CAN A WRITER LIE ?

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

CAN A WRITER LIE ?

I am puzzled by Mr. Kipling's declaration, made a few days ago at an important literary luncheon, that writers cannot lie (writes "Jackdaw" in "John o' Londor-'s Weekly"). What precisely docs this mean? The "Times" reports him as saying:— AVe who nso words enjoy a peculiar advantage over our fellows. AVe cannot tell a lie. However much we may wish.to do so, we only of educated men' andi women cannot tell a lie —in , out working hours. The more subtly we attempt it, the more certainly do we tietray some aspect of truth i concerning the life of our age. It is with us as with timber. Every knot and , shake in a board reveals some disease or injury overtook the log when it was growing. A gentleman of the name of Jean Pigeonwho once built a frame house for me not far from your border put this in a nutshell. Ho said: "E'verythlng which a tree she has experience in the forest she takes with her into the house." That Is the law for all of us, each in his or her onn. land. The illustration is perhaps more impressive than the. statement, though it is Emersonian rather than Kiplingcsque in spirit. It is, of course, more difficult and risky to lie in writing than by word of mouth, though even this may not be always true. A speaker may utter "a frigid and calculated lie" in the House of Commons (such an accusation was once brought by the late Earl of Balfour). He docs not put it into writing, but others do it for him: it goes into "Hansard" and into the newspapers. It mav not Be- a conscious lie at all —that has to be proved—but his inherent ability to lie seems to be neither more nor less than a writer's. What Mr. Kipling probably meant is that it is, in the end, more difficult for a writer to lie successfully than for anyone else. The more permanent his writings, and the more widely distributed, the more liable he is to detection. But he will hardly be convicted as a liar. If he has misstated facts he may have done so inadvertently or negligently, but who is to prove fifty or a hundred years hence that he did it lyingly? If ho has expressed absurd and unjust opinions, who is to charge him with anything worse than ignorance or prejudice? By general consent he may be held to have been wrong (in different degrees of culpability), but to prove that he was mendacious is another matter. It is psychologically impossible for a writer to lie on the large scale which would be , necessary to his purpose. At the most . he can twist the truth, he can hold a hricf and support it unscrupulously, but downright lying would defeat his end j only the more quickly. It is generally conceded that Lord Macaulay's estimate 1 of William Penn was a false one, but who dare suggest that it was a lying one? In the sense which I suppose to be Mr. Kipling's, writers cannot lie. But ] hia way of saying it seems to bo too < epigrammatic. ;