HAPPY BOOKS
AN ENGLISH SELECTION.
It is not' difficult ’to convey sadness in writing. There are innumerable books and innumerable poems which the least sensitive cannot read without hearing “the still sad music of humanity,” says “Colophon,” writing in “John o’ London’s Weekly.” But happiness? That is another matter altogether. It is very hard indeed to con-j vey happiness, and I would even go to the length of saying that no writer can do it by taking thought. Subconscious recognition of this may be the reason why so few make the attempt, though perhaps writers are also influenced by a feeling that sadness has more literary possibilities than happiness, just as an unhappy marriage is more promising literary material than a happy one. which must be, outwardly at least, undramatic. The comparative rarity of happiness in literature has just been demonstrated by a contemporary which invited its readers to suggest a set of three “entirely happy” books written in the English language. Analysis of the results showed that the following six had received the most votes: “The Compleat Angler,”' “Under the Greenwood Tree,” “The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp,” “Walden,” “Elizabeth and Her German Garden,” “The Pickwick Papers.”
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 6
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197HAPPY BOOKS Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 6
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