The Peterite
THE PETERITE Vol. LXI FEBRUARY, 1970 No. 382 EDITORIAL John Bunyan's pilgrims were shown, in the Interpreter's House, "a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand," and the man could not see the crown offered to him because he did not look up. "Where there's muck there's money" is well-known to us, and there can have been few decades that have borne this out more fully than the decade of the sixties now passed. Obscene books, obscene films, obscene "plays" have certainly brought in the money for their unremem- bered authors, producers and actors. Memoirs of prostitutes and criminals have brought easy wealth; a drug offence has become almost essential publicity for some. Decent discretion is now labelled hypocrisy, and skeletons that used to be in cupboards are now expected to be proudly displayed. Writers of "plays" have turned a quick penny by shooting little arrows at long-accepted heroes; the writers' names are soon forgotten, but those at whom they have shot have had an awkward habit of standing secure, unsullied: Havelock, Nightingale, Churchill, Nelson. Not to be out-done, some churchmen have jumped on the wagon. At first it was to help prove the literary merit of "Lady Chatterley's Lover". Then a new "humanism" became the vogue, and a clerical collar became the badge of the avant-garde, provided its wearer was disproving the divinity of Christ, or "rationalising" the faith by which he is presumed to live. The man with the muck-rake certainly had his head well down.
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