IS THE TRAVEL-BOOK DEAD ?
SIR,—Hard hitting, in literary controversy, is welcome; we may, indeed, trace many of the weaknesses of present-day literature to the lack of it. But should not the targets be restricted to the talent, good sense or good taste of one's opponent? To sink to insinua- tions of base personal motives, as Mr. Green does, is deplorable.
It is true that such tactics usually defeat their own ends. And if I protest it is in the interests of the public, since Mr. Amis scarcely requires defending. For Mr. Green's malice is particularly inept. He is accusing of subservience to fashion, for mercenary and other reasons, a novelist• whose first work ran so brilliantly counter to the fashions then in vogue that it made its way and created its own public entirely on its own highly original merits, But let us imagine that, after suitable apologies, we have readmitted Mr. Green to the court out of which he has put himself. For he seems also to be trying to make a literary point. He maintains that Mr. Lee's prose is superior to that of Mr. Amis. This notion seems so ludicrous to anyone who, like myself, holds the opposite view that we are probably in the presence of an unbridgeable gulf of taste. But if we make a magnanimous gesture, and concede that prettiness may be a virtue, might not the other side have the spirit to admit that it is a minor one?
Mr. Amis has, indeed, the faults of his virtues. One of these is a willingness to set down ideas that strike his fancy, without regard to their modishness. His suggestion that travel-books should be novels is an example. Even here, though such propositions may (as in this case) be rather eccentric, they are always at least provocative and interesting, and worth arguing about. But it is a pity that they distract attention from the more impor- tant task of giving hell to 'poetic' prose.— Yours faithfully,
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