HUNGRY FOR KNOWLEDGE?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 270, 25 August 1944, Page 6

HUNGRY FOR KNOWLEDGE?

Three Writers Who Think the Public is More Serious=-minded than is Generally Supposed

I N a recent article in the "New Statesman," Professor Joad argued that the chief cause of the popularity of the BBC’s Brains Trust session is the hunger of people for knowledge. Something like the same view is taken by Rebecca West, who complains (in a recent issue of "Picture Post’) of the reluctance of the BBC to treat its listeners with intellectual respect. On the other hand, C. Day Lewis complained not so long ago in "Picture Post" (in an article on the publishing business) that, while people read more books than they read before the war, they do not read better books. But, he said, they might if they were available: and that publishers are neglecting the opportunity the war has given them of producing good books without financial risk. One curious fact mentioned by Professor Joad was that he had been compelled to count up to 104 among the passengers in a suburban train before coming to one who was reading a book, and that the title of this book was "No Orchids for Miss Blandish." lt would be reckless to say how much better or worse the position in New Zealand is, but one of our staff who applied the same kind of test in a railway carriage found four book readers among 72 passengers, and another who applied the test in a harbour ferry saw seven books in a cabin occupied by 29 passengers, The day following, the number of readers had increased to 14, but the passengers had increased to 53. Tram and bus tests are not very useful, since only the most fortunate (or most reckless) find it possible toa read in such places, and travellers on inter-island steamers usually go early to their cabins, If they go to read-as some certainly do-they do not’ often carry their books where these can be seen and counted. Here are the statements to which we have just referred:

Cc. E. M. Joad .

FOR the root causes of the popularity of the Brains Trust I think one must go deep. I venture to suggest three. First, that there exists among people an accumulated fund of unexpended seriousness. There has been a good deal of sporadic evidence of this during the war. Army classes and discussion groups, A.B.C.A. lectures, Mass Observation reports indicating renewed interest in religious questions, the revival of music to which the success of C.E.M.A. testifies -- all these are straws that show which way the wind is blowing. The Brains Trust is, I think, the outstanding piece of evidence. Nor is the fact surprising. There have been ages crueller, wickeder, more brutal, but never so silly an age as the one before the war. Eight out of nine of us did no serious reading of any kind after we left school at 14; only 10 per cent had contact with any religious organisation, and by most of us the questions with which religion has historiéally concerned itself were ignored. It was not that they were not answered; They were not asked. Very few young people, less than two per cent of those under 23, were members of a political party. : Under-Stimulated Minds The Press, I think, consistently underrated the underlying seriousness of a public whom it fed with crosswords,

football pools, crime stories, sex stories and snippets of gossip and gobbets of news, on the assumption that the powers of the average man’s concentration were exhausted by two minutes’ reading on any topic. Women in particular suffered from under-stimulated minds. It was this unexploited vein of seriousness in the public that the Brains Trust tapped. Secondly, there is the failure of popular education to satisfy the people’s needs or to win their interests. "On a train journey not one in a hundred," I said, "can be seen reading a book." "But that," I admonished myself, "is plainly an exaggeration." So I set out to put it to the test. The train, from Edinburgh to London, takes normally nine hours, and on this occasion was an hour late, It was full of soldiers. They had long exhausted their somewhat slender resources of conversation; the mild delights of looking out of the window had palled hours ago; there they sat, hour after hour, bored and low, and to not one in a hundred did it occur to relieve their boredom: by reading. For I went through the train countingcounting soldiers and airmen of all ranks, and I reached number 104 before I found my first book reader. He was reading No Orchids for Miss Blandish. ‘ The Motive of "Playing Safe"’ Thirdly, the Brains Trust broke through, if only for a time, the glaze of BBC gentility. The BBC is part of the Civil Service at east in this, that its dominating objective is to avoid a row as symbolised by a question in Parliament.- There may be good reasons for this attitude in a Government department, but it seems to me to be disastrous in an institution one of whose objects should be the promotion and stimulation of thought. Thought is formed and guided by the vigorous advocacy of different points of view, irrespective of their truth or falsehood; yet we look to the radio in vain for the vigorous expressions of strongly-held opinions. Where the canvas of controversy should be painted-overpainted, if you will-in blacks and whites, the BBC gives us only a monochrome of grey. The world is as full as ever of fools and scoundrels, but whatever is said must not offend the scoundrels or provoke the fools. The expression of strongly-held opinion always offends somebody. Therefore, it is concluded, there must be no strong expression of

vigorously-held opinions. The BBC, in fact, proceeds upon the assumption that nothing must be said over the microphone which could produce a ripple of disagreement in the still waters of the minds of Tory maiden aunts, born twothirds of a century ago and living onfor such do not die-into a different age in the closes of cathedral towns. When Quintin Hogg once attacked me on a Brains Trust with heat and feeling, calling me an old man whose views had helped to bring on this war in the past and, if persisted in, would bring on another war in the future, there was the devil of a fuss. The BBC was deluged with protests, and I received a couple of hundred letters from softhearted persons anxious to express their sympathy with the victim of Mr. Hogg’s unprovoked attack. For my part, I was unable to see what the fuss was about, Why shouldn’t a man say what he thinks, and say it forcibly as he thinks it? It was only because the BBC had for so long soothed our ears with radio syrup, administered to us by decorous voices, inculcating platitudes with Oxford accents, that people were shocked. Ban on Political Discussion Now, for a time the Brains Trust broke through this tradition. In its early days, when the Trust was comparatively unimportant, we said what we liked and answered questions on religion and politics. Presently, religion dropped out altogether-under pressure, the BBC made a clean breast ‘of this — and the questions on politics grew fewer and fewer, although the BBC never admitted that there was a virtual ban on political discussion. Howard Thomas is, no doubt, right in thinking that the popularity of the Brains Trust was largely due to the interplay of personalities but, as the hubbub increased, one was bound to ask oneself, popularity to what end? And, for me, the end was education, The Brains Trust served this end by virtue of its ability to guide listeners through the rapids of controversy and to plunge them at last into the dark and bracing waters of thought. I venture, then, to claim that to an institution which has increasingly come to equate controversy with sin, the Brains Trust has done service by bringing back something of the great English traditions of discussion, disagreement, plain speaking, even on occasion of invective. (continued on next page)

Rebecea West

[Tt may be said that the fighting forces ‘~ do not want intellectual fare, This is fiat rubbish. In the last analysis, man does what it amuses him to do. If he has cultivated his mind throughout the ages, it is because the cultivation of the mind is fun. Certain men have been debarred from the opportunity to cultivate their minds by economic handicaps, and cannot believe that it is fun. Few people who have never mountaineered can believe that toiling over snowfields and forcing aching limbs up rock faces is fun, though those who have done it know there is no better. The BBC would not be using their monopoly conscientiously if they did not put talks of a sound, intellectual character before people who have been prejudiced against the intellect by economic handicaps, But, in any case, the Army does not consist solely of such people. As any Army lecturer will tell you, there are innumerable soldiers who hunger and thirst after knowledge, and know no peace without it. Open the Radio Times and see just what the General Forces programme is doing about this appetite for knowledge! Where are the teachers of the day, the wise men who, being wise are humble, and would esteem it the proudest honour to teach what they know to the soldiers and sailors who are defending them? Where is Gilbert Murray or Julian Huxley, or Philip Guedalla, or Maurice Bowra? Such men poke their heads up here and there for half an hour. It is not enough. There should be frequent opportunities, day in, day out, for such men to give of their best. Thus the ideas which are the foundation of life in any age could be discussed, and there should be lectures on what we are planning in this country to work out these ideas, in such spheres as education and housing. There should be debates between rivals in the world of ideas, on the theoretical and the practical plane. We should have the men overseas sharing the intellectual adventures on which we here have embarked. For example, the fact that in tubes and on buses we constantly see people, old and young, studying Russian grammar books should be the cue for General Forces programme to provide simple radio lessons in Russian. After all, as Monsieur Stephane used to show us in -his French hours, language lessons on the radio can be-far more than scraping performances of tunes from stale musical comedies-"light entertainment."

C. Day Lewis

WE are certainly reading more books. The blackout has seen to that. But it is not only a matter of the physical conditions of war which drive people to books by curtailing other forms of recreation. The war has also created certain spiritual- conditions, favourable to literature and the other arts; it throws into high relief spiritual and emotional problems which in peacetime many of us passed lightly over. We take ourselves, on the whole more seriously; we ask ourselves difficult questions-Is all this killing worth while? What is going to happen to us after the war?and, by asking these questions, we enter into the region of values, a region where literature has always been in demand as a guide, But, although we are taking life more seriously, this does not necessarily mean that we are taking literature more seriously, too. It simply is not true, as far as imaginative literature-novels, poetry -is concerned, that "we needs must love the highest when we see it." To get full value out of many imaginative books requires effort and co-operation on our part, just as it requires effort to get full value out of good music or painting. And effort is not a commodity we have much left of, after a wartime day’s work. Technical Books Most Popular So it is not surprising to learn that this war’s best-sellers have not come from the class of imaginative writing. Apart from the Government illustrated books-"Battle . of Britain," "Bomber Command," "Front Line," ‘and the rest of them — which easily top the bestselling lists, the books people have been buying are technical ones-books about engineering and patching old clothes and making the most of your rations, books which ‘help people practically to get more efficient at their work or adapt themselves to war conditions. The reading of technical books--not the elementary "Plastics gWithout Tears" or "Prefabrication rt Beginners" sort, but really tough, solid, advanced bookshas particularly increased among factory workers. A friend of mine, who has had alot to do with factories during the last year estimates that there must be somewhere between one and two million factory workers who are reading such books, or possess the very high intellectual calibre necessary for reading them. Moreover, in my friend’s experience, hardly any of them read anything (continued on next page)

"The Public Is Tired of Trash" (continued from previous page) else, any other serious books, that is. What a field those million and a-half highly intelligent men and women would offer to our publishers and our writers if only they could be made as interested in serious imaginative writing as they are in serious technical books! Literature as a Luxury It is true that some of us, at any rate, are reading better books. And I am convinced very many more would do so, if they only realised the needs of the imagination as keenly as they have come to realise the needs of the practical intelligence. The technical books, the books on how to do things and make things and plan for a better world only answer the factual questions we ask ourselves in wartime. For enlightenment on the spiritual and emotional problems, we should go to imaginative literature; but we shall not go to it as long as we think of poetry, fiction, drama as a sort of luxury, like edible birds’ nests, which would not be particularly good for us even if we had a taste for it. Taste, of course, is not developed in the first place by thinking and criticism. Appetite comes before taste, And there must be many people to-day unconsciously developing a taste in literature by the accidental process of buying good books (because there is little else to spend one’s money and leisure on), reading them, and thoroughly enjoying them — enjoying new fields of experience which, before the war, they assumed to be the private preserve of the "highbrows." In the creation of a popular taste for better books, the publishers could play a tremendous part just now. Paper rationing means that they are only able to produce a limited number of books every year: at the same time, they. have never had less difficulty in selling their books. Add these two facts together, and you see what results? A publisher to-day could, without commercial risk, publish nothing but first-rate books provided, of course, there were the people to write them. Publishers Could Take Risks A few publishers would claim they had always tried to do this; a few others — the mass-production boyswould say that their job is to give the public tripe, because tripe is what the public likes. In between comes the great majority of publishing firms which in peacetime published a number of second-rate books they knew would be popular for the purpose of profit only, and were prepared to risk a certain amount of this profit on good books they knew whose names had prestige value. Some publishers ‘to-day, perhaps because there are not enough young writers of talent to go round, are sinking some of their profits in literary periodicals. Murray’s, for instance, have revived The Cornhill; Nicholson and Watson publish Poetry, London, This is a useful and honourable way of gaining prestige for the firm, but it is not necessarily an indication that publishers as a whole, have yet realised that the public is tired of trash. : But to-day, even allowing for the fact that he must be preparing himself for a post-war slump, he could take more risks, I fancy, than he does, It would encourage the good writers to write their best, and then we should all at least have the chance of reading better books.