BOOK-TALK FROM LONDON

Southland Times, Issue 23840, 10 June 1939, Page 14

BOOK-TALK FROM LONDON

WORLD AFFAIRS THE MAIN CONCERN One by one the lamps of European culture go out. Here in London, after the gloomiest start to any year since 1918, the book world is illumined only by the kicksy-wicksy glare of “Mein Kampf.” Hurst and Blackett published on March 21 a complete but unduly polite translation, which differs from, both of the American versions. This is the only runaway best-seller, writes John Hadfield in The Saturday Review of Literature. It is one of life’s little ironies that every one of the sixty thousand copies sold has put a pourboire into the packet of the man who has caused our present discontents. _ .Readers at present are preferring tragi-comedy to revue. Despite beguiling offers of “All This—and Heaven Too,” the public taste is all for the other thing—and the hell of it. Douglas Reed’s “Disgrace Abounding,” . Wells s “The Holy Terror,” Sir Philip Gibbs’s “This Nettle Danger,” Gedye’s “Fallen Bastions”—these symptomatically depressing titles are the books that are selling. The publisher of “Fallen Bastions” (which is called “Betrayal in Central Europe” in the United States) took the drastic course of halving the price of the book ten days after publication!, when Hitler occupied Bohemia. His enterprise has been rewarded by large sales. Meanwhile two great and lasting literary monuments have been completed. More than 40 years after the Secretary to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press first discussed the project with Lord Acton, the “Cambridge Histories” have been completed. April 20 saw the issue of the twelfth volume of the 1 “Cambridge Ancient History.” The modem section was finished in 1910, the medieval in 1936. Recently, too, J. E. Manson completed Harrap’s French and English Dictionary, a task on which he has been engaged since 1919. END OF THE MERCURY It is not long since T. S. Eliot ceased publication of his quarterly, The Criterion. Now, with its April issue, The London Mercury comes to an end. Founded in 1919 by J. C. Squire, it was the chief organ of the Georgian poets and of that robust and bucolic group of writers known as “the Squirearchy.” It .was a vigorous defender of cultural amenities as diverse as fine printing and Stonehenge. In 1934 Sir John Squire gave way to R. A. ScottJames as editor. Now the Mercury is to be incorporated in a younger, more experimental, journal, Life and Letters Today, which is edited by a protege of Squire’s, Robert Herring. Life and Letters Today is a coterie organ. _ The influential and authoritative critical journals are now reduced to four—The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator,' The New Statesman and Nation, and Time and Tide, with John ©’London’s Weekly successfully catering to more “popular” taste. The only controversy . of a purely literary nature this spring is about Somerset Maugham’s new novel “Christmas Holiday.” Seldom can there have been such sharp divergence of critical opinion. Frank Swinnerton, Howard Spring and a majority of the chief critics have praised it in high terms. James Agate and some of the younger critics have expressed _ keen disappointment in it. Some praise its technical virtuosity; others call it an artistic failure. Some extol its perfection of style; others say it is written in cliches. The theme shocks or exalts some readers; to others it is jejune and outmoded. I suspect that few of the critics have understood Maugham’s purpose. This goes also for T. S. Eliot’s mod-ern-dress verse drama, “The Family Reunion,” which has not had a good

reception from the dramatic critics, though some of the literary critics describe it as an advance on “Murder in the Cathedral.” The only discovery of the season is a beautifully-written novel about Himalaya by Rumer Godden, “Black Narcissus.” Watch Wales, however. There are several young and as yet undisciplined talents emerging from this neglected field. Some vigorous verse and prose is appearing in an ill-printed periodical called Wales, which is published from a Welsh farmhouse by Keidrych Rhys. Its outstanding contributor is the erratic and nightmarish young poet Dylan Thomas, who is publishing a book of mixed verse and stories in the summer. He is going to be talked about. MASS OBSERVATION Tailpieces . . . Rare book prices offer exceptional bargains just now. This is the moment to buy eighteenth-cen-tury first editions; a recent catalogue from McLeish, of Little Russell street, is packed with rare items at rockbottom prices . . . Blackwell’s worldfamed bookshop in Broad street, Oxford, has been redesigned and enlarged —a book man’s paradise . . . Geoffrey Faber, chief of Faber and Faber, becomes President of the Publishers’ Association ... His Master’s Voice Gramophone Company is issuing sets of records of modern verse spoken by leading actors and actresses . . . The book trade is contemplating the employment of Tom Harrison’s “Mass Observation” organization to examine reading habits. Some regard this much-discussed method of social study as a valuable scientific inquiry; others share the view of humorist Timothy Shy, who calls it “sixpennorth of eye-lotion” . . , Such was the success of the November Book Fair that another will be held this year, on a bigger scale, at Olympia, preceding the renowned Bertram Mills Circus.