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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2566-h.zip b/2566-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..90b50bc --- /dev/null +++ b/2566-h.zip diff --git a/2566-h/2566-h.htm b/2566-h/2566-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b096e44 --- /dev/null +++ b/2566-h/2566-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1298 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>How to Fail in Literature</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">How to Fail in Literature, by Andrew Lang</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, How to Fail in Literature, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: How to Fail in Literature + + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Release Date: May 11, 2005 [eBook #2566] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1890 Field & Tuer edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE: A LECTURE BY ANDREW LANG</h1> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> +<p><i>This Lecture was delivered at the South Kensington Museum, in +aid of the College for Working Men and Women. As the Publishers, +perhaps erroneously, believe that some of the few authors who were not +present may be glad to study the advice here proffered, the Lecture +is now printed. It has been practically re-written, and, like +the kiss which the Lady returned to Rodolphe</i>, is revu, corrigé, +et considerablement augmenté.</p> +<p>A. L.</p> +<h2>HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE</h2> +<p>What should be a man’s or a woman’s reason for taking +literature as a vocation, what sort of success ought they to desire, +what sort of ambition should possess them? These are natural questions, +now that so many readers exist in the world, all asking for something +new, now that so many writers are making their pens “in running +to devour the way” over so many acres of foolscap. The legitimate +reasons for enlisting (too often without receiving the shilling) in +this army of writers are not far to seek. A man may be convinced +that he has useful, or beautiful, or entertaining ideas within him, +he may hold that he can express them in fresh and charming language. +He may, in short, have a “vocation,” or feel conscious of +a vocation, which is not exactly the same thing. There are “many +thyrsus bearers, few mystics,” many are called, few chosen. +Still, to be sensible of a vocation is something, nay, is much, for +most of us drift without any particular aim or predominant purpose. +Nobody can justly censure people whose chief interest is in letters, +whose chief pleasure is in study or composition, who rejoice in a fine +sentence as others do in a well modelled limb, or a delicately touched +landscape, nobody can censure them for trying their fortunes in literature. +Most of them will fail, for, as the bookseller’s young man told +an author once, they have the poetic temperament, without the poetic +power. Still among these whom <i>Pendennis</i> has tempted, in +boyhood, to run away from school to literature as Marryat has tempted +others to run away to sea, there must be some who will succeed. +But an early and intense ambition is not everything, any more than a +capacity for taking pains is everything in literature or in any art.</p> +<p>Some have the gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the +ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. +This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both +the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, +the love of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, +and mean nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance +or fruit. Or, again, the concern about letters may come suddenly, +when a youth that cared for none of those things is waning, it may come +when a man suddenly finds that he has something which he really must +tell. Then he probably fumbles about for a style, and his first +fresh impulses are more or less marred by his inexperience of an art +which beguiles and fascinates others even in their school-days.</p> +<p>It is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from +his early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, +from her childish grace, the beauty of a woman.</p> +<p>But the following remarks on How to fail in Literature are certainly +meant to discourage nobody who loves books, and has an impulse to tell +a story, or to try a song or a sermon. Discouragements enough +exist in the pursuit of this, as of all arts, crafts, and professions, +without my adding to them. Famine and Fear crouch by the portals +of literature as they crouch at the gates of the Virgilian Hades. +There is no more frequent cause of failure than doubt and dread; a beginner +can scarcely put his heart and strength into a work when he knows how +long are the odds against his victory, how difficult it is for a new +man to win a hearing, even though all editors and publishers are ever +pining for a new man. The young fellow, unknown and unwelcomed, +who can sit down and give all his best of knowledge, observation, humour, +care, and fancy to a considerable work has got courage in no common +portion; he deserves to triumph, and certainly should not be disheartened +by our old experience. But there be few beginners of this mark, +most begin so feebly because they begin so fearfully. They are +already too discouraged, and can scarce do themselves justice. +It is easier to write more or less well and agreeably when you are certain +of being published and paid, at least, than to write well when a dozen +rejected manuscripts are cowering (as Theocritus says) in your chest, +bowing their pale faces over their chilly knees, outcast, hungry, repulsed +from many a door. To write excellently, brightly, powerfully, +with these poor unwelcomed wanderers, returned MSS., in your possession, +is difficult indeed. It might be wiser to do as M. Guy de Maupassant +is rumoured to have done, to write for seven years, and shew your essays +to none but a mentor as friendly severe as M. Flaubert. But all +men cannot have such mentors, nor can all afford so long an unremunerative +apprenticeship. For some the better plan is <i>not</i> to linger +on the bank, and take tea and good advice, as Keats said, but to plunge +at once in mid-stream, and learn swimming of necessity.</p> +<p>One thing, perhaps, most people who succeed in letters so far as +to keep themselves alive and clothed by their pens will admit, namely, +that their early rejected MSS. <i>deserved to be rejected</i>. +A few days ago there came to the writer an old forgotten beginner’s +attempt by himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; +he had forgotten its very existence. He read it with curiosity; +it was written in a very much better hand than his present scrawl, and +was perfectly legible. But <i>readable</i> it was not. There +was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, and the +ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its composition. +But it was cramped and thin, and hesitating between several manners; +above all it was uncommonly dull. If it ever was sent to an editor, +as I presume it must have been, that editor was trebly justified in +declining it. On the other hand, to be egotistic, I have known +editors reject the attempts of those old days, and afterwards express +lively delight in them when they struggled into print, somehow, somewhere. +These worthy men did not even know that they had despised and refused +what they came afterwards rather to enjoy.</p> +<p>Editors and publishers, these keepers of the gates of success, are +not infallible, but their opinion of a beginner’s work is far +more correct than his own can ever be. They should not depress +him quite, but if they are long unanimous in holding him cheap, he is +warned, and had better withdraw from the struggle. He is either +incompetent, or he has the makings of a Browning. He is a genius +born too soon. He may readily calculate the chances in favour +of either alternative.</p> +<p>So much by way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we may +say about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to failure. +And by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not +in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a fortunate +barrister’s gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope. +Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a +modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of +gossip—these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern +literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature +is, for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure. +But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and +yet may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or not publish +at all. He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not +call that failure. I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, +incompetence, lack of common sense, conceited dulness, and certain practical +blunders now to be explained and defined.</p> +<p>The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice +as to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere +critic, and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics “are the +fellows who have failed,” or have not succeeded. The persons +who really can paint, or play, or compose seldom tell us how it is done, +still less do they review the performances of their contemporaries. +That invidious task they leave to the unsuccessful novelists. +The instruction, the advice are offered by the persons who cannot achieve +performance. It is thus that all things work together in favour +of failure, which, indeed, may well appear so easy that special instruction, +however competent, is a luxury rather than a necessary. But when +we look round on the vast multitude of writers who, to all seeming, +deliberately aim at failure, who take every precaution in favour of +failure that untutored inexperience can suggest, it becomes plain that +education in ill-success, is really a popular want. In the following +remarks some broad general principles, making disaster almost inevitable, +will first be offered, and then special methods of failing in all special +departments of letters will be ungrudgingly communicated. It is +not enough to attain failure, we should deserve it. The writer, +by way of insuring complete confidence, would modestly mention that +he has had ample opportunities of study in this branch of knowledge. +While sifting for five or six years the volunteered contributions to +a popular periodical, he has received and considered some hundredweights +of manuscript. In all these myriad contributions he has not found +thirty pieces which rose even to the ordinary dead level of magazine +work. He has thus enjoyed unrivalled chances of examining such +modes of missing success as spontaneously occur to the human intellect, +to the unaided ingenuity of men, women, and children. <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a></p> +<p>He who would fail in literature cannot begin too early to neglect +his education, and to adopt every opportunity of not observing life +and character. None of us is so young but that he may make himself +perfect in writing an illegible hand. This method, I am bound +to say, is too frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent +literary volunteers are fairly legible. On the other hand there +are novelists, especially ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining +to let itself be deciphered, but who fill up the margins with interpolations, +who write between the lines, and who cover the page with scratches running +this way and that, intended to direct the attention to after-thoughts +inserted here and there in corners and on the backs of sheets. +To pin in scraps of closely written paper and backs of envelopes adds +to the security for failure, and produces a rich anger in the publisher’s +reader or the editor.</p> +<p>The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, +often overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS. +typewritten, this gives them a chance of being read with ease and interest, +and this must be neglected by all who have really set their hearts on +failure. In the higher matters of education it is well to be as +ignorant as possible. No knowledge comes amiss to the true man +of letters, so they who court disaster should know as little as may +be.</p> +<p>Mr. Stevenson has told the attentive world how, in boyhood, he practised +himself in studying and imitating the styles of famous authors of every +age. He who aims at failure must never think of style, and should +sedulously abstain from reading Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Walton, +Gibbon, and other English and foreign classics. He can hardly +be too reckless of grammar, and should always place adverbs and other +words between “to” and the infinitive, thus: “Hubert +was determined to energetically and on all possible occasions, oppose +any attempt to entangle him with such.” Here, it will be +noticed, “such” is used as a pronoun, a delightful flower +of speech not to be disregarded by authors who would fail. But +some one may reply that several of our most popular novelists revel +in the kind of grammar which I am recommending. This is undeniable, +but certain people manage to succeed in spite of their own earnest endeavours +and startling demerits. There is no royal road to failure. +There is no rule without its exception, and it may be urged that the +works of the gentlemen and ladies who “break Priscian’s +head”—as they would say themselves—may be successful, +but are not literature. Now it is about literature that we are +speaking.</p> +<p>In the matter of style, there is another excellent way. You +need not neglect it, but you may study it wrongly. You may be +affectedly self-conscious, you may imitate the ingenious persons who +carefully avoid the natural word, the spontaneous phrase, and employ +some other set of terms which can hardly be construed. You may +use, like a young essayist whom I have lovingly observed, a proportion +of eighty adjectives to every sixty-five other words of all denominations. +You may hunt for odd words, and thrust them into the wrong places, as +where you say that a man’s nose is “beetling,” that +the sun sank in “a cauldron of daffodil chaos,” and the +like. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a> You +may use common words in an unwonted sense, keeping some private interpretation +clearly before you. Thus you may speak, if you like to write partly +in the tongue of Hellas, about “assimilating the <i>êthos</i>” +of a work of art, and so write that people shall think of the processes +of digestion. You may speak of “exhausting the beauty” +of a landscape, and, somehow, convey the notion of sucking an orange +dry. Or you may wildly mix your metaphors, as when a critic accuses +Mr. Browning of “giving the irridescence of the poetic afflatus,” +as if the poetic afflatus were blown through a pipe, into soap, and +produced soap bubbles. This is a more troublesome method than +the mere picking up of every newspaper commonplace that floats into +your mind, but it is equally certain to lead—where you want to +go. By combining the two fashions a great deal may be done. +Thus you want to describe a fire at sea, and you say, “the devouring +element lapped the quivering spars, the mast, and the sea-shouldering +keel of the doomed <i>Mary Jane</i> in one coruscating catastrophe. +The sea deeps were incarnadined to an alarming extent by the flames, +and to escape from such many plunged headlong in their watery bier.”</p> +<p>As a rule, authors who would fail stick to one bad sort of writing; +either to the newspaper commonplace, or to the out of the way and inappropriate +epithets, or to the common word with a twist on it. But there +are examples of the combined method, as when we call the trees round +a man’s house his “domestic boscage.” This combination +is difficult, but perfect for its purpose. You cannot write worse +than “such.” To attain perfection the young aspirant +should confine his reading to the newspapers (carefully selecting his +newspapers, for many of them will not help him to write ill) and to +those modern authors who are most praised for their style by the people +who know least about the matter. Words like “fictional” +and “fictive” are distinctly to be recommended, and there +are epithets such as “weird,” “strange,” “wild,” +“intimate,” and the rest, which blend pleasantly with “all +the time” for “always”; “back of” for +“behind”; “belong with” for “belong to”; +“live like I do” for “as I do.” The authors +who combine those charms are rare, but we can strive to be among them.</p> +<p>In short, he who would fail must avoid simplicity like a sunken reef, +and must earnestly seek either the commonplace or the <i>bizarre</i>, +the slipshod or the affected, the newfangled or the obsolete, the flippant +or the sepulchral. I need not specially recommend you to write +in “Wardour-street English,” the sham archaic, a lingo never +spoken by mortal man, and composed of patches borrowed from authors +between Piers Plowman and Gabriel Harvey. A few literal translations +of Icelandic phrases may be thrown in; the result, as furniture-dealers +say, is a “made-up article.”</p> +<p>On the subject of style another hint may be offered. Style +may be good in itself, but inappropriate to the subject. For example, +style which may be excellently adapted to a theological essay, may be +but ill-suited for a dialogue in a novel. There are subjects of +which the poet says</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Ornari res ipsa vetat, contenta doceri</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The matter declines to be adorned, and is content with being clearly +stated. I do not know what would occur if the writer of the Money +Article in the <i>Times</i> treated his topic with reckless gaiety. +Probably that number of the journal in which the essay appeared would +have a large sale, but the author might achieve professional failure; +in the office. On the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write +about the Origins of Religion in the style which might suit a study +of the life of ballet dancers; the two MM. Halévy, the learned +and the popular, would make a blunder if they exchanged styles. +Yet Gibbon never denies himself a jest, and Montesquieu’s <i>Esprit +des Lois</i> was called <i>L’Esprit sur les Lois</i>. M. +Renan’s <i>Histoire d’Israel</i> may almost be called skittish. +The French are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. +It is a digression, but he who would fail can reach his end by not taking +himself seriously. If he gives himself no important airs, whether +out of a freakish humour, or real humility, depend upon it the public +and the critics will take him at something under his own estimate. +On the other hand, by copying the gravity of demeanour admired by Mr. +Shandy in a celebrated parochial animal, even a very dull person may +succeed in winning no inconsiderable reputation.</p> +<p>To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work +in hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay +on Style, Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth: <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a></p> +<p>“The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent +to the true literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other +arts, structure is all important, felt or painfully missed, everywhere?—that +architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the beginning, +and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of all the +rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigour, unfold +and justify the first—a condition of literary art, which, in contradistinction +to another quality of the artist himself, to be spoken of later, I shall +call the necessity of <i>mind</i> in style.”</p> +<p>These are words which the writer should have always present to his +memory, if he has something serious that he wants to say, or if he wishes +to express himself in the classic and perfect manner. But if it +is his fate merely to be obliged to say something, in the course of +his profession, or if he is bid to discourse for the pleasure of readers +in the Underground Railway, I fear he will often have to forget Mr. +Pater. It may not be literature, the writing of <i>causeries</i>, +of Roundabout Papers, of rambling articles “on a broomstick,” +and yet again, it <i>may</i> be literature! “Parallel, allusion, +the allusive way generally, the flowers in the garden”—Mr. +Pater charges heavily against these. The true artist “knows +the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to which +any <i>diversion</i>, literally, is welcome, any vagrant intruder, because +one can go wandering away with it from the immediate subject . . . In +truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, from the +last finish of the gem engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible +dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work to be lying +somewhere, according to Michel Angelo’s fancy, in the rough-hewn +block of stone.”</p> +<p>Excellent, but does this apply to every kind of literary art? +What would become of Montaigne if you blew away his allusions, and drove +him out of “the allusive way,” where he gathers and binds +so many flowers from all the gardens and all the rose-hung lanes of +literature? Montaigne sets forth to write an Essay on Coaches. +He begins with a few remarks on seasickness in the common pig; some +notes on the Pont Neuf at Paris follow, and a theory of why tyrants +are detested by men whom they have obliged; a glance at Coaches is then +given, next a study of Montezuma’s gardens, presently a brief +account of the Spanish cruelties in Mexico and Peru, last—<i>retombons +à nos coches</i>—he tells a tale of the Inca, and the devotion +of his Guard: <i>Another for Hector</i>!</p> +<p>The allusive style has its proper place, like another, if it is used +by the right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also +its higher province. It would not do to employ either style in +the wrong place. In a rambling discursive essay, for example, +a mere straying after the bird in the branches, or the thorn in the +way, he might not take the safest road who imitated Mr. Pater’s +style in what follows:</p> +<p>“In this way, according to the well-known saying, ‘The +style is the man,’ complex or simple, in his individuality, his +plenary sense of what he really has to say, his sense of the world: +all cautions regarding style arising out of so many natural scruples +as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense +of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: +nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter +save that.” Clearly the author who has to write so that +the man may read who runs will fail if he wrests this manner from its +proper place, and uses it for casual articles: he will fail to hold +the vagrom attention!</p> +<p>Thus a great deal may be done by studying inappropriateness of style, +by adopting a style alien to our matter and to our audience. If +we “haver” discursively about serious, and difficult, and +intricate topics, we fail; and we fail if we write on happy, pleasant, +and popular topics in an abstruse and intent, and analytic style. +We fail, too, if in style we go outside our natural selves. “The +style is the man,” and the man will be nothing, and nobody, if +he tries for an incongruous manner, not naturally his own, for example +if Miss Yonge were suddenly to emulate the manner of Lever, or if Mr. +John Morley were to strive to shine in the fashion of <i>Uncle Remus</i>, +or if Mr. Rider Haggard were to be allured into imitation by the example, +so admirable in itself, of the Master of Balliol. It is ourselves +we must try to improve, our attentiveness, our interest in life, our +seriousness of purpose, and then the style will improve with the self. +Or perhaps, to be perfectly frank, we shall thus convert ourselves into +prigs, throw ourselves out of our stride, lapse into self-consciousness, +lose all that is natural, <i>naif</i>, and instinctive within us. +Verily there are many dangers, and the paths to failure are infinite.</p> +<p>So much for style, of which it may generally be said that you cannot +be too obscure, unnatural, involved, vulgar, slipshod, and metaphorical. +See to it that your metaphors are mixed, though, perhaps, this attention +is hardly needed. The free use of parentheses, in which a reader +gets lost, and of unintelligible allusions, and of references to unread +authors—the <i>Kalevala</i> and Lycophron, and the Scholiast on +Apollonius Rhodius, is invaluable to this end. So much for manner, +and now for matter.</p> +<p>The young author generally writes because he wants to write, either +for money, from vanity, or in mere weariness of empty hours and anxiety +to astonish his relations. This is well, he who would fail cannot +begin better than by having nothing to say. The less you observe, +the less you reflect, the less you put yourself in the paths of adventure +and experience, the less you will have to say, and the more impossible +will it be to read your work. Never notice people’s manner, +conduct, nor even dress, in real life. Walk through the world +with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results in a +story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally +begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public +want to read. The young writer has usually read a great deal of +verse, however, and most of it bad. His favourite authors are +the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts, wasted lives, early deaths, +disappointment, gloom. Without having even had an unlucky flirtation, +or without knowing what it is to lose a favourite cat, the early author +pours forth laments, just like the laments he has been reading. +He has too a favourite manner, the old consumptive manner, about the +hectic flush, the fatal rose on the pallid cheek, about the ruined roof +tree, the empty chair, the rest in the village churchyard. This +is now a little <i>rococo</i> and forlorn, but failure may be assured +by travelling in this direction. If you are ambitious to disgust +an editor at once, begin your poem with “Only.” In +fact you may as well head the lyric “Only.” <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a></p> +<blockquote><p>ONLY.</p> +<p>Only a spark of an ember,<br /> + Only a leaf on the tree,<br /> +Only the days we remember,<br /> + Only the days without thee.<br /> +Only the flower that thou worest,<br /> + Only the book that we read,<br /> +Only that night in the forest,<br /> + Only a dream of the dead,<br /> +Only the troth that was broken,<br /> + Only the heart that is lonely,<br /> +Only the sigh and the token<br /> + That sob in the saying of Only!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a person +might make a livelihood by writing verses like these—for music. +Another good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, only two to +the four lines, and regretfully vague. Thus:</p> +<blockquote><p>SHADOWS.</p> +<p>In the slumber of the winter,<br /> + In the secret of the snow,<br /> +What is the voice that is crying<br /> + Out of the long ago?</p> +<p>When the accents of the children<br /> + Are silent on the stairs,<br /> +When the poor forgets his troubles,<br /> + And the rich forgets his cares.</p> +<p>What is the silent whisper<br /> + That echoes in the room,<br /> +When the days are full of darkness,<br /> + And the night is hushed in gloom?</p> +<p>’Tis the voice of the departed,<br /> + Who will never come again,<br /> +Who has left the weary tumult,<br /> + And the struggle and the pain. <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a></p> +<p>And my heart makes heavy answer,<br /> + To the voice that comes no more,<br /> +To the whisper that is welling<br /> + From the far off happy shore.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If you are not satisfied with these simple ways of not succeeding, +please try the Grosvenor Gallery style. Here the great point is +to make the rhyme arrive at the end of a very long word, you should +also be free with your alliterations.</p> +<blockquote><p>LULLABY.</p> +<p>When the sombre night is dumb,<br /> +Hushed the loud chrysanthemum,<br /> + Sister, sleep!<br /> +Sleep, the lissom lily saith,<br /> +Sleep, the poplar whispereth,<br /> + Soft and deep!</p> +<p>Filmy floats the wild woodbine,<br /> +Jonquil, jacinth, jessamine,<br /> + Float and flow.<br /> +Sleeps the water wild and wan,<br /> +As in far off Toltecan<br /> + Mexico.</p> +<p>See, upon the sun-dial,<br /> +Waves the midnight’s misty pall,<br /> + Waves and wakes.<br /> +As, in tropic Timbuctoo,<br /> +Water beasts go plashing through<br /> + Lilied lakes!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, +and adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or ought +to make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The poem +should, as a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, and should +express regret and despair for circumstances in the past with which +the reader is totally unacquainted. Thus:</p> +<blockquote><p>GHOSTS.</p> +<p>We met at length, as Souls that sit<br /> +At funeral feast, and taste of it,<br /> +And empty were the words we said,<br /> +As fits the converse of the dead,<br /> +For it is long ago, my dear,<br /> +Since we two met in living cheer,<br /> +Yea, we have long been ghosts, you know,<br /> +And alien ways we twain must go,<br /> +Nor shall we meet in Shadow Land,<br /> +Till Time’s glass, empty of its sand,<br /> +Is filled up of Eternity.<br /> +Farewell—enough for once to die—<br /> +And far too much it is to dream,<br /> +And taste not the Lethæan stream,<br /> +But bear the pain of loves unwed<br /> +Even here, even here, among the dead!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often practised +with satisfactory results. Every form of imitation (imitating +of course only the faults of a favourite writer) is to be recommended.</p> +<p>Imitation does a double service, it secures the failure of the imitator +and also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. As soon +as a new thing appears in literature, many people hurry off to attempt +something of the same sort. It may be a particular trait and accent +in poetry, and the public, weary of the mimicries, begin to dislike +the original.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Most can grow the flowers now,<br /> + For all have got the seed;<br /> +And once again the people<br /> + Call it but a weed.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In fiction, if somebody brings in a curious kind of murder, or a +study of religious problems, or a treasure hunt, or what you will, others +imitate till the world is weary of murders, or theological flirtations, +or the search for buried specie, and the original authors themselves +will fail, unless they fish out something new, to be vulgarised afresh. +Therefore, imitation is distinctly to be urged on the young author.</p> +<p>As a rule, his method is this, he reads very little, but all that +he reads is <i>bad</i>. The feeblest articles in the weakliest +magazines, the very mildest and most conventional novels appear to be +the only studies of the majority. Apparently the would-be contributor +says to himself, or herself, “well, <i>I</i> can do something +almost on the level of this or that maudlin and invertebrate novel.” +Then he deliberately sits down to rival the most tame, dull, and illiterate +compositions that get into print. In this way bad authors become +the literary parents of worse authors. Nobody but a reader of +MSS. knows what myriads of fiction are written without one single new +situation, original character, or fresh thought. The most out-worn +ideas: sudden loss of fortune; struggles; faithlessness of First Lover; +noble conduct of Second Lover: frivolity of younger sister; excellence +of mother: naughtiness of one son, virtue of another, these are habitually +served up again and again. On the sprained ankles, the mad bulls, +the fires, and other simple devices for doing without an introduction +between hero and heroine I need not dwell. The very youngest of +us is acquainted with these expedients, which, by this time of day, +will spell failure.</p> +<p>The common novels of Governess life, the daughters and granddaughters +of <i>Jane Eyre</i>, still run riot among the rejected manuscripts. +The lively large family, all very untidy and humorous, all wearing each +other’s boots and gloves, and making their dresses out of bedroom +curtains and marrying rich men, still rushes down the easy descent to +failure. The sceptical curate is at large, and is disbelieving +in everything except the virtues of the young woman who “has a +history.” Mr. Swinburne hopes that one day the last unbelieving +clergyman will disappear in the embrace of the last immaculate Magdalen, +as the Princess and the Geni burn each other to nothingness, in the +<i>Arabian Nights</i>. On that happy day there will be one less +of the roads leading to failure. If the pair can carry with them +the self-sacrificing characters who take the blame of all the felonies +that they did not do, and the nice girl who is jilted by the poet, and +finds that the squire was the person whom she <i>really</i> loved, so +much the better. If not only Monte Carlo, but the inevitable scene +in the Rooms there can be abolished; if the Riviera, and Italy can be +removed from the map of Europe as used by novelists, so much the better. +But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority of authors +do not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the last domestic +drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last analysis of the +inmost self of some introspective young girl which crossed the water +from the States.</p> +<p>These are general counsels, and apply to the production of books. +But, when you have done your book, you may play a number of silly tricks +with your manuscript. I have already advised you to make only +one copy, a rough one, as that secures negligence in your work, and +also disgusts an editor or reader. It has another advantage, you +may lose your copy altogether, and, as you have not another, no failure +can be more complete. The best way of losing it, I think and the +safest, is to give it to somebody you know who has once met some man +or woman of letters.. This somebody must be instructed to ask +that busy and perhaps casual and untidy person to read your manuscript, +and “place” it, that is, induce some poor publisher or editor +to pay for and publish it. Now the man, or woman of letters, will +use violent language on receiving your clumsy brown paper parcel of +illegible wares, because he or she has no more to do with the matter +than the crossing sweeper. The MS. will either be put away so +carefully that it can never be found again, or will be left lying about +so that the housemaid may use it for her own domestic purposes, like +Betty Barnes, the cook of Mr. Warburton, who seems to have burned several +plays of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>The MS. in short will go where the old moons go.</p> +<blockquote><p>And all dead days drift thither,<br /> + And all disastrous things.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Not only can you secure failure thus yourself, but you can so worry +and badger your luckless victim, that he too will be unable to write +well till he has forgotten you and your novel, and all the annoyance +and anxiety you have given him. Much may be done by asking him +for “introductions” to an editor or publisher. These +gentry don’t want introductions, they want good books, and very +seldom get them. If you behave thus, the man whom you are boring +will write to his publisher:</p> +<blockquote><p>Dear Brown,</p> +<p>A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend +his rubbish to you. I send it by to-day’s post, and I wish +you joy of it.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This kind of introduction will do you excellent service in smoothing +the path to failure. You can arrive at similar results by sending +your MS. <i>not</i> to the editor of this or that magazine, but to some +one who, as you have been told by some nincompoop, is the editor, and +who is <i>not</i>. He <i>may</i> lose your book, or he may let +it lie about for months, or he may send it on at once to the real editor +with his bitter malison. The utmost possible vexation is thus +inflicted on every hand, and a prejudice is established against you +which the nature of your work is very unlikely to overcome. By +all means bore many literary strangers with correspondence, this will +give them a lively recollection of your name, and an intense desire +to do you a bad turn if opportunity arises. <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a></p> +<p>If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it +with your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. +It is the publisher’s business to send out books to the editors +of critical papers, but never mind <i>that</i>. Go on telling +critics that you know praise is only given by favour, that they are +all more or less venal and corrupt and members of the Something Club, +add that <i>you</i> are no member of a <i>côterie</i> nor clique, +but that you hope an exception will be made, and that your volume will +be applauded on its merits. You will thus have done what in you +lies to secure silence from reviewers, and to make them request that +your story may be sent to some other critic. This, again, gives +trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and contributes +to the end which you have steadily in view.</p> +<p>I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who +possess beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, +and treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated +Prince Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black’s +novels.</p> +<p>Much may be done by re-writing your book on the proof sheets, correcting +everything there which you should have corrected in manuscript. +This is an expensive process, and will greatly diminish your pecuniary +gains, or rather will add to your publisher’s bill, for the odds +are that you will have to publish at your own expense. By the +way, an author can make almost a certainty of disastrous failure, by +carrying to some small obscure publisher a work which has been rejected +by the best people in the trade. Their rejections all but demonstrate +that your book is worthless. If you think you are likely to make +a good thing by employing an obscure publisher, with little or no capital, +then, as some one in Thucydides remarks, congratulating you on your +simplicity, I do not envy your want of common sense. Be very careful +to enter into a perfectly preposterous agreement. For example, +accept “half profits,” but forget to observe that before +these are reckoned, it is distinctly stated in your “agreement” +that the publisher is to pay <i>himself</i> some twenty per cent. on +the price of each copy sold before you get your share.</p> +<p>Here is “another way,” as the cookery books have it. +In your gratitude to your first publisher, covenant with him to let +him have all the cheap editions of all your novels for the next five +years, at his own terms. If, in spite of the advice I have given +you, you somehow manage to succeed, to become wildly popular, you will +still have reserved to yourself, by this ingenious clause, a chance +of ineffable pecuniary failure. A plan generally approved of is +to sell your entire copyright in your book for a very small sum. +You want the ready money, and perhaps you are not very hopeful. +But, when your book is in all men’s hands, when you are daily +reviled by the small fry of paragraphers, when the publisher is clearing +a thousand a year by it, while you only got a hundred down, then you +will thank me, and will acknowledge that, in spite of apparent success, +you are a failure after all. There are publishers, however, so +inconsiderate that they will not leave you even this consolation. +Finding that the book they bought cheap is really valuable, they will +insist on sharing the profits with the author, or on making him great +presents of money to which he has no legal claim. Some persons, +some authors, cannot fail if they would, so wayward is fortune, and +such a Quixotic idea of honesty have some middlemen of literature. +But, of course, you <i>may</i> light on a publisher who will not give +you <i>more</i> than you covenanted for, and then you can go about denouncing +the whole profession as a congregation of robbers and clerks of St. +Nicholas.</p> +<p>The ways of failure are infinite, and of course are not nearly exhausted. +One good plan is never to be yourself when you write, to put in nothing +of your own temperament, manner, character—or to have none, which +does as well. Another favourite method is to offer the wrong kind +of article, to send to the <i>Cornhill</i> an essay on the evolution +of the Hittite syllabary, (for only one author could make <i>that</i> +popular;) or a sketch of cock fighting among the ancients to the <i>Monthly +Record</i>; or an essay on <i>Ayahs in India</i> to an American magazine; +or a biography of Washington or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. +We have them every month in some American periodicals, and our poor +insular serials can get on without them: “have no use for them.”</p> +<p>It is a minor, though valuable scheme, to send poems on Christmas +to magazines about the beginning of December, because, in fact, the +editors have laid in their stock of that kind of thing earlier. +Always insist on <i>seeing</i> an editor, instead of writing to him. +There is nothing he hates so much, unless you are very young and beautiful +indeed, when, perhaps, if you wish to fail you had better <i>not</i> +pay him a visit at the office. Even if you do, even if you were +as fair as the Golden Helen, he is not likely to put in your compositions +if, as is probable, they fall <i>much</i> below the level of his magazine.</p> +<p>A good way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing +successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours which +did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all. By +encouraging this kind of vanity and spite you may entirely destroy any +small powers you once happened to possess, you will, besides, become +a person with a grievance, and, in the long run, will be shunned even +by your fellow failures. Again, you may plagiarise yourself, if +you can, it is not easy, but it is a safe way to fail if you can manage +it. No successful person, perhaps, was ever, in the strict sense, +a plagiarist, though charges of plagiary are always brought against +everybody, from Virgil to Milton, from Scott to Molière, who +attains success. When you are accused of being a plagiarist, and +shewn up in double columns, you may be pretty sure that all this counsel +has been wasted on you, and that you have failed to fail, after all. +Otherwise nobody would envy and malign you, and garble your book, and +print quotations from it which you did not write, all in the sacred +cause of morality.</p> +<p>Advice on how to secure the reverse of success should not be given +to young authors alone. Their kinsfolk and friends, also, can +do much for their aid. A lady who feels a taste for writing is +very seldom allowed to have a quiet room, a quiet study. If she +retreats to her chill and fireless bed chamber, even there she may be +chevied by her brothers, sisters, and mother. It is noticed that +cousins, and aunts, especially aunts, are of high service in this regard. +They never give an intelligent woman an hour to herself.</p> +<p>“Is Miss Mary in?”</p> +<p>“Yes, ma’am, but she is very busy.”</p> +<p>“Oh, she won’t mind me, I don’t mean to stay long.”</p> +<p>Then in rushes the aunt.</p> +<p>“Over your books again: my dear! You really should not +overwork yourself. Writing something”; here the aunt clutches +the manuscript, and looks at it vaguely.</p> +<p>“Well, I dare say it’s very clever, but I don’t +care for this kind of thing myself. Where’s your mother? +Is Jane better? Now, do tell me, do you get much for writing all +that? Do you send it to the printers, or where? How interesting, +and that reminds me, you that are a novelist, have you heard how shamefully +Miss Baxter was treated by Captain Smith? No, well you might make +something out of it.”</p> +<p>Here follows the anecdote, at prodigious length, and perfectly incoherent.</p> +<p>“Now, write <i>that</i>, and I shall always say I was partly +the author. You really should give me a commission, you know. +Well, good bye, tell your mother I called. Why, there she is, +I declare. Oh, Susan, just come and hear the delightful plot for +a novel that I have been giving Mary.”</p> +<p>And then she begins again, only further back, this time.</p> +<p>It is thus that the aunts of England may and do assist their nieces +to fail in literature. Many and many a morning do they waste, +many a promising fancy have they blighted, many a temper have they spoiled.</p> +<p>Sisters are rather more sympathetic: the favourite plan of the brother +is to say, “Now, Mary, read us your new chapter.”</p> +<p>Mary reads it, and the critic exclaims, “Well, of all the awful +Rot! Now, why can’t you do something like <i>Bootles’s +Baby</i>?”</p> +<p>Fathers never take any interest in the business at all: they do not +count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her +judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her +own tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that +relations can do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, deride, +and tease the literary member of the family. They seldom fail +in these duties, and not even success, as a rule, can persuade them +that there is anything in it but “luck.”</p> +<p>Perhaps reviewing is not exactly a form of literature. But +it has this merit that people who review badly, not only fail themselves, +but help others to fail, by giving a bad idea of their works. +You will, of course, never read the books you review, and you will be +exhaustively ignorant of the subjects which they treat. But you +can always find fault with the <i>title</i> of the story which comes +into your hands, a stupid reviewer never fails to do this. You +can also copy out as much of the preface as will fill your eighth of +a column, and add, that the performance is not equal to the promise. +You must never feel nor shew the faintest interest in the work reviewed, +that would be fatal. Never praise heartily, that is the sign of +an intelligence not mediocre. Be vague, colourless, and languid, +this deters readers from approaching the book. If you have glanced +at it, blame it for not being what it never professed to be; if it is +a treatise on Greek Prosody, censure the lack of humour; if it is a +volume of gay verses, lament the author’s indifference to the +sorrows of the poor or the wrongs of the Armenians. If it has +humour, deplore its lack of thoughtfulness; if it is grave, carp at +its lack of gaiety. I have known a reviewer of half a dozen novels +denounce half a dozen <i>kinds</i> of novels in the course of his two +columns; the romance of adventure, the domestic tale, the psychological +analysis, the theological story, the detective’s story, the story +of “Society,” he blamed them all in general, and the books +before him in particular, also the historical novel. This can +easily be done, by dint of practice, after dipping into three or four +pages of your author. Many reviewers have special aversions, authors +they detest. Whatever they are criticising, novels, poems, plays, +they begin by an attack on their pet aversion, who has nothing to do +with the matter in hand. They cannot praise A, B, C, and D, without +first assailing E. It will generally be found that E is a popular +author. But the great virtue of a reviewer, who would be unreadable +and make others unread, is a languid ignorant lack of interest in all +things, a habit of regarding his work as a tedious task, to be scamped +as rapidly and stupidly as possible.</p> +<p>You might think that these qualities would displease the reviewer’s +editor. Not at all, look at any column of short notices, and you +will occasionally find that the critic has anticipated my advice. +There is no topic in which the men who write about it are so little +interested as contemporary literature. Perhaps this is no matter +to marvel at. By the way, a capital plan is not to write your +review till the book has been out for two years. This is the favourite +dodge of the ---, that distinguished journal.</p> +<p>If any one has kindly attended to this discourse, without desiring +to be a failure, he has only to turn the advice outside in. He +has only to be studious of the very best literature, observant, careful, +original, he has only to be himself and not an imitator, to aim at excellence, +and not be content with falling a little lower than mediocrity. +He needs but bestow the same attention on this art as others give to +the other arts and other professions. With these efforts, and +with a native and natural gift, which can never be taught, never communicated, +and with his mind set not on his reward, but on excellence, on style, +on matter, and even on the not wholly unimportant virtue of vivacity, +a man will succeed, or will deserve success. First, of course, +he will have to “find” himself, as the French say, and if +he does <i>not</i> find an ass, then, like Saul the son of Kish, he +may discover a kingdom. One success he can hardly miss, the happiness +of living, not with trash, but among good books, and “the mighty +minds of old.” In an unpublished letter of Mr. Thackeray’s, +written before he was famous, and a novelist, he says how much he likes +writing on historical subjects, and how he enjoys historical research. +<i>The work is so gentlemanly</i>, he remarks. Often and often, +after the daily dreadful lines, the bread and butter winning lines on +some contemporary folly or frivolity, does a man take up some piece +of work hopelessly unremunerative, foredoomed to failure as far as money +or fame go, some dealing with the classics of the world, Homer or Aristotle, +Lucian or Molière. It is like a bath after a day’s +toil, it is tonic and clean; and such studies, if not necessary to success, +are, at least, conducive to mental health and self-respect in literature.</p> +<p>To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, +not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better +take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making +a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune +and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily +within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of +two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of <i>A Scotch +Probationer</i>, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister +of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted +by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest +song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, +Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly +published, <i>Anent Old Edinburgh</i>, in which is briefly told the +story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave +and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with +a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, +Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, +industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, +they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of +their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they +did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief +records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us all. +They bequeath to us the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty +gains of money or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by +literature, unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call +success could never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship +are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing +at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith +about one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, +or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If literature +and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly they who +seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth that +they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it is +not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on them. +Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or with the +imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their success is +this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and the contests +of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious eyes and +idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world’s +goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men +and women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, +and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should +provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition.</p> +<p>It is not an easy goal to attain, as the crowd of aspirants dream, +nor is the reward luxurious when it is attained. A garland, usually +fading and not immortal, has to be run for, not without dust and heat.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> As the +writer has ceased to sift, editorially, the contributions of the age, +he does hope that authors will not instantly send him their MSS. +But if they do, after this warning, they will take the most direct and +certain road to the waste paper basket. No MSS. will be returned, +even when accompanied by postage stamps.</p> +<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> I have +made a rich selection of examples from the works of living English and +American authors. From the inextensive volumes of an eminent and +fastidious critic I have culled a dear phrase about an oasis of style +in “a desert of literary limpness.” But it were hardly +courteous, and might be dangerous, to publish these exotic blossoms +of art.</p> +<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a> <i>Appreciations</i>, +p. 18.</p> +<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> It was +the custom of Longinus, of the author of <i>The Bathos</i>, and other +old critics, to take their examples of how <i>not</i> to do it from +the works of famous writers, such as Sir Richard Blackmore and Herodotus. +It seems altogether safer and more courteous for an author to supply +his own Awful Examples. The Musical Rights in the following Poems +are reserved.</p> +<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> Or, if +you prefer the other rhyme, read: <i>And the wilderness of men</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a> It is +a teachable public: since this lecture was delivered the author has +received many MSS. from people who said they had heard the discourse, +“and enjoyed it so much.”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2566-h.htm or 2566-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/6/2566 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: How to Fail in Literature + + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Release Date: May 11, 2005 [eBook #2566] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1890 Field & Tuer edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE: A LECTURE BY ANDREW LANG + + +PREFACE + + +_This Lecture was delivered at the South Kensington Museum, in aid of the +College for Working Men and Women. As the Publishers, perhaps +erroneously, believe that some of the few authors who were not present +may be glad to study the advice here proffered, the Lecture is now +printed. It has been practically re-written, and, like the kiss which +the Lady returned to Rodolphe_, is revu, corrige, et considerablement +augmente. + +A. L. + + + + +HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE + + +What should be a man's or a woman's reason for taking literature as a +vocation, what sort of success ought they to desire, what sort of +ambition should possess them? These are natural questions, now that so +many readers exist in the world, all asking for something new, now that +so many writers are making their pens "in running to devour the way" over +so many acres of foolscap. The legitimate reasons for enlisting (too +often without receiving the shilling) in this army of writers are not far +to seek. A man may be convinced that he has useful, or beautiful, or +entertaining ideas within him, he may hold that he can express them in +fresh and charming language. He may, in short, have a "vocation," or +feel conscious of a vocation, which is not exactly the same thing. There +are "many thyrsus bearers, few mystics," many are called, few chosen. +Still, to be sensible of a vocation is something, nay, is much, for most +of us drift without any particular aim or predominant purpose. Nobody +can justly censure people whose chief interest is in letters, whose chief +pleasure is in study or composition, who rejoice in a fine sentence as +others do in a well modelled limb, or a delicately touched landscape, +nobody can censure them for trying their fortunes in literature. Most of +them will fail, for, as the bookseller's young man told an author once, +they have the poetic temperament, without the poetic power. Still among +these whom _Pendennis_ has tempted, in boyhood, to run away from school +to literature as Marryat has tempted others to run away to sea, there +must be some who will succeed. But an early and intense ambition is not +everything, any more than a capacity for taking pains is everything in +literature or in any art. + +Some have the gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the +ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. This +class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both the +power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love of +letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean +nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance or +fruit. Or, again, the concern about letters may come suddenly, when a +youth that cared for none of those things is waning, it may come when a +man suddenly finds that he has something which he really must tell. Then +he probably fumbles about for a style, and his first fresh impulses are +more or less marred by his inexperience of an art which beguiles and +fascinates others even in their school-days. + +It is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from his +early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, from +her childish grace, the beauty of a woman. + +But the following remarks on How to fail in Literature are certainly +meant to discourage nobody who loves books, and has an impulse to tell a +story, or to try a song or a sermon. Discouragements enough exist in the +pursuit of this, as of all arts, crafts, and professions, without my +adding to them. Famine and Fear crouch by the portals of literature as +they crouch at the gates of the Virgilian Hades. There is no more +frequent cause of failure than doubt and dread; a beginner can scarcely +put his heart and strength into a work when he knows how long are the +odds against his victory, how difficult it is for a new man to win a +hearing, even though all editors and publishers are ever pining for a new +man. The young fellow, unknown and unwelcomed, who can sit down and give +all his best of knowledge, observation, humour, care, and fancy to a +considerable work has got courage in no common portion; he deserves to +triumph, and certainly should not be disheartened by our old experience. +But there be few beginners of this mark, most begin so feebly because +they begin so fearfully. They are already too discouraged, and can +scarce do themselves justice. It is easier to write more or less well +and agreeably when you are certain of being published and paid, at least, +than to write well when a dozen rejected manuscripts are cowering (as +Theocritus says) in your chest, bowing their pale faces over their chilly +knees, outcast, hungry, repulsed from many a door. To write excellently, +brightly, powerfully, with these poor unwelcomed wanderers, returned +MSS., in your possession, is difficult indeed. It might be wiser to do +as M. Guy de Maupassant is rumoured to have done, to write for seven +years, and shew your essays to none but a mentor as friendly severe as M. +Flaubert. But all men cannot have such mentors, nor can all afford so +long an unremunerative apprenticeship. For some the better plan is _not_ +to linger on the bank, and take tea and good advice, as Keats said, but +to plunge at once in mid-stream, and learn swimming of necessity. + +One thing, perhaps, most people who succeed in letters so far as to keep +themselves alive and clothed by their pens will admit, namely, that their +early rejected MSS. _deserved to be rejected_. A few days ago there came +to the writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by himself. Whence it +came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten its very existence. He +read it with curiosity; it was written in a very much better hand than +his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But _readable_ it was +not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, +and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its +composition. But it was cramped and thin, and hesitating between several +manners; above all it was uncommonly dull. If it ever was sent to an +editor, as I presume it must have been, that editor was trebly justified +in declining it. On the other hand, to be egotistic, I have known +editors reject the attempts of those old days, and afterwards express +lively delight in them when they struggled into print, somehow, +somewhere. These worthy men did not even know that they had despised and +refused what they came afterwards rather to enjoy. + +Editors and publishers, these keepers of the gates of success, are not +infallible, but their opinion of a beginner's work is far more correct +than his own can ever be. They should not depress him quite, but if they +are long unanimous in holding him cheap, he is warned, and had better +withdraw from the struggle. He is either incompetent, or he has the +makings of a Browning. He is a genius born too soon. He may readily +calculate the chances in favour of either alternative. + +So much by way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we may say +about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to failure. And +by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not in our +thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a fortunate +barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope. +Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a +modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of +gossip--these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern +literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is, +for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure. +But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and yet +may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or not publish at all. +He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not call that failure. +I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence, lack of common +sense, conceited dulness, and certain practical blunders now to be +explained and defined. + +The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice as +to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere critic, +and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics "are the fellows who have +failed," or have not succeeded. The persons who really can paint, or +play, or compose seldom tell us how it is done, still less do they review +the performances of their contemporaries. That invidious task they leave +to the unsuccessful novelists. The instruction, the advice are offered +by the persons who cannot achieve performance. It is thus that all +things work together in favour of failure, which, indeed, may well appear +so easy that special instruction, however competent, is a luxury rather +than a necessary. But when we look round on the vast multitude of +writers who, to all seeming, deliberately aim at failure, who take every +precaution in favour of failure that untutored inexperience can suggest, +it becomes plain that education in ill-success, is really a popular want. +In the following remarks some broad general principles, making disaster +almost inevitable, will first be offered, and then special methods of +failing in all special departments of letters will be ungrudgingly +communicated. It is not enough to attain failure, we should deserve it. +The writer, by way of insuring complete confidence, would modestly +mention that he has had ample opportunities of study in this branch of +knowledge. While sifting for five or six years the volunteered +contributions to a popular periodical, he has received and considered +some hundredweights of manuscript. In all these myriad contributions he +has not found thirty pieces which rose even to the ordinary dead level of +magazine work. He has thus enjoyed unrivalled chances of examining such +modes of missing success as spontaneously occur to the human intellect, +to the unaided ingenuity of men, women, and children. {1} + +He who would fail in literature cannot begin too early to neglect his +education, and to adopt every opportunity of not observing life and +character. None of us is so young but that he may make himself perfect +in writing an illegible hand. This method, I am bound to say, is too +frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent literary volunteers +are fairly legible. On the other hand there are novelists, especially +ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining to let itself be +deciphered, but who fill up the margins with interpolations, who write +between the lines, and who cover the page with scratches running this way +and that, intended to direct the attention to after-thoughts inserted +here and there in corners and on the backs of sheets. To pin in scraps +of closely written paper and backs of envelopes adds to the security for +failure, and produces a rich anger in the publisher's reader or the +editor. + +The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, often +overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS. typewritten, +this gives them a chance of being read with ease and interest, and this +must be neglected by all who have really set their hearts on failure. In +the higher matters of education it is well to be as ignorant as possible. +No knowledge comes amiss to the true man of letters, so they who court +disaster should know as little as may be. + +Mr. Stevenson has told the attentive world how, in boyhood, he practised +himself in studying and imitating the styles of famous authors of every +age. He who aims at failure must never think of style, and should +sedulously abstain from reading Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Walton, +Gibbon, and other English and foreign classics. He can hardly be too +reckless of grammar, and should always place adverbs and other words +between "to" and the infinitive, thus: "Hubert was determined to +energetically and on all possible occasions, oppose any attempt to +entangle him with such." Here, it will be noticed, "such" is used as a +pronoun, a delightful flower of speech not to be disregarded by authors +who would fail. But some one may reply that several of our most popular +novelists revel in the kind of grammar which I am recommending. This is +undeniable, but certain people manage to succeed in spite of their own +earnest endeavours and startling demerits. There is no royal road to +failure. There is no rule without its exception, and it may be urged +that the works of the gentlemen and ladies who "break Priscian's head"--as +they would say themselves--may be successful, but are not literature. Now +it is about literature that we are speaking. + +In the matter of style, there is another excellent way. You need not +neglect it, but you may study it wrongly. You may be affectedly self- +conscious, you may imitate the ingenious persons who carefully avoid the +natural word, the spontaneous phrase, and employ some other set of terms +which can hardly be construed. You may use, like a young essayist whom I +have lovingly observed, a proportion of eighty adjectives to every sixty- +five other words of all denominations. You may hunt for odd words, and +thrust them into the wrong places, as where you say that a man's nose is +"beetling," that the sun sank in "a cauldron of daffodil chaos," and the +like. {2} You may use common words in an unwonted sense, keeping some +private interpretation clearly before you. Thus you may speak, if you +like to write partly in the tongue of Hellas, about "assimilating the +_ethos_" of a work of art, and so write that people shall think of the +processes of digestion. You may speak of "exhausting the beauty" of a +landscape, and, somehow, convey the notion of sucking an orange dry. Or +you may wildly mix your metaphors, as when a critic accuses Mr. Browning +of "giving the irridescence of the poetic afflatus," as if the poetic +afflatus were blown through a pipe, into soap, and produced soap bubbles. +This is a more troublesome method than the mere picking up of every +newspaper commonplace that floats into your mind, but it is equally +certain to lead--where you want to go. By combining the two fashions a +great deal may be done. Thus you want to describe a fire at sea, and you +say, "the devouring element lapped the quivering spars, the mast, and the +sea-shouldering keel of the doomed _Mary Jane_ in one coruscating +catastrophe. The sea deeps were incarnadined to an alarming extent by +the flames, and to escape from such many plunged headlong in their watery +bier." + +As a rule, authors who would fail stick to one bad sort of writing; +either to the newspaper commonplace, or to the out of the way and +inappropriate epithets, or to the common word with a twist on it. But +there are examples of the combined method, as when we call the trees +round a man's house his "domestic boscage." This combination is +difficult, but perfect for its purpose. You cannot write worse than +"such." To attain perfection the young aspirant should confine his +reading to the newspapers (carefully selecting his newspapers, for many +of them will not help him to write ill) and to those modern authors who +are most praised for their style by the people who know least about the +matter. Words like "fictional" and "fictive" are distinctly to be +recommended, and there are epithets such as "weird," "strange," "wild," +"intimate," and the rest, which blend pleasantly with "all the time" for +"always"; "back of" for "behind"; "belong with" for "belong to"; "live +like I do" for "as I do." The authors who combine those charms are rare, +but we can strive to be among them. + +In short, he who would fail must avoid simplicity like a sunken reef, and +must earnestly seek either the commonplace or the _bizarre_, the slipshod +or the affected, the newfangled or the obsolete, the flippant or the +sepulchral. I need not specially recommend you to write in +"Wardour-street English," the sham archaic, a lingo never spoken by +mortal man, and composed of patches borrowed from authors between Piers +Plowman and Gabriel Harvey. A few literal translations of Icelandic +phrases may be thrown in; the result, as furniture-dealers say, is a +"made-up article." + +On the subject of style another hint may be offered. Style may be good +in itself, but inappropriate to the subject. For example, style which +may be excellently adapted to a theological essay, may be but ill-suited +for a dialogue in a novel. There are subjects of which the poet says + + _Ornari res ipsa vetat, contenta doceri_. + +The matter declines to be adorned, and is content with being clearly +stated. I do not know what would occur if the writer of the Money +Article in the _Times_ treated his topic with reckless gaiety. Probably +that number of the journal in which the essay appeared would have a large +sale, but the author might achieve professional failure; in the office. +On the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write about the Origins of +Religion in the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet +dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make a +blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a +jest, and Montesquieu's _Esprit des Lois_ was called _L'Esprit sur les +Lois_. M. Renan's _Histoire d'Israel_ may almost be called skittish. The +French are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. It is a +digression, but he who would fail can reach his end by not taking himself +seriously. If he gives himself no important airs, whether out of a +freakish humour, or real humility, depend upon it the public and the +critics will take him at something under his own estimate. On the other +hand, by copying the gravity of demeanour admired by Mr. Shandy in a +celebrated parochial animal, even a very dull person may succeed in +winning no inconsiderable reputation. + +To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work in +hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay on Style, +Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth: {3} + +"The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true +literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other arts, +structure is all important, felt or painfully missed, everywhere?--that +architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the +beginning, and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of +all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigour, +unfold and justify the first--a condition of literary art, which, in +contradistinction to another quality of the artist himself, to be spoken +of later, I shall call the necessity of _mind_ in style." + +These are words which the writer should have always present to his +memory, if he has something serious that he wants to say, or if he wishes +to express himself in the classic and perfect manner. But if it is his +fate merely to be obliged to say something, in the course of his +profession, or if he is bid to discourse for the pleasure of readers in +the Underground Railway, I fear he will often have to forget Mr. Pater. +It may not be literature, the writing of _causeries_, of Roundabout +Papers, of rambling articles "on a broomstick," and yet again, it _may_ +be literature! "Parallel, allusion, the allusive way generally, the +flowers in the garden"--Mr. Pater charges heavily against these. The +true artist "knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent +intelligence to which any _diversion_, literally, is welcome, any vagrant +intruder, because one can go wandering away with it from the immediate +subject . . . In truth all art does but consist in the removal of +surplusage, from the last finish of the gem engraver blowing away the +last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the +finished work to be lying somewhere, according to Michel Angelo's fancy, +in the rough-hewn block of stone." + +Excellent, but does this apply to every kind of literary art? What would +become of Montaigne if you blew away his allusions, and drove him out of +"the allusive way," where he gathers and binds so many flowers from all +the gardens and all the rose-hung lanes of literature? Montaigne sets +forth to write an Essay on Coaches. He begins with a few remarks on +seasickness in the common pig; some notes on the Pont Neuf at Paris +follow, and a theory of why tyrants are detested by men whom they have +obliged; a glance at Coaches is then given, next a study of Montezuma's +gardens, presently a brief account of the Spanish cruelties in Mexico and +Peru, last--_retombons a nos coches_--he tells a tale of the Inca, and +the devotion of his Guard: _Another for Hector_! + +The allusive style has its proper place, like another, if it is used by +the right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also its +higher province. It would not do to employ either style in the wrong +place. In a rambling discursive essay, for example, a mere straying +after the bird in the branches, or the thorn in the way, he might not +take the safest road who imitated Mr. Pater's style in what follows: + +"In this way, according to the well-known saying, 'The style is the man,' +complex or simple, in his individuality, his plenary sense of what he +really has to say, his sense of the world: all cautions regarding style +arising out of so many natural scruples as to the medium through which +alone he can expose that inward sense of things, the purity of this +medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there +which might give conveyance to any matter save that." Clearly the author +who has to write so that the man may read who runs will fail if he wrests +this manner from its proper place, and uses it for casual articles: he +will fail to hold the vagrom attention! + +Thus a great deal may be done by studying inappropriateness of style, by +adopting a style alien to our matter and to our audience. If we "haver" +discursively about serious, and difficult, and intricate topics, we fail; +and we fail if we write on happy, pleasant, and popular topics in an +abstruse and intent, and analytic style. We fail, too, if in style we go +outside our natural selves. "The style is the man," and the man will be +nothing, and nobody, if he tries for an incongruous manner, not naturally +his own, for example if Miss Yonge were suddenly to emulate the manner of +Lever, or if Mr. John Morley were to strive to shine in the fashion of +_Uncle Remus_, or if Mr. Rider Haggard were to be allured into imitation +by the example, so admirable in itself, of the Master of Balliol. It is +ourselves we must try to improve, our attentiveness, our interest in +life, our seriousness of purpose, and then the style will improve with +the self. Or perhaps, to be perfectly frank, we shall thus convert +ourselves into prigs, throw ourselves out of our stride, lapse into self- +consciousness, lose all that is natural, _naif_, and instinctive within +us. Verily there are many dangers, and the paths to failure are +infinite. + +So much for style, of which it may generally be said that you cannot be +too obscure, unnatural, involved, vulgar, slipshod, and metaphorical. See +to it that your metaphors are mixed, though, perhaps, this attention is +hardly needed. The free use of parentheses, in which a reader gets lost, +and of unintelligible allusions, and of references to unread authors--the +_Kalevala_ and Lycophron, and the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, is +invaluable to this end. So much for manner, and now for matter. + +The young author generally writes because he wants to write, either for +money, from vanity, or in mere weariness of empty hours and anxiety to +astonish his relations. This is well, he who would fail cannot begin +better than by having nothing to say. The less you observe, the less you +reflect, the less you put yourself in the paths of adventure and +experience, the less you will have to say, and the more impossible will +it be to read your work. Never notice people's manner, conduct, nor even +dress, in real life. Walk through the world with your eyes and ears +closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to +Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because +verse is the last thing that the public want to read. The young writer +has usually read a great deal of verse, however, and most of it bad. His +favourite authors are the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts, +wasted lives, early deaths, disappointment, gloom. Without having even +had an unlucky flirtation, or without knowing what it is to lose a +favourite cat, the early author pours forth laments, just like the +laments he has been reading. He has too a favourite manner, the old +consumptive manner, about the hectic flush, the fatal rose on the pallid +cheek, about the ruined roof tree, the empty chair, the rest in the +village churchyard. This is now a little _rococo_ and forlorn, but +failure may be assured by travelling in this direction. If you are +ambitious to disgust an editor at once, begin your poem with "Only." In +fact you may as well head the lyric "Only." {4} + + ONLY. + + Only a spark of an ember, + Only a leaf on the tree, + Only the days we remember, + Only the days without thee. + Only the flower that thou worest, + Only the book that we read, + Only that night in the forest, + Only a dream of the dead, + Only the troth that was broken, + Only the heart that is lonely, + Only the sigh and the token + That sob in the saying of Only! + +In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a person +might make a livelihood by writing verses like these--for music. Another +good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, only two to the four +lines, and regretfully vague. Thus: + + SHADOWS. + + In the slumber of the winter, + In the secret of the snow, + What is the voice that is crying + Out of the long ago? + + When the accents of the children + Are silent on the stairs, + When the poor forgets his troubles, + And the rich forgets his cares. + + What is the silent whisper + That echoes in the room, + When the days are full of darkness, + And the night is hushed in gloom? + + 'Tis the voice of the departed, + Who will never come again, + Who has left the weary tumult, + And the struggle and the pain. {5} + + And my heart makes heavy answer, + To the voice that comes no more, + To the whisper that is welling + From the far off happy shore. + +If you are not satisfied with these simple ways of not succeeding, please +try the Grosvenor Gallery style. Here the great point is to make the +rhyme arrive at the end of a very long word, you should also be free with +your alliterations. + + LULLABY. + + When the sombre night is dumb, + Hushed the loud chrysanthemum, + Sister, sleep! + Sleep, the lissom lily saith, + Sleep, the poplar whispereth, + Soft and deep! + + Filmy floats the wild woodbine, + Jonquil, jacinth, jessamine, + Float and flow. + Sleeps the water wild and wan, + As in far off Toltecan + Mexico. + + See, upon the sun-dial, + Waves the midnight's misty pall, + Waves and wakes. + As, in tropic Timbuctoo, + Water beasts go plashing through + Lilied lakes! + +Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, and +adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or ought to +make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The poem should, as +a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, and should express +regret and despair for circumstances in the past with which the reader is +totally unacquainted. Thus: + + GHOSTS. + + We met at length, as Souls that sit + At funeral feast, and taste of it, + And empty were the words we said, + As fits the converse of the dead, + For it is long ago, my dear, + Since we two met in living cheer, + Yea, we have long been ghosts, you know, + And alien ways we twain must go, + Nor shall we meet in Shadow Land, + Till Time's glass, empty of its sand, + Is filled up of Eternity. + Farewell--enough for once to die-- + And far too much it is to dream, + And taste not the Lethaean stream, + But bear the pain of loves unwed + Even here, even here, among the dead! + +That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often practised +with satisfactory results. Every form of imitation (imitating of course +only the faults of a favourite writer) is to be recommended. + +Imitation does a double service, it secures the failure of the imitator +and also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. As soon as a +new thing appears in literature, many people hurry off to attempt +something of the same sort. It may be a particular trait and accent in +poetry, and the public, weary of the mimicries, begin to dislike the +original. + + "Most can grow the flowers now, + For all have got the seed; + And once again the people + Call it but a weed." + +In fiction, if somebody brings in a curious kind of murder, or a study of +religious problems, or a treasure hunt, or what you will, others imitate +till the world is weary of murders, or theological flirtations, or the +search for buried specie, and the original authors themselves will fail, +unless they fish out something new, to be vulgarised afresh. Therefore, +imitation is distinctly to be urged on the young author. + +As a rule, his method is this, he reads very little, but all that he +reads is _bad_. The feeblest articles in the weakliest magazines, the +very mildest and most conventional novels appear to be the only studies +of the majority. Apparently the would-be contributor says to himself, or +herself, "well, _I_ can do something almost on the level of this or that +maudlin and invertebrate novel." Then he deliberately sits down to rival +the most tame, dull, and illiterate compositions that get into print. In +this way bad authors become the literary parents of worse authors. Nobody +but a reader of MSS. knows what myriads of fiction are written without +one single new situation, original character, or fresh thought. The most +out-worn ideas: sudden loss of fortune; struggles; faithlessness of First +Lover; noble conduct of Second Lover: frivolity of younger sister; +excellence of mother: naughtiness of one son, virtue of another, these +are habitually served up again and again. On the sprained ankles, the +mad bulls, the fires, and other simple devices for doing without an +introduction between hero and heroine I need not dwell. The very +youngest of us is acquainted with these expedients, which, by this time +of day, will spell failure. + +The common novels of Governess life, the daughters and granddaughters of +_Jane Eyre_, still run riot among the rejected manuscripts. The lively +large family, all very untidy and humorous, all wearing each other's +boots and gloves, and making their dresses out of bedroom curtains and +marrying rich men, still rushes down the easy descent to failure. The +sceptical curate is at large, and is disbelieving in everything except +the virtues of the young woman who "has a history." Mr. Swinburne hopes +that one day the last unbelieving clergyman will disappear in the embrace +of the last immaculate Magdalen, as the Princess and the Geni burn each +other to nothingness, in the _Arabian Nights_. On that happy day there +will be one less of the roads leading to failure. If the pair can carry +with them the self-sacrificing characters who take the blame of all the +felonies that they did not do, and the nice girl who is jilted by the +poet, and finds that the squire was the person whom she _really_ loved, +so much the better. If not only Monte Carlo, but the inevitable scene in +the Rooms there can be abolished; if the Riviera, and Italy can be +removed from the map of Europe as used by novelists, so much the better. +But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority of authors do +not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the last domestic +drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last analysis of the +inmost self of some introspective young girl which crossed the water from +the States. + +These are general counsels, and apply to the production of books. But, +when you have done your book, you may play a number of silly tricks with +your manuscript. I have already advised you to make only one copy, a +rough one, as that secures negligence in your work, and also disgusts an +editor or reader. It has another advantage, you may lose your copy +altogether, and, as you have not another, no failure can be more +complete. The best way of losing it, I think and the safest, is to give +it to somebody you know who has once met some man or woman of letters.. +This somebody must be instructed to ask that busy and perhaps casual and +untidy person to read your manuscript, and "place" it, that is, induce +some poor publisher or editor to pay for and publish it. Now the man, or +woman of letters, will use violent language on receiving your clumsy +brown paper parcel of illegible wares, because he or she has no more to +do with the matter than the crossing sweeper. The MS. will either be put +away so carefully that it can never be found again, or will be left lying +about so that the housemaid may use it for her own domestic purposes, +like Betty Barnes, the cook of Mr. Warburton, who seems to have burned +several plays of Shakespeare. + +The MS. in short will go where the old moons go. + + And all dead days drift thither, + And all disastrous things. + +Not only can you secure failure thus yourself, but you can so worry and +badger your luckless victim, that he too will be unable to write well +till he has forgotten you and your novel, and all the annoyance and +anxiety you have given him. Much may be done by asking him for +"introductions" to an editor or publisher. These gentry don't want +introductions, they want good books, and very seldom get them. If you +behave thus, the man whom you are boring will write to his publisher: + + Dear Brown, + + A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend his + rubbish to you. I send it by to-day's post, and I wish you joy of it. + +This kind of introduction will do you excellent service in smoothing the +path to failure. You can arrive at similar results by sending your MS. +_not_ to the editor of this or that magazine, but to some one who, as you +have been told by some nincompoop, is the editor, and who is _not_. He +_may_ lose your book, or he may let it lie about for months, or he may +send it on at once to the real editor with his bitter malison. The +utmost possible vexation is thus inflicted on every hand, and a prejudice +is established against you which the nature of your work is very unlikely +to overcome. By all means bore many literary strangers with +correspondence, this will give them a lively recollection of your name, +and an intense desire to do you a bad turn if opportunity arises. {6} + +If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it with +your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. It is +the publisher's business to send out books to the editors of critical +papers, but never mind _that_. Go on telling critics that you know +praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less venal and +corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that _you_ are no member +of a _coterie_ nor clique, but that you hope an exception will be made, +and that your volume will be applauded on its merits. You will thus have +done what in you lies to secure silence from reviewers, and to make them +request that your story may be sent to some other critic. This, again, +gives trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and +contributes to the end which you have steadily in view. + +I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who possess +beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, and +treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated Prince +Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black's novels. + +Much may be done by re-writing your book on the proof sheets, correcting +everything there which you should have corrected in manuscript. This is +an expensive process, and will greatly diminish your pecuniary gains, or +rather will add to your publisher's bill, for the odds are that you will +have to publish at your own expense. By the way, an author can make +almost a certainty of disastrous failure, by carrying to some small +obscure publisher a work which has been rejected by the best people in +the trade. Their rejections all but demonstrate that your book is +worthless. If you think you are likely to make a good thing by employing +an obscure publisher, with little or no capital, then, as some one in +Thucydides remarks, congratulating you on your simplicity, I do not envy +your want of common sense. Be very careful to enter into a perfectly +preposterous agreement. For example, accept "half profits," but forget +to observe that before these are reckoned, it is distinctly stated in +your "agreement" that the publisher is to pay _himself_ some twenty per +cent. on the price of each copy sold before you get your share. + +Here is "another way," as the cookery books have it. In your gratitude +to your first publisher, covenant with him to let him have all the cheap +editions of all your novels for the next five years, at his own terms. +If, in spite of the advice I have given you, you somehow manage to +succeed, to become wildly popular, you will still have reserved to +yourself, by this ingenious clause, a chance of ineffable pecuniary +failure. A plan generally approved of is to sell your entire copyright +in your book for a very small sum. You want the ready money, and perhaps +you are not very hopeful. But, when your book is in all men's hands, +when you are daily reviled by the small fry of paragraphers, when the +publisher is clearing a thousand a year by it, while you only got a +hundred down, then you will thank me, and will acknowledge that, in spite +of apparent success, you are a failure after all. There are publishers, +however, so inconsiderate that they will not leave you even this +consolation. Finding that the book they bought cheap is really valuable, +they will insist on sharing the profits with the author, or on making him +great presents of money to which he has no legal claim. Some persons, +some authors, cannot fail if they would, so wayward is fortune, and such +a Quixotic idea of honesty have some middlemen of literature. But, of +course, you _may_ light on a publisher who will not give you _more_ than +you covenanted for, and then you can go about denouncing the whole +profession as a congregation of robbers and clerks of St. Nicholas. + +The ways of failure are infinite, and of course are not nearly exhausted. +One good plan is never to be yourself when you write, to put in nothing +of your own temperament, manner, character--or to have none, which does +as well. Another favourite method is to offer the wrong kind of article, +to send to the _Cornhill_ an essay on the evolution of the Hittite +syllabary, (for only one author could make _that_ popular;) or a sketch +of cock fighting among the ancients to the _Monthly Record_; or an essay +on _Ayahs in India_ to an American magazine; or a biography of Washington +or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. We have them every month in +some American periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on +without them: "have no use for them." + +It is a minor, though valuable scheme, to send poems on Christmas to +magazines about the beginning of December, because, in fact, the editors +have laid in their stock of that kind of thing earlier. Always insist on +_seeing_ an editor, instead of writing to him. There is nothing he hates +so much, unless you are very young and beautiful indeed, when, perhaps, +if you wish to fail you had better _not_ pay him a visit at the office. +Even if you do, even if you were as fair as the Golden Helen, he is not +likely to put in your compositions if, as is probable, they fall _much_ +below the level of his magazine. + +A good way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing +successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours which +did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all. By +encouraging this kind of vanity and spite you may entirely destroy any +small powers you once happened to possess, you will, besides, become a +person with a grievance, and, in the long run, will be shunned even by +your fellow failures. Again, you may plagiarise yourself, if you can, it +is not easy, but it is a safe way to fail if you can manage it. No +successful person, perhaps, was ever, in the strict sense, a plagiarist, +though charges of plagiary are always brought against everybody, from +Virgil to Milton, from Scott to Moliere, who attains success. When you +are accused of being a plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you +may be pretty sure that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that +you have failed to fail, after all. Otherwise nobody would envy and +malign you, and garble your book, and print quotations from it which you +did not write, all in the sacred cause of morality. + +Advice on how to secure the reverse of success should not be given to +young authors alone. Their kinsfolk and friends, also, can do much for +their aid. A lady who feels a taste for writing is very seldom allowed +to have a quiet room, a quiet study. If she retreats to her chill and +fireless bed chamber, even there she may be chevied by her brothers, +sisters, and mother. It is noticed that cousins, and aunts, especially +aunts, are of high service in this regard. They never give an +intelligent woman an hour to herself. + +"Is Miss Mary in?" + +"Yes, ma'am, but she is very busy." + +"Oh, she won't mind me, I don't mean to stay long." + +Then in rushes the aunt. + +"Over your books again: my dear! You really should not overwork +yourself. Writing something"; here the aunt clutches the manuscript, and +looks at it vaguely. + +"Well, I dare say it's very clever, but I don't care for this kind of +thing myself. Where's your mother? Is Jane better? Now, do tell me, do +you get much for writing all that? Do you send it to the printers, or +where? How interesting, and that reminds me, you that are a novelist, +have you heard how shamefully Miss Baxter was treated by Captain Smith? +No, well you might make something out of it." + +Here follows the anecdote, at prodigious length, and perfectly +incoherent. + +"Now, write _that_, and I shall always say I was partly the author. You +really should give me a commission, you know. Well, good bye, tell your +mother I called. Why, there she is, I declare. Oh, Susan, just come and +hear the delightful plot for a novel that I have been giving Mary." + +And then she begins again, only further back, this time. + +It is thus that the aunts of England may and do assist their nieces to +fail in literature. Many and many a morning do they waste, many a +promising fancy have they blighted, many a temper have they spoiled. + +Sisters are rather more sympathetic: the favourite plan of the brother is +to say, "Now, Mary, read us your new chapter." + +Mary reads it, and the critic exclaims, "Well, of all the awful Rot! Now, +why can't you do something like _Bootles's Baby_?" + +Fathers never take any interest in the business at all: they do not +count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her +judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her own +tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that relations can +do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, deride, and tease the +literary member of the family. They seldom fail in these duties, and not +even success, as a rule, can persuade them that there is anything in it +but "luck." + +Perhaps reviewing is not exactly a form of literature. But it has this +merit that people who review badly, not only fail themselves, but help +others to fail, by giving a bad idea of their works. You will, of +course, never read the books you review, and you will be exhaustively +ignorant of the subjects which they treat. But you can always find fault +with the _title_ of the story which comes into your hands, a stupid +reviewer never fails to do this. You can also copy out as much of the +preface as will fill your eighth of a column, and add, that the +performance is not equal to the promise. You must never feel nor shew +the faintest interest in the work reviewed, that would be fatal. Never +praise heartily, that is the sign of an intelligence not mediocre. Be +vague, colourless, and languid, this deters readers from approaching the +book. If you have glanced at it, blame it for not being what it never +professed to be; if it is a treatise on Greek Prosody, censure the lack +of humour; if it is a volume of gay verses, lament the author's +indifference to the sorrows of the poor or the wrongs of the Armenians. +If it has humour, deplore its lack of thoughtfulness; if it is grave, +carp at its lack of gaiety. I have known a reviewer of half a dozen +novels denounce half a dozen _kinds_ of novels in the course of his two +columns; the romance of adventure, the domestic tale, the psychological +analysis, the theological story, the detective's story, the story of +"Society," he blamed them all in general, and the books before him in +particular, also the historical novel. This can easily be done, by dint +of practice, after dipping into three or four pages of your author. Many +reviewers have special aversions, authors they detest. Whatever they are +criticising, novels, poems, plays, they begin by an attack on their pet +aversion, who has nothing to do with the matter in hand. They cannot +praise A, B, C, and D, without first assailing E. It will generally be +found that E is a popular author. But the great virtue of a reviewer, +who would be unreadable and make others unread, is a languid ignorant +lack of interest in all things, a habit of regarding his work as a +tedious task, to be scamped as rapidly and stupidly as possible. + +You might think that these qualities would displease the reviewer's +editor. Not at all, look at any column of short notices, and you will +occasionally find that the critic has anticipated my advice. There is no +topic in which the men who write about it are so little interested as +contemporary literature. Perhaps this is no matter to marvel at. By the +way, a capital plan is not to write your review till the book has been +out for two years. This is the favourite dodge of the ---, that +distinguished journal. + +If any one has kindly attended to this discourse, without desiring to be +a failure, he has only to turn the advice outside in. He has only to be +studious of the very best literature, observant, careful, original, he +has only to be himself and not an imitator, to aim at excellence, and not +be content with falling a little lower than mediocrity. He needs but +bestow the same attention on this art as others give to the other arts +and other professions. With these efforts, and with a native and natural +gift, which can never be taught, never communicated, and with his mind +set not on his reward, but on excellence, on style, on matter, and even +on the not wholly unimportant virtue of vivacity, a man will succeed, or +will deserve success. First, of course, he will have to "find" himself, +as the French say, and if he does _not_ find an ass, then, like Saul the +son of Kish, he may discover a kingdom. One success he can hardly miss, +the happiness of living, not with trash, but among good books, and "the +mighty minds of old." In an unpublished letter of Mr. Thackeray's, +written before he was famous, and a novelist, he says how much he likes +writing on historical subjects, and how he enjoys historical research. +_The work is so gentlemanly_, he remarks. Often and often, after the +daily dreadful lines, the bread and butter winning lines on some +contemporary folly or frivolity, does a man take up some piece of work +hopelessly unremunerative, foredoomed to failure as far as money or fame +go, some dealing with the classics of the world, Homer or Aristotle, +Lucian or Moliere. It is like a bath after a day's toil, it is tonic and +clean; and such studies, if not necessary to success, are, at least, +conducive to mental health and self-respect in literature. + +To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, +not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take +to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a +sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune +and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within +their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the +pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of _A Scotch Probationer_, Mr. +Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United +Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, +unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the +first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, +died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, _Anent Old +Edinburgh_, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can +hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were +eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in +letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine +poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary +conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, +though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call +them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and +uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and +console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a +real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the +spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety, +unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so +much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are +only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, +make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is +ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or +electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own +reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is +not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count +wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to +call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, +or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their +success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and +the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious +eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world's +goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and +women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and +thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke +envy, nor be coveted by ambition. + +It is not an easy goal to attain, as the crowd of aspirants dream, nor is +the reward luxurious when it is attained. A garland, usually fading and +not immortal, has to be run for, not without dust and heat. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} As the writer has ceased to sift, editorially, the contributions of +the age, he does hope that authors will not instantly send him their MSS. +But if they do, after this warning, they will take the most direct and +certain road to the waste paper basket. No MSS. will be returned, even +when accompanied by postage stamps. + +{2} I have made a rich selection of examples from the works of living +English and American authors. From the inextensive volumes of an eminent +and fastidious critic I have culled a dear phrase about an oasis of style +in "a desert of literary limpness." But it were hardly courteous, and +might be dangerous, to publish these exotic blossoms of art. + +{3} _Appreciations_, p. 18. + +{4} It was the custom of Longinus, of the author of _The Bathos_, and +other old critics, to take their examples of how _not_ to do it from the +works of famous writers, such as Sir Richard Blackmore and Herodotus. It +seems altogether safer and more courteous for an author to supply his own +Awful Examples. The Musical Rights in the following Poems are reserved. + +{5} Or, if you prefer the other rhyme, read: _And the wilderness of +men_. + +{6} It is a teachable public: since this lecture was delivered the +author has received many MSS. from people who said they had heard the +discourse, "and enjoyed it so much." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 2566.txt or 2566.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/6/2566 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk +from the 1890 Field and Tuer edition. + + + + + +HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE: A LECTURE BY ANDREW LANG + + + + +PREFACE + + + +This Lecture was delivered at the South Kensington Museum, in aid of +the College for Working Men and Women. As the Publishers, perhaps +erroneously, believe that some of the few authors who were not +present may be glad to study the advice here proffered, the Lecture +is now printed. It has been practically re-written, and, like the +kiss which the Lady returned to Rodolphe, is revu, corrige, et +considerablement augmente. + +A. L. + + + +HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE + + + +What should be a man's or a woman's reason for taking literature as a +vocation, what sort of success ought they to desire, what sort of +ambition should possess them? These are natural questions, now that +so many readers exist in the world, all asking for something new, now +that so many writers are making their pens "in running to devour the +way" over so many acres of foolscap. The legitimate reasons for +enlisting (too often without receiving the shilling) in this army of +writers are not far to seek. A man may be convinced that he has +useful, or beautiful, or entertaining ideas within him, he may hold +that he can express them in fresh and charming language. He may, in +short, have a "vocation," or feel conscious of a vocation, which is +not exactly the same thing. There are "many thyrsus bearers, few +mystics," many are called, few chosen. Still, to be sensible of a +vocation is something, nay, is much, for most of us drift without any +particular aim or predominant purpose. Nobody can justly censure +people whose chief interest is in letters, whose chief pleasure is in +study or composition, who rejoice in a fine sentence as others do in +a well modelled limb, or a delicately touched landscape, nobody can +censure them for trying their fortunes in literature. Most of them +will fail, for, as the bookseller's young man told an author once, +they have the poetic temperament, without the poetic power. Still +among these whom Pendennis has tempted, in boyhood, to run away from +school to literature as Marryat has tempted others to run away to +sea, there must be some who will succeed. But an early and intense +ambition is not everything, any more than a capacity for taking pains +is everything in literature or in any art. + +Some have the gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the +ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. +This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has +both the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to +write, the love of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, +or youth, and mean nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom +without fragrance or fruit. Or, again, the concern about letters may +come suddenly, when a youth that cared for none of those things is +waning, it may come when a man suddenly finds that he has something +which he really must tell. Then he probably fumbles about for a +style, and his first fresh impulses are more or less marred by his +inexperience of an art which beguiles and fascinates others even in +their school-days. + +It is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from his +early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, +from her childish grace, the beauty of a woman. + +But the following remarks on How to fail in Literature are certainly +meant to discourage nobody who loves books, and has an impulse to +tell a story, or to try a song or a sermon. Discouragements enough +exist in the pursuit of this, as of all arts, crafts, and +professions, without my adding to them. Famine and Fear crouch by +the portals of literature as they crouch at the gates of the +Virgilian Hades. There is no more frequent cause of failure than +doubt and dread; a beginner can scarcely put his heart and strength +into a work when he knows how long are the odds against his victory, +how difficult it is for a new man to win a hearing, even though all +editors and publishers are ever pining for a new man. The young +fellow, unknown and unwelcomed, who can sit down and give all his +best of knowledge, observation, humour, care, and fancy to a +considerable work has got courage in no common portion; he deserves +to triumph, and certainly should not be disheartened by our old +experience. But there be few beginners of this mark, most begin so +feebly because they begin so fearfully. They are already too +discouraged, and can scarce do themselves justice. It is easier to +write more or less well and agreeably when you are certain of being +published and paid, at least, than to write well when a dozen +rejected manuscripts are cowering (as Theocritus says) in your chest, +bowing their pale faces over their chilly knees, outcast, hungry, +repulsed from many a door. To write excellently, brightly, +powerfully, with these poor unwelcomed wanderers, returned MSS., in +your possession, is difficult indeed. It might be wiser to do as M. +Guy de Maupassant is rumoured to have done, to write for seven years, +and shew your essays to none but a mentor as friendly severe as M. +Flaubert. But all men cannot have such mentors, nor can all afford +so long an unremunerative apprenticeship. For some the better plan +is NOT to linger on the bank, and take tea and good advice, as Keats +said, but to plunge at once in mid-stream, and learn swimming of +necessity. + +One thing, perhaps, most people who succeed in letters so far as to +keep themselves alive and clothed by their pens will admit, namely, +that their early rejected MSS. DESERVED TO BE REJECTED. A few days +ago there came to the writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by +himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten +its very existence. He read it with curiosity; it was written in a +very much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly +legible. But READABLE it was not. There was a great deal of work in +it, on an out of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not +quite without novelty at the time of its composition. But it was +cramped and thin, and hesitating between several manners; above all +it was uncommonly dull. If it ever was sent to an editor, as I +presume it must have been, that editor was trebly justified in +declining it. On the other hand, to be egotistic, I have known +editors reject the attempts of those old days, and afterwards express +lively delight in them when they struggled into print, somehow, +somewhere. These worthy men did not even know that they had despised +and refused what they came afterwards rather to enjoy. + +Editors and publishers, these keepers of the gates of success, are +not infallible, but their opinion of a beginner's work is far more +correct than his own can ever be. They should not depress him quite, +but if they are long unanimous in holding him cheap, he is warned, +and had better withdraw from the struggle. He is either incompetent, +or he has the makings of a Browning. He is a genius born too soon. +He may readily calculate the chances in favour of either alternative. + +So much by way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we may +say about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to +failure. And by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the +laurels are not in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a +fourth of a fortunate barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a +Dickens or a Trollope. Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as +many prickles as roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good +deal of envy, a great deal of gossip--these are the rewards of genius +which constitute a modern literary success. Not to reach the +moderate competence in literature is, for a professional man of +letters of all work, something like failure. But in poetry to-day a +man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and yet may be unread, and +may publish at his own expense, or not publish at all. He pleases +himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not call that failure. I +regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence, lack of common +sense, conceited dulness, and certain practical blunders now to be +explained and defined. + +The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice +as to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere +critic, and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics "are the +fellows who have failed," or have not succeeded. The persons who +really can paint, or play, or compose seldom tell us how it is done, +still less do they review the performances of their contemporaries. +That invidious task they leave to the unsuccessful novelists. The +instruction, the advice are offered by the persons who cannot achieve +performance. It is thus that all things work together in favour of +failure, which, indeed, may well appear so easy that special +instruction, however competent, is a luxury rather than a necessary. +But when we look round on the vast multitude of writers who, to all +seeming, deliberately aim at failure, who take every precaution in +favour of failure that untutored inexperience can suggest, it becomes +plain that education in ill-success, is really a popular want. In +the following remarks some broad general principles, making disaster +almost inevitable, will first be offered, and then special methods of +failing in all special departments of letters will be ungrudgingly +communicated. It is not enough to attain failure, we should deserve +it. The writer, by way of insuring complete confidence, would +modestly mention that he has had ample opportunities of study in this +branch of knowledge. While sifting for five or six years the +volunteered contributions to a popular periodical, he has received +and considered some hundredweights of manuscript. In all these +myriad contributions he has not found thirty pieces which rose even +to the ordinary dead level of magazine work. He has thus enjoyed +unrivalled chances of examining such modes of missing success as +spontaneously occur to the human intellect, to the unaided ingenuity +of men, women, and children. {1} + +He who would fail in literature cannot begin too early to neglect his +education, and to adopt every opportunity of not observing life and +character. None of us is so young but that he may make himself +perfect in writing an illegible hand. This method, I am bound to +say, is too frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent +literary volunteers are fairly legible. On the other hand there are +novelists, especially ladies, who not only write a hand wholly +declining to let itself be deciphered, but who fill up the margins +with interpolations, who write between the lines, and who cover the +page with scratches running this way and that, intended to direct the +attention to after-thoughts inserted here and there in corners and on +the backs of sheets. To pin in scraps of closely written paper and +backs of envelopes adds to the security for failure, and produces a +rich anger in the publisher's reader or the editor. + +The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, +often overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS. +typewritten, this gives them a chance of being read with ease and +interest, and this must be neglected by all who have really set their +hearts on failure. In the higher matters of education it is well to +be as ignorant as possible. No knowledge comes amiss to the true man +of letters, so they who court disaster should know as little as may +be. + +Mr. Stevenson has told the attentive world how, in boyhood, he +practised himself in studying and imitating the styles of famous +authors of every age. He who aims at failure must never think of +style, and should sedulously abstain from reading Shakespeare, Bacon, +Hooker, Walton, Gibbon, and other English and foreign classics. He +can hardly be too reckless of grammar, and should always place +adverbs and other words between "to" and the infinitive, thus: +"Hubert was determined to energetically and on all possible +occasions, oppose any attempt to entangle him with such." Here, it +will be noticed, "such" is used as a pronoun, a delightful flower of +speech not to be disregarded by authors who would fail. But some one +may reply that several of our most popular novelists revel in the +kind of grammar which I am recommending. This is undeniable, but +certain people manage to succeed in spite of their own earnest +endeavours and startling demerits. There is no royal road to +failure. There is no rule without its exception, and it may be urged +that the works of the gentlemen and ladies who "break Priscian's +head"--as they would say themselves--may be successful, but are not +literature. Now it is about literature that we are speaking. + +In the matter of style, there is another excellent way. You need not +neglect it, but you may study it wrongly. You may be affectedly +self-conscious, you may imitate the ingenious persons who carefully +avoid the natural word, the spontaneous phrase, and employ some other +set of terms which can hardly be construed. You may use, like a +young essayist whom I have lovingly observed, a proportion of eighty +adjectives to every sixty-five other words of all denominations. You +may hunt for odd words, and thrust them into the wrong places, as +where you say that a + +man's nose is "beetling," that the sun sank in "a cauldron of +daffodil chaos," and the like. {2} You may use common words in an +unwonted sense, keeping some private interpretation clearly before +you. Thus you may speak, if you like to write partly in the tongue +of Hellas, about "assimilating the ethos" of a work of art, and so +write that people shall think of the processes of digestion. You may +speak of "exhausting the beauty" of a landscape, and, somehow, convey +the notion of sucking an orange dry. Or you may wildly mix your +metaphors, as when a critic accuses Mr. Browning of "giving the +irridescence of the poetic afflatus," as if the poetic afflatus were +blown through a pipe, into soap, and produced soap bubbles. This is +a more troublesome method than the mere picking up of every newspaper +commonplace that floats into your mind, but it is equally certain to +lead--where you want to go. By combining the two fashions a great +deal may be done. Thus you want to describe a fire at sea, and you +say, "the devouring element lapped the quivering spars, the mast, and +the sea-shouldering keel of the doomed Mary Jane in one coruscating +catastrophe. The sea deeps were incarnadined to an alarming extent +by the flames, and to escape from such many plunged headlong in their +watery bier." + +As a rule, authors who would fail stick to one bad sort of writing; +either to the newspaper commonplace, or to the out of the way and +inappropriate epithets, or to the common word with a twist on it. +But there are examples of the combined method, as when we call the +trees round a man's house his "domestic boscage." This combination +is difficult, but perfect for its purpose. You cannot write worse +than "such." To attain perfection the young aspirant should confine +his reading to the newspapers (carefully selecting his newspapers, +for many of them will not help him to write ill) and to those modern +authors who are most praised for their style by the people who know +least about the matter. Words like "fictional" and "fictive" are +distinctly to be recommended, and there are epithets such as "weird," +"strange," "wild," "intimate," and the rest, which blend pleasantly +with "all the time" for "always"; "back of" for "behind"; "belong +with" for "belong to"; "live like I do" for "as I do." The authors +who combine those charms are rare, but we can strive to be among +them. + +In short, he who would fail must avoid simplicity like a sunken reef, +and must earnestly seek either the commonplace or the bizarre, the +slipshod or the affected, the newfangled or the obsolete, the +flippant or the sepulchral. I need not specially recommend you to +write in "Wardour-street English," the sham archaic, a lingo never +spoken by mortal man, and composed of patches borrowed from authors +between Piers Plowman and Gabriel Harvey. A few literal translations +of Icelandic phrases may be thrown in; the result, as furniture- +dealers say, is a "made-up article." + +On the subject of style another hint may be offered. Style may be +good in itself, but inappropriate to the subject. For example, style +which may be excellently adapted to a theological essay, may be but +ill-suited for a dialogue in a novel. There are subjects of which +the poet says + + +Ornari res ipsa vetat, contenta doceri. + + +The matter declines to be adorned, and is content with being clearly +stated. I do not know what would occur if the writer of the Money +Article in the Times treated his topic with reckless gaiety. +Probably that number of the journal in which the essay appeared would +have a large sale, but the author might achieve professional failure; +in the office. On the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write +about the Origins of Religion in the style which might suit a study +of the life of ballet dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and +the popular, would make a blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet +Gibbon never denies himself a jest, and Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois +was called L'Esprit sur les Lois. M. Renan's Histoire d'Israel may +almost be called skittish. The French are more tolerant of those +excesses than the English. It is a digression, but he who would fail +can reach his end by not taking himself seriously. If he gives +himself no important airs, whether out of a freakish humour, or real +humility, depend upon it the public and the critics will take him at +something under his own estimate. On the other hand, by copying the +gravity of demeanour admired by Mr. Shandy in a celebrated parochial +animal, even a very dull person may succeed in winning no +inconsiderable reputation. + +To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work +in hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay on +Style, Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth: {3} + +"The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the +true literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other +arts, structure is all important, felt or painfully missed, +everywhere?--that architectural conception of work, which foresees +the end in the beginning, and never loses sight of it, and in every +part is conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does but, +with undiminished vigour, unfold and justify the first--a condition +of literary art, which, in contradistinction to another quality of +the artist himself, to be spoken of later, I shall call the necessity +of MIND in style." + +These are words which the writer should have always present to his +memory, if he has something serious that he wants to say, or if he +wishes to express himself in the classic and perfect manner. But if +it is his fate merely to be obliged to say something, in the course +of his profession, or if he is bid to discourse for the pleasure of +readers in the Underground Railway, I fear he will often have to +forget Mr. Pater. It may not be literature, the writing of +causeries, of Roundabout Papers, of rambling articles "on a +broomstick," and yet again, it MAY be literature! "Parallel, +allusion, the allusive way generally, the flowers in the garden"--Mr. +Pater charges heavily against these. The true artist "knows the +narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to which any +DIVERSION, literally, is welcome, any vagrant intruder, because one +can go wandering away with it from the immediate subject . . . In +truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, from the +last finish of the gem engraver blowing away the last particle of +invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work +to be lying somewhere, according to Michel Angelo's fancy, in the +rough-hewn block of stone." + +Excellent, but does this apply to every kind of literary art? What +would become of Montaigne if you blew away his allusions, and drove +him out of "the allusive way," where he gathers and binds so many +flowers from all the gardens and all the rose-hung lanes of +literature? Montaigne sets forth to write an Essay on Coaches. He +begins with a few remarks on seasickness in the common pig; some +notes on the Pont Neuf at Paris follow, and a theory of why tyrants +are detested by men whom they have obliged; a glance at Coaches is +then given, next a study of Montezuma's gardens, presently a brief +account of the Spanish cruelties in Mexico and Peru, last--retombons +a nos coches--he tells a tale of the Inca, and the devotion of his +Guard: Another for Hector! + +The allusive style has its proper place, like another, if it is used +by the right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also +its higher province. It would not do to employ either style in the +wrong place. In a rambling discursive essay, for example, a mere +straying after the bird in the branches, or the thorn in the way, he +might not take the safest road who imitated Mr. Pater's style in what +follows: + +"In this way, according to the well-known saying, 'The style is the +man,' complex or simple, in his individuality, his plenary sense of +what he really has to say, his sense of the world: all cautions +regarding style arising out of so many natural scruples as to the +medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, +the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing +is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save +that." Clearly the author who has to write so that the man may read +who runs will fail if he wrests this manner from its proper place, +and uses it for casual articles: he will fail to hold the vagrom +attention! + +Thus a great deal may be done by studying inappropriateness of style, +by adopting a style alien to our matter and to our audience. If we +"haver" discursively about serious, and difficult, and intricate +topics, we fail; and we fail if we write on happy, pleasant, and +popular topics in an abstruse and intent, and analytic style. We +fail, too, if in style we go outside our natural selves. "The style +is the man," and the man will be nothing, and nobody, if he tries for +an incongruous manner, not naturally his own, for example if Miss +Yonge were suddenly to emulate the manner of Lever, or if Mr. John +Morley were to strive to shine in the fashion of Uncle Remus, or if +Mr. Rider Haggard were to be allured into imitation by the example, +so admirable in itself, of the Master of Balliol. It is ourselves we +must try to improve, our attentiveness, our interest in life, our +seriousness of purpose, and then the style will improve with the +self. Or perhaps, to be perfectly frank, we shall thus convert +ourselves into prigs, throw ourselves out of our stride, lapse into +self- consciousness, lose all that is natural, naif, and instinctive +within us. Verily there are many dangers, and the paths to failure +are infinite. + +So much for style, of which it may generally be said that you cannot +be too obscure, unnatural, involved, vulgar, slipshod, and +metaphorical. See to it that your metaphors are mixed, though, +perhaps, this attention is hardly needed. The free use of +parentheses, in which a reader gets lost, and of unintelligible +allusions, and of references to unread authors--the Kalevala and +Lycophron, and the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, is invaluable to +this end. So much for manner, and now for matter. + +The young author generally writes because he wants to write, either +for money, from vanity, or in mere weariness of empty hours and +anxiety to astonish his relations. This is well, he who would fail +cannot begin better than by having nothing to say. The less you +observe, the less you reflect, the less you put yourself in the paths +of adventure and experience, the less you will have to say, and the +more impossible will it be to read your work. Never notice people's +manner, conduct, nor even dress, in real life. Walk through the +world with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results +in a story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we +generally begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing +that the public want to read. The young writer has usually read a +great deal of verse, however, and most of it bad. His favourite +authors are the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts, wasted +lives, early deaths, disappointment, gloom. Without having even had +an unlucky flirtation, or without knowing what it is to lose a +favourite cat, the early author pours forth laments, just like the +laments he has been reading. He has too a favourite manner, the old +consumptive manner, about the hectic flush, the fatal rose on the +pallid cheek, about the ruined roof tree, the empty chair, the rest +in the village churchyard. This is now a little rococo and forlorn, +but failure may be assured by travelling in this direction. If you +are ambitious to disgust an editor at once, begin your poem with +"Only." In fact you may as well head the lyric "Only." {4} + + +ONLY. + +Only a spark of an ember, +Only a leaf on the tree, +Only the days we remember, +Only the days without thee. +Only the flower that thou worest, +Only the book that we read, +Only that night in the forest, +Only a dream of the dead, +Only the troth that was broken, +Only the heart that is lonely, +Only the sigh and the token +That sob in the saying of Only! + + +In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a +person might make a livelihood by writing verses like these--for +music. Another good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, +only two to the four lines, and regretfully vague. Thus: + + +SHADOWS. + +In the slumber of the winter, +In the secret of the snow, +What is the voice that is crying +Out of the long ago? + +When the accents of the children +Are silent on the stairs, +When the poor forgets his troubles, +And the rich forgets his cares. + +What is the silent whisper +That echoes in the room, +When the days are full of darkness, +And the night is hushed in gloom? + +'Tis the voice of the departed, +Who will never come again, +Who has left the weary tumult, +And the struggle and the pain. {5} + +And my heart makes heavy answer, +To the voice that comes no more, +To the whisper that is welling +From the far off happy shore. + +If you are not satisfied with these simple ways of not succeeding, +please try the Grosvenor Gallery style. Here the great point is to +make the rhyme arrive at the end of a very long word, you should also +be free with your alliterations. + + +LULLABY. + +When the sombre night is dumb, +Hushed the loud chrysanthemum, +Sister, sleep! +Sleep, the lissom lily saith, +Sleep, the poplar whispereth, +Soft and deep! + +Filmy floats the wild woodbine, +Jonquil, jacinth, jessamine, +Float and flow. +Sleeps the water wild and wan, +As in far off Toltecan +Mexico. + +See, upon the sun-dial, +Waves the midnight's misty pall, +Waves and wakes. +As, in tropic Timbuctoo, +Water beasts go plashing through +Lilied lakes! + + +Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, +and adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or +ought to make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The +poem should, as a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, +and should express regret and despair for circumstances in the past +with which the reader is totally unacquainted. Thus: + + +GHOSTS. + +We met at length, as Souls that sit +At funeral feast, and taste of it, +And empty were the words we said, +As fits the converse of the dead, +For it is long ago, my dear, +Since we two met in living cheer, +Yea, we have long been ghosts, you know, +And alien ways we twain must go, +Nor shall we meet in Shadow Land, +Till Time's glass, empty of its sand, +Is filled up of Eternity. +Farewell--enough for once to die - +And far too much it is to dream, +And taste not the Lethaean stream, +But bear the pain of loves unwed +Even here, even here, among the dead! + + +That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often +practised with satisfactory results. Every form of imitation +(imitating of course only the faults of a favourite writer) is to be +recommended. + +Imitation does a double service, it secures the failure of the +imitator and also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. +As soon as a new thing appears in literature, many people hurry off +to attempt something of the same sort. It may be a particular trait +and accent in poetry, and the public, weary of the mimicries, begin +to dislike the original. + + +"Most can grow the flowers now, +For all have got the seed; +And once again the people +Call it but a weed." + + +In fiction, if somebody brings in a curious kind of murder, or a +study of religious problems, or a treasure hunt, or what you will, +others imitate till the world is weary of murders, or theological +flirtations, or the search for buried specie, and the original +authors themselves will fail, unless they fish out something new, to +be vulgarised afresh. Therefore, imitation is distinctly to be urged +on the young author. + +As a rule, his method is this, he reads very little, but all that he +reads is BAD. The feeblest articles in the weakliest magazines, the +very mildest and most conventional novels appear to be the only +studies of the majority. Apparently the would-be contributor says to +himself, or herself, "well, _I_ can do something almost on the level +of this or that maudlin and invertebrate novel." Then he +deliberately sits down to rival the most tame, dull, and illiterate +compositions that get into print. In this way bad authors become the +literary parents of worse authors. Nobody but a reader of MSS. knows +what myriads of fiction are written without one single new situation, +original character, or fresh thought. The most out-worn ideas: +sudden loss of fortune; struggles; faithlessness of First Lover; +noble conduct of Second Lover: frivolity of younger sister; +excellence of mother: naughtiness of one son, virtue of another, +these are habitually served up again and again. On the sprained +ankles, the mad bulls, the fires, and other simple devices for doing +without an introduction between hero and heroine I need not dwell. +The very youngest of us is acquainted with these expedients, which, +by this time of day, will spell failure. + +The common novels of Governess life, the daughters and granddaughters +of Jane Eyre, still run riot among the rejected manuscripts. The +lively large family, all very untidy and humorous, all wearing each +other's boots and gloves, and making their dresses out of bedroom +curtains and marrying rich men, still rushes down the easy descent to +failure. The sceptical curate is at large, and is disbelieving in +everything except the virtues of the young woman who "has a history." +Mr. Swinburne hopes that one day the last unbelieving clergyman will +disappear in the embrace of the last immaculate Magdalen, as the +Princess and the Geni burn each other to nothingness, in the Arabian +Nights. On that happy day there will be one less of the roads +leading to failure. If the pair can carry with them the self- +sacrificing characters who take the blame of all the felonies that +they did not do, and the nice girl who is jilted by the poet, and +finds that the squire was the person whom she REALLY loved, so much +the better. If not only Monte Carlo, but the inevitable scene in the +Rooms there can be abolished; if the Riviera, and Italy can be +removed from the map of Europe as used by novelists, so much the +better. But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority +of authors do not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the +last domestic drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last +analysis of the inmost self of some introspective young girl which +crossed the water from the States. + +These are general counsels, and apply to the production of books. +But, when you have done your book, you may play a number of silly +tricks with your manuscript. I have already advised you to make only +one copy, a rough one, as that secures negligence in your work, and +also disgusts an editor or reader. It has another advantage, you may +lose your copy altogether, and, as you have not another, no failure +can be more complete. The best way of losing it, I think and the +safest, is to give it to somebody you know who has once met some man +or woman of letters.. This somebody must be instructed to ask that +busy and perhaps casual and untidy person to read your manuscript, +and "place" it, that is, induce some poor publisher or editor to pay +for and publish it. Now the man, or woman of letters, will use +violent language on receiving your clumsy brown paper parcel of +illegible wares, because he or she has no more to do with the matter +than the crossing sweeper. The MS. will either be put away so +carefully that it can never be found again, or will be left lying +about so that the housemaid may use it for her own domestic purposes, +like Betty Barnes, the cook of Mr. Warburton, who seems to have +burned several plays of Shakespeare. + +The MS. in short will go where the old moons go. + + +And all dead days drift thither, +And all disastrous things. + + +Not only can you secure failure thus yourself, but you can so worry +and badger your luckless victim, that he too will be unable to write +well till he has forgotten you and your novel, and all the annoyance +and anxiety you have given him. Much may be done by asking him for +"introductions" to an editor or publisher. These gentry don't want +introductions, they want good books, and very seldom get them. If +you behave thus, the man whom you are boring will write to his +publisher: + + +Dear Brown, + +A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend +his rubbish to you. I send it by today's post, and I wish you joy of +it. + + +This kind of introduction will do you excellent service in smoothing +the path to failure. You can arrive at similar results by sending +your MS. NOT to the editor of this or that magazine, but to some one +who, as you have been told by some nincompoop, is the editor, and who +is NOT. He MAY lose your book, or he may let it lie about for +months, or he may send it on at once to the real editor with his +bitter malison. The utmost possible vexation is thus inflicted on +every hand, and a prejudice is established against you which the +nature of your work is very unlikely to overcome. By all means bore +many literary strangers with correspondence, this will give them a +lively recollection of your name, and an intense desire to do you a +bad turn if opportunity arises. {6} + +If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it +with your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. +It is the publisher's business to send out books to the editors of +critical papers, but never mind THAT. Go on telling critics that you +know praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less +venal and corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that YOU are +no member of a coterie nor clique, but that you hope an exception +will be made, and that your volume will be applauded on its merits. +You will thus have done what in you lies to secure silence from +reviewers, and to make them request that your story may be sent to +some other critic. This, again, gives trouble, and makes people +detest you and your performance, and contributes to the end which you +have steadily in view. + +I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who +possess beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, +and treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated +Prince Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black's +novels. + +Much may be done by re-writing your book on the proof sheets, +correcting everything there which you should have corrected in +manuscript. This is an expensive process, and will greatly diminish +your pecuniary gains, or rather will add to your publisher's bill, +for the odds are that you will have to publish at your own expense. +By the way, an author can make almost a certainty of disastrous +failure, by carrying to some small obscure publisher a work which has +been rejected by the best people in the trade. Their rejections all +but demonstrate that your book is worthless. If you think you are +likely to make a good thing by employing an obscure publisher, with +little or no capital, then, as some one in Thucydides remarks, +congratulating you on your simplicity, I do not envy your want of +common sense. Be very careful to enter into a perfectly preposterous +agreement. For example, accept "half profits," but forget to observe +that before these are reckoned, it is distinctly stated in your +"agreement" that the publisher is to pay HIMSELF some twenty per +cent. on the price of each copy sold before you get your share. + +Here is "another way," as the cookery books have it. In your +gratitude to your first publisher, covenant with him to let him have +all the cheap editions of all your novels for the next five years, at +his own terms. If, in spite of the advice I have given you, you +somehow manage to succeed, to become wildly popular, you will still +have reserved to yourself, by this ingenious clause, a chance of +ineffable pecuniary failure. A plan generally approved of is to sell +your entire copyright in your book for a very small sum. You want +the ready money, and perhaps you are not very hopeful. But, when +your book is in all men's hands, when you are daily reviled by the +small fry of paragraphers, when the publisher is clearing a thousand +a year by it, while you only got a hundred down, then you will thank +me, and will acknowledge that, in spite of apparent success, you are +a failure after all. There are publishers, however, so inconsiderate +that they will not leave you even this consolation. Finding that the +book they bought cheap is really valuable, they will insist on +sharing the profits with the author, or on making him great presents +of money to which he has no legal claim. Some persons, some authors, +cannot fail if they would, so wayward is fortune, and such a Quixotic +idea of honesty have some middlemen of literature. But, of course, +you MAY light on a publisher who will not give you MORE than you +covenanted for, and then you can go about denouncing the whole +profession as a congregation of robbers and clerks of St. Nicholas. + +The ways of failure are infinite, and of course are not nearly +exhausted. One good plan is never to be yourself when you write, to +put in nothing of your own temperament, manner, character--or to have +none, which does as well. Another favourite method is to offer the +wrong kind of article, to send to the Cornhill an essay on the +evolution of the Hittite syllabary, (for only one author could make +THAT popular;) or a sketch of cock fighting among the ancients to the +Monthly Record; or an essay on Ayahs in India to an American +magazine; or a biography of Washington or Lincoln to any English +magazine whatever. We have them every month in some American +periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on without them: +"have no use for them." + +It is a minor, though valuable scheme, to send poems on Christmas to +magazines about the beginning of December, because, in fact, the +editors have laid in their stock of that kind of thing earlier. +Always insist on SEEING an editor, instead of writing to him. There +is nothing he hates so much, unless you are very young and beautiful +indeed, when, perhaps, if you wish to fail you had better NOT pay him +a visit at the office. Even if you do, even if you were as fair as +the Golden Helen, he is not likely to put in your compositions if, as +is probable, they fall MUCH below the level of his magazine. + +A good way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing +successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours +which did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all. By +encouraging this kind of vanity and spite you may entirely destroy +any small powers you once happened to possess, you will, besides, +become a person with a grievance, and, in the long run, will be +shunned even by your fellow failures. Again, you may plagiarise +yourself, if you can, it is not easy, but it is a safe way to fail if +you can manage it. No successful person, perhaps, was ever, in the +strict sense, a plagiarist, though charges of plagiary are always +brought against everybody, from Virgil to Milton, from Scott to +Moliere, who attains success. When you are accused of being a +plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you may be pretty sure +that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that you have +failed to fail, after all. Otherwise nobody would envy and malign +you, and garble your book, and print quotations from it which you did +not write, all in the sacred cause of morality. + +Advice on how to secure the reverse of success should not be given to +young authors alone. Their kinsfolk and friends, also, can do much +for their aid. A lady who feels a taste for writing is very seldom +allowed to have a quiet room, a quiet study. If she retreats to her +chill and fireless bed chamber, even there she may be chevied by her +brothers, sisters, and mother. It is noticed that cousins, and +aunts, especially aunts, are of high service in this regard. They +never give an intelligent woman an hour to herself. + +"Is Miss Mary in?" + +"Yes, ma'am, but she is very busy." + +"Oh, she won't mind me, I don't mean to stay long." + +Then in rushes the aunt. + +"Over your books again: my dear! You really should not overwork +yourself. Writing something"; here the aunt clutches the manuscript, +and looks at it vaguely. + +"Well, I dare say it's very clever, but I don't care for this kind of +thing myself. Where's your mother? Is Jane better? Now, do tell +me, do you get much for writing all that? Do you send it to the +printers, or where? How interesting, and that reminds me, you that +are a novelist, have you heard how shamefully Miss Baxter was treated +by Captain Smith? No, well you might make something out of it." + +Here follows the anecdote, at prodigious length, and perfectly +incoherent. + +"Now, write THAT, and I shall always say I was partly the author. +You really should give me a commission, you know. Well, good bye, +tell your mother I called. Why, there she is, I declare. Oh, Susan, +just come and hear the delightful plot for a novel that I have been +giving Mary." + +And then she begins again, only further back, this time. + +It is thus that the aunts of England may and do assist their nieces +to fail in literature. Many and many a morning do they waste, many a +promising fancy have they blighted, many a temper have they spoiled. + +Sisters are rather more sympathetic: the favourite plan of the +brother is to say, "Now, Mary, read us your new chapter." + +Mary reads it, and the critic exclaims, "Well, of all the awful Rot! +Now, why can't you do something like Bootles's Baby?" + +Fathers never take any interest in the business at all: they do not +count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her +judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her +own tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that +relations can do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, +deride, and tease the literary member of the family. They seldom +fail in these duties, and not even success, as a rule, can persuade +them that there is anything in it but "luck." + +Perhaps reviewing is not exactly a form of literature. But it has +this merit that people who review badly, not only fail themselves, +but help others to fail, by giving a bad idea of their works. You +will, of course, never read the books you review, and you will be +exhaustively ignorant of the subjects which they treat. But you can +always find fault with the TITLE of the story which comes into your +hands, a stupid reviewer never fails to do this. You can also copy +out as much of the preface as will fill your eighth of a column, and +add, that the performance is not equal to the promise. You must +never feel nor shew the faintest interest in the work reviewed, that +would be fatal. Never praise heartily, that is the sign of an +intelligence not mediocre. Be vague, colourless, and languid, this +deters readers from approaching the book. If you have glanced at it, +blame it for not being what it never professed to be; if it is a +treatise on Greek Prosody, censure the lack of humour; if it is a +volume of gay verses, lament the author's indifference to the sorrows +of the poor or the wrongs of the Armenians. If it has humour, +deplore its lack of thoughtfulness; if it is grave, carp at its lack +of gaiety. I have known a reviewer of half a dozen novels denounce +half a dozen KINDS of novels in the course of his two columns; the +romance of adventure, the domestic tale, the psychological analysis, +the theological story, the detective's story, the story of "Society," +he blamed them all in general, and the books before him in +particular, also the historical novel. This can easily be done, by +dint of practice, after dipping into three or four pages of your +author. Many reviewers have special aversions, authors they detest. +Whatever they are criticising, novels, poems, plays, they begin by an +attack on their pet aversion, who has nothing to do with the matter +in hand. They cannot praise A, B, C, and D, without first assailing +E. It will generally be found that E is a popular author. But the +great virtue of a reviewer, who would be unreadable and make others +unread, is a languid ignorant lack of interest in all things, a habit +of regarding his work as a tedious task, to be scamped as rapidly and +stupidly as possible. + +You might think that these qualities would displease the reviewer's +editor. Not at all, look at any column of short notices, and you +will occasionally find that the critic has anticipated my advice. +There is no topic in which the men who write about it are so little +interested as contemporary literature. Perhaps this is no matter to +marvel at. By the way, a capital plan is not to write your review +till the book has been out for two years. This is the favourite +dodge of the -, that distinguished journal. + +If any one has kindly attended to this discourse, without desiring to +be a failure, he has only to turn the advice outside in. He has only +to be studious of the very best literature, observant, careful, +original, he has only to be himself and not an imitator, to aim at +excellence, and not be content with falling a little lower than +mediocrity. He needs but bestow the same attention on this art as +others give to the other arts and other professions. With these +efforts, and with a native and natural gift, which can never be +taught, never communicated, and with his mind set not on his reward, +but on excellence, on style, on matter, and even on the not wholly +unimportant virtue of vivacity, a man will succeed, or will deserve +success. First, of course, he will have to "find" himself, as the +French say, and if he does NOT find an ass, then, like Saul the son +of Kish, he may discover a kingdom. One success he can hardly miss, +the happiness of living, not with trash, but among good books, and +"the mighty minds of old." In an unpublished letter of Mr. +Thackeray's, written before he was famous, and a novelist, he says +how much he likes writing on historical subjects, and how he enjoys +historical research. THE WORK IS SO GENTLEMANLY, he remarks. Often +and often, after the daily dreadful lines, the bread and butter +winning lines on some contemporary folly or frivolity, does a man +take up some piece of work hopelessly unremunerative, foredoomed to +failure as far as money or fame go, some dealing with the classics of +the world, Homer or Aristotle, Lucian or Moliere. It is like a bath +after a day's toil, it is tonic and clean; and such studies, if not +necessary to success, are, at least, conducive to mental health and +self-respect in literature. + +To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in +literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They +had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they +are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the +narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom +success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to +be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the +Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, +an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He +died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon +after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady +whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, +leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which +is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true +tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently +qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. +Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, +both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary +conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek +it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none +can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of +honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these +as to delight, and console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us +the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money +or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by literature, +unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call success could +never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship are dusty +and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few +that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith about +one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or +barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If +literature and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly +they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth +that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it +is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on +them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or +with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their +success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub +and the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by +curious eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in +this world's goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they +win among men and women whose faces they will never see. They may +well be content, and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a +lot which should provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition. + +It is not an easy goal to attain, as the crowd of aspirants dream, +nor is the reward luxurious when it is attained. A garland, usually +fading and not immortal, has to be run for, not without dust and +heat. + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} As the writer has ceased to sift, editorially, the contributions +of the age, he does hope that authors will not instantly send him +their MSS. But if they do, after this warning, they will take the +most direct and certain road to the waste paper basket. No MSS. will +be returned, even when accompanied by postage stamps. + +{2} I have made a rich selection of examples from the works of +living English and American authors. From the inextensive volumes of +an eminent and fastidious critic I have culled a dear phrase about an +oasis of style in "a desert of literary limpness." But it were +hardly courteous, and might be dangerous, to publish these exotic +blossoms of art. + +{3} Appreciations, p. 18. + +{4} It was the custom of Longinus, of the author of The Bathos, and +other old critics, to take their examples of how NOT to do it from +the works of famous writers, such as Sir Richard Blackmore and +Herodotus. It seems altogether safer and more courteous for an +author to supply his own Awful Examples. The Musical Rights in the +following Poems are reserved. + +{5} Or, if you prefer the other rhyme, read: And the wilderness of +men. + +{6} It is a teachable public: since this lecture was delivered the +author has received many MSS. from people who said they had heard the +discourse, "and enjoyed it so much." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext How to Fail in Literature, by Andrew Lang + diff --git a/old/fllit10.zip b/old/fllit10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..82ec865 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/fllit10.zip |