THE PUBLIC TO-DAY IS MORE EXACTING WITH ITS WRITERS.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 724, 27 December 1933, Page 2

THE PUBLIC TO-DAY IS MORE EXACTING WITH ITS WRITERS.

MR. HUGH WALPOLE'S VIEWS. The novel, which is in most eountries the most popular form of current literature, has, in the last 25 years, undergone fundamental and revolutionary changes, according to Mr. Hugh Walpole, h'imself a disting.uished exponent of the art. A quarter of a century ago, says Mr. Walpole, it was still feasible for a novelist of the front rank to write a story of the sword-and-pistol type, ta tale of adventure in which one exciting incident is piled on to another, and in which the characters' only form of conversation is th'e mono.•syllable "Ha," except in moments of emotional stress, when they might perhaps exclaim, "Ho." Nowadays, however, in Mr. Walpole's opinion, the puhlic demands that the vovelist should be ,a.n artist, and that his work should have the shapeliness and form of a painting or a piece of music. No longer can the serious .novelist be content merely to tell a story. Most people will probably admit with Mr. Walpole that a great change has come over the novel in the period under review, without perhaps entirely agreeing as to the nature of that change. It was more or less natural that thirty years ago serious writers should begin to abandon the pure story of adventure. In the early nineteenth century Sir Walter Scott had given that type of novel the finest possible substance, and toward the end Rohert Louis Stevenson had ornamented it with the grace of a singuarly attractive style. It seemed that the -best kind of work possible in this line had already been done; and anibitious novelists inevitably began to look round for other worlds to conquer. But modern novels as a class are perhaps searcely remarkable for the architectural beauty of their form. Mr. H. G. Wells is among most prominent of writers currently employing the novel as a vehicle for his ideas, but his books can hardly be ■said to be systematically planned according to any formula of beauty. It would, perhaps, b& more accurate to

suggest that the novel of to-day differs from its predecessors chiefly in lattempting to get behind the actions of its characters to the thoughfs from which those actions spring, and in be- ' coming a forum for the discussion of 1 contemporary issues, whether political, religious, soeial, or artistic. The modern novel is indeed the Marble Areh of literature. It furrdshes the soap box from which the orator can talk about everything from cahhages to kings. It is the universal talking •society. It will be interesting to see whether the talks reveal anything of permanent value.