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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 19

Sir,-If your correspondent Max Bol- . linger really believes that farm hands and the rest of the culturally backward read inferior books because they have so little choice, he might explain why a bookseller in the centre of a large farming district finds that intelligent and

ably written books are often left on the shelves. Mr. Bollinger tells us to study what is being done for culture in Czechoslovakia. This is what a writer in the Saturday Review of Literature found on a recent visit there: 1. The best known Czech authors have published nothing recently. The literary scene is dominated by reporters_and journalists. 2. Among the foreign novelists, the Americans enjoy the greatest popularity even to the extent that a communist paper has spoken of "a dark plot" and "a boycott of Russian literature." 3. The Czech Government has recently given permission to a publisher to spend fifty thousand American dollars for the Czech tights of eight of Louis Bromfield’s novels -money that could be better spent on teconstruction. 4. While most theatres run political and contemporary Czech plays, The Man Who Came to Dinner sold out for more than five months. Is this what Mr, Bollinger means by "culture?"

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(Wellington). |