READING FOR PLEASURE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27443, 1 September 1954, Page 8

READING FOR PLEASURE

ADDRESS BY CHURCH YOUTH DIRECTOR

“COMICS NOT CONSIDERED DANGEROUS”

In the opinion of the Rev. M. Hendrie, youth director of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, comics are not “dangerous literature.” Mr Hendrie expressed this opinion when he addressed a ,group of young men and women taking part in a “home and society” lecture course organised by the Christchurch Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations yesterday. Mr Hendrie said he himself had a small son who read comics. They probably did not do him any good at all, but he did not consider their influence dangerous. “There has always been throughout human history the desire to escape from the real world to an imaginary world,” he said. “Shakespeare did it, and other great writers have done it. There is nothing wrong with that.” An essay by G. K. Chesterton, “A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls,” was mentioned by Mr Hendrie. “If you want to get a line on comics, read that,” he said. “Chesterton puts the whole thing in its right perspective. “But for heaven’s sake don’t let us sink to the depths the Americans have done, where 50 of the 60 pages in Sunday papers comprise the ‘funnies,’” he! said. “When we have got to that stage, then we have got to be worried. At the moment, I am not going to launch a violent attack on comics.” Attractions of Books

Taking as his subject “Reading for Pleasure,” Mr Hendrie said that there were some persons who thought that books were for those of high intellectual attainment and for “swots.” “They could not be more wrong,” he said.

He himself did not claim to be an intellectual, he said. Indeed, at school the only remark reported about him was that “Walter tries hard.” But he still loved books. Films had done a lot to widen the interest in books. Formerly pebple read a book, then went to see it on the screen. “Nowadays we go the other way around—we go to the picture, then go back and read the book,” he said. “But remember the book comes first. And it is very often better than the film.” The reading of a new book enriched a person’s experience, Mr Hendrie said. “The dullest people in life are those who have never read a thing,” he said. “They are dull because they have not expanded themselves, and have not developed the bodies that God gave them. “You do not choose books because it is the ‘done thing.’ You do not choose them for fine conversation, or because you are intellectual. You choose them for enjoyment and to expand yourself,” said Mr Hendrie.