A MASTER JOURNALIST

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18635, 2 August 1930, Page 15

A MASTER JOURNALIST

THE BEAUTY OF WORDS. The work of a journalist to the uninitiated, may seem simple enough—just a matter of telling the events and happenings of the day in palatable form. But how well-equipped the good journalist must be to carry out that simple task may be seen by reading the last book of Mi* C. E. Montague, a journalist first and foremost, even if a notable writer in his spare time. Here is an abundant store of literary knowledge garnered from all markets, quotations which grow native in the text, never obtruding, but tickling the mind of the reader into the right state for the author to work his purpose, suggesting by their context the memory of earlier adventures in the world of literature. Perhaps the most striking feature in “A Writer’s Notes on his Trade,” apart from Mr Montague’s art in subordinating literary knowledge to his aim, is his divine discontent with his practice of his art. He is always feeling after the beauty of words, trying to make the beauty which words and thoughts conceal within themselves live alone, apart from the baser matter which they demand for a vehicle. He cries out for the tragic beauty of the death scene between Othello and Desdemona without the material encumbrance of a bedroom, pillows, a woman and a man’s rough gestures. He strives after the “purfe” beauty of words, in the educational sense of the epithet. Mr Montague combines the art of the writer with the skill of the journalist. In a chapter which shows his wide reading in every line, he enlists the reader’s sympathy at the outset by giving a list of famous books which he has never read, nor ever will read, and cries out against the omniverous reader who knows his classics through and through. Better a man who has his little knowledge marshalled to command, than a fellow muddled with over-soaking. A comfortable feeling is at once established between human author and busy reader, which is heightened when he champions the common colloquialisms of every-day speech as being far preferable to the pretentious stilts of blue-stockings. Justifiable and true enough, but the stock-in-trade of the skilled journalist • nevertheless. A book of graceful English prose, downright, incisive, broad of vision, and preeminently just and sane. ‘‘A Writer’s Notes on his Trade,” by C. E. Montague .(Chatto and Windus).