CUT OR UNCUT PAGES?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1113, 28 April 1911, Page 8

CUT OR UNCUT PAGES?

Ode might have supposed Mr. A. C. Benson,'the preacher of quietude, would like using a paper knife. Hβ doesn't. Ho writes to the "Morning Post" : "Why should books ever bo published with their pages uncut? Is it to advertise the integrity of a volume, a proof that it has not been read before? Would it bo possible, for instance, for a fradulent trader to sell the first skimming of a book to a careful reader and then to re-sell it as new?- Or has the custom anything to do with an idea of keeping the; pages unstained? "If there is no practical value in the tradition, why should it not bo utterly and instantly abolished? One is not obliged to receive other trade articles in an unfinished condition, and forced personally to apply tho process of completion. 1 am a busy man myself; I have to turn over, for various literary purposes, a considerable number of now books. If a book is cut, I welcome it with a sigh of relief; if not, I find minuto after minute, of precious time wasted, when, instead of turning .the leaves over briskly to discover what I want, I am prodding at tho lower edge of of two adhering pages with a paper-knife, trying to force an opening, or blowing on tho top, in the hopes of finding a parting. Or, again, I buy a now volume at a bookstall, to beguile a tedious journey. It proves to be uncut, and I have to separate it page by page with a railway ticket, or a toothpick, or an envelope, or, failing all, with an inserted finger. The annoyance this causes is great, the time expended is simply and purely lost, with no sort of corresponding gain. "I have heard leisurely people say that they rather enjoy cutting a book! But I do not think that the interests of tho busy ought to bo sacrificed to the pleasures of the idle. Thoro are people who like disengaging a tangle of string, others who like consuming their food with maddening deliberation; but that would not constitute a valid reason for selling all string in tangles, or for forbidding one course to succeed another in any restaurant or pubic eating-house until fifteen minutes had elapsed from the time of serving the previous ono." >

Mr. John Lano replied with a ' practical" defence of uncut pages: "Only on Wednesday last I happened to bo in a bookseller's shop when a gentleman came- in and asked to look at a copy of Air. Christopher Tumor's recent work, 'Land Problems and National Welfare.' But tho bookseller had not the work in stock, and after tho inquirer had gone I said to the bookseller : 'Send to the Bodley Head for a copy, and submit it for approval. . The book-seller replied by saying: 'If I were to do that, he would sit down and read tho book and return it.' Ho evidently knew his man. It happens, however, that this particular book is uncut, so at most lip could only have roah half of it. There is a growing disposition on the part of publishers to send out their books to the booksellers on approval. It is therefore all tho more necessary to guard against the abuse of such a privilege, and this as much in the interest of tho bookseller as of the author and the publisher. Moropver, many publishers hind their books, but chiefly novels, in two styles, cut edges for tho libraries and uncut edges for the booksellers. There is also another practical reason, for I assume that Mr. Benson does not snend much of his time in reading novels, so it is only fair to surmise that the serious, or work books, would have to be bound sooner or later, in calf or morocco. Uius, if the book were cut in its cloth torm, its edges in all probability would again be ploughed by the cutting machine, and thus the page which was once a thing of beauty would'be shorn of. all symmetry. To many sensitive minds tho margin or edges of a book him tho same relation to its text as tho frame should be to a picture, and we all know how a frame can mar the beauty of a picture."