TOO MANY AUTHORS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 34, 9 February 1935, Page 24

TOO MANY AUTHORS

SOME MUST GO

How often we are'discouraged by the reviewer's "This is a book that everyone must read," or "Nobody with the slightest interest in the subject .will neglect to read this book"! For we have not the least intention of reading it, and we may suspect that the reviewer does not expect us to do so (writes Alan Monkhouso,'in the "Manchester Guardian.") Doubtless we are all very neglectful, and every one of us has-pricks of conscience about particular neglects. Of course, it is undesirable that we should all read the same things—let us-stick to that—and there are some few books that must be read. Let us at least go as far as the Bible and Shakespeare; but I. suppose Montague would at once have added Dickens; I suspect that Mr. Wells would miss out Shakespeare, who never invented any gadgets. So where are we? Even the Bible is not safe, though the civilised sceptic would be kind to it. You are a marked man if you haven't read "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "Don Quixote" and "Tristram Shandy," and yet a considerable culture might be attained without these. It may be a question whether the list of musts should bo shortened or increased.

The ardent and advanced young per son may say that the mistake is to bother too much about what have been accepted as classics. Tho classic has two functions: one is to give perpetual wisdom or pleasure in itself, the other tb inform and qualify the work that succeeds it. We may not have read the old books, but they come to us in a thousand forms; their spirit has become part of humanity. If I have not read Plato and Homer, I do not altogether escape them. And that advanced young person might say that the books which must be read are the pioneering ones, those that are giving new forms and new ideas.

It is not always easy to find out which these are. The modern young man or woman may with some Jpoirit mention such names as Proust and Joyce and Aldous Huxley; yet even the impassive veteran may be touched with melancholy to hear that these may sometimes, or some, time, be put among the outmoded. Doubtless a nice mixture of reading is best.

I Is there any English novelist that the advanced young person thinks it is really necessary to read? I should doubt it, or at least doubt, whether any considerable body would concentrate on one. Students read . Elchardson and Fielding and Smollett, and I suppose they must read some Scott, though I think he depends a good deal on loyalties. Two novelists'perpetually in favour are. Dickens and Jane Austen, though perhaps-they do not appeal to the same kind of people. Plays and books are written about the Brontes, but young people do not get excited over them, as we did. lam afraid that George Eliot is sometimes regarded as stuffy, and that few. would hold to her in, preference to Miss Austen; yet how do they stand in the eye of God? Thackeray is hardly in the news, and it is too soon to talk of Meredith, who should be discovered ' again presently. America seems to have forgotten Henry James, arid fashion there seems to be to ■writeabout Bret Harte characters in a very:- different . spirit from his. Hardy, and' Conrad are not above sus: picion. Who is safe? Which can we spare? Who is to die out? The second-raters should go first, but which are they? You might say that Conrad is first rate and that Stevenson is not. He is.not.a first-rate nov : ' elist,. but I should say/ho is a first-rate story-teller, "so. Sve," inightr call- him secondary rather.'than second rate: He_ is great fun, and it would be a stupidity to let him go. There are many admirable and individual writers not proved to bo first rato that wo do not want to lose, but they have yet' to convince the world.that, they are essential. Shall we have" to fiiid Voom for such writers as E. -M. ITorstf:'.-, Virginia 'Woblf, Willa Gather? Mr. Wells has^already achieved a kind of multiform immortality. Will GeQrge Gissing persist —or Stephen Crane? Almost weekly a book arrives that somebody thinks a masterpiece. What is to be done about it? Who's to go? Of course, there can be no formal decision, but it is possible to make a mistake slowly. Anyhow/there will be a «ppy in the British Museum of every book. 'Students in the twenty-second century or so mil have fine opportunities to discover submerged talents.