BOOKSTALL & STUDY

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 642, 21 December 1932, Page 5

BOOKSTALL & STUDY

Writing on the subject of Christmas presents Mr J. B. Priestley says:— Nearly all the presents I have had, these last few years, that have been delightful surprises have been things to eat, drink, or smoke. Greedy presents, things to eat and drink and smoke, appeal to me, and I never get enough of them. Nor am I the only one. I believe this taste is fairly general. I once made up for a I certain lady a thoroughly greedy Christmas present, a stocking filled with entirely unnecessary and inexcusable things to eat, and I doubt if she ever had a present that pleased her better. But women are easy present-receivers, because they like knick-knacks and bits of jewellery and so forth, and, indeed, have an adorable child-like delight in nearly anything that comes as a surprise to them. We men, unless we are dandies or book-lovers not in the trade, are much harder to please. That is why, if you are thinking about me, you had better stick to the greedy things. Mr Grant Richards, the publisher, in his book of reminiscences tells a new Bernard Shaw story. This outburst refers to a photograph of Shaw which was used to illustrate a review, and was written to the late W. T. Stead:— “As usual, the S people have taken a decent photograph and then deliberately ruined it by rubbing every line and mark out of the face, which looks like a piece of dirty drawing paper. Please, in the interests of reasonable art and common sense, do not have it reproduced. . . . Reproduce the enclosed untouched photo, which you can see at least represents a human face with the traces of a human life on it instead of the slob of wet dough which the S people have felt bound to produce.”

FROM

Mr Sinclair Lewis’s new novel, “ Ann Vickers,” portrays the modern business woman, the social worker, the successful feminist whose development and emancipation is one of the most striking phenomena of the last thirty years. It is being published simultaneously in eight different countries. Lord Baden-Powell has completed the writing of his reminiscences. He was born in 1857, and served in India, Afghanistan, the Gold Coast, Matabeleland and South Africa. He has drawn his own illustrations for the book. Several of his former books were illustrated by him. In 1907 he exhibited in the Royal Academy a bust of the famous John Smith of Virginia. The story of the cataloguer who wrote “Mill—On Logic” and “Ditto: On the Floss ” is a classic. As also is that of the other—or was it the same? —who listed Marco Polo under the heading “ Sport.” Recently, in one of London’s principal circulating libraries, a copy of Dr Sieburg’s “Is God a Frenchman? ” was carefully placed on the shelves devoted to—“ Theology ” ! Mr W. B. Yeats, who, with Mr Bernard Shaw and others, is founding an Irish Academy of Letters, recently told a story to illustrate the situation of Irish writers to-day: “At present we are like the fish in Lough Neagh. I once found myself in a railway carriage full of men going to London to testify before some court about some Lough Neagh fishery dispute. When I asked what it was all about, somebody said, ‘ Charles 11. gave the fish to one man and the water to another, and their descendants have fallen out.’ We Irish writers are the fish, but hitherto t.he water has been English and American/*

“It is time that the Irish people were aware that- a nation that takes so % little interest in its own writers and leaves them dependent on English attention and English alms is culturally speaking contemptible.”—Edwasd Garnett, The fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the literary life of Maxim Gorki is being celebrated in Russia Gorki plays and films are being shown, and Gorki scholarships and a Gorki literary institute founded. Mr Hugh Walpole, in the New York ” Herald-Tribune,” says: Mrs Carswell’s life of D. H. Lawrence has been called in by its publisher at the instance of Mr Middleton Murry. I won’t say more about this than to remark that this* is the fourth work in the last year and a half that has had to be withdrawn after publication because of opinions, held to be libellous, about living persons. May one hope that this practice of persecution of the living by the living may cease? No. One may not. But one day there is going to be a most unholy row. Mrs Edgar Wallace tells, in “ Edgar Wallace,” how her late husband wrote a column of racing advice every day for years, then, having satisfied himself as to the best bet in the race, he would go to the meeting and. on the slightest hint of a tip, abandon his own selection and bet heavily on his new information ... it was enough that some racecourse habitue whispered a third-hand tip to make him discard entirely his own fancy. The first time he got £IOOO for a serial he went to Newmarket and lost £I2OO on the first racej “He never finished a season’s racing on the right side,” says Mrs Wallace. And yet, lest one poor bookmaker should be ruined by his contemplated winnings, he ran accounts with ten. As for his own horses, Edgar expected the very cheapest animal to develop into a winner at Ascot. The horses were placed in races ’way above their class, races which must be won by infinitely superior animals. Not content with this, he would invariably back them heavily.