Mr. George Moore on the Perishable Book

The Observer, 28 July 1928, page 19, 491 words

The Novels and the Trees.

“I should be sorry, very sorry indeed, if almost all the books written to-day did not perish,” said Mr. George Moore, the author, in an interview. I had drawn his attention (writes a correspondent) to Lord Ebbisham’s recent statement that the famous document on which Mr. Clemenceau and Lord Milner had assigned supreme command of the Allied Forces to Marshal Foch would perish through being written on inferior notepaper made from wood-pulp. And so I sought Mr. Moore’s opinions on the perishability of first editions not printed on rag-paper.

“It is a mercy, I think, that almost all the trash written to-day will perish,” he added. “What would happen to the British Museum if it didn’t? Why should anyone be concerned about the perishability of novels which are read once and are most certainly never opened again six months after they are published? What people would be concerned about are the trees that are cut down to provide wood-pulp paper on which to print such novels. What is going to happen to the forests? Who is going to replant them? But there never was an animal with less foresight than man. If, of course, there is anything written to-day which merits being preserved for all time, by all means let the best British rag-paper be used for the first edition.”

“What about your own works, Mr. Moore?” I asked the author.

“My own?” he queried. “Why should I worry about them? How can I trouble about the preservation of their first editions when I am dead? I shall be sound asleep and the daisies growing above me. Indeed, it will be well that I shall be asleep. I never wish to see the sorry day when modern fiction will be read with the zeal that characterises the study of the great, really great authors. What would be the state of the world, I ask you, when such fiction as is produced to-day is read and re-read between and during meals as worth perusal on its literary merits?”

I asked Mr. Moore if he intended as his last work to write a story, however short, in his own handwriting, on imperishable paper.

“Possibly. Perhaps,” he replied.

“On Modern Life?” I asked him.

“Modern life,” he answered, “is unaesthetic. No one can write about those who go around in motor-cars, and whose carpentry consists of nothing more than screwing into position a machine-made door. Modern life is without beauty, and the wise man will be thankful for the wood-pulp that will destroy much ‘literature’ that is written to-day.”

“Is there then no hope?”

“Oh yes, plenty of hope. Mankind will somehow come to the belief (unconscious belief, perhaps, but none the worse for that) that the re-afforestation of the world is more important than novels. This seems to stand with common sense.”