BOYS WILL READ

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 65, 16 March 1940, Page 21

BOYS WILL READ

WHAT \VILL THEY

READ?

EXAMPLES AND RECIPES

(Written for "The Post" by

F. L. Combs.)

:itt "days gone by boys mastered the disgustingly pedantic part of reading fsbiWewhere about the age of twelve. ■It was then that they suddenly dis- : covered that what they had regarded ■as: a loathsome scholastic task was tworth while for itself. How was the made? Often, as Norman 'Lindsay tells us in "Saturdee," a diselder brother or a groom woiild ihave a collection of penny dreadfuls. Andy-deem liis junior faut de mieux a audience for-a retelling of the he-man sagas of Frank Reed, Buffalo : Bill, and the Ghoul Detective ■dt Galveston. If notj there was always 3a low-lyingj unseen, undrained stratum {;iDif v ;boy life through which this type of 'literature percolated, rarely, and then catastrbphically, Seeping up where it ; would; encounter adult scrutiny. ■; '■■ JThere ; were also boys' books of "proven, worth, works in which violent action was mixed with a modicum of historic fact or; human probability. G. .A;;Henty, .until he got into the hands 6^ ■ agjsroving parents, wrote quite a 'few.'i;; After that-he tended to bear idown'on ■boyhood -with overdoses of useful-informations.Ballantyne, IsuggestiVwas, 'perhaps^ .from the not easily -recphCileci;;standpbihts of boyhood and ■fattierlibod/the best boy author.;^ Reread him now and you will be1 sufpiajsed at the amount of veracity and convincing local colour he succeeds .in-imparting to.his quite exciting narratives:- His Indians, for instance, with their casual brutality, colossal gluttony, and indifference to soap, are a, good; x antidote to "The Last of the Mohicans.":"■ Mark Twain, of course, was unbeatable with Tom Sawyer, How amazed, the lads of the 1890s were to, discover such a book on the approved jlist. The smoking episode on the island seemed alone enough to put it on the parental index. Careful estimatesmade showed that Tom and Joe Harper could not have been more than KM-K^SrSoe of :the virile land of the free in our. own tight-laced young colony. . Tisom Sawyer was Mark Twain's _; greatest achievement in fiction. The essential boy, the graceless and ingratiating young scrubber, has never been/better done. What a pity such a delightful casual of letters ever went in for Literature with a capital L. What a tragedy that his well-connected . -womenfolk took him in hand and (their own words) "dusted him off/ The quid-chewing, suspender-wearing small-town idlers of the middle States *h v were his proper material. s ; ••■ ■■■'■-■■$« ma,n mohEmteNxs. • Boy fiction can be concocted from the simplest of recipes. The main ingredient is action, rapid and breath-: taking action-^ohe would almost add, the more incredible the better.-A certain .amount of elementary humour is .also' not .., amiss as a seasoning. Mark ] ' Twaia^up&lied this in hte best vintages: years -with the earless exuberance of genius. • ' *.. As for : characterisation, next to none .is much the safest. Stick to embodimentSQf' .husky virility. A hero who bends'bar iron into horseshoes with his bare hands .or gets the drop on a bar room full 6f.toughs is good for a dozen volumes, for he _ will appeal to boyhood's most aamirable trait, a loyalty • pS^'e^fofS^f preposterbus - For this reason I doubt if boys at home with the silken villainy of Long John Silver (not Mr. Beery, but Long John Silver). In the early chap^; •^tersthey are taken in by his bonhomie^ v; to Jim Hawkins; he is a boy's man'if , -ever; there was one. Toward ■ the •£ middle -\otV the book they: have to re"adjust" themselves disconcertingly t o \ . the .fact. that Long John is a blood- : curdling'scoundrel. Of course, serious students..of-literature know that R.L.S. :,is at his convincing best with his black-•guards.-But your boy, if happy in his illusions, is that opposite of a serious reader, an absorbed one. ~; p ne .QtherT.ringredient of boy fictipti; £is essential^^though there should: be pf fit\only a modicum," This is a heroine, |, She is. easily handled, for though fernI inine in her'sweetness she need (must, i rather) have non^ of the other traits, f that mark, her rather baffling sex. It |is sound advice to leave her almost | entirely :to the illustrator. Beyond I adihiring the hero and. being rescued fahd. protected, she has absolutely no- a

■ thing to do, not even to boil an eg* for to. sew on a button. Least of all, | whatever j. M. Barrie wrote, should f she mother the masculine members oi i the cast,.. Brick Bradford, be it noted, always' travels with such a heroins and, bewitching, adorable characteristic, she never gives rise to compli-. cations. Thus is a boy conditioned' (mostly by penny-a-liners) in regard to. some future She who will not for another ten years rise above his horizon. Thus does he learn to< worship the very ground" she treads on. A ..man grown, the lad who in his imagi- " "nation has saved her from torture at the stake will remark, as Tennyson .-, did: "Her feet have kissed the meadows " arid left the daisies rosy." PLEA FOR BOYS' BOOKS. '■-'' -To wind up, earnest plea is made for /■such Books for Boys. Fashions in adult books come and go today with every spring list, but this type of ••..•boy fiction endures. Simon-..Tapper- _ tit read it 160 years ago. Boys are at an" age when their imaginations should be on the stretch—when boldly speculating, they should probe into the " "shape of things to come. It is for j them, as for Shakespeare, to ascend : ,the brightest heaven of invention and -to idealise. Oddly enough, never again will their ideals be so uplifting, disinterested, and pure. Without Mhe adult noticing it, these lads who v."simply will not wash behind their gears'' tend to become Galahads of and chivalry. Let them thereSfore \*iden the bounds of their higher >'feeling and nobler conceiving. The v. child heart is becoming a man's, heart ;tin its own immemorial fashion and •tithe penny-a-liner is helping it on with -"Hits evolution. Perhaps our penhy-a-

liners should be better paid and given time to turn their craft into an art, but I am against their studying for degrees. There is something broad and strong-pinioned about the admittedly reckless sweep of a born penny-a-liner's imagination, and it is pathetic to think of his sitting with, one wing clipped on a University perch. There, is another reason why today ! red-blooded boy literature should be encouraged. We live in. an organising age. The tendency of all organisation, paradoxically enough, is to beepme mechanistic and therefore to obliterate individuality by running it into moulds. One seel today lads so well j tamed that they remember their man-, ners at a tea fight, boys who when playing with their meccano are soberly bent on careers as structural engineers. Now it is desirable to coiuv terweight'to a certain extent this undoubtedly excellent preparation for a life that has more of endeavour than of joy, and boy fiction, it is suggested, is just such a counterweight. A boy reading it can be by himself and dream his own dreams. He can touch the skirts of that most fleeting and fickle of goddesses, Kipling's True Romance. He may even, like Fenrod Schofield, take to writing such fiction, dipping his pen in' his own heart's blood. Such a boy has been for brief intervals, at any rate, a poet.

-.;■ But there is no market for poets? The more's the pity, for theirs alone are the hormones that keep the lifesap flowing in the loftier branches. It is admitted that there cnn be an overplus of poets. Perhaps the Renaissance had too many,. But our time is in opposite case and could, for the sake of having more poets, welj afford to dispense with some of its statisticians and cash registers and at least half a dozen of its writers of metaphysical verse. .