ODDS AND ENDS

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

ODDS AND ENDS

A best' seller, declares Sir Hugh Walpole, works mischief in the brain ot its author. Having had that supreme luck once, why should you not have it again? In nine out of ten cases you do not have it again, but, even when you do, the mischief is done—the mischief of the heightened scale of living, the fantastic dreams, the world applause, the jealousy of fellow-authors, the sense that you are a sort of superhuman.

The Liverpool Post notes that Spain is the first favourite at present in the field of fiction. Sooner or later all the novelists take their readers there.

In the opinion of J. Middleton Murry, a kind of paralysis appears to descend upon the man of letters who takes to teaching literature. It seems that it is much more inhibitive than ' w nen an artist takes to teaching art: probably because the teaching of art is almost entirely a teaching of technique.

According to James Stephens, almost no recognized novelist or dramatist has written an autobiography which is worth reading twice. There are, indeed, certain “personal” writers who have written wonderfully, but they were careful not to cast their autobiographical material in an autobiographical mold.

“John o’ London” points out that period classifications can never have much meaning when applied to poetry. True poetry is timeless. It is convenient to talk of Elizabethan poetry, but when it is Shakespeare’s, who thinks of Bess? We speak of Victorian poetry only because our own, whatever it is, is not Victorian.

The worst of reticence in biography, says The Times Literary Supplement, is that, when secrets come to light, they are apt to be exploited by the vahity of salesmanship of irresponsible writers. Portraits that were perhaps faultily faultless are repainted with catchpenny deformities.

Wordsworth’s birth-place, which was threatened with demolition, has been saved.

The biography of “Robert Loraine” (Collins), by Winifred Loraine, has attracted special attention in the literary world through including several letters written by Bernard Shaw, one of which is a very helpful response to a request by Loraine for advice on the writing of a book.) Lord Gorell confesses that he has risen from readings of many autobiographies of recent years less friendly disposed to the author than he was before he started, and occasionally a good deal more than that—exasperated by an irrepressed vanity.

According to Compton Mackenzie, the theatre is usually behind literature in its development. It is nearly always the book which comes before the play.