LITERARY TASTES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3830, 6 November 1936, Page 9

LITERARY TASTES

LIBRARIANS AS GUIDES. “In the past in the matter of literary guidance there were sound and honest critics upon whose judgment, the public could rely. In these days, except for a few honourable exceptions, literary critics apparently function as part of the sales machinery of the publishing houses. If only their claims to the discovery of masterpieces and works of pure gemius were true, we should be living in the golden age of English letters. 1 am far from saying that all current literature is either bad or negligible. Far from it. Along with the meretricious there come good, honest, wellfound, courageous works; but, unfortunately, the bad is boomed at least a;; loudly as the good. How is the ■ordinary reader to judge? It is t r tain that we can no longer trust the reviewers, and the reader who would

trust the publisher’s blurbs would be simple indeed. But the public ought to be abUe to trust the professional librarian. As librarians, we have no axes to grind, no pecuniary profit to gain.”—Mr Harry Grindle, Inspector of Lending Libraries, in Birmingham.