"KIT CARMICHAEL"
Sir,-It is perhaps not worth replying to a critic so innocent as to put forward an extract from a publisher’s blurb as evidence. However, when "Q.M." says "a good deal of misunderstanding would be avoided if people would make certain they have not misread before they criticise,’ I may reply that it is also important that critics of critics should use words correctly. "Q.M." says I have made "a slight slip" in my review. A slip is something that can be tested by fact, not an opinion. If I were to say that Tennyson wrote "The Scholar-Gipsy," I should make a slip, but not if I said that Tennyson was a third-rate poet (which I would not). A critic is less concerned with an author’s intentions about a character than with the effect which the character produces on him, [I have no doubt
that Galsworthy thought a lot of his Irene, but I have seen Irene described as one of the most objectionable women in fiction. I am willing te concede Miss Scanlan’s Mrs. Annabel a_ certain amount of superficial charm, but, as I see her, and others.may seé her differently, she is a selfish and vulgar-minded woman, whom in real life I should
avoid.
A.
M.
(Wellington)_
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19471114.2.14.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 438, 14 November 1947, Page 5
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210"KIT CARMICHAEL" New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 438, 14 November 1947, Page 5
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