THE AUTHOR'S TASK

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 60, 27 March 1937, Page 9

THE AUTHOR'S TASK

Appeal by J- B.. Prisetley

An urgent appeal to authors to report their own age and to readers not to rufi.» away from reality was made by Mr. J. B. Priestley In London recently, says the Baily Telegraph. "I am entirely in sympathy," he said, "with. the old point of view that the novelist ought to be an ent'ertainer. I£ things were better than they are I ehould not hsk anything better for myself. People wxite and a'sk me why I don't write another ' Good Companions. ' The answer is that I don't want to. "The world has changed since I wrote that book. We are living in a stxangely unsettled world, and I believe you would have very iittle respect for an author who in these tim.es merely eontinued to blow his penny whistle. People are changing in their view of what the author should do. Very cften they want to borrow money, but many of the letters I receive are appeals to do eomething about the state of the world in which we live. "Why should I be dragged into thisf Because there is coming into being a feeling that popuiar autnors should be guides, philosophers, and friends. It isn't that they think I have more wisdom, but that I have more tlme. Young people in particular t'eel that the writer should be encouraged to report on things because he is politically and economically disisterested. "Another reason is that the author is felt to have a clue to the ordinary human point of view, which every year

is in greater danger of being lost as we become more and more organised. The pathetie thing about many citizens of big cities is that they have to go to novels to find real people, because the people they meet are automata, not ^present to their conscionsness any more than the man who takes them up tn the fourth floor in the lift. "The contemporary writer, if he ls worth our respect, must deal with the contemporary scene, report it as he finds it, and humanise it for us. We are living in so dangerous an- age that literature cannot alford to play. I be lieve very sincerely that there has arisen in our own time a great new reading public which can, if it wishes, dominate our scene. On this public the future of the world depends, and I am proud to write for it. "I atic you not to desert a man because a graver note creeps into his work. Don't stay out of the theatre because the reallties of life have entered it. Don't refuse to enjoy a bool because it doesn't take you out Of yourselves. There are forces at work now which may take you right out of yourselves. "We cannot write for pastenty There may be no posteiity and. if therr i.s, we don't know what it will read. 1 am prdud to be a man of my own timc. Tn a better world we may be forgotten. But even if nobody remembers, eo long as the things that make life beautifui go on existing, it doesn't matter if wc have gone for ever."