MODERN CIVILIZATION

Southland Times, Issue 24862, 30 September 1942, Page 3

MODERN CIVILIZATION

Part Played By Books The immense part played by books in the moulding of modem civilization was stressed by Mr W. A. Purvis in a talk on books at yesterday’s meeting of the Invercargill Rotary Club. On the mistakes of the past, faithfully recorded’ in books, the civilized countries had been able to build up their. standards of living and culture to a high level. The illiterate native races also gained wonderful knowledge from their experiences, but they had no means of recording it, with the result that they had no foundation on which to build. Posterity would learn from the books of the present day, and the English people so fully realized this that the law in England declared that a qopy of every book or pamphlet published must be lodged in the British Museum. Mr Purvis went on to describe the various groups of popular books. The world’s best sellers came, for the most part, from the fiction group. For a large number of people novels were the. only known literature. Mr Purvis mentioned that no book became more quickly popular than one which had been banned or queried by the censor. Some time ago Boccaccio’s “Decameron” had figured in a court case. It had never been greatly read, although written more than 300 years ago, but it came into its own as soon as the report of the case was published.. Novels provided entertainment, but in addition, he thought, many people read them because they were able to associate themselves with some of the characters and gratify by proxy some of their unconscious and unfulfilled desires. Among novelists whose books are eagerly awaited in New Zealand he mentioned Humfrey Jordan, Rafael Sabatini, A. J. Cronin and Anne Hepple. .Some very fine books were being written about the war by journalists. But the world’s best seller in recent years had been “Mein Kampf,” the book in which Hitler set out his programme for world domination. This book was still selling in large numbers, but the royalties were being paid to a British hospital fund.