GOSSIP....

Southland Times, Issue 22816, 15 February 1936, Page 11

GOSSIP....

At the annual conference of the Association of Special Libraries ana Information Bureaux held at Cambridge, Sir Richard Gregory, in ms presidential address, referred to the affinities of science and literature, a subject only rarely dealt with: With one or two brilliant exceptions, popular writers of the present day are indifferent to the knowledge gained by scientific study, and unmoved by the message which science alone is able to give. Science needs not only writers to make its achievements intelligible to general readers, but also poetic and other interpreters who will expound its intent and influence by artistic representation of performance. The cause of intellectual freedom has not found a single apostle among poets to-day when Einstein and hundreds of leaders of science, art, and literature have been driven from the country of their adoption, in suffering and in shame, to find homes in other lands. If oppression and injustice can still stir the strings of the human heart, surely here is a theme for a poem which will live when the exiles who are now sorrowing by the waters of Babylon will have passed on.

Part of an essay by Sinclair Lewis introducing “Samples,” a book published by the Limited Editions Club: There are two sorts of book collecting: of books fine and memorable in themselves, and of “items” that are merely rare—and generally monstrously expensive. Devotees of the second sort of collecting I suspect of being just such exhibitionists as are the dreary people who are renowned for having the largest house on Myrtle Avenue* or the costliest limousine in Omaha or the longest string of honorary degrees in the university. To possess one of the three copies extant of a dingy little pamphlet written by Thomas Hardy before he knew better; to hunt down, and pay real bookmoney for, one of the second issue of the first edition of a Kipling novel (ffie issue in which, on page 7, Smith is spelled Smihf); this is less noble than stamp collecting. No, the collection of books fer their rarity ranks with the collection of walking sticks, match books, or the shirts of movie heroes.

But the collection of books that are distinguished in themselves, that are a delight to the hand as they are to the eye, that ar? masterful in paper, in binding, in the arrangement of the page, this is not so very different from the collection of superior paintings — and it is a hundred times or so more possible for purses that are none too fat.

Yet even such books, I hear from friends far richer than I, are too costly for them. Well, these lads will spend two or three or four thousand for a car; three or four hundred for a radio; four hundred a month for rent, and think nothing of it —and a heavenly collection of fine books could be made, I know, at not more than an average of ten dollars apiece. I think that I would rather leave to my two boys, just as my father left me his leather Milton, a hundred or so books, each of which should be a delight that would last a hundred of so years, rather than the remains of a ten-year-old Rolls Royce, the cabinet of an obsolete radio, and a bunch of rent receipts! « « . »

1935 was a record year for publishing according to the “Bookseller,” the organ of the book trade. The total number of books published in Great Britain during the year is 16,678 —1242 more than in 1934 and 1184 more than in 1930, which was the previous record year. The 1935 total has never before been touched in the whole of publishing history. The gain in production is chiefly accounted for in novels, of which there were 483 more than in 1934, in poetry and drama 116 more, and in politics 110 more. ♦ * * ♦

Mr Michael Arlen confesses that he is still unable to find the right title for a novel on which he has been working for two years.

The “Glasgow Herald” gives a warning against novels that are based on the biographies of men who have become legends. Either they dress up the old romance with a very small dash of realism and immoderate helping of pseudo-lyricism; or, which is worse, they grope in the obscure comers of the hero’s wardrobe for the dirty linen which will prove that, after all, he was no hero.