WAITING FOR “A GREAT BOOK”

Southland Times, Issue 23676, 26 November 1938, Page 14

WAITING FOR “A GREAT BOOK”

“People don’t buy books any more.” The speaker was a member of a wellknown publishing firm and he sat across from me at dinner. He was finishing what he described as a “whirlwind tour” of the book markets of the United States.

“The book-buying public constitute less than 1 per cent, of the adult population of the United States,” he continued. “You say ‘buyers,’ ” I countered. “If you had said ‘readers’ I might be more concerned.”

“The readers are declining, also. It is more difficult to get accurate figures on this point, however. But even the comer renting libraries which, in their very nature, have tended to decrease the book-buying public, report a gradual reduction in their readers throughout the United States.” “And the cause?” I asked. He looked at me and smiled. “I thought you might have a theory.” “Well,” I said, “perhaps you publishers don’t publish the type of books the public wants to read.” “That can hardly be the answer,” he replied. “More books of various kinds are being published today than ever before.” “Too many publications, then. It is virtually impossible for a reader to read all the hooks published, even on the one subject he happens to be interested in. He may find himself bewildered by the neVer-ending stream and give up all efforts to keep abreast.” I was merely repeating some of the reasons I had heard individuals advance for their failure to read a current book. “People also tell me,” I continued, “and this seems the most revealing reason to me, that they do not find most modern novels, for instance, very good. I often hear thoughtful individuals say that they find modem writing unrewarding reading. What do you think?” I asked him.

“I believe,” he said seriously, “that that is only too true. It would be difficult to mention more than two or three authors of current fame who really are writing for the future as well as the present.” MEETING A NEED “I have a theory that people find and read the books that meet their need. In fact we might be said to live by books—beginning with the Bible and Shakespeare,” I told him. “I noticed that the other day Mr Chamberlain quoted Shakespeare when he emerged from the Munich conference room to indicate that he believed he had succeeded in his mission. A few minutes later, in London, another distinguished statesman quoted Shakespeare to indicate his belief that the Munich conference was a failure.”

People look to books for many reasons, all of them closely bound to the primary fact of a need within themselves. When we cease to have that need, or satisfy it in a different manner with, say, the films or the radio, our reading declines. Good enough. But I think we might go a step further in our inquiry and question if people would not go to books despite the competition of modem living if the books of today continued to meet their need.

Now we are not always articulate, even to ourselves, about what our need is. The books of great writers often have revealed to their readers a need the nature of which they were not conscious of before.

“What the publishing world needs today is a great book, a book like Don Quixote or David Copperfield,” the publisher mused. “The books of today are too much with us, too close in our steps instead of ahead in the road, leading the way. ' I’m looking for a book that is compassionate and strong, wise and human. The kind of a book.” he said, “that Dickens or Cervantes would write if they were here in this world now.”

That is just the book that the remaining 99 per cent, of adults will read and buy when he publishes it.