Whose was that to be?" "Clarence's." Vicarious Pleasure. "Oh, yes, Clarrie. It would do him, too. Funny how grandma and Clarrie like the same literature, isn't it? Now, he reads just what you would expect; strong, dashing youth who might h.ive been a cowboy or a detective himself if he'd had the chance. And yet it's Vie same old story. He reads about wh it lie might have been, not about what he; is. You know how popular are all thoca books about millionaires and dukes- aiid princesses and palaces and Rolls Roy.~es and niaids that say 'Yes, ma'am' like a talking doll? We revel in their luxury because it doesn't come into our lives, and it never will. We read period novels like Barrington and Heyer because our time seems so dull and prosaic, and theirs so full of glamour. The, present rush on war books is partly due to our continual fever of unrest, to balance which we like to read of men occupied, not with thought,- but with action. When you hear people deplore the lack of interest in colonial literature, does it occur to you that it is due to our close acquaintance-with the originals? 1% a country like England there's rooiii for all sorts, but here, where we can't ger. away from the cow, no matter where we turn, no one wants to hear about, the cow. Of course, we have other material, such as the pioneers aud Maori legend, there's scope for that, and our young writers are waking up to it; but most of what is typical is common, and it takes a first-rate artist to make a man see the romance in his everyday life."' "But it doesn't, always seem' to follnw. I know, lots of people " "Of course you do. But consider first whether they always stick to the same type; if so, be sure it fills a gap somewhere. If they like all sorts, they read either purely for the sake of diversi >n, without absorbing anything, or because their lives are sufficient unto themselves, or to satisfy an intellectual appetite; these last are the 'good' readers. No good reader restricts himself to one type, though he will have his preferences, according to his ideas and his temperament. . But don't take too m-ioh notice of what I say. They're only mv theories. Just watch your job and see ,if I'm right." J '