LIBRARIANS

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

LIBRARIANS

A POLITICAL democracy that is not also a cultural democracy seems to me to be missing on one cylinder, and something should be done about it, Democracy is surely indivisible. Taking the world as it is, the common man knows what he likes. In music and art and literature he may not have the skilled judgment of the -intelligentsia, but he has his individual taste, and that is vital. There is an essential element of truth in one’s own taste, and truth, being honest, cannot be altogether wrong.

Is there any reason to assume that what people like is wrong ‘or that it is vicious to give it to them" without a struggle? Though herd emotion is fostered. by both the film and radio, music tends to raise culture all round. Radio has

brought good music to thousands of homes in New Zealand which never had anything better than a jew’s harp or a ukulele. These people appreciate good music, and have enough culture to enjoy German and Italian as well as our/own. Ie is because the common people are so much more numerous than the highbrows that even Hollywood has been compelled to star composers and musicians and literary men and women. In short, there is money in it. How Mr. Priestfey can describe Hollywood films as democratic beats me. They scarcely touch the life of ordinary men and women at any point, and are self condemned by the vocal ballyhoo with which they are forced upon a world of hicks. It is simply the crude technique of the barker at circuses and sasacwtioebe Yet the herd*emotion which is most to be feared is that which is aroused by broadcasting. One voice-it may be of a criminal or a paranoiac-can force itself upon half the world. Some broadcasters, if dull, are yet truthful and sincere, Some are clever and unprincipled; and some are hacks hired to scare the sick and flatter the weak-minded. These men at

the mike are blatant and self-confident, safe from contradiction and from physical assault. In fact they are oracles. That is a real danger. A Then there is the press. Opinion should be quite free, but never anonymous. News, information and facts are another thing. They. should be above suspicion. The freedom which is given to the press and the privilege accorded to radio ate both betrayed by the publication of false news, however trivial and insignificant. Every lie begins somewhere, and most wars began in lies. Today the library is more than ever the Sanctuary and fortress of the individual conscience. Almost alone in a strident world, it offers to men and women of goodwill, hospitality and comfort and freedom to think as they wish, It gives both sides of every question, and encoutages individual judgment. Yet we are selective to some extent-and I hope Mr. Priestley will appreciate that. While providing free every worthwhile book on any subject, we tend to leave the lighter and less substantial literature to the commercial libraries or put it in our pay collections. No library that I know of makes any effort to canalise the opinions of its readers. The library is an oasis, free from oratory and trumpets, where the individual can arrive at his own judgment. And it is just these people who in the long run swing the balance between opposing schools of thought. I am satisfied that though the common man, about whom Mr. Priestley and I are equally concerned, may’ know nothing of the .intricacies of law, or economics or psychology or political science, yet if he is told the truth of the case in four cases out of five he will know right from wrong. Democracy simply cannot survive if people are not told the truth. Not just now and again, but all

the time.

G. H.

Scholefield

(Librarian, General Assembly Library). * * * ]T is a little diverting to see the author of The Good Companions, once regarded as the chief exponent of antihighbrow sentiment, expressing in his

own way views that, differently phrased, might have come from Clive Bell. One question always raised by this talk of cultural dictatorship-the alternative, I suppose, to cultural democracy-is: Who will do the dictating? After reading this article, one has the uneasy feeline that :

our spiritual and mental welfare is to be in the hands of the Priestleys and their kind-an uninviting prospect. Ranting about other people’s bad taste is futile and Pharisaical. If the Englishmen of our time prefer pin-

tables (whatever they are) to Shakespeare, we may well reflect that the ancestors of these same people were Shakespeare’s audience and go on to ask why it is that there is so wide a gulf betwéen the popular taste of Elizabethan times and that of our own day. From this point, if we have the necessary faith and energy, we may proceed to change the conditions in which the Hollywood film flourishes and Priestley becomes an authority on culture. My own feeling is that he underrates the taste and intelligence of the common man, but his judgment is perhaps sounder. After all, it is the common man who has given Priestley wealth and transient fame. . My limited experience as a librarian leads me to believe that it would be useless in @ public library to cut off the supply of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dorothy Sayers, and J. B. Priestley; if you did that, people would merely go elsewhere for their daily or weekly injections of light fiction. It is essential, however, that librarians should safeguard the rights of the serious reading public and do what they can to prevent the confusion of standards that is a more serious menace than a liking for the obviously and unequivocally bad. In other words, librarians are called upon to exercise taste and to make democracy

work,

E. H.

McCormick