WHY NOT TAKE LIFE CHEERFULLY?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3138, 9 October 1922, Page 2

WHY NOT TAKE LIFE CHEERFULLY?

(By lan Hay.) The way of young people is hard. They know so little, and the conclusions which they draw from what they encounter early in life are out of all proportion to reality. What sort of business, for instance, can the Life of to-day appear to be to young' people who . get their ideas of life —as Youth always does—-from the novels of the moment ? A dreary business, indeed. Fiction has its phases and fashions like everything else. At present we are suffering from a tidal wave of what I wilLventure to call the fiction of disillusion. Disillusion and pessimism are the prerogatives of the very young, and most of the novels of this school are written by very young people—very able, very observant, and acutely sensitive—who have not the patience to wait until they acquire that natural breadth of view and balance of mind which enables them to realise that Life, as a Frenchman once put it, was full of compensations. No, they will have no dealings with evasive optimism of that kind. They ■want the truth; and to them truth and gloom are one and indivisible, while cheerfulness and shallowness are synonymous terms. Their mission in this world is to write of Life as it really is. So they write a book—a "book about a small town, or a small community, or a small household. You know the kind of book I mean. It rubs in the unchanging routine, the dull monotony, the pettiness of human nature, and the general hopelessness of everything. Young people read that book and consider, and say: “Well, now I come to think of. it, this is the sort of life I live. These are the sort of people I associate with. How terrible Life is!” Yes, the young reader is having a hard time to-day. No romantic nonsense or make-believe for him! Even the nursery is not spared. There are people going about now seriously advocating that children’s heads should no longer “be stuffed with fairy tales and make-believe.” Think what this crew of cranks might do, Ave will say, Avith the story of Cinderella. Cinderella, a common, scheming little hus-band-hunter ! The faithful page a sneak and . a pilferer! The prince a self-indulgent egoist, AA'ho Avyuld neglect his vulgar little kitchen-maid of a Avife u month after marriage! In fact, this new school cherishes a sort of hazy theory that a happy book cannot be any good because it is unreal; Avhile a sordid book must be good because it is real—because Life is sordid. Well, there I respectfully beg to differ. Life is Avhat Ave make it, and if the majority of men and Avomeu made life sordid the world could not go on. The world has been going on for a good many centuries now; not by any means perfect or happy centuries; but 1, for one, cannot help feeling that this world would have given up and quit long ago if there had not been more beauty and contentment in Life than this disgruntled school Avould have us believe. Life to-day Is not too easy or cheerful a business for any of us. We get all the reality we Avant without diving into best-seller for it. Then Avhy make Life more difficult by intensifying its least cheerful side? Deep books, serious books, we must read, and do read. But no reader—least of all a young reader—should be called on to absorb serious diet all the time. Let us not forget, especially at the present time, that there is such a thing as the Literature of Recreation. My opinion is that a man Avho could move the Avorld to clean mirth for tive minutes a day just uoav ought to be endowed, subsidised, and handsomely pensioned.