Books $ Literary Gossip

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15973, 15 November 1919, Page 8

Books $ Literary Gossip

After much wit and a good deal ot harmless self-praise, G. Bernard , Shaw, in his article “On Cutting Shakespeare” in the Fortnightly Review, says: The sane conclusion is, therefore, that cutting must be dogmatically ruled out, because, as Lao-Tse said, “Of the making of reforms there is no end.” The simple thing to do with a Shakespeare play .is to perform it. The alternative is to let it alone. If Shakespeare made a mess of it, it is not likely that Smith or Robinson will succeed where he failed. Extract from an American libary publication dated October: —With the death of Andrew Carnegie the library world has lost Its greatest benefactor. Mr Carnegie once said, “I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help these who help themselves. They never pauperise • They reach the aspiring, and open to these ihe chief treasure® of the world—those stored up in books. A taste for reading drives out lower tastes. Besides this, I believe good fiction one of the most beneficial reliefs to the monotonous lives of the people. For these and other reasons, I prefer the free pnblic library to most if not any other agencies for the happiness and improvement of a community.” Readers of books on spiritualism will be interested to learn that a Federation of Spiritualists came into being in London on July 1 in the commonplace precincts of the Pood Reform Restaurant. There were over 100 present in the flesh, and journalists attending could not count the others. Officers were elected for not only the mundane federation, but for a duplicate organisation on the other side, the late Mr Stead being called upon to assume the presidency of the spiritual branch. He was averred by a medium there to have accepted,' and he has power to appoint his own spiritual executive committee, which will decide upon a variety of matters,’ including, doubtless, the size of the spiritual dues. The ‘dues of this world's federation are an important item, a writer upon it in Truth even suggesting that the organisers have a most worldly eye for them. Much indignation was expressed at the meeting over the small fees that psychics often get. Berta Buck has been here, writes Miss Fanny Butcher in the Chicago Tribune, and those of us who met her will never forget the three days which were a succession of glorious hours to her and to us. There has never come to Chicago any one more joyously eager about our town, more sincerely happy in our smoke and our dreams. Berta Ruck is tli© sort of woman who makes one proud one is a woman—straightforward, keenminded, with an antenna-like sense of humour, a joy in life and a passionately devoted love for her two children and her husband, who is, by the way, Oliver Onions, who wrote “Mushroom Town,” that most remarkable of all life histories of a village springing into a city. The last chapter of her first novel was written on the day that her youngest son was born, a little over five years ago. She had done journalism before that, but she had never attempted a novel. She is frankly a popular writer, and she insists that her husband is anything but a “ writing man.” ‘Then and Now,” by Eden Phillpotte, in the Westminster Gazette.” A “greyhaired, dim-eyed, still inquiring thing” makes up for the cloudiness of the rest:— When I was young and leapt into the Spring— An eager, quick-eyed, all-inquiring thing— ■■ I hunted wood and valley, sea and shore. Yet knew not how to feel the wonders that I saw. Now I am old and creep into the Spring— A grey-haired, dim-eyed, still inquiring thing. By ancient ways, a shadow, still I steal. Yet know not how to see the wonders that I feel. Come Youth again, while to another Spring My memories the old adventure bring. Wonder and wander yet once more with me; I’ll teach you how to feel, and you my eyes shall be. “The ways of American professors are different from those of their English counterparts. Our own professors, at any rate in their own subjects, think it incumbent on them, if they publish at ’all, to make a definite addition to knowledge rather than to contribute to the journalism of the subject. - It may even be said, always excepting the incumbent of the Chair of English at Cambridge, that they are almost morbidly afraid of the journalistic touch. Not so the American professor, who is more afraid of being dull than of being trivial, though he does not always escape the latter in striving to avoid the former. May we hazard the guess that, while the English professor knows that even the most solid tome will’find a certain audience of cultured people, the American professor knows that unless he interests the ignorant it is useless for him to write at all The Times.

OF INTEREST TO LOVERS OF READING.

T)r van Wijk, a Dutch critic of Russian literature,' declares: —“ When we study Russian literature of the nineteenth century we always have the impression that it stands on a broader basis than our Western literatures. We find that all great Russian authors have a common psychological background—the problem of man’s relation to the universe. They cannot limit their interest to smaller, particular phenomena; they must put these iu some relation to the meaning of human life considered as a whole. . . The more we have to do with the Russians the more we come to realise that this breadth of nature is thier distinguishing characteristic. And where shall we find a more powerful expression of this characteristic than in Russia’s greatest spirits, in Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky ?” “American literature is still terribly apt’to excite the snobbish elements in an English critic. It is either feeble with an excess of culture, of forcible with a self-conscious virility. In either case it appears to be influenced by the desire to conciliate or flout the European standards; and such deference not only never attains its object, but, perhaps deservedly, brings its own punishment in the shape of patronage and derision. One cannot help, on such occasions, boasting of the "English descent from Shakes-peare.”—-The Times. “MOTHER LORE;” By Malbanke Anderson. (H. I. Jones and Son.) Mothers in particular will welcome “Mother Lore,” by Mrs Francis Anderson, who in the preface points put that the book was not written for teachers, nor for learned women only. It is meant for all—fathers, mothers, oi- teachers, who, recognising their responsibility, seek to do their duty to their children and to the nation. “Mother Lore” seeks to show the necessity" for building up character in the home by the person who alone can lay its foundation—the mother! ALLOTMENT GARDENING. A very interesting booklet on Allotment Gardening has been published by Cassell and Co., and is being distributed locally per medium of, H. I. Jones and Son. The boob is a complete guide to amateurs, and is most profusely illustrated. Allotment Gardening shcrulcl prove exceedingly useful to those desirous of keeping down the cost of living by growing good crops of vegetables in accordance with the scientific direction of H. A. Thomas. NOMADS OP THE NORTH; hy James Oliver Curwood (A. D. Willis, Ltd.). James Oliver Curwood, who has been responsible for the authorship of some vtry fine stories, has maintained his pretige as a writer by producing another of his very readable stories. This time it is “Nomads of the North,” and just as interestingly as he entered into and described the life of Kazan, the wolf-dog, Curwood has given us in “Nomads of the North” a delightful story with a Northland setting. How a sagacious dog named Mild and a bear became almost akin to human pals and protected and fought for each other in the wilds, is told in this popular author’s best style.