WHAT DO WE READ?

Evening Star, Issue 21742, 9 June 1934, Page 2

WHAT DO WE READ?

[Written by Mahy Scott, for the ‘ Evening Star.’] T worried our librarian again the other day. “What do they read?” she asked' with a sternly impersonal air. “ Well, very largely exactly the opposite to what you would expect them to read.” It sounded as if for once her patience had collapsed into epigram, hut at her invitation I stayed to see for mystelf, and found her seeming paradox entirely true. It was the sale day in our country town, and a crowd of country folk were coining in and out of the library. The women for the most part read lighter novels. “ I want to be entertained,” they said frankly. ( “To forget hard times and worries.” Miss Bosnian's novels were in great demand. “ Light, entertaining, and clean,” the librarian called them. “ 1 wish she would write one a month; those we have seldom get as far as the shelves.” The New Zealander, Nelle Scanlon, had many admirers, and Georgette Heyer seems an unfailing favourite. That is natural enough. Her pretty romances with their old-world setting would be likely to appeal to those who see little of the glamour of life. This, however, was merely the average country woman. A few read probably better novels than their town friends. “ Something with some meat in it,” I heard one say, and watched some go away with such books as ‘ The Unforgotten Prisoner,’ ‘ Kristin Lavransdatter,’ and the Henry Handel Richardson trilogy. For the most part, however, I noticed that they disliked war novels. “ Women won’t take them,” the librarian said. “ The older generation have suffered too much and the younger have heard too much about the whole thing.” “ I suppose the men want still less to he reminded of what they suffered,” I suggested, but she shook her head, “That’s the extratraordinary thing. Many returned soldiers read nothing but war literature. I was surprised to prove the truth of her words that afternoon. One farmer, who had even yet scarcely reached what should have been the prime of life, brought back, one war history only to take another. Several others, one an ex-officer in the British Air Force, two suffering obviously from war disabilities, hunted the shelves that held war literature. Particularly was there a great demand for aviation histories and biographies. ‘ Death in tho Air,’ ‘ Flying Fury,’ ‘ The Red Knight of Germany,’ ‘German War Birds, and a dozen more were, 1 learned, never for a day upon the shelves. Looking at the strained and worn faces of these men, I regretted the tragic and morbid memories thfl-t must always be thus rekindled. Watching pathetic eagerness with which they sought these books, it seemed to mo that they were like pale ghosts forced for ever to haunt the scenes of their former miseries. The farmers’ reading was on the whole very interesting. 1 should have expected a preponderance ot light literature, of thrillers and cowboy romance?. Blit the majority confined their attention to non-fiction, to biographies, travel, and history. vc so little time for reading that I like it to be something worth while, one said, almost in excuse lor the solid time he bore away. The 9lder generation seemed absorbingly interested in economics and political science; they took also books on finance, op the Douglas Credit, , and on any kmc. ot economics. It seemed as though they were searching fiercely and still inarticulately for some panacea of all their woes, some remedy for the madness into which their world had fallen. The mass of the people were thinking moie, studying more deeply. Surely it was a step upon the very road to recoveij that they sought? ‘ The astounding popularity ol one type of light fiction surprised me—might even once have shocked me. Everyone has the right, of course, to her own taste, in books or in hats; but whereas the wearing of an ugly bat mav induce an uneasiness that leads to improvement, the persistent reading of light and impossible fiction is apt to induce a permanent disincfiliation for anything better. The revelling m tripe and nothing but tripe causes the mind to revolt from more solid tare. An occasional meal of light fiteratuie is as beneficial as any other change of diet, but the young reader who works her wav persistently through Ruby Ayres, Ethel Dell, Rosita I'orbes, and Muriel Hine soon loses the taste lot anything that more nearly resembles life. Such reading induces a lazy and slovenly habit of mind which it may take years to eradicate. I was staying lately at a. wealthy home where the daughter, a girl nineteen, spent most of her tune idling in a hammock with a novel of Elinor Glyn’s and a box of chocolates. Although she was an ornamental figure, I found it an unedifymg spectacle, and felt some sympathy for the father when he pointed grimly to her with the comment • “ Food for body and mind! And my father starved on oatmeal while he worked his way through the Lainburgli Jaw schools. But that s' what we seem to have come to. '' as it, 1 wondered, a natural reaction from those stern forbears, a swing of the pendulum? Nevertheless, I seemed to hear that old grandfather’s voice asking: “Was it for this I worked so hard? ” , „,, T “Who reads the sex novels? I asked our librarian. “ The bright young moderns, I suppose.” Not at all. The men and women between forty and fifty.” She was, once more, sadly correct. It seemed to me somewhat pathetic to watch these elderly and unattractive people furtively stealing out with a book they had just heard a young girl declare “ too hot for me.” But after all, is it not but one more attempt to escape from the sad reality of file, one last clutch at the vanishing skirts of romance and excitement? 1 did not. grudge these disillusioned souls their secret orgies with Ethel Mannin and Rosita Forbes.

T saw enough that afternoon to convince me that the psychologists are unnecessarily alarming when they write of the bad influence of the crime novel upon the world to-day. It seemed to me that only the most decorous, the most law-abiding young men took out Dorothy Sayers, Horler, and Agatha Christie. Just as .incongruous to picture them wallowing in crime as to imagine the conventional little misses who went off with Seltzer and Brand really enjoying a cowboy “shoot” or a Wild West Adventure, Human nature must seek for a little excitement, a natural vent. These young things would sit in their little suburban villas and devour their thrillers, hut not for the world would they break one jot or tittle of the law. On tho whole 1 agree with the Dean of Durham, who, having plaintively remarked that “it Would bo refreshing to find some consideration for the Catechism teaching in the minds of tho modern novelist’s distracted heroes and heroines,” goes on to point out that “ some of the most respectable of us have been driven to detective novels, where, if one is not on the side of tho angels, one is at least on the side of the police.” i am very sure that these young things, despite tlicir lurid tasks in literature, are upon the side of the police.