BOOKS OF 1937

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

BOOKS OF 1937

Critics In A Mood For Stocktaking The end of 1937 has produced in English literary critics, as well as publishers and booksellers, a mood for stocktaking. Sir John Squire, in the “Daily Telegraph,” opens by remarking that if he had been writing a similar retrospect 25 years ago his article would probably have been dominated by tlie works of poets, essayists, and literary historians. The art of writing was then cultivated for its own sake, and there was leisurely appreciation of it. Now, in a world on tenterhooks, it is not so; the moon, the stars, fireside meditations, careful workmanship, and Hie music of words are out of fashion. Hence, almost all the good books of the year, and almost all the widely read books, are about facts. They are biographies or autobiographies or records of travel.

Writing in the “Sunday Times,” Mr. Desmond McCarthy is rather pessimistic in his survey of this class of books. Among the biographies he has been reading several had considerable merits, but there was not one born of really intimate union between biographer and subject. Some of them added to our knowledge; some set our previous knowledge at a new angle; some were informative but barely readable; others were extremely readable but ignored many important facts. One and all they could be superseded. Indeed, some were only justified as helping a subsequent writer to supersede them. In fiction also the popular demand seems to have changed. The “Glasgow Herald” observes that it is a seriousminded public for which the novelist writes to-day. In support of this conclusion it publishes the results of an analysis it has been making of a representative selection of the best novels of the year. Here are the percentages: Socio-political novels, 27 : psychological, 25; historical and pseudo-histori-cal, 10; regional, 8; adventure. 14; fantasy and humorous fantasy, 11; light fiction not otherwise classified, 5. A rather different opinion of contemporary fiction is expressed by Sir Hugh Walpole in “John o’ London’s Weekly.” Both in England and in America, he says, the highbrow intellectual’s stream-of-consciousness novel has retreated from its strong position of five years ago. The successful novel to-day is almost exactly what it was forty’years back. Two things may be noticed about it: it is romantic in spirit and it is long. Novels are once again peppered with characters, loose in technique, dashingly romantic in story and altogether unconscious of proper serious behaviour. According to Sir Hugh, the novel of the year is undoubtedly A. J. Cronin’s “The Citadel.” His own personal choice, however, is for Tennyson Jesse's “Act of God,” and, next to this, Christopher Isherwood's “Sally Bowles.” Two members of the ‘‘Manchester Guardian’s” reviewing staff have also been generalising on this subject. Mr, AVilfrid Gibson thinks the fiction of 1937 has been remarkable for its efficiency rather than for any tokens of genius it has revealed. The common level of fiction writing to-day is commendably high, but very little of it leaves any vivid impression. Mr. Gibson adds Huit perhaps the most singular feature of recent literary enterprise has been the number of poets who are trying their hand at fictionwriting. Mr. J. D. Beresford, in his retrospect, can recall no 1937 novel by any well-known author that he feels inclined to mark with Baedeker’s sign of three stars. Mr. Charles Powell, a “Manchestdr Guardian” critic who specialises in dealing with new poetry, finds that the general level of achievement in this field is “depressingly depressed.” The volume that has done most to redeem the year’s yield is by England’s official poet, John Masefield—namely, “The Country Scene.”