WE WANT MORE STORIES

Hawera Star, Volume L, 29 November 1930, Page 9

WE WANT MORE STORIES

A RECENT writer wants more books that tell a st'ory, and he) is right, says Cecil Hunt in the “Daily Mail.” Story tellers will bo next year’s best sellers, and the “Daily Mail” has anticipated public demand by presenting two story-tellers in Kathleen Wallace and George Preedy. The vogue for silly sex novels is lading rapidly. There are distinguished authors who portray modern psychology brilliantly, but the majority of the novels are little more than snappy conversation that it is fashionable to call clever. Often there is no story, no gift of characterisation or description—only just this superficial tawdry sparkle. And now the great reading public is tired of them—as one tires of puff pastries. They are turning to solid fare, and the store of story tellers wants replenishing. There is a tremendous gap through W. G. Locke’s going. He never wrote great literature, but he was a supreme story i teller. And we want another Conan Doyle, not only for Sherlock Holmes, but for the magnificent stories like “The White Company” and “Rodney Stone.” Kipling is sadly quiet these days, j and Wells and Bennett do not tell the -stories they used to tell. You cannot sit down with them and say, “Here is a. great yarn!” You get politics and science and philosophy as obvious ingredients. Stanley Weyman, Rider Haggard, Israel Zangwill, Joseph Conrad —-all are gone, and Mason, Stacpoole, Vacljell do not speak as great names to the young people of to-day, though the older following is faithful.

Public Wants Its Tale-Tellers

The historic romance is fairly well alive with Sabatini still masterly, and Marjorie Bowen and George I'reedy. Slingsby Bethell is also rising m this genre, but we want more tale-tellers who can make history live with all the appeal of a modern setting. The country has Sheila Kaye-Smith, erudite, exact, distinguished. But passion smoulders and burns in country Jives just as in town. Some day J. H. Freeman, whose “Joseph and His Brethren” is a book of beauty, will boil over and give us an epic of the country which is not sleepy and inhabited only by -okels. I jr. H. Mottram, Henry Williamson, and others are, by their very art, secure in a circle that revels in thenwriting, apart from the narrative, but we want more Deepings. Is there not a rising Bennett who can give us a Cockney epic as beautiful and as gripping as “Hi coy man Steps”—or a Sinclair Lewis to give us every man’s story until it grips a-s “Babbit” and “Main Street” gnp.' Priestley, most welcome story teller, is too mellow and leisurely lor some. Humour is all right with Wodoliousc Leacock, and our own D. B. .V\ yndham Lewis, A. P. Herbert, Denis MarIvail and Dornford Yates. Granted that there are Galsworthj, Maugham, Brett Young, Henry Handed Richardson, Edgar Wallace, and all the acknowledged names, hut ulmre, oil, where is a rising Barrie, or Kipling, or Bennett, or Locke, or anotlici Lewis Carroll? Let us noise it abroad .if someone lias found another O. Henry, or \V . W. Jacobs, or another man who can create three immortal “Musketeers.