DREAM BOOKS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 9

DREAM BOOKS.

It was Theophile Gautier, I think, who said that planning a new book, before beginning to write it, was like smoking enchanted cigarettes (observes an Evening Standard writer). And the image is a good one, for in those hours of erfortless reverie there is a blissful and soothing ease which does not recur during the process of writing. Writing a book is a hard and thankless task. There is only labour and drudgery for the author, the first thrill of imagination being behind' him. It is like working out the details of a problem in mathematics when one has already foreseen the answer. besides, the book on paper is never the book it was in fancy. Those vague but glowing pictures in which it first took shape become less glowing as _ they become more definite. All writing is an effort to capture something, to lose as little as possible of what has been perceived. It is like drinking from one's cupped hands, which one raises hastily from the spring, not hoping to bring them full to the lips, but at anyrale keeping a spoonful or two. And because one knows this perhaps the best books to dream of are those written or to bo written by someone alse. Dreams of one's own projected works are infused by experience with a taste of bitterness. But A. or Y., you think, could do that admirably? What a good book it would be, if he only would ! How you would like to read it! Dreams about books yet to be written are perhaps the best, for with them it is easy to escape disillusionment. And yet sometimes they get one into trouble. On one occasion, at least, I wrote a book merely because I wanted to read it, and no one else would write it for me; and, when it was written it disappointed me. And on another occasion, having long searched for information on a particular subject, I misguidedly signed a contract to supply it myself, and still occasionally receive rather plaintive letters from the publisher who was the party of the other part. It is unfortunately a subject on which 1 know nothing whatever; and 1 really cannot write that book, strong as is* still my desire to read it.