Droll Stories
HAVE listened twice now to a recording of Algernon Blackwood over 3YC, once on the occasion of his 80th birthday, and once on Human Idiosyncracies. His informal radio technique is of the kind where art conceals art. The whimsical conversational sentences and phrases come out for you alone, and keep you simmering on the edge of laughter throughout. He tells you how H. G. Wells once debunked Blackwood’s interest in interstellar space and flight -"What’s that to get interested in" says Wells. "If you got to the moon all you’d see would be an awful lot more of the same things, more stars, more stars our telescopes can’t reach that’s all, that’s all.’ So Blackwood turned then to the little things: the unaccountable reason why men open their mouths when adjusting a monocle and so on. Listening to him and remembering stories I’ve heard from good raconteurs I cannot help wondering if a little enterprise would not discover one or two New Zealand Alvernons.
Westclift
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19510601.2.19.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 11
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167Droll Stories New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 11
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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.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
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