Back to Books?

There was no fanfare, no fancy set--only an elderly gentleman surrounded by four of his grandchildren in the yard of their home at Pound Ridge, N.Y. It seemed strange to see such a family group gathered anywhere but before a television set. To Poet-Playwright Archibald (J.B.) MacLeish, 67, it was quite natural; he was reading from the works of his late fellow poet, Walter de la Mare, just as MacLeish had read poetry to his own children years ago.

Seen in only five cities (Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland), the debut of Westinghouse Broadcasting's Reading Out Loud series proved to be a small clear voice speaking strongly in answer to television's critics, who have often accused TV of destroying the art of reading. There was no script--just the poet reading, sometimes with wonderful insight, sometimes in a poem-killing singsong. The children were seen responding, sometimes with a joy of understanding, sometimes with the bored and nervous smiles of polite scorn.

In the weeks ahead, with a cast ranging from Richard (Have Gun) Boone reading from Bret Harte to Eleanor Roosevelt reading from Kipling's Just So Stories, the Reading Out Loud show might well achieve the unique distinction of becoming a program that measures its success by the number of viewers it turns away from video and back to books.

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