IS PRIESTLEY RIGHT?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 412, 16 May 1947, Page 14

IS PRIESTLEY RIGHT?

ad our last issue we printed a summary of an article by J. B. Priestley in which he affirmed his allegiance to the principle of political democracy, but attacked what he termed "cultural democracy" — the theory that the ordinary man or woman is the best judge of everything. The issue raised by Priestley is a significant one, and "The Listener" has been at some pains to gather responsible New Zealand comment on it. Last week we published the views of writers and dramatists, this week publishers and libra rians discuss the issue. A summary of Priestley’s article appears on the opposite page.

PUBLISHERS N Mr. Priestley’s remarks about radio, picture-going or commercialism I cannot comment. My listening hours do not total.ten a year (I am at present footsore from following the NZBS Orchestra over the "Antrim Hills"); I rarely go té the pictures; and I try to avoid reading advertisements. But I have been asked to comment as a publisher. While the world remains largely dominated by money, there will always be the inducement to produce shoddy books. I would like to sce more sympathetic treatment for established publishers of cultural books (query: which are cultural books, on whose sayso?); but I do not think it is in the

ability. of any Government, even in times of sh&rtage, to say what shall or | shall not be published. I often inveigh

against the waste of paper on race-books; but if people would rather have them than, say, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, that’s their choiceand their loss. Free _ publishing ‘produces a number of evils. But we must allow people

to read what’they like, in the pious hope that they will thresh out a few grains from the chaff. The Clammy Hand lies heavily enough across our brows without any attempt, state-inspired, to produce uplift. One should expect nothing

more cultural than an income-tax demand from any Government. The public taste has always been low. How. else would we few, we happy few (and Mr. Priestley), be so superior? But I should deprecate any kind of cu!tural hegemony, whether presided over by Mr. Priestley or another. Nobody forces, or can force, me to read books or listen to radio if-I don’t want to. The farm-hand hearkening to Mr, Priestley on books or plays might legitimately yawn like a ditch: farm-hands I have listened to (on books, politics, music), have often proved more interesting, if less "correct," than professors. New Zealand is in some danger of public apathy from government efforts which prefer to direct rather than unobtrusively encourage. There is too much zealous talk by the half-educated about

"educating the public." (I feel irritated, not edified, when the Health Department tells me DON’T BE A SLOUCH, I will if I want to). Sometimes I think we have a poor cultural appetite.’ But it is better than cultural indigestion.

Denis

Glover

] B. PRIESTLEY has put into words * a feeling that must be in the minds of a great number of people in democratic countries. His definitions of "political" and "cultural" democracy ring true to present-day conditions, and one feels grateful to him for having defined his ideas so tersely. As a publisher who has made some contribution to the arts, I can say that what Mr. Priestley admires — political

democracy — and . what he deplores as cultural democracy seem to me to be as true in New Zealand as it appears to be in England. Anyone who tries to publish any independent cultural publication (other than an educational

authority) in this country has a hard row to hoe, and must not expect much public support. In my experience, a publication devoted to the art of music was only

able to keep going for seven years. Another devoted to the arts lasted 17 years, Neither could have lasted as long as it did but for the help of one or two public-spirited enthusiasts. This may or may not be evidence of the cultural demfocracy which Mr. Priestley deplores: it might have been due to bad management or bad editorial work, but both publications were an honest attempt to do something for the arts, and good writers and editors gave of their best. While there are no regrets over these two experiments on the writer’s part, they were at least a valuable experience. Coulg tHey not be fairly called evidence of the existence in this country of Mr. Priestley’s "Cultural" democracy whicn he so much deplores? »

H. H.

Tombs

MR: PRIESTLEY is, of course, largely right. In films in particular, the tastes of the discerning few have had pretty scant consideration. In radio, too, the voice of the multitude has drowned other and more worthy voices-though not always and everywhere. But Mr. Priestley is less than just to publishers in suggesting that the bad taste of the great mass of the people has recently been the main factor in what books will be published. In Britain in war time most of the older publishers seem to have used their

paper quotas to assure a livelihood to their authors. The best-selling novelists have had their editions rigorously limited, the authors of middling sales at any rate had their books published regularly. And for this purpose the "high-

brow writer," and the writer of love Stories and thrillers, seem to have been grouped together by the publisher in his paternal fashion as he tried to keep his family together till the brave days after the war. It was an understandable attitude, and if it showed little understanding of the duty of a publisher to "Litera-

ture," it showed little either of an attempt to exploit the worse at the expense of the better. It is true indeed that in pre-war times the great prize in publishing has been the best-seller, And it is true, too, that the reading habits of our society tend to make all readers cluster round the best-selling novel which everyone talks about. Those tendencies are reinforced overseas, especially in America, by lavish advertising. But that that advertising only encourages existing tendencies, is proved by the remarkable way in which best-sellers in the.older countries become best-sellers here too-although never advertised and rately reviewed. Here, also, local production of the works of a few popular novelists (started during the war by local representatives of British publishers) has further canalised public taste by making their books widely distributed and easily available.

But it is foolish, and indeed canting, to blame commerce for the concentration of popular taste round much worthless |- fiction, badly written and with little relation to experience. The effect of the reign of the best-seller can be mitigated by encouraging bookshops and libraries to present a good range of books of all ages and on all subjects to the public. And in the New Zealand library and bookshop it has been possible to find such a range of books even im the most restricted days of the war. In fact, in spite of Mr. Priestley, my own experience during the war is that the classic English novels were easier to obtain than, say, the works of Leslie Charteris, And it was not infrequent during the war years to find that the only novels with which my bookshop was overstocked were the most ably and _ intelligently written. Probably the best of the fiction republished in New Zealand by any critical, standards-Indigo, by Christine Weston, and The Ballad and the Source, by Rosamund Lehmann-have both been slow in selling, and copies of the latter are still being put out at annual sales. You can’t make the bulk of the people read better books merely by making them plentiful. On the local publishing side something can be done by a State subsidy to make possible the publication of good New (continued on next page)

CULTURE. AND DEMOCRACY

(continued from previous page) Zealand work which could be done as a commercial venture. And the Government should give up encouraging our bookshops to concentrate on the secondtrate. For clearly under our import control system the inducement is for the bookseker to use up his licence on bestselling novels rather than to present a comprehensively selected range of books new and old. That might require a qualitative judgment of the kind which Mr. Priestley says Governments dislike, But qualitative discrimination has its difficulties and also its dangers, It would, --

for instance, throw a burden on the Customs Department in applying such rules as were devised to separate the sheep from the goats. However, the Government has already made a qualitative ‘decision. Before the war it suddenly banned the importation of back-date magazines of a sensational or pornographic type. And although many people must have objected, there -was no vocal protest from the common man, who presumably was rather ashamed of his taste in reading. It isn’t even certain, however, that a qualitative decision exempting books of literary value and informative

works from import restrictions is necessary. A general relaxation of the limitations on books (imposed in no other Dominion) would make it possible for the many booksellers who would like to do so to show an increased variety of books. The Government in New Zealand has been awake to its responsibilitiea in providing and encouraging good public libraries where the best will be seen along with the mediocre., In fact one hears frequent complaints in country districts which boil down to a moan that there aren’t enough second-rate books. And too often good books go unread. Nevertheless the National Library Service is a laudable attempt on the part of the Government to make a qualitative judgment. And above all if intelligent reading is to prosper we must have more criti-cism-jin our own papers--and more interest in critical writing overseas. Lack of appreciation of criticism (at all levels) is a most disquieting feature of New

Zealand life.

Blackwood

Paul