TALKING ABOUT BOOKS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 915, 22 February 1957, Page 5

TALKING ABOUT BOOKS

Sir, The time has come, I feel, to question the kind of literary criticism J. C. Reid has been giving us in his series The Modern European Novel. In his two talks on the Modern French novel, Mr. Reid speaks entertainingly of a very large number of books and their writers, and one cannot help but be astonished at the apparent breadth of his reading-for one must assume that he has read and digested all these books. But what real value is there in hearing so many books mentioned in such a short time? I am sure that many listeners to these talks were left, as I was, with only a confused impression of what was said, and with the conviction that the only way to-form any valid judgments on such a vast and important subject is to read the novels Mr. Reid mentioned, together with those outstanding ones he omitted to mention, and to form one’s own opinion. I am well aware that the NZBS places a high value on volubility, and no one will deny this quality to Mr. Reid, but considerably more than this is required when a critic approaches such a rich and complex subject. In spite of Mr. Reid’s prodigious industry, and his undoubted ability in some branches of criticism, I feel that the time occupied by these talks would have been better given to some purely creative work. Good New Zealand stories, in particular, are rarely heard on the NZBS, and the practice of broadcasting the same short story (usually imported) at both 1YA and 1YC in the same week seems to me a very poor one. Those who like foreign novels predigested and censored (Mr. Reid can never resist making moral judgments) doubtless already read Time, the New Yorker, or New Statesman. Let us hear morte original work by New Zealand writers and less "middlemen of literature" talking about books.

O. E.

MIDDLETON

(Patumahoe).