THE AFTERMATH.

Otago Witness, Issue 4033, 30 June 1931, Page 66

THE AFTERMATH.

“It leaves a nasty taste in one’s mouth.” The expression is so frequently heard nowadays. * Not only about “ nasty tonics or unsuitably prepared food. No! Much oftener about books, kinema plavs, and objects of art (so called!) How often one listens to such remarks as these:—“ Very cleverly written, I agree, but it leaves a nasty taste in one’s mouth.” “ Splendid show, but it leaves ” etc. “ Oh, everybody knows it is a work of art, of course, but I hate to see it each time I call on Mrs So-and-so. I can’t help looking at it, because it stares one in the face, so to speak. But it leaves a kind of nasty taster in my mouth as it were.” There is no “ as it were ” about that nasty taste in the mouth which crabbed and crazy notions produce when they are materialised and confronting us. Probably they are “ clever,” or they would not pass muster. A certain brand of genius can produce the most revolt•irig work. And, unfortunately, some of the clever things, penned or painted, which have dealt with the macabre, the horror-filled, the morose, and other desperate conditions and situations, are no more fit to be circulated indiscriminately among the multitude than is poison. They have been done so cleverly. Brilliantly. Convincingly. True—or the craze for the seamy side would not have induced a number of less clever and less brilliant makers of literature and objects of art to imitate these products. When the imitations have appeared in sufficient numbers (because the would-be-smart support the fashion for fashion’s sake, and those of as yet unformed intellect support the same fashion imitatively, and because other people do), then the physical consequence is felt. Not, at first, by the eyes and ears, which see and read and listen to the horrors, but by the tongue!—A Ward Sister, in the Women’s Magazine.