BOOK-LOVERS’ NOTES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 17 June 1933, Page 12

BOOK-LOVERS’ NOTES

AUTHORS AND REVIEWS WORK OF WELL-KNOWN WRITERS. PASSING COMMENT. . If men and women were at all like the forms given to them in modern art, the sooner the human race were annihilated the better. —The Hon. John Collier. _ * * * *

In general, on my tour, 1 found that wherever people are civilised they are unhappy and anxious, but wherever thev are uncivilised they appear happy and care-free. —Mr Bernard Sliaw\

The congratulations of the literary world of this country go out to Mr Lindsay Buick on his inclusion m the Birthday Honours. Among other New Zealanders who have been so honoured, some have written books, but All Buick is the first New Zealander to be decorated purely for his literary work. The honour given to Air Buick is a recognition not only of his own labours, |,u” of the fact that there is such a rhino- as a New Zealand literature. % ft ft ft *

In “South Africa, 1652-1933,” the most recent addition to the scholarly “Home University Library,” Professor Hattersley, of -Natal University College, gives a brief compact history of South” Africa. front the first occupation of the Cape of Good Hope in the seventeenth century to the present time. He is optimistic as regards the future, believing that colour prejudices are becoming less pronounced and that as the natives achieve racial solidarity tiiev will he admitted as full members in the industrial life of the Union. This interesting survey does not, of course, touch specifically upon many of the matters which excite the cablegrams from month t-o month, but provides a background. * * * *

In “The Stolen Bride” Miss Marjorie Bowen once again appears as the successful writer of an historical romance. This is a love story of more than average ability, treating of the American Rebellion of 1777, and the many complications caused by the mixed quarrels of Red Indians, Britons and British colonials, and the unofficial spy system, which included deserters! idle scoundrels seeking wealth and women. The woman who is guilty of all treachery to injure' the man she loves, because lie lias given his love elsewhere, and finally gives up life itself that he may attain his wish, is finely’ conceived and drawn. -X- -ft ft ft ft

Since the war (writes “Liverpool Post”) the number of deaths of great and nearly great authors is sufficiently impressive to make us wonder rather anxiously how few remain, for the gap left by the removal of Thomas Hardy, Robert Bridges, Joseph Conrad, Charles Doughty, Arnold Bennett. Israel Banzwill, Conan Doyle, Edward Carpenter, and now George Saintbury, George Moore and John Galsworthy, seems unlikely to be widened much further. ft ft ft ft ft

Mr Ivor Brown, who must be one of the most hard-working writers in England, declares that authors who dictate cannot possibly care about style, unless they revise so radically that it would have been more economical of labour to write It all down originally. He says that he can usually recognise one kind of dictated stuff (the more ambitious) by its cumbrous, unshapely sentences and dubious syntax; the other (shocker-narrative) by its bareness, lack of vocabulary, and reliance on cliches. ■* ft ft ft *

The home at Ealing (London) of Mi's Selwyn Oxley, who has written charming books about “Stubby” the cat, is a Pussies’ Pantheon. Every mantelpiece is thronged with china cats, glass cats, ivory eats, wooden cats, picture postcard’ cats, kneeling cats, sleeping cats, dancing cats, large cats, small cats, giants and midgets. The teapots are china cats. The fireplace is adorned with cats. Real cats leer at one from easy chairs. Mrs Oxiley looks out for cats wherever she goes, and collects everything about cats. The press-cutting cupboard contains some 60 volumes, neatly indexed. *** * * ■

F. E. Baumc’s "Half-Caste” is probably the most easily readable novel about New Zealand that has yet been published. In place of the "slabs of scenery” with which other New Zealand novelists have often- bo.red their readers, Mr Baumc gives a highly romantic story that is full of action. It is the story of Ngaire, a half-caste girl, born in squalor in the Kawliia district, who goes to Auckland as a pupil at a boarding -school. At the end of her term she learns that she has no money and .she is thereupon "dropped” by her white friends, and eventually becomes a maid in one of the homes where formerly she had been welcomed as an intimate. Then a singular stroke of luck makes her the companion of an eccentric Englishwoman, resident in Auckland, who marries her off to a young Scottish tourist.

The Chinese municipality of Shanghai has forbidden production of M i'S Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize novel, "The Good Earth,” as a Chinese motion picture (khvs the correspondent- of the "Christian Science Monitor”). Work had already been started on the film by a Chinese company. The novel, despite high praise by foreign critics as a classic of Chinese peasant life, has been condemned by sensitive members of the Chinese intelligentsia as a reflection upon their country. Apparently they feel that Mrs Buck should have.portrayed members of a higher social class in her novel, to draw a true picture of China, although she lias replied that it was not within the scope of her purpose to portray any but the peasant classes with whom she has had intimate sympathetic contact. **’ # *• * *

To read about buried treasure is always a satisfaction: to find it, a .joy granted to only very few, must be something much greater than a thrill. Every normal boy has been brought up on tales of the hoard hidden by pirates, plus the heroic leader of the band of seekers, the rival oanu of cutthroats, the sketch of tne locality where the treasure is hidden, the damsel who falls into the hands of the cut-throats, her rescue, and the happy ending after the discomfiture of the rivals and the finding of the treasure. But the truth about buried treasure is really much more entertaining than tlie fiction, as anyone who reads "The Coast of Treasure,” by Laurence G. Green, will find out for himself or herself. The coast referred to is the south-west coast of Africa. Ship-

masters, wo arc told, give a great stretch of it a wide bertn,, for “it is roughly charted, unexplored, unknown to this day.” Hero lies treasure of all kinds, and Mr Green’s hook is almost a pressing invitation to go there and collect some of the riches that pirates and others have left on that coast.