A novelist and his public: a talk in which Joyce Cary considers his relationship with the people to whom his work is offered. Item note: Definition of a novelist's 'public'. Relationship between writer and his reader. How a writer acquires a public. False nonchalance and detachment of best-selling writers: 'no writer can hide behind his book'. Penalty of being a bore in print. Place of ideas and of morals in the world and in the novel. Evils of censoring the reading of bored adolescents. The reading public and its reading habits. The different needs fulfilled by different authors. Reader's special intimacy with an author.