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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 414, 30 May 1947, Page 5

Sir,-I read with alarm the extract from Mr. Priestley’s article and the various comments by New Zealand people. Surely Mr. Priestley does not claim that his 35 years study of books and plays qualifies him to thrust upon

the world in general and the reading public in particular, only that which he thinks they should have, Would he have us read only what he thinks is good for us? I feel that such an attitude savours rather of what we have just spent six years trying to conquer. As for his comparison of himself with a farmer, Samuel Butler was a farmer, and without this experience Erewhon would never have been written. Shakespeare was popular with -the public and while the cultural dictators say he should be, made a "compulsory subject," the fact that it is made compulsory (either by education or suppressing other authors who cater for the public demand), is one very good reason for not being interested. Schubert's music was written out of economic necessity, accepted by his public and also, years later, remembered and enjoyed by us. Who can say that we are on the wrong cultural track when such composers as Chopin and Gershwin, such playwrights as Shakespeare and Rattigan draw the same representative admirers? I, for one, will not be party to being dished out just what Mr. Priestley thinks I should have. The volumes of Shakespeare, Thorne Smith, Priestley, Samuel Johnson and others, I shall read just so long as they satisfy my desires. I have even read Miss sh’s Death in Ecstasy and it filled in an evening.

but would she include it in her diet of what she calls "hard tack?" In a world of _ restrictions, please let us choose for ourselves what we wish to

read.

FREEDOM

(Fendalton).