Vest-Pocket Thinking

Cue (NZERS), Issue 10, 31 October 1944, Page 18

Vest-Pocket Thinking

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7UST prior to the outbreak of the Big Brawl the publishing world was much exercised in its mind over ' the spate of so-called literature that was flooding the market. The vulgar public, as gullible as ever, • simply lapped up this rushing torrent of booksmost of which could safely be labelled as tripe. And strangely enough, the greater the tripe, the more 1 energetic was the lapping and the more urgent were the demands for something similar. The result, of course, was inevitable: a widespread outbreak of literary dyspepsia coupled with acute mental constipation. As a palliative there appeared the innumberable digests so familiar to the lazy reader and so beloved by the mentally bankrupt. These, too, rolled off the presses in such numbers and guises that there arose the curious anomaly of the cure being worse than the disease. Here was a pretty problem for publishers. So that they could satisfy their clamouring customers in their cries Tor more and better tripe they found that their literary bismuth 7 was ousting the tripe. Worse, so that the digests could be kept going in sufficient quantities to make them profitable the tripe machines had to work at full blast to provide the digestible material. Granted, one or two digests (we'll leave out the italics) are excellent publications of their sort and some real attempt is made to select from the more worthwhile literature for condensation. These shall be unnamed for. this column, with its usual niggardly attitude, does not propose to give any free advertising. On the other hand, the bulk of these magazines cull from the most sensational sources and appear to deal chiefly with freaks and freakish situ-

ations interpsevsed with pseudopolitical or economic arguments. /Is a contribution to, or a review of literature in the best sense of the word, they are a dead loss. So formidable has this Frankenstein, monster grown that there is now the pathetic sight of digests of digests! Where will it all end? Might not a magazine called The Digest to the Ump 1 - tuenth Power or something of the sort, be looked for one day. Looking at the other side of the picture it must be remembered that to the lazy thinkerand a distressingly large section of the populace are lazy thinkers—the digest form of reading is the answer to a maiden’s prayer. It creates a false but comfortable feeling in the breast of the addict that he is extraordinarily well-read, whereas in fact, his addled head is filled with all manner of irrelevant facts and odd bits of nonsense.

From an author’s'point of view, the digests can, of course, provide a substantial income. . But this is largely dependent on whether he has been

shrewd enough to secure a let-out clause in his agreement with his publishers. If the publishers, soulless creatures as they sometimes are, have insisted on full reproduction rights, the unfortunate .author then has, to coin a new phrase, had it as far as digests are concerned.

One of the more influential and wealthy digests (still no free advertising) recently came into bad odour because it was-, discovered to be backing certain publications, so that it could reproduce from them, free of charge. Considering the enormous circulation of this particular digest, it was good business on their part, but hardly ethical —if publishers can be considered to have any ethics. Viewing the situation broadly, it is an undesirable one from every point of view. The publisher, in his rapacity has found himself overwhelmed with books and magazines z he really does not want: but having created the demand he is compelled to churn out masses of inconsequential reading together with the ■appropriate digests. The war put some sort of a brake on their production but the public appetite has been whetted and there is no indication that it will subside after the war. The reader is pandered to in his laziness, and if this practice persists there may come a time when the market for really good literature is confined to a few old dodderers to whom Conrad is ■something more than a new cocktail. The obvious remedy is io curtail the literary output at the source. That is to say, manuscripts that show any promise at all should be closely examined by a committee appointed by a

union of publishers. No new book should see the light of day unless it bore the approval of this committee as being something really worth reading. Scribblers and dealers in sensation for its own sake would be discouraged, and eventually forced into advertising

or newspaper work, two unavoidable evils. ' } ,/ ■ s’. Digests would then be compelled to digest either good new literature or some of the older works which have stood the test of time and criticism. It is*significant that no digest ever reviews, say, Stevenson, or Tolstoy, or Voltaire, or even GBS! Perhaps the average perception would spurn these pearls with a contemptuous grunt and. turn impatiently to a nutshell description of sea-serpents which existed only in the bibulous imagination of a broken-down sea captain. Sad to relate, .some people are really happy knowing something of nothing and nothing of anything. It only remains for some bright spark to write that Cue is after all a form of digest. Why not? Could it be that he would recognise himself in the previous paragraph ?