PRIDE OR PREJUDICE?
Sir.-Many compliments have been rightly bestowed on your film critic G.M. I take a professional interest in his reviews and find them with a few exceptions excellent, even if I do not always agree with his judgment. May I however air a grievance? G.M. has been annoying me several times by "showing off’-out of sheer affectation-his "illiteracy". Off hand I can only remember the cases of Pride and Prejudice and The Bluebird (there were others and I am not speaking of works of indifferent literary value), when G.M. was proudly boasting of his ignorance of the "originals". + | In this week’s Listener (March 1) he says, talking of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, "it is so long since I read it that my memory is open to correction." Well, who prevents G.M. correcting his memory by reading the story again? It is neither long nor difficult to obtain (and the same was true for Pride and Prejudice and The Bluebird). After all being a critic involves some responsibilities and, if necessary also some tedious (?) work, to provide the "background" to a witty chat.
IMAGO
(Hastings). .
G.M. replies: ‘Neither pride nor prejudice but the easy way out. It took me, for instance, two hours to see Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and, believe it or not, four more to write about it. All spare-time work, too. ‘Imago’ may safely delete that question-mark after ‘tedious.’ But if The Listener cares to employ me as a full-time film critic I'll cheerfully undertake to read or re-read all the classics,
and all the other stories, plays, biographies, and newspaper articles from which Hollywood may conceivably at some time make pictures. Better still, I might be able to afford to take somebody like ‘Imago’ to the pictures with me to give me first-hand information about the originals."
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 142, 13 March 1942, Page 4
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305PRIDE OR PREJUDICE? New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 142, 13 March 1942, Page 4
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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