BOOK-LOVERS’ NOTES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 19 August 1933, Page 12

BOOK-LOVERS’ NOTES

AUTHORS AND REVIEWS WORK OF WELL-KNOWN WRITERS. CRITICISM OF THE ‘ ‘VORACIOUS .READER.” Writing of books that have some justification to claims to be regarded as .literature, and not of trashy novels, Cecil Palmer, the publisher, _ quotes Shakespeare’s dictum: “He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes,” and “With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.” These -words of wisdom he remarks, apply with peculiar force to those innumerable linen and women (and more particularly the latter) whose appetites for reading are insatiable. There are scores of thousands of such people who see nothing absurd in their conceited boast that they read a book a day and a couple on Sunday. They read as some other men and women smoke —incessantly, automatically, and joylessly. I refer to the type of reader who enthuses about the latest book he is reading and, when challenged for a little obvious information concerning it, is ludicrously incapable of imparting it. Such a one races through chapter after chapter without registering any appreciable signs of undestanding. In his feverish anxiety to reach the climax of the story and the anticlimax of his own emotions, he will skip page upon page of what he is pleased to denounce as dull, 'descriptive padding. From the author’s point of view such readers are heartbreaking. For example, a novelist of the calibre of Eden Phillpotts Is wasted on them. His beautiful prose, his unerring power to paint Nature with insight and poetic feliety, are qualties which cannot be dissociated from the master of plots which lie is without destroying at least one half of his essential worth as a novelist and creative artist. The distinguished author who confessed to a friend that he had done a good morning’s work by writing eight lines and rewriting them until only eight words remained expressed in a sentence the impish elusiveness of words and their stubborn insubordination when called upon to function as vehicles of artistic expression. It is an undoubted fact that the average level of writing today is higher than- the public’s capacity for appreciating it. People simply will not giyp themselves time to read receptively and critically. Authors, on the other hand, were never before so conscientious in their efforts to enlighten and entertain their readers. A public which cannot see tho folly of treating books as if they were cigarettes —something to be partly absorbed and then thrown away—are unworthy of the artist’s efforts and are guilty of stifling the life out of life itself. * * * * *

William Cobbett’s “Progress of- a Plougliboy to a Seat in Parliament, has just been published. This is the first time the work has appeared completely in print. *

Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows” is authoritatively stated to be the most popular book for children published in the last 25 years. The writing of the “life” of Grahamc, who died early this year, has been entrusted to Mr Patrick R. Chalmers.

Dr. James Loeb, who has died in Bavaria at the age of 65, founded in 1912 the famous Loeb .Classical Library, those translations of Greek and Roman literature known to every student. Dr. Loeb was born in New York and was a member of a wealthy banking family. * * * * *

The London Library, one of the besteciuipped proprietary libraries in the world, has been granted the distinction of a charter. It was founded in 1841, largely through the efforts of Carlyle, and its 400,000 volumes are available for members to read at their homes.

Of Jane Austen’s juvenile writing one volume, entitled “Love and .Friendship,” was published in 1922.. A “first volume” was known to exist, but for many years this was untraced. If lias now been discovered in the Bodleian Library, and the Oxford Press will soon publish it. The volume contains several short “novels,” two dramatic pieces, and some fragments. All seem to be the high-spirited jokes of a child writing for the amusement of brothers and sisters in a household rich in family jokes. The book is called simply “Volume the First.” ■* * * * * *■

Another book from the pen of Sir Oliver Lodge has been published. It is called “My Philosophy,” because, ho' writes, “It is really my pronounce- 1 ment, probably my final pronounce-1 ment, to the world as to what I think of things in general.” The book is in | four parts, in the last of which Sir < Oliver states his ease for his belief in the survival herefffter of the human spirit. K- * * * * [

Sir John Marriott in a review in \ “The Observer” (London), of a recently published volume of lectures! bearing on Victorian philosophy, re-) fers to Phillips Brooks as the fastest, as well as one of the greatest preach-' crs lie ever heard. Sir John does not 1 say so, but, as a rule, great preachers are, in the main, deliberate in speech,, and, seldom, or never, shout in the pul-1 pit. I * * * * ' * I

One of the Home newspapers, in a ; recent leader on “The Changing: World,” refers to the Churches.! “They represent,” it says, <l< all that j is best and most vital in our national j life, and the nation would assuredly. suffer doom by neglect of the higher values of human life and duty for which they stand. The world is changing in many ways, but the immutable things of the spirit always remain.” 1 * * * * * I

A book of reminiscences by Mr George Grossmith is ready. “G.G.,” as he is called in the theatre world, is a grandson of the man upon whom Dickens is supposed to have based Mr Pickwick. He is the son of the George Grossmith who delighted the later Victorians, and he himself has been on the stage for more than forty years. Mr Grossmith was at the Gaiety during the great years of George Edwardes, Gertie tMiller and Edmund Payne, and when he first sang “Yip-i-addy,” the prim Victorians booed because the chorus girls showed their knees. This sentimental leg theory is now completely discredited.