FACTS BEFORE FICTION
PREFERENCE OF OLDER READERS. As life goes on most people tend to read less fiction —and 1 am no exception—except first-rate bosh when they can find it, writes Mr Desmond MacCarthy, the literary critic. The elderly prefer facts; facts are more odd and instructive. It is only while one is young that one is very curious about oneself, how one is likely to feel in certain circumstances, or how different sorts of people, are likely to behave; and it is this kind of curiosity which the novelist chiefly satisfies. But as lime goes* on there is less which he or she can tell us about life that we do not already think we know or guess—except perhaps about the process of growing old. That unfortunately is a subject on which novelists have been lamentably dumb.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1939, Page 9
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138FACTS BEFORE FICTION Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1939, Page 9
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