CASUAL COMMENTS

Evening Star, Issue 19924, 21 July 1928, Page 2

CASUAL COMMENTS

WRITING FOR LOVE OR MONEY [By Leo Fanning.] ♦ Of course, most of the world’s wrting is for love—not for love of woman (although she inspires much free prose and verse) but sheer love o! writing, love of uplifting, love of explaining, love of advising the '.other fellow now to mind his P’s and Q’s, cross his T’s, and dot his I’s in matters of this world and the next. • • * # Very few of us claim to be orators, although we have a secret feeling that we are bright conversationalists, but most of us know that we can write, especially if wo have the opportunity. Your friend, Foodies, would have as much interest in facing an audience in a public hall as a plump rabbit would have in staring at a lean and hungry tiger, but Foodies, in the quietness of his home, with a bottle of ink handy, is a very different Foodies. No knight of any round or square table ever felt more valiant with lance and shield than Foodies does with pen and paper. He will stab at anything or anybody, but he does no harm, because cold, prejudiced editors will not publish tho stuff, or they will pass only a fragment of it to the compositor. The remnant may have that phrase “ hoping some abler pen than mine will ,” but that is not tho real feeling of Foodies; ho is only fooling the public with that statement; ho does not believe that an abler pen will rush to the cause that lacks assistance. « * « » Poetry is notoriously the worst-paid product of talent or genius, not because it is poetry but because it is not understood by the average person who has a shilling or two to spare for literature after the toll of the " tote ” and other" things. Anyhow, the {root is not supposed to be interested in flesh-puts. His life is of the spirit, to or for the spirit, and by, with' or from the spirit—but it is hard. However, for one poet who may pine in a soulful solitude of non-under-stooduess there are thousands of versifiers, who have only fitful intermittent outbreaks of inspiration, and between whiles they are as keen for money as pork butchers or plumbers. a* * * « A few years ago—it seems only yesterday—any great occasion would start numerous persons into the business of unliterary scantlings—roughhewn slabs of-, piggety-rickety verse. The death of a king or the birth of a prince, a coronation or a jubilee, would bring some queer jingles into the Press at a time when editors were relaxed or on holiday. One of those persistent incorrigible versifiers was Official Assignee and Coroner at Wellington. At ono meeting to investigate the_ affairs of an easy-going nonpaying; bankrupt, the assignee was the only cheerful person. lie mentioned to the creditors, who looked very blue and keen for vengeance oa the debtor, that he was afraid the estate would not yield much. He had looked into the accounts, which were very muddled, and he did not think that the dividend would be more than 7d in the £. However, if it would be any comfort to them he would read a few lines which he had written on the particulars of tho case. Forthwith he read some verses, which were funny enough, but they only deepened the gloom. The poet looked reproachfully at those dour, lowering faces, and it was easy to see that he was thinking of the proverb about casting peax-ls before swine. • * * *• A poet may believe that it takes more power of the mind and soul to writs a good poem than a piece of prose, and it may bo easier to write a sonnet on a sunset than a popular proclamation about a pork pie or a sausage. The poet does not have to sell the sunset, but the ad.-writer is expected to create a clamour for ’he pork pie or the sausage. The poet enjoys a licence to please himself with that sunset, which he may serve up us fancifully as he likes, but that modern apostle of truth, the ad.-writer, has no licence to play pranks with the pork pie or the sausage. Pushing that pie upon the public calls for much subtlety of thought and ’ skill in expression. a * • » On a w-ail in front ot my table is a picture which helps to keep mo n, my place (which I do not, yet exactly know). On a boundary fence of two fields is a signboard: “No trespassing on this lot,” but some trespassing is being committed by two donkeys, each of which has a head stretched over the fence nibbling tho adjacent pasture. The title is: “The other fellow’s grass is always the sweetest.” Thus it is with writers and others. The essayist may believe that the best-selling novelist is merely playing the fool. The very serious reviewer of men, women, and affairs has an opinion that the iictionist’s only problem is in finding a helpful title—such as ‘ The Devil and the Duchess ’—and the book will then almost write itself. Tho successful novelist’s notion of the learned essayist is a man working very hard to give the world bitter medicine that it does not want and won’t take.

Perhaps no writer ever enjoyed his job better than the author ol an oldlashioned melodrama (the standard one with the very valiant hero, the very virtuous “shero,” the very dcep-iyod cigarettiferous villain, the perky, saucy, resourceful maid, and the comic valet or other lie-servant). The writer would bo stout, of course—as fat as Falstaff, and as fond of flagons and food. These aids to inspiration are beside him. With a pewter in one hand and a pen in the other he gives the right touch to the heroine’s appeal for mercy. Between sips he wonders whether the villain’s stuff is strong enough, and with a laugh or two he adds the ginger.

The writer of the thing known as a “ song hit ” —such as tho banana banality of yesteryear—is not so happy. After all the old melodramatist knew what ho was about. He know what the public liked, and he delivered it with as sure a hand as tho successful manufacturer of sausages or saveloys. But

the song writer is not on such safe ground. All he knows is that the public will like something silly, but for the life of him he does not know the kind of silliness which will be preferred to another. He may turn a hundred sloppy things, which leave the masses cold, and then catch the fond many and the money with the hundred-and-first, which is really the worst of the lot. ft ft « • The biggest money paid for modern writing--the highest rate per word—is not for the masterpieces of Rudyard Kipling or H. G. Wells or Lloyd George, but for the honeyed words ot a rich man’s love letter in a breach oi promise suit when hearts have drifted apart. ■ * » * Writing which gives the least pleasure is the filling in of the cheque for income tax, and the writing which brings the greatest delight is the signing of a receipt for a large wad ol pounds sterling. * * • • Among the easy writing tasks is the running of such a column as this one. All you have to do is to find a subject, start off with it, choose any one of a dozen others which buzz about in the thoughtery, and carry on without further bother except the space limit. • » * * Perhaps the least interesting writer in British countries is the average business man. Ho clings u. the old stock of words and phrases (some of which are abominable jargon). This tiresome conservatism has been brightly trounced by Carolyn Wells in these lines They beg to inquire aud they beg to state, They beg to advise and they bog to relate; They beg to observe and they beg to mention, They beg 10 call your kind attention ; They beg to remark and they beg to remind, They bog to inform and you’ll herein find: i They beg to announce and they beg to intrude. They beg to explain and they beg to include; They beg to acknowledge and they beg to reply, They beg, and they beg, and they beg, oh, why? They reluctantly beg for a moment of timo; They bog to submit you an offer sublime, Till 1 wish I could put the annoying array Of beggars on horseback and send ’em away. a * * * Many American business men have gone to the other extreme. Their letters to perfect strangers may begin with “ My dear Mr and go on chippily and chattily as if the writer and the reader had been to school together and had married each other’s sisters. This method is known as “ the human touch,” which is supposed to , “ get there ”or “ put it across.” It has it’s comicality, but it is preferable to much of the cold, colourless stodge of the standard British business letter.