Authors and Critics

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 469, 18 June 1948, Page 10

Authors and Critics

INE stimulating entertainment is to be found in a session, The Reader Takes Over, a BBC discussion, of which I heard two different examples from 4YA and 3YA. This programme introduces a group of four; one member is a professional critic, who is supported by two non-professional people, and these three are confronted with a selected author. As can be imagined, the conversation is enlivening. In the 4YA programme, the author was Louis Golding, author of Magnolia Street, who had the dubious pleasure of hearing his critics inform him of his faults and virtues, of their reasons for liking his work, and what type of author they thought him. Golding, besides replying to all the criticisms, also provided listeners with a penetrating analysis of the mind. of the author in general, and of the particular type of author which he considered himself to be. He did it all with excellent good nature and a consideration as calm as though some other writer, and not he

himself, were the focus of attention. In the 3YA programme C. E. M. Joad, as the author, proved equally good-natured but not so calm, and his volatile rebounding to the attack caused this discussion to wax fast and furious, After hearing both of these programmes, I had a delightful but I suppose impracticable vision of the extension of the principle of critical discussion to other fields of creative endeavour, and I wondered what would happen should any of our local radio performers, for instance, be selected to appear before the microphone, facing the concentrated attack of three critics at once!