PRIESTLEY AT SEVENTY
SIR,—Quoodle, it seems, has always thought it a great pity that J. B. Priestley 'is so often presented as either Jolly Jack or the pipe-smoking Cassandra of the post-war world.' No one can be blamed for this but Mr. Priestley himself, who appears to enjoy and foster that image.
What really jars on one, though, is the attribution of a 'Johnsonian personality' to Mr. Priestley All those who admire Johnson, and not only literary specialists, must surely deprecate the use of his name in connection with literary personalities who catch at the outward form of character and ex- pression, the things that are easily parodied, and miss the organic interplay of his moral, intellectual, and stylistic sense. 'Literary specialists' have rightly de- bunked the cult of the Johnsonian personality.
Quoodle ends his say with a democratic, no-non- sense dictum, 'After all, what I suspect offends his critics most of all, the man can write.' What, I wonder, does that confident assertion mean?
D. F. GRAIIAM
70 Saint Eligius Street, Cambridge
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