Gossip

Southland Times, Issue 22915, 13 June 1936, Page 13

Gossip

In no branch of post-war literature, says a London writer, is the superabundance of chaff over wheat so marked as in that devoted to Secret Service. A qualified critic has estimated that of the books in this class about 5 per cent, contain some grain of fact, and 1 per cent, consists of truth undefiled.

Miss Rebecca West offers in the Sunday Times a defence of forms of writing which have something more than a surface meaning:—

There are certain assumptions made about books by such readers as love to call themselves plain blunt men with nothing of the highbrow about them. One of the chief among these is the assumption that every author is under an obligation to make his work as simple and as easily comprehensible as possible, and that any author who fails to do so, and produces work that is complicated, hard to follow, and difficult to sum up, is either an incompetent woolly-wit or an intentionally perverse highbrow. This is an odd assumption, because most plain blunt readers are devoted students of detective stories, which, with half a dozen exceptions in the year, consist of nothing but complications, grim and unlovely as stove pipes, and, as hard to follow as the nastiest algebra. And it is also unsound since it demands from all writers a method which is quite unsuitable for the end at which many of them are aiming. Of course, if a writer has a story of not more than surface significance he can get it down in big thick outlines that a myope can see at ten yards distance; and, of course, if he is one of the great classic artists he can fuse a world of experience into one large simple myth. But there are other writers . . . who fall into quite another category.

More than a million books will be kept in a room of ordinary size as the result of the latest process devised in Moscow by Professor J. P. Tikhonov, who is attached to the Academy of Sciences and is in charge of the laboratory for the restoration and preservation of manuscripts. With the new device all the collected works, for example, of Sir Walter Scott and Shake-

speare would require no more space than an ordinary matchbox. The process calls for the photograph of a printed page so greatly reduced in size that an ordinary newspaper page is no larger than a third of a square inch. The photograph is then transferred to a thin platinum film, which is soldered between two plates of glass. The projector throws the tiny “page” on to a greatly enlarged screen when it is to be consulted. According to Professor Tikhonov, this method has the advantage of cheapness and permanence. The amount of platinum necessary is so small as to be of negligible importance. The glass is impervious to damp, mould, decay, and changes of temperature. The documents can be preserved indefinitely, and no special filing rooms, with elaborate equipment, are necessary. Miss Jean Batten, the New Zealand airwoman, is among the contributors to a book entitled “Living Dangerously,” which has been published by Allen and Unwin. “Most of the contributors to this very thrilling collection of adventure,” says the publishers, “have at one time or another been in direct danger of death, but one and all seem to agree that ‘living dangerously’ is worth it.” Several famous Irish authors have books on the latest register of prohibited publications issued by the Irish Free State Government. The strictness of the literary censorship prevailing in the Free State is shown by the ban imposed on the books of generally esteemed writers. Irish authors who are on the list include Liam O’Flaherty, Sean O’Casey (for his volume of stories and poems, “Windfalls”), George Moore for “The Story-Teller’s Holiday,” Sean O’Faolain, for “Mid-summer Night’s Madness,” and Austin Clarke for “The Bright Temptation.” “Point Counter Point,” “Brave New World,” “Brief Candles,” and “Antic Hay,” all by Aldous Huxley, are on the list. Then there are “Cakes and Ale” by Somerset Maugham, “Death of a Hero,” by Richard Aldington, “Elmer Gantry and Ann Vickers,” by Sinclair Lewis, “War Birds,” the famous story of air fighting in France, “The Bulpington of Blup,” by H. G. Wells, “And Quiet Flows the Don,” a best-selling Russian novel, “Turnabout,” the amusing work by Thorne Smith, “Anthony Adverse,” and “She Done Him Wrong,” by Mae West. All books on sexual subjects are prohibited, and the ban applies also to some English newspapers and periodicals, including the popular “News of the World.”