A NOVELIST ON NOVELS.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19723, 13 September 1929, Page 11

A NOVELIST ON NOVELS.

YESTERDAY, TODAY, TO-MORROW. HUGH WALPOLE TO TEACHBR9(raoit otm ow» coßßasrosnawf.) LONDON, August 9. Mr Hugh Walpole was one of the lecturers at the City of London Vacation Course in Education. He referred to himself as one of a school of fietionists now regarded as old-fashioned. "In another twenty years you are going to see in England, and probably elsewhere, a new type of novel, and a new band of creators, of a power and a force we have not had, possibly, for the last fifty or sixty years," he said. Mr Walpole described the ▼arieua problems that beset the storyteller, pat* ticularly at the present day, whea matters of the most eomplex character ana bewildering variety forced themselves daily upon public attention, f haekeray, he said, went into his library and had no absorbing thoughts of what was going on in China or Cseeho-Slovakia, Then he went to the Garrick Clnb and wrapped himself up in contemplation of the group of characters that were occupying him at the moment. To-day, on the other hand, we want to know why we are here, wherei*» are going, and what is to be done with all the discoveries and problems in front of us. To take a typical novel of to-day. Mr Aldous Huxley's "Point and Counterpoint," Mr Walpole said was a brilliant and entertaining book, excellent to read, and revealing all sorts of things. But, although it showed every facet* of the author's mind, one felt at the end as if one had been watching a number of melaneboly fish swimming about in a dark aquarium and all dead and abandoned, except Mr Huxley himself. (Laughter.) Opposite Worlds. What they might expect for the future was the artist who WM receiving the ideas of a new world, but was also combining them with a creative aest of his own. If they felt, aa ha did, that the novel was still capable of containing all beauty, drama, and pathos, and if they as readers were tking part in the creating of it, then they eonld be a force in combining both of those opposite worlds, the past and the future. But there was danger in the process if they let the past go altogether, or if they considered the present too immoral, too drastic, too ugly to give it the creative life that it needed. Otherwise they might look on the present as a preparation for the grandest time the world had yet. seen. (Loud cheers.) Lord Gorell, viee-principal oi' the course, said it was rare for anyone to excel in self-expression either rhetorically or on paper. But Mr Walpole showed that he could do both, and if he had ehosen to devote himself to public affairs the politicians would have had to look oat for themselves. (Laughter and cheers.)