Authors' Secrets Revealed

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

Authors' Secrets Revealed

In "What Is a Book?" 20 well-known authors have been invited to tell oj the methods and inner secrets of their craft. The collection is unusual and commcndable, particularly from one important point of view. Instead of the flippancies and fireworks which usually flourish in such hooks, each writer seems to have seriously tried to impart information. For English tastes it is perhaps unfortunate that so large a proportion of the contributors are American, because few English people regard American literature with the same complacence as Mr. E. }. O'Brien does the American short story. Nevertheless the seriousness of the Americans has enabled the book to be the help to understanding which it is. _ Almost every different kind of writing is represented. Thus Sabatini throws down the gage on behalf of fiction, and has the support of several other contributors wh> uphold the pre-eminence of this form of literature. "Fiction simply cannot afford to be as improbable as life" is the general dictum. Few Will admit to the unfashionable formula of Kathleen Norris: "I write of life as I Want it to be. Havelock Ellis, outdoing the Americans in seriousness, renders a service by pointing out the danger of a slavish adherence to mechanical rules. "The beautiful incorrcction which so often marked the great and even the small writers of the seventeenth century has been lost," he repines. Harold Nicholson discusses the problem of how far a biographer is justified in suppressing facts likely to injure the reputation of his subject. He gives concrete examples drawn from his own experience Valentine Williams supplies so many of the rules, problems and essentials of detective fiction, that all anyone needs is a good pen—and a good idea. He holds that construction, or as he calls it, "plausibility," outweighs everything else. Almost more interesting than the long articles are the pithy sentences and epigrams oj famous writers down the ages, which are sandwiched in between. "What Is a Book?" Twenty talks by Famous Authors. (George Allen and Unv/in.)