NOVEL WRITING

Hokitika Guardian, 10 April 1930, Page 2

NOVEL WRITING

INCREASE OF CRIME THEMES.

MR E. Y. KNOX’S REVIEW

BONBON, Feb. 11.

Mr E. Y. Knox, “Evoe” of “Punch,” gave some startling figures last night relating to the increase of crime as the subjects of novels during a speech at an Authors’ Clulb dinner. Having confessed that he had only once attempted to write a novel, and then only completed one sentence, Mr Knox asked why it was that everyone wrote novels except himself. How did they come to contract this queer malady of pseudosis, while he had only a kind of parrot-disease, which made him want to write imitations of the bad novels of everyone else? “There was a young girl I met last year playing tennis—she was very beautiful and very charming. I felt that her loveliness atoiled almost entirely for what I could not help describing to myself as want of brains. What was my horror to learn that this slip of pure English womanhood bad written no fewer than three strong sex novels under another name, all of which I had read—aye, and Iblushed to read.”

He knew a man whose duty it was to assist in the management of the Empire of India, and whose leisure hours should have been. Spent in brooding on the mysterious East, , But what did he do? Wrote rather snappy detective novels and they meant more to him than the Taj Mahal. Time was when writers did not (criticise [painters, and painters did not criticise writers. Nowadays ho doubted if there was a single artist who did not write novels. And the young politician, instead of springing into fame by writing a romance, looked forward to writing romances in order to earn those rewards in his old age which am ungrateful electorate lmd taken from him by turning Turnout of office.

“AN EVE FOR AN EYE.”

“But tiie most terrible thing happened to me at my dentist’s,’’ continued Mr Knox. “Sitting with my tnouth open in the seat of pain, I suddenly received from the smiling operator the awful tidings, ‘I have just finished a novel.’ Tears welled from my eyes. Naturally, I could not express what I felt, but I did what I could. 1 managed .to get hold of his novel when it was published, and I reviewed it—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! ■ ;y “Now let me turn to a few statistics. Between the years 1924 and 1929 not more than 10,000 people in England and America, were actually slain by blunt instruments. In fiction there were 174,653. The range of fatal revolver shots during the 3ame period increased from' fifty to a hundred paces. Tffe use of the .South American ■ poison known as ‘curare became practically universal among novelists throughout the civilised globe. There were 158 persons in novels found, sturk cload yyho had not only been unrecognisable through mutilation by continuous battering with a blunt instrument, but also pierced with a pointed’weapon, punc-. tured by a revolver,' bullet, arid strangled a as well. These are very serious, figiures,” • THE NEW HISTORY.

“Whence this unsalable, this prodigious* appetite for romantic *.mtrutiQSiWhat is' it all about? Are we jjy£.the second childhood of the worlsftSs it feminism? Is all literatur^to>be~ synonymous with fiction or is it "not? History is all turning to romance. When I open any historical work nowadays I expect to find either a study of sex life or a study of diabolical crime, such as I get in my novels—and I get it. “Aided by films, I anticipate that history as sensational romance will more and more replace the study of history as fact. It has been said that truth is ■ stranger than fiction. I should rather say that truth has to be represented as fiction before anyone will read it at ail. In time to come 1 ask myself, will not every form of the printed word be published in very self-defence ;■ to fall into the fictional mould. ' Will not then the really excellent novels be in danger of drowning in the flood?” To him fiction was a : strange goddess. • All iiis life he bad been a truth-teller; he had dealt witli fact, and fact alone. In a kind of white purity lie stood before many who had employed themselves in misleading and bewitching the' world with their in-

genious and delightful mendacity. Recalling the only attempt, he had made to write a novel, Mr Knox said that, so far as he could remember, it began:

Edward Smith stood on the top step of his house in Berkeley square on a late November evening of 18—. He was immaculately dressed. A fine drizzling rain was falling. ' “It never got any further than that,” he continued. “I left Edward Smith standing here, and there lie will stand through the years on that top step, one of London’s less considerable statues. His clothes remain immaculate. The rain continues t<. fall. If I ever visit Berkeley square —and that is very seldom—l pas l hurriedly to the house with averted eye. What do I care about Edward Smith? Who was the idiot, anyway? 1 was sick of him. I hated the man. MR KNOX’S ART.

The Rev. Anthony C. Deane, Canon of Windsor, who presided, in toasting “The Guest,’’ said that he imagined thee were few people who, in t inform or another, had not written fiction.

Mr Knox from an early age had written most admirable verse—verse which had the quality of almost seeming to write itself. (Laughter). Although it seemed so spontaneous, it was, in fact, the most consummately artistic work. / “1 confess that I wrote a very short'novel in the day 9 of my youth, ’ added Canon Beane. “It proved to he the last straw that broke the camel’s back, for the publisher promptly went into liquidation. (Laughter.) Mr Knox bad never written a novel, but it was not yet too late." '

Mr Guy Kendall, headmaster of University College l School, Hampstead, said there was one sphere in history in which novelists might be very useful, and that was in ancient history, which, as it was usually written, was a most portentously' dull thing. (Laughter.)

Dr Albert Baillie, Dean of Windsor. said he had none of the creative gifts that formed an author, and be was perfectly incapable of writing any form of literature. But be was a great reader of novels. He believed the real purpose of literature, the highest form of which, he thfught, was poetry, was often neglected by people who were capable of doing good work. “I think it is a great loss to the present generation,” added Dean Baillie, “that, literary men are so obsessed with the erroneous idea that they can write novels.” Mr Holloway Horn, who confessed to having written ten novels, 3aid that he had come up in the train with a fellow-townsman in Hertfordshire vho had casually observed: “I hear you write,” adding, “Perhaps you write under another name?” Mr Horn replied that he wrote under two pennames— “Michael Arlen” and “Ethel M. Dell,” whereupon the other said: “I have ’ never heard of either of thbm.” (Laughter.)