Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 177, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1918 — FREE IN CRITICISM [ARTICLE]

FREE IN CRITICISM

Marginal Notes Upon Books Are Sometimes Severe. Readers’ Estimates of the Works In a Circulating Library Apt to Bo Irritating to. Author, If He,Saw Them. Not only la the battered condition of certain works of fiction in circulating libraries a sure proof of their popularity, but one may even gather details from the marginal notes made by feminine readers-. It is not sufficient for the commentative pencil to underscore -admired passages, observes a writer in the New Orleans Times-Pica-yune ; adjectives of praise also are freely if not always discriminatingly bestowed. On the closing page of some favorite novel may often be read: “Fine!” “Splendid!” “Lovely 1” v or—highest commendation of all—“ Grand f One notemaker undertook the large order, “I would read every single word she writes,” and another avowed, with more justice than she knew, “You don’t often find a book like this.” On the other hand, these unprofessional critics can be terribly severe. A novel which takes them out of their depth is denounced as “A great big bore,” or, with rude terseness, “Rot!” or even, in one case of evident exasperation, “You think you know it all.” A vigorous commentator on one of Mary Cholmondeley’s novels did not wait for-thedast, but on the first-page warned away possible readers with the'word, “Punk,” and three exclamation joints. The sprawling, unformed hand pursued the author with inveterate scorn throughout the book, manifesting that strange sense of superiority which frequently characterizes ignorance.

.A verse of French poetry evoked the impatient query, “Why not write Greek?” while above another was scribbled, “Aw, piffle! We are not all French, you know.” Observe that no intellectual curiosity was kindled in that thick brain to know what the French words meant, nor any realization awakened that we enrich ourselves by knowledge of another language. The author’s humorous touches were clearly taken as serious by this outraged reader who, after one passage, wrote mockingly, “My hero!” When a masculine character says something “hoarsely” it is asked with biting sarcasm, “Did he have a cold?” The hero conducts the heroine through a dark room, “knocking her carefully against pieces of furniture,’.’ as usually happens when one person tries to pilot another through obscurity, but this merciless critic demands, “Wasn’t he chivalrous?” Of a tastelessly arranged room the author said, “The furniture was not of the kind that expresses only one idea, and that a bad one,” which calls forth the comment. “Like this book.” The sun is not permitted to shine “bravely" without the jeer, “The sun ought to have a medal.” Finally the cup of the author’s iniquities, so far as the captious reader is concerned, quite overflows, and on the last page we find the verdict, “Thia book is the buggiest ever.”