STATE LITERARY FUND
Sir-I read with much interest your special article on the State. Literary Fund in the issue of May 11. The Listener is to be congratulated on approaching the Minister of Internal Affairs about the Fund’s operations. I think the comments on the standard of novels submitted indicate an attitude of the Fund Committee which is entirely wrong. Why should State-subsi-dised fiction which is purely for local consumption have to be up to the ‘technical standard of English and American publishing houses? Any ‘slight difference which the. general public might detect would be compensated for by the additional interest of a familiar background. Emphasis on technique has become a fetish in the past thirty years-prob-ably, in my opinion, because the majority of publishers’ readers are working journalists. In the meantime, the God‘given quality of imagination which characterised the Victorians has all but disappeared from world fiction, Does the sporting public ‘ceca to patronise our tennis and soccer players because they are’ below world standards? I suggest that the public would become strong supporters of local fiction if they were given a chance to develop a taste for it. If the Committee members want creative fiction of a high standard they must do their part by adopting a creative attitude. I think the general feeling must be that the Fund’s four. years of patronage has been largely mis-
placed.
NEW
DEAL
(Wellington).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19510601.2.11.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 5
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233STATE LITERARY FUND New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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