BOOKS THAT ENDURE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 17

BOOKS THAT ENDURE

"Tho future of the novel'depends on whether or not accident is going to throw up novelists endowed with one or, other, or preferably both, of two qualities neither of which can be defined. These qualities are stature and charm," said Mr. John Galswortny, in a recent address. "It is because of charm and stature, one or both, that we turn to books a second- and third time. And only those books to which we can turn again have any chance of living on. During the thirty odd years since I began to write I have known dozens of books talked of as if they were going to be tho last word in permanence, but now as dead as if they had never been. Tho unseen motion of Timo's fan drifts to tho winds all that has not the magic stuff 'life' in it. An ironical recorder, keeping entry of tongue and pen-made reputations and their duration, would have indeed a curious notion of our critical taste. And I will say to myself and all those others who blow the bubble of reputation ffom mouth to month: Back, your taste, by all means, but remember that, by all the evidence of history, it is probabljr bad!.'*