DETECTIVE NOVELS
Sir-I would like to thank you for printing the article by Edmund Wilson in a recent Listener. I found it very stimulating. This is the kind of criticism I like-no beating about the bush-you know where you are-I like him. Although I am in entire agreement with him in regard to Ngaio Marsh, I don’t altogether agree with him over Dorothy Sayers. There is a certain educated element in her writing. When you have put down the book, you feel you have learnt something, and that should be the true test of any book. She has taught me quite a lot about bell-ring-ing, the art of advertising, and trial by peers, etc., all of which I knew nothing about. A detective story, too, is a great relaxation from heavier reading. Lord Birkenhead admitted that he never read anything else, so great was his need for relaxation. I notice Mr. Wilson says nothing of the cleverness of Agatha Christie, or the claptrap of Edgar Wallace. I hope you will let us have more criticisms of this kind, not only of litera- | ture, but of music.
H.
F.
(Mairangi Bay).
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS Sir--The mere fact that the 9.0 p.m. news had been removed from 3YA to 3YL for the occasion made 3YA’s complete broadcast of the Christchurch performance of IJ Trovatore most noteworthy. And indeed boldness went a | step further. Anyone who heard the Wel lington production of the same opera from 2YC last year may remember how the music faded out at an arbitrary moment to enable the station operator
to play a gramophone record of a clock striking and a cadence performed on an organ, and then resumed as if nothing had happened. On this occasion at 3YA no such interruption occurred at 9.0 p.m. It was perhaps ungracious of me to have even suspected that it would, and unnecessary to have waited specially to find out; but I was keen to know, since only two nights before, 2YC had been broadcasting Hayn’s Creation and this inexplicable interruption had occurred. The Creation is a religious work, and the act of rudely breaking into it with gramophone records was sacrilegious, If anyone wants to deny this, just let him go along to the Wesley Church next time they sing the Creation and try to stop the performance halfway through a chorus, and call for a gramophone record and some Silent Prayer.
MISERERE
(Wellington),
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 329, 12 October 1945, Page 24
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407DETECTIVE NOVELS New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 329, 12 October 1945, Page 24
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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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