LET'S CONSIDER NAMES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 183, 24 December 1942, Page 6

LET'S CONSIDER NAMES

(Written for "The Listener" by

KAY

ESTERDAY while in the library I was struck with these book titles: Not An Inch, by Lord Craigavon; Conservatism The Only Way; Britannia Waives The Rules. Both conscious and unconscious wit. I leave it to you. But speaking of witty titles, could anything beat A. R. D. Fairburn’s The Sky’s A Limpet? No doubt to exist to-day, a writer has to be more salesman than writer. Hence these provocative titles we now see everywhere. Inside Hitler, for instance, by Hitler’s physician, opens up amusing possibilities, and is perhaps, a riposte to Gunther’s Inside Europe and Inside Asia.. Sometimes the titles are a puzzle, It happens in painting, too. You often see carvings called Madonnas, which are more like mountains. I remember seeing one picture entitled "Nude Descending a Staircase," but neither a nude nor a staircase could I see. Here are some novels with headline names: What Makes Sammy Run; Sneeze on Monday; The Lions Starve In Naples; Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog; The Postman Always Rings Twice; Lacemaker Lekholm Has An Idea. ’ Novels began with "straight" titlesthe hero’s or heroine’s name, say: Tom Jones, Jane Eyre, Old Goriot, Oblomov. Or it may be a whole family group: Forsyte Saga (English); Pasquier Chronicles (French); Pascarella..Family (Australia); Buddenbrooks (German); Brothers. Karamazov (Russian). Sometimes titles indicated mystery, and were feeling their way to the modern thriller: Lady Audley’s Secret, The Pit And The Pendulum. Moliére with his Doctor In Spite Ot Himself sounds quite twentieth century. I remember one charmer of my childhood days-Coelebs In Search Of A Wife (or was it a husband?). You have only to recall Gentlemen Preter Blondes, or-a little on the risky side-Grandma Called It Carnal, to see how far we have gone along the road of snappy, if dubious titles. Queer and Vague Two of the queerest titles I know are Journey Round My Skull and Thoughts In the Cranium Of A Giantess. Or take these Russians: Apropos Of The Falling Sleet, Torrents Of Spring, Murmuring Forest, Forward O Time, and Quiet Flows The Don. Then there are The Sunken Bell, The House With Green Shutters, The House With Green Gables, Ronald Fraser’s Bird. Under Glass, and Firbank’s Prancing Nigger. Very fashionable to-day also is vagueness: So What, This Above All. This kind is frequently taken from a line of poetry: Eyeless In Gaza, It Winter Comes. A good thing poor Shelley didn’t know the uses his lines would be put to, Our own Robin Hyde had a gift for the apt titles: The Godwits Fly, Passport to Hell. You have no. doubt heard of the schoolgirl who was sent to buy Gone To Earth. While in the shop, she had a look at Passport To Hell; which had just appeared. When asked what she wanted, she said, "Have you got Gone To Heil by Mary Webb?"

Humorists naturally name their books well. Moonbeams From The Larger Lunacy is a bit pretentious, perhaps, but I like Thurber’s Owl In The Attic and Leave Your Mind Alone (a glorious title), Inventive Poets Poems sometimes have good names when they are not dedicated to nightingales, skylarks and other dickie birdsor to spring, roses, or country churchyards: all fitting subjects, of course, but we like a change on the old currency. Whitman must have startled the dovecotes with his volume Leaves Of Grass. So also the jaded mind gets quite a joggle reading his poem to a Locomotive. They hadn’t been mentioned before, But I am forgetting the Englishman, Mr. T. ‘Baker, In the ’forties of last century, Mr. Baker was "inexhaustively impressed with the powers of steam," and in 1857 burst into a pwan entitled "The Steam Engine; Or The Powers Of Flame, An Original Poem." You have to admit that Browning had all these moderns licked. Consider A Grammarian’s Funeral, Bifurcation, The Bishop Orders His Tomb, The Statue And The Bust, Red Cotton Nightcap Country, and a hundred other exuberant fancies. After all, the name is important, Some may shout overmuch, some are undeniably cheap. But a good title is half the battle. Certainly Thoughts In The Cranium Of A Giantess will take a lot of beating.