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PREFA CE
censure. I do not need to point out to the reader that this is not true or to enumerate the many fine things to be heard daily in every part of the country. At the same time there is a persistent complaint that the literature of radio is pretty junky and that somebody ought to do something about it. Since this is precisely the problem to which I devote all my time and energy, I should like to state a simple, ineluctable fact that the detractors of radio have not bothered to notice. If these critics of radio literature would stop rifling at radio and, instead, send a load of bird shot into the general region of the entire literary migration, they would bring down a couple of trophies worth stuffing for a more unhurried study.
The over-all view will, of course, reveal that most radio literature is tripe. But here is an item that is hard to get around ; the over-all view of any field of writing will reveal that most of its literature is tripe. A hundred and seventyfour plays were produced in Greater New York last year. Most of them failed ; most of them were tripe. Most movies are tripe; most novels are tripe; most stories are tripe. So is most poetry. This is not alarming. Or if it is, literature has been in an alarming state since Josephus.
Although I believe this to be true, it would be the rankest sort of tergiversation to excuse radio’s literary delinquency on the grounds that others were equally delinquent, and I haven’t any intention of doing so. Radio is quite as aware of the problem of the good script as is the publisher of fiction, the director of motion pictures, or the producer of plays. We all want the same thing; the best possible property ; we all accept the same thing : the best obtainable.
But radio does have script problems peculiar to itself. The problem of impermanence is one. The problem of money is another. The problem of delivering regularly and quickly is still another. And a fourth — which is gradually disappearing — is this unfortunate and undeserved stigma: radio does not as yet enjoy a respectable place in the personal opinion of a large proportion of America’s first-class writers. Many writers whose services have been hopefully invited by radio people have turned down the invitation cuttingly and with scorn. Most of this response is due to
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