SO MANY NOVELISTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 250, 12 January 1928, Page 10

SO MANY NOVELISTS

MODERN FICTION DEFENDED “STRONG STUFF” BY ILLITERATES “One can hardly go to a gathering of people nowadays without meeting someone who has written a novel,” said Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith. the novelist, the other day. We are not told that she was voicing a grievance; she was certainly telling the truth when she inferred that we are all novelists now, says the London correspondent of the Melbourne “Herald.” Moreover, according to the publishers, the average standard of the novel that is now being submitted is higher than at any other period within memory. "The number of*people writing novels is increasing enormously,” said Mr. Walter Hutchinson, of Hutchinson and Co. “We sometimes turn down 100 fulllength novels in manuscript in a day. I don’t suppose we publish one in 100.” This should do something towards disposing of the suspicion that publishers leap at anything which looks like a novel. Entertaining Trash “We try to set a high standard,” Mr. Hutchinson went on, “but we have to supply the public tastes, and sometimes give what school teachers would call ‘trashy because it is entertaining.” Mr. Hutchinson was here replying

to the allegation of Miss Monk, the principal of Newport Secondary School, who told a meeting of teachers that thousands of novels to-day are written in a hopelessly illiterate and slovenly manner, and are as remarkable for their lack of grammar as for their lack of sense. “Miss Monk has probably been unfortunate in the novels, she has read,” he' said. “No doubt there is a tremendous lot of rubbish being written and published, but there are plenty of good ones, too. A lot of people don’t want to read heavy ‘literary’ work. They want something light and diverting. “Some books are written for entertainment, and if they entertain, they serve their purpose. I suppose that Charles Garvice and Nat Gould have given more happiness than almost any other author. Garvice’s sales run into tens of millions, and Gould’s reach about twenty-five millions. “Miss Monk seems to think that all novels are written for educational or school purposes. But that is not quite the function of a novel. And she is quite wrong if she thinks that publishers can sell rubbish. They cannot.” Mr. Hutchinson said there could be no question that the average novel to-day is better written and better constructed than ever before. And this view is shared by other publishers, including Mr. Newman Flower, managing director of Cassells, and Mr. B. W. Willett, chairman of John Lane. The Bodley Head Ltd. “There are new and bright ideas coming into fiction—it has been specially noticeable in the last two years,” said Mr. Flower, who does not agree that thousands of books with bad grammar are published. “When all is said and done, I thinfc.

the percentage of bad novels is verv small indeed.” Mr. Willett mentioned that sometimes they got a comparatively illiterate person who could write really strong stuff. “Such work,” he explained, “would always be gone .through by our own editor, and rewritten without, if possible, destroying the original style. “It would, of course, be properly punctuated, and the grammar put right."