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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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<table style='padding:0; margin-left:0; border-collapse:collapse'> - <tr><td>Title:</td><td>Why Authors Go Wrong</td></tr> - <tr><td></td><td>And Other Explanations</td></tr> -</table> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Grant Martin Overton</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 25, 2021 [eBook #64385]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David E. Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<h1>WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG<br /> -<small>AND</small><br /> -OTHER EXPLANATIONS</h1> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<p><span class="xxlarge">WHY AUTHORS<br /> -GO WRONG</span><br /> -<br /> -<span class="xlarge">AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS</span></p> -<br /> -<p>BY<br /> -<span class="xlarge">GRANT M. OVERTON</span><br /> -AUTHOR OF “THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS”</p> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_titlelogo.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<p><span class="large">NEW YORK</span><br /> -<span class="xlarge">MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY</span><br /> -<span class="large">1919</span></p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1919,<br /> -BY<br /> -MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table"> - -<tr><td class="tdr"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td> </td><td class="tdr"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Why Authors Go Wrong</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1"> 1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td> <span class="smcap">A Barbaric Yawp</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25"> 25</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td> <span class="smcap">In the Critical Court</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39"> 39</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Book “Reviewing”</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51"> 51</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Literary Editors, by One of Them</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103"> 103</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td> <span class="smcap">What Every Publisher Knows</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_119"> 119</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Secret of the Best Seller</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_145"> 145</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Writing a Novel</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_173"> 173</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="ph1">WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG<br /> - -<span class="smaller">AND</span><br /> - -<small>OTHER EXPLANATIONS</small></p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span> - -<p class="ph1">WHY AUTHORS GO<br /> -WRONG<br /> -<small>AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS</small></p> -</div> - - - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I<br /> - -<small>WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG</small></h2> - - -<p class="drop-cap">THE subject of <i>Why Authors Go Wrong</i> is one -to answering which a book might adequately -be devoted and perhaps we shall write a book about -it one of these days, but not now. When, as and -if written the book dealing with the question will -necessarily show the misleading nature of Mr. -Arnold Bennett’s title, <i>The Truth About an -Author</i>—a readable little volume which does not -tell the truth about an author in general, but only -what we are politely requested to accept as the truth -about Arnold Bennett. Mr. Bennett may or -may not be telling the truth about himself in that -book; his regard for the truth in respect of the -characters of his fiction has been variable. Perhaps -he is more scrupulous when it comes to himself, but -we are at liberty to doubt it. For a man who will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span> -occasionally paint other persons—even fictionary -persons—as worse than they really are may not -unnaturally be expected to depict himself as somewhat -better than he is.</p> - -<p>We must not stay with Mr. Bennett any longer -just now. It is enough that he has not been content -to wait for the curtain to rise and has insisted on -thrusting himself into our prologue. Exit; and let -us get back where we were.</p> - -<p>We were indicating that <i>Why Authors Go Wrong</i> -is an extensive subject. It is so extensive because -there are many authors and many, many more -readers. It is extensive because it is a moral and -not a literary question, a human and not an artistic -problem. It is extensive because it is really unanswerable -and anything that is essentially unanswerable -necessitates prolonged efforts to answer it, -this on the well-known theory that it is better that -many be bored than that a few remain dissatisfied.</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>Let us take up these considerations one by one.</p> - -<p>It seems unlikely that any one will misunderstand -the precise subject itself. What, exactly, is meant -by an author “going wrong”? The familiar euphemism, -as perhaps most frequently used, is anything -but ambiguous. Ambiguous-sounding words -are generally fraught with a deadly and specific<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span> -meaning—another illustration of the eternal paradox -of sound and sense.</p> - -<p>But as used in the instance of an author, “going -wrong” has a great variety of meanings. An author -has gone wrong, for example, when he has -deliberately done work under his best; he has gone -wrong when he has written for sentimental or æsthetic -reasons and not, as he should, for money -primarily; he has gone wrong when he tries to uplift -or educate his readers; he has gone wrong when he -has written too many books, or has not written -enough books, or has written too fast or not fast -enough, or has written what he saw and not what -he felt, or what he felt and not what he saw, or -posed in any fashion whatsoever.</p> - -<p>Ezra Pound, for example, has gone atrociously -wrong by becoming a French Decadent instead of -remaining a son of Idaho and growing up to be an -American. Of course as a French Decadent he will -always be a failure; as Benjamin De Casseres -puts it, “the reality underlying his exquisite art is -bourgeois and American. He is a ghost materialized -by cunning effects of lights and mirrors.”</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Mr. Robert W. Chambers went wrong in an entirely -different fashion. The usual charge brought -against Mr. Chambers is that he consented to do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> -less than his best because it profited him. This is -entirely untrue. Mr. Chambers’s one mistake was -that he did not write to make money. Every -writer should, because writing is a business and a -business is something which can only be decently -conducted with that end in view. Fancy a real -estate business which should not be conducted to -make money! We should have to stop it immediately. -It would be a menace to the community, -for there is no telling what wickedness of purpose -might lie behind it. A business not conducted primarily -to make money is not a business but a blind; -and very likely a cover for operations of a criminal -character. The safety of mankind lies in knowing -motives and is imperilled by any enterprise that -disguises them.</p> - -<p>And so for Mr. Chambers to refrain deliberately -from writing to make money was a very wrong -thing for him to do. Far from having a wicked -motive, he had a highly creditable motive, which -does not excuse him in the least. His praiseworthy -purpose was to write the best that was in him for -the sake of giving pleasure to the widest possible -number of his readers. There does not seem to be -much doubt that he has done it; those who most -disapprove of him will hardly deny that the vast -sales of his half a hundred stories are incontestable -evidence of his success in his aim. But what is -the result? On every hand he is misjudged and condemned.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span> -He is accused of acting on the right -motive, which is called wrong! He is not blamed, -as he should be, for acting on a wrong motive, which -would, if understood, have been called right! What -he should have done, of course, was to write sanely -and consistently to make money, as did Amelia Barr. -Mrs. Barr was not a victim of widespread contemporary -injustice and Mr. Chambers is and will -remain so.</p> - -<p>Take another illustration—Mr. Winston Churchill. -One of the ablest living American novelists, -he has gone so wrong that it cannot honestly be supposed -he will ever go right again. His earlier novels -were not only delightful but actually important. His -later novels are intolerable. In such a novel as <i>The -Inside of the Cup</i> Mr. Churchill is not writing with -the honorable and matter-of-course object of selling -a large number of copies and getting an income from -them; he is writing with the dishonorable and unavowed -object of setting certain ideas before you, -the contemplation of which will, in his opinion, do -you good. He wants you to think about the horror -of a clergyman in leading strings to his wealthiest -parishioner. As a fact, there is no horror in such -a situation and Mr. Churchill cannot conjure up any. -There is no horror, there are only two fools. Now -if a man is a fool, he’s a fool; he cannot become -anything else, least of all a sensible man. A clergyman -in thrall to a rich individual of his congregation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span> -is a fool; and to picture him as painfully emancipating -himself and becoming not only sensible but, -as it were, heroic is to ask us to accept a contradiction -in terms. For a fool is not a man who lacks -sense, but a man who cannot acquire sense. Not -even a miracle can make him sensible; if it could -there would be no trouble with <i>The Inside of the -Cup</i>, for a miracle, being, as G. K. Chesterton says, -merely an exceptional occurrence, will always be -acquiesced in by the intelligent reader.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>It would be possible to continue at great length -giving examples of authors who have gone wrong -and specifying the fifty-seven varieties of ways they -have erred. But the mere enumeration of fallen -authors is terribly depressing and quite useless. If -we are to accomplish any good end we must try to -find out why they have allowed themselves to be deceived -or betrayed and what can be done in the shape -of rescue work or preventive effort in the future. -Perhaps we can reclaim some of them and guide -others aright.</p> - -<p>After a consideration of cases—we shall not clog -the discussion with statistics and shall confine ourselves -to general results—we have been led by all the -evidence to the conclusion that the principal trouble -is with the authors. Little or none of the blame for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span> -the unfortunate situation rests on their readers. Indeed, -in the majority of cases the readers are the -great and unyielding force making for sanity and -virtue in the author. Without the persistent moral -pressure exerted by their readers many, many more -authors would certainly stray from the path of business -rectitude—not literary rectitude, for there is no -such thing. What is humanly right is right in -letters and nothing is right in letters that is wrong in -the world.</p> - -<p>The commonest way in which authors go wrong -is one already stated: By ceasing to write primarily -for money, for a living and as much more as may -come the writer’s way. The commonest reason why -authors go wrong in this way is comical—or would -be if it were not so common. They feel ashamed to -write for money first and last; they are seized with -an absurd idea that there is something implicitly disgraceful -in acting upon such a motive. And so to -avoid something that they falsely imagine to be disgraceful -they do something that they know is disgraceful; -they write from some other motive and let -the reader innocently think they are writing with the -old and normal and honorable motive.</p> - -<p>So widespread is this delusion that it is absolutely -necessary to digress for a moment and explain -why writing to make money is respectable! Why is -anything respectable? Because it meets a human -necessity and meets it in an open and aboveboard<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> -fashion without detriment to society in general or -the individual in particular. All lawful business -conforms to this definition and writing for money -certainly does. Writing—or painting or sculpturing -or anything else—not done to make money is -not respectable because (1) it meets no human necessity, -(2) it is not done openly and aboveboard, -(3) it is invariably detrimental to society, and (4) -it is nearly always harmful to individuals, and most -harmful to the individual engaged upon it.</p> - -<p>It is useless to say that a man who writes or -paints or carves for something other than money -meets a human necessity—a spiritual thirst for -beauty, perhaps. There is no spiritual thirst for -beauty which cannot be satisfied completely by work -done for an adequate and monetary reward. And -to satisfy the human longing for the beautiful without -requiring a proper price is to demoralize society -by showing men that they can have something for -nothing.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Now it is just here that the moral pressure of the -great body of readers is felt, a pressure that is -constantly misunderstood by the author. So surely -as the writer has turned from writing to make -money and has taken up writing for art’s sake -(whatever that means) or writing for some ethical -purpose or writing in the interest of some propaganda,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span> -though it be merely the propaganda of his -own poor, single intellect—just so surely as he has -done this his readers find him out. Whether they -then continue to read him or not depends entirely on -what they think of his new and unavowed (but -patent) motive. Of course readers ought to be -stern; having caught their author in a wrong motive -they ought to punish him by deserting him instantly. -But readers are human; they are even surprisingly -selfish at times; they are capable of considering -their own enjoyment, and, dreadful to say, they are -capable of considering it first. So if, as in the case -of Mr. Chambers, they find his new motive friendly -and flattering they read him more than ever; on the -other hand, if they find the changed purpose disagreeable -or tiresome, aiming to uplift them or to -shock them unpleasantly or (sometimes) to make -fun of them, they quit that author cold. And they -hardly ever come back. Usually the author is not -perspicacious enough to grasp the cause of the defection; -it is amazing how seldom authors think -there can be anything wrong with themselves. Usually -the abandoned author goes right over and joins -a small sect of highbrows and proclaims the deplorable -state of his national literature. “The public -be damned!” he says in effect, but the public is not -damned, it is he that is damned, and the public has -done its utmost to save him.</p> - -<p>Sometimes an author deliberately does work that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> -is less than his best, but he never does this with the -idea of making money, or, if he entertains that idea, -he fools no one but himself. There are known and -even (we believe) recorded instances of an author -ridiculing his own output and avowing with what -he probably thought audacious candor: “Of course, -this latest story of mine is junk—but it’ll sell 100,000 -copies!”</p> - -<p>It never does. The author is perfectly truthful -in describing the book as worthless. If he implies -as he always will in such a case that he deliberately -did less than his best he is an unconscious liar. It -was his best and its worthlessness was solely the result -of his total insincerity. For a man or woman -may write a very bad book and write it with an utter -sincerity that will sell hundreds of thousands of -copies; but no one can write a very fine book insincerely -and have it sell.</p> - -<p>The author who thinks that he has written a -rather inferior novel for the sake of huge royalties -has actually written the best he has in him, namely, -a piece of cheese. The author who has actually -written beneath his best has not done it for money, -but to avoid making money. He thinks it is his -best; he thinks it is something utterly artistic, -æsthetically wonderful, highbrowedly pure, lofty and -serene; he scorns money; to make money by it -would be to soil it. What he cannot see is that it -is not his best; that it is very likely quite his worst;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> -that when he has done his best he will unavoidably -make money unless, like the misguided mortal we -have just mentioned, deep insincerity vitiates his -work.</p> - -<p>We are therefore ready, before going further, to -formulate certain paradoxical principles governing -all literary work.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>To understand why authors go wrong we must -first understand how authors may go right. The -paradoxical rules which if observed will hold the -author to the path of virtue and rectitude may be -formulated briefly as follows:</p> - -<p>1. An author must write to make money first of -all, and every other purpose must be secondary to -this purpose of money making.</p> - -<p>The paradoxy inherent in this principle is that -while writing the author must never for a single -moment think of the money he may make.</p> - -<p>2. Every writer must have a stern and insistent -moral purpose in his writing, and especially must he -be animated by this purpose if he is writing fiction.</p> - -<p>The paradoxy here is that never, under any circumstances, -may the writer exhibit his moral purpose -in his work.</p> - -<p>3. A writer must not write too much nor must -he write too little. He is writing too much if his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span> -successive books sell better and better; he is writing -too little if each book shows declining sales.</p> - -<p>This may appear paradoxical, but consider: If -the writer’s work is selling with accelerated speed -the market for his wares will very quickly be over-supplied. -This happened to Mr. Kipling one day. -He had the wisdom to stop writing almost entirely, -to let his production fall to an attenuated trickle; -with the result that saturation was avoided, and -there is now and will long continue to be a good, -brisk, steady demand for his product.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, consider the case of Mrs. -Blank (the reader will not expect us to be either -so ungallant or so professionally unethical or so -commercially unfair as to give her name). Mrs. -Blank wrote a book every two or three years, and -each was more of a plug than its predecessor. She -began writing a book a year, and the third volume -under her altered schedule was a best seller. It was -also her best novel.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Then why? why? why? do the authors go wrong? -Because, if we must say it in plain English, they -disregard every principle of successful authorship. -When they have written a book or two and have -made money they get it into their heads that it is -ignoble to write for money and they try to write<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> -for something else—for Art, usually. But it is impossible -to write for Art, for Art is not an end but -a means. When they do not try to write for Art -they try to write for an Ethical Purpose, but they -exhibit it as inescapably as if the book were a pulpit -and the reader were sitting in a pew. Indeed, some -modern fiction cannot be read unless you are sitting -in a pew, and a very stiff and straight backed pew -at that; not one of these old fashioned, roomy, high -walled family pews such as Dickens let us sit in, -pews in which one could be comfortable and easy -and which held the whole family, pews in which -you could box the children’s ears lightly without -doing it publicly; no! the pews the novelists make -us sit in these days are these confounded modern -pews which stop with a jab in the small of your -back and which are no better than public benches, -but are intensely more uncomfortable—pews in -which, to ease your misery, you can do nothing but -look for the mote in your neighbor’s eye and the -wrong color in your neighbor’s cravat.</p> - -<p>Because—to get back to the whys of the authors—because -when they are popular they overpopularize -themselves, and when they are unpopular -they lack the gumption to write more steadily and -fight more gamely for recognition. We don’t mean -critical recognition, but popular recognition. How -can an author expect the public, his public, any public -to go on swallowing him in increased amounts<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> -at meals placed ever closer together—for any length -of time? And how, equally, can an author expect a -public, his public, or any public, to acquire a taste for -his work when he serves them a sample once a week, -then once a month, then once a year? Why, a person -could not acquire a taste for olives that way.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>We have no desire to be personal for the sake of -being personal, but we have every desire to be personal -in this discussion for the sake of being impersonal, -pointed, helpful and clear. It is time to -take a perfectly fresh and perfectly illustrative example -of how not to write fiction. We shall take -the case of Mr. Owen Johnson and his new novel, -<i>Virtuous Wives</i>.</p> - -<p>Mr. Johnson will be suspected by the dense and -conventional censors of American literature of having -written <i>Virtuous Wives</i> to make money. Alackaday, -no! If he had a much better book might -have come from his typewriter. Mr. Johnson was -not thinking primarily of money, as he should have -been (prior to the actual writing of the story). He -was filled with a moral and uplifting aim. He had -been shocked to the marrow by the spectacle of the -lives led by some New York women—the kind Alice -Duer Miller writes discreetly about. The participation -of America in the war had not begun. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> -performances of an inconsiderable few were unduly -conspicuous. Mr. Johnson decided to write a novel -that would hold up these disgusting triflers (and -worse) to the scorn of sane and decent Americans. -He set to work. He finished his book. It was -serialized in one of the several magazines which -have displaced forever the old Sunday school library -in the field of Awful Warning literature. In these -forums Mr. Galsworthy and Gouverneur Morris inscribe -our present-day chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta -family, and writ large over their instalments, -as part of the editorial blurb, we read the expression -of a fervent belief that Vice has never been so Powerfully, -Brilliantly and Convincingly Depicted in All -Its Horror by Any Pen. But we divagate.</p> - -<p>Mr. Johnson’s novel was printed serially and appeared -then as a book with a solemn preface—the -final indecent exhibition, outside of the story itself, -of his serious moral purpose. And as a book it is -failing utterly of its purpose. It has sold and is -selling and Mr. Johnson is making and will make -money out of it—which is what he did not want. -What he did want he made impossible when he unmasked -his great aim.</p> - -<p>The world may be perverse, but you have to take -it as it is. The world may be childish, but none -of us will live to see it grow up. If the world thinks -you write with the honest and understandable object -of making a living it attributes no ulterior motive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span> -to you. The world says: “John Smith, the -butcher, sells me beefsteak in order to buy Mrs. -Smith a new hat and the little Smiths shoes.” The -world buys the steaks and relishes them. But if -John Smith tells the world and his wife every time -they come to his shop: “I am selling you this large, -juicy steak to give you good red blood and make -you Fit,” then the world and his wife are resentful -and say: “We think we don’t like your large, juicy -steaks. We are red blooded enough to have our -own preferences. We will just go on down the -street to the delicatessen—we mean the Liberty food -shop—and buy some de-Hohenzollernized frankfurters, -the well-known Liberty sausage. To hell -with the Kaiser!” And so John Smith merely -makes money. Oh, yes, he makes money; a large, -juicy steak is a large, juicy steak no matter how -deadly the good intent in selling it. But John Smith -is defeated in his real purpose. He does not furnish -the world and his wife with the red corpuscles -he yearned to give them.</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>At this juncture we seem to hear exasperated -cries of this character: “What do you mean by -saying that an author must write for money first -and last and yet must have a stern moral purpose? -How can the two be reconciled? Why must he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span> -think of money until he begins to write and never -after he begins to write? We understand why the -moral object must not obtrude itself, but why need -it be there at all?”</p> - -<p>Can a man serve two masters? Can he serve -money and morality? Foolish question No. 58,914! -He not only can but he always does when his work -is good.</p> - -<p>A painter—a good painter—is a man who burns -to enrich the world with his work and is determined -to make the world pay him decently for it. A -good sculptor is a man who has gritted his teeth -with a resolution to give the world certain beautiful -figures for which the world must reward him—or -he will know the reason why! A good corset manufacturer -is a man who is filled with an almost holy -yearning to make people more shapely and more -comfortable than he found them—and he is fanatically -resolved that they shall acknowledge his -achievement by making him rich!</p> - -<p>For that’s the whole secret. How is a man to -know that he has painted great portraits or landscapes -or carved lovely monuments or made thousands -shapelier and more easeful if not by the money -they paid him? How is an author to know that he -has amused or instructed thousands if not by the -size of his royalty checks? By hearsay? By mind -reading? By plucking the petals of a daisy—“They -love me. They love me not”?</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>Every man can and must serve two masters, but -the one is the thing that masters him and the other -is the evidence of his mastery. Every man must -before beginning work fix his mind intently upon -the making of money, the money which shall be -an evidence of his mastery; every man on beginning -work and for the duration of the work must -fix his mind intently and exclusively on the service -of morality, the great master whose slave he is in -the execution of an Invisible Purpose. And no -man dare let his moral purpose expose itself in his -work, for to do that is to do a presumptuous and -sacrilegious thing. The Great Moralizer, who has -in his hands each little one of us workers, holds his -Purpose invisible to us; how then can we venture -to make visible what He keeps invisible, how can -we have the audacity to practice a technique that -He Himself does not employ?</p> - -<p>For He made the world and all that is in it. -And He made it with a moral end in view, as we -most of us believe. But not the wisest of us pretends -that that moral object is clearly visible. It -does not disclose itself to us directly; we are aware -of it only indirectly; and are influenced by it forevermore. -If the world was so made, who are we -that think ourselves so much more adroit than Him -as to be able to expose boldly what He veils and -to reveal what He hath hidden?</p> - -<p>There are those, of course, who see no moral explanation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> -of the universe; but they are not always -consistent. There is that famous passage of -Joseph Conrad’s in which he declines the ethical -view and says he would fondly regard the panorama -of creation as pure spectacle—the marvellous -spectacle being, perchance, a moral end in itself. -And yet no man ever wrote with a deeper manifestation -and a more perfect concealment of his -moral purpose than Conrad; for exactly the thing -to which all his tales are passionate witnesses is the -sense of fidelity, of loyalty, of endurance—above -all, the sense of fidelity—that exists in mankind. -Man, in the Conradist view, is a creature of an -inexhaustible loyalty to himself and to his fellows. -This inner and utter fidelity it is which makes the -whole legend of <i>Lord Jim</i>, which is the despairing -cry that rings out at the last in <i>Victory</i>, which -reaches lyric heights in <i>Youth</i>, which is the profound -pathos of <i>The End of the Tether</i>, which, in -its corruption by an incorruptible metal, the silver -of the mine, forms the dreadful tragedy of <i>Nostromo</i>. -An immortal, Conrad, but not the admiring -and passive spectator he diffidently declares -himself to be!</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>Have we covered all the cases? Obviously not. -It is no more possible to deal with all the authors<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> -who go wrong than it is to call all the sinners to -repentance. But sin is primarily a question between -the sinner and his own conscience, and the -errors of authors are invariably questions between -the authors and the public. The public is -the best conscience many an author has; and the -substitution of a private self-justification for a public -vindication has seldom been a markedly successful -undertaking in human history. Yet there -is a class of writers for whom no public vindication -is possible; who affect, indeed, to scorn it; -who set themselves up as little gods. They are -the worshippers of Art. They are the ones who -not only do not admit but who deliberately deny -a moral purpose in anything; who think that a -something they call pure Beauty is the sole end of -existence, of work, of life, and is alone to be worshipped. -It is a cult of Baal.</p> - -<p>For these Artists despise money, and in despising -money they cheapen themselves and become -creatures of barter. They sneer at morality and -reject it; immediately the world disappears: “And -the earth was without form, and void.” They demoralize -honest people with whom they come in -contact by demolishing the possibly imperfect but -really workable standards which govern normal -lives—and never replacing them. What is their -Beauty? It is what each one of them thinks beautiful. -What is their Art? It is what each cold<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span> -little selfish soul among them chooses to call Art. -What is their achievement? Self-destruction. -They are the spiritual suicides, they are the moral -defectives, they are the outcasts of humanity, the -lepers among the workers of the world. For them -there can be neither pity nor forgiveness; for they -deny the beauty of rewarded toil, the sincerity of -honest labor, the mystical humanity of man.</p> - -<p>Of them no more. Let us go back in a closing -moment to the contemplation of the great body of -men and women who labor cheerfully and honorably, -if rather often somewhat mistakenly, to make -their living, to do good work and make the world -pay them for it, yet leaving with the world the -firm conviction that it has had a little the better -of the bargain! These are the authors who “go -wrong,” and with whose well-meant errors we have -been dealing, not very methodically but perhaps -not unhelpfully. Is there, then, no parting word -of advice we can give our authors? To be sure -there is! When our authors are quite sure they -will not go wrong, they may go write!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> -<p class="ph1">A BARBARIC YAWP</p> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak">II<br /> - - -<small>A BARBARIC YAWP</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap">IT was the handy phrase to describe Walt Whitman: -The “barbaric yawp.” In its elegant -inelegance the neatly adjectived noun was felt to -be really brilliant. Stump speakers “made the -eagle scream”; a chap like Whitman had to be characterized -handily too.</p> - -<p>The epigrammatic mind is the card index mind. -Now the remarkable thing about the card index is -its casualty list. People who card index things are -people who proceed to forget those things. The -same metal rod that transfixes the perforated cards -pierces the indexers’ brains. A mechanical device -has been called into play. Brains are unnecessary -any more. The day of pigeonholes was slightly -better; for the pigeonholes were not unlike the -human brain in which things are tucked away together, -because they really have some association -with each other. But the card index alphabetizes -ruthlessly. Fancy an alphabetical brain!</p> - -<p>Epigrams are like that. A man cannot take the -trouble to think; he falls back on an epigram. He -cannot take the trouble to remember and so he -card indexes. The upshot is that he can find<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span> -nothing in the card index and of course has no -recollection to fall back on. Or he recalls the epigram -without having the slightest idea what it was -meant to signify.</p> - -<p>But this is not to be about card indexes nor even -about epigrams. It is to be a barbaric yawp, by -which it is to be supposed was once meant the happy -consciousness and the proud wonder that struck -into the heart of an American poet. Whitman was -not so much a poet as the chanteyman of Longfellow’s -Ship of State. There was an hour when the -chanteyman had an inspiration, when he saw as -by an apocalyptic light all the people of these -United States linked and joined in a common effort. -Every man, woman and child of the millions tailed -on the rope; every one of them put his weight and -muscle to the task. It was a tremendous hour. It -was the hour of a common effort. It was the hour -for which, Walt felt, men had risked their lives -a century earlier. It was a revealed hour; it had -not yet arrived; but it was sure to come. And in -the glow of that revelation the singer lifted up his -voice and sang.... God grant he may be hearing -the mighty chorus!</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>America is not a land, but a people. And a -people may have no land and still they will remain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span> -a people. There has, for years, been no country -of Poland; but there are Poles. There has been -a country of Russia for centuries, but there is -to-day no Russian people. What makes a people? -Not a land certainly. Not political forms nor -political sovereignty. Not even political independence. -Nor, for that matter, voices that pretend -or aspire to speak the thoughts of a nation. -Poland has had such voices and Russia has had -her artists, musicians, novelists, poets.</p> - -<p>The thing that makes a people is a thing over -which statesmen have no control. Geography -throws no light on the subject. Nor does that -study of the races of man which is called anthropology. -It is not a psychological secret (psychology -covers a multitude of guesses). Philosophy -may evolve beautiful systems of thought, but systems -of thought have nothing to do with the particular -puzzle before us.</p> - -<p>The secret must be sought elsewhere. Is it an -inherited thing, this thing that makes a people? -That can’t be; ours is a mixed inheritance here in -America. Is it an abstract idea? Abstract ideas -are never more than architectural pencillings and -seldom harden into concrete foundations. Is it a -common emotion? If it were we should be able -to agree on a name for it. Is it an instinct? An -instinct might be back of it.</p> - -<p>What is left? Can it be a religion? As such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span> -it should be easily recognizable. But an element -of religion? An act of faith?</p> - -<p>Yes, for faith may exist with or without a creed, -and the act of faith may be deliberate or involuntary. -Willed or unwilled the faith is held; formulated -or unformulated the essential creed is there. -Let us look at the people of America, men and -women of very divergent types and tempers far -apart; men and women of inextricable heredities -and of confusing beliefs—even, ordinarily, of -clashing purposes. Each believes a set of things, -but the beliefs of them all can be reduced to a lowest -common denominator, a belief in each other; just -as the beliefs of them all have a highest common -multiple, a willingness to die in defence of America. -To some of them America means a past, to some -the past has no meaning; to some of them America -means a future, to others a future is without significance. -But to all of them America means a -present to be safeguarded at the cost of their lives, -if need be; and the fact that the present is the -translation of the past to some and the reading of -the future to others is incidental.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>We would apply these considerations to the affair -of literature; and having been tiresomely generalizing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> -we shall get down to cases that every one can -understand.</p> - -<p>The point we have tried to make condenses to -this: The present is supremely important to us all. -To some of us it is all important because of the -past, and to some of us it is of immense moment -because of the future, and to the greatest number -(probably) the present is of overshadowing concern -because it <i>is</i> the present—the time when they -count and make themselves count. It is now or -never, as it always is in life, though the urgency -of the hour is not always so apparent.</p> - -<p>It was now or never with the armies in the field, -with the men training in the camps, with the coal -miners, the shipbuilders, the food savers in the -kitchens. It is just as much now or never with the -poets, the novelists, the essayists—with the workers -in every line, although they may not see so distinctly -the immediacy of the hour. Everybody -saw the necessity of doing things to win the war; -many can see the necessity of doing things that -will constitute a sort of winning after the war. -There is always something to be won. If it is not -a war it is an after the war. “Peace hath its victories -no less renowned than war” is a fine sounding -line customarily recited without the slightest -recognition of its real meaning. The poet did -not mean that the victories of peace were as greatly -acclaimed as the victories of war, but that the sum<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span> -total of their renown was as great or greater because -they are more enduring.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>Now for the cases.</p> - -<p>It is the duty, the opportunity and the privilege -of America now, in the present hour, to make it -impossible hereafter for any one to raise such a -question as Bliss Perry brings up in his book <i>The -American Spirit in Literature</i>, namely, whether -there is an independent American literature. Not -only does Mr. Perry raise the question, but, stated -as baldly as we have stated it, the query was thereupon -discussed, with great seriousness, by a well-known -American book review! We are happy -to say that both Mr. Perry and the book review -decided that there <i>is</i> such a thing as an -American literature, and that American writing is -not a mere adjunct (perhaps a caudal appendage) -of English literature. All Americans will feel -deeply gratified that they could honorably come to -such a conclusion. But not all Americans will feel -gratified that the conclusion was reached on the -strength of Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, -Holmes, Whitman, Poe and others of the immortal -dead. Some Americans will wish with a -faint and timid longing that the conclusion might -have been reached, or at least sustained, on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span> -strength of Tarkington, Robert Herrick, Edith -Wharton, Mary Johnston, Gertrude Atherton, -Mary S. Watts, William Allen White, Edgar Lee -Masters, Amy Lowell, Edna Ferber, Joseph -Hergesheimer, Owen Wister and a dozen or so -other living writers over whose relative importance -as witnesses for the affirmative we have no desire -to quarrel. Mr. Howells, we believe, was called -to the stand.</p> - -<p>If we had not seen it we should refuse to credit -our senses. The idea of any one holding court to-day -to decide the question as to the existence of an -independent American literature is incredibly -funny. It is the peculiarity of criticism that any -one can set up a court anywhere at any time for -any purpose and with unlimited jurisdiction. -There are no rules of procedure. There are no -rules of evidence. There is no jury; the people -who read books may sit packed in the court room, -but there must be no interruptions. Order in the -court! Usually the critic-judge sits alone, but -sometimes there are special sessions with a full -bench. Writs are issued, subpœnas served, witnesses -are called and testimony is taken. An injunction -may be applied for, either temporary or -permanent. Nothing is easier than to be held in -contempt.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span></p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>The most striking peculiarity of procedure in the -Critical Court is with regard to what constitutes -evidence. You might, in the innocence of your -heart, suppose that a man’s writings would constitute -the only admissible evidence. Not at all. His -writings have really nothing to do with the case. -What is his Purpose? If, as a sincere individual, -he has anywhere exposed or stated his object in -writing books counsel objects to the admission of -this Purpose as evidence on the ground that it is -incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial; and not -sound Art. On the other hand if, as an artist, he -has embodied his Purpose in his fiction so that -every intelligent reader may discover it for himself -and feel the glow of a personal discovery, counsel -will object to the admission of his books as evidence -on the ground that they are incompetent, irrelevant -and immaterial; and not the best proof. -Counsel will demand that the man himself be examined -personally as to his purpose (if he is alive) -or will demand a searching examination of his -private life (if he be dead). The witness is -always a culprit and browbeating the witness is -always in order. I am a highbrow and you are a -lowbrow; what the devil do you mean by writing -a book anyway?</p> - -<p>Before the trial begins the critic-judge enunciates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span> -certain principles on which the verdict will be based -and the verdict is based on those principles whether -they find any application in the testimony or not. A -favorite principle with the man on the bench is that -all that is not obscure is not Art. It isn’t phrased as -intelligibly as that, to be sure; a common way to put -it is to lay down the rule that the popularity of a -book (which means the extent to which it is understood -and therefore appreciated) has nothing to do -with the case, tra-la, has nothing to do with the -case. Another principle is that sound can be -greater than sense, which, in the lingo of the Highest -Criticism, is the dictum that words and sentences -can have a beauty apart from the meaning -(if any) that they seek to convey. And there -really is something in this idea; for example, what -could be lovelier than the old line, “Eeny, meeny, -miny-mo”? Shakespeare, a commercial fellow -who wrote plays for a living, knew this when he -let one of his characters sing:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“When that I was and a little tiny boy,</div> -<div class="indent">With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,</div> -<div class="verse">A foolish thing was but a toy,</div> -<div class="indent">For the rain it raineth every day.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>And a little earlier in <i>Twelfth Night</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Like a mad lad,</div> -<div class="verse">Pare thy nails, dad;</div> -<div class="indent">Adieu, goodman devil.”</div> -</div></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>Which is not only beautiful as sound, but without -the least sense unless it hath the vulgarity to be -looked for in the work of a mercenary playwright.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>But the strangest thing about the proceedings in -the Critical Court is their lack of contemporary interest. -Rarely, indeed, is anything decided here -until it has been decided everywhere else. For the -great decisions are the decisions of life and not decisions -on the past. A man has written twenty -books and he is dead. He is ripe for consideration -by the Critical Court. A man has written two -novels and has eighteen more ahead of him. The -Critical Court will leave him alone until he is past -all helping. It seems never to occur to the critic-judge -that a young man who has written two -novels is more important than a dead man who has -written twenty novels. For the young man who -has written two novels has some novels yet to be -written; he can be helped, strengthened, encouraged, -advised, corrected, warned, counselled, rebuked, -praised, blamed, presented with bills of particulars, -and—heartened. If he has not genius -nothing can put it in him, but if he has, many -things can be done to help him exploit it. And -a man who is dead cannot be affected by anything -you say or do; the critic-judge has lost his chance<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span> -of shaping that writer’s work and can no longer -write a decree, only an epitaph.</p> - -<p>To be brutally frank: Nobody cares what the -Critical Court thinks of Whitman or Poe or Longfellow -or Hawthorne. Everybody cares what -Tarkington does next, what Mary Johnston tackles, -what the developments are in the William Allen -White case, what becomes of Joseph Hergesheimer, -whether Amy Lowell achieves great work in that -contrapuntal poetry she calls polyphonic prose. -On these things depend the present era in American -literature and the possibilities of the future. And -these things are more or less under our control.</p> - -<p>The people of America not only believe that -there is an independent American literature, but -they believe that there will continue to be. Some -of them believe in the past of that literature, some -of them believe in its future; but all of them believe -in its present and its presence. Their voice -may be stifled in the Critical Court (silence in the -court!) but it is audible everywhere else. It is -heard in the bookshops where piles of new fiction -melt away, where new verse is in brisk demand, -where new biographies and historical works are -bought daily and where books on all sorts of -weighty subjects flake down from the shelves into -the hands of customers.</p> - -<p>The voice of the American people is articulate in -the offices of newspapers which deal with the news<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> -of new books. It makes a seismographic record -in the ledgers of publishing houses. It comes to -almost every writer in letters of inquiry, comment -and commendation. What, do you suppose, a -writer like Gene Stratton-Porter cares whether the -Critical Court excludes her work or condemns it? -She can re-read hundreds and thousands of letters -from men and women who tell her how profoundly -her books have—tickled their fancy? pleased their -love of verbal beauty? taxed their intellectuals to -understand? No, merely how profoundly her -books have altered their whole lives.</p> - -<p>Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The Critical -Court is in session. All who have business with -the court draw near and give attention!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="ph1">IN THE CRITICAL COURT</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak">III<br /> - - -<small>IN THE CRITICAL COURT</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap2"><i>THE Critical Court being in session, William -Dean Howells, H. W. Boynton, W. C. -Brownell, Wilson Follett and William Marion -Reedy sitting, the case of Booth Tarkington, -novelist, is called.</i></p> - -<p> </p> -<p><span class="smcap">Counsel for the Prosecution</span>: If it please the -court, this case should go over. The defendant, -Mr. Tarkington, is not dead yet.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Howells</span>: I do not know how my colleagues -feel, but I have no objection to considering the -work of Mr. Tarkington while he is alive.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: I think it would be better if we -deferred the consideration of Mr. Tarkington until -it is a little older.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Counsel for the Defense</span> (<i>in this case Mr. -Robert Cortes Holliday, biographer of Tarkington</i>): -“It”?</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: I mean his work, or works. Perhaps -I should have said “them.”</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Holliday</span>: “They,” not “them.” Exception. -And “are” instead of “is.” Gentlemen, I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span> -have no wish to prejudice the case for my client, -but I must point out that if you wait until he is a -little older he may be dead.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Boynton</span>: So much the better. We can -then consider his works in their complete state and -with reference to his entire life.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Holliday</span>: But it would then be impossible -to give any assistance to Mr. Tarkington. The -chance to influence his work would have passed.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Brownell</span>: That is relatively unimportant.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Holliday</span>: I beg pardon but Mr. Tarkington -feels it rather important to him.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Boynton</span>: My dear Mr. Holliday, you really -must remember that it is not what seems important -to Mr. Tarkington that can count with us, -but what is important in our eyes.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Holliday</span>: Self-importance.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Boynton</span> (<i>stiffly</i>): Certainly not. Merely -self-confidence. But on my own behalf I may say -this: I am unwilling to consider Mr. Tarkington’s -works in this place at this time; but I am willing -to pass judgment in an article for a newspaper or -a monthly magazine or some other purely perishable -medium. That should be sufficient for Mr. -Tarkington.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: I think the possibility of considering -Mr. Tarkington must be ruled out, anyway, as -one or more of his so-called works have first appeared -serially in the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i>.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>Mr. <span class="smcap">Holliday</span> (<i>noting the effect of this revelation -on the members of the court</i>): Very well, I -will not insist. Booth, you will have to get along -the best you can with newspaper and magazine reviews -and with what people write to you or tell you -face to face. Be brave, Tark, and do as you aren’t -done by. After all, a few million people read you and -you make enough to live on. The court will pass -on you after you are dead, and if you dictate any -books on the ouija board the court’s verdict may -be helpful to you then; you might even manage the -later Henry James manner.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Clerk of the Court</span> (<i>Prof. William Lyon -Phelps</i>): Next case! Mrs. Atherton please step -forward!</p> - -<p>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Atherton</span> (<i>advancing with composure</i>): I -can find no one to act for me, so I will be my own -counsel. I will say at the outset that I do not care -for the court, individually or collectively, nor for -its verdict, whatever it may be.</p> - -<p>Prof. <span class="smcap">Phelps</span>: I must warn you that anything -you say may, and probably will, be used against -you.</p> - -<p>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Atherton</span>: Oh, I don’t mind that; it’s the -things the members of the court have said against -me that I purpose to use against them.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Brownell</span>: Are you, by any chance, referring -to me, Madam?</p> - -<p>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Atherton</span>: I do not refer to persons, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span> -Brownell. I hit them. No, I had Mr. Boynton -particularly in mind. And perhaps Gene Stratton-Porter. -Is she here? (<i>Looks around menacingly</i>). -No. Well, go ahead with your nonsense.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Howells</span> (<i>rising</i>): I think I will withdraw -from consideration of this case. Mrs. Atherton -has challenged me so often——</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Boynton</span>: No, stay. <i>I</i> am going to stick -it out——</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: I think there is no question but -that we should hold the defendant in contempt.</p> - -<p>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Atherton</span>: Mutual, I assure you. (<i>She -sweeps out of the room and a large section of the -public quietly follows her.</i>)</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Clerk Phelps</span>: Joseph Hergesheimer to the -bar! (<i>A short, stocky fellow with twinkling eyes -steps forward.</i>) Mr. Hergesheimer?</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Hergesheimer</span>: Right.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Reedy</span>: Good boy, Joe!</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: It won’t do, it won’t do at all. -There’s only <i>The Three Black Pennys and Gold and -Iron</i> and a novel called <i>Java Head</i> to go by. <i>Saturday -Evening Post.</i> And bewilderingly unlike -each other. Seem artistic but are too popular, I -fancy, really to be sound.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Hergesheimer</span>: With all respect, I should -like to ask whether this is a court of record?</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Howells</span>: It is.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Hergesheimer</span>: In that case I think I shall<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> -press for a verdict which may be very helpful to -me. I should like also to have the members of the -court on record respecting my work.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Boynton</span>: Just as I feared. My dear fellow, -while we should like to be helpful and will -endeavor to give you advice to that end it must -be done unobtrusively ... current reviews ... -we’ll compare your work with that of Hawthorne -and Hardy or perhaps a standard Frenchman. -That will give you something to work for. But -you cannot expect us to say anything definite about -you at this stage of your work. Suppose we were -to say what we really think, or what some really -think, that you are the most promising writer in -America to-day, promising in the sense that you -have most of your work before you and in the -sense that your work is both popular and artistically -fine. Don’t you see the risk?</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Hergesheimer</span>: I do, and I also see that -you would make your own reputation much more -than you would make mine. I write a story. I -risk everything with that story. You deliver a -verdict. Why shouldn’t you take a decent chance, -too?</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: Why should I take any more -chances than I have to with my contemporaries? I -pick them pretty carefully, I can tell you.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Hergesheimer</span>: I shall write a novel to be -published after my death. There was Henry<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> -Adams. He stipulated that <i>The Education of -Henry Adams</i> should not be published until after -his death; and everybody says it is positively brilliant.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span> (<i>relieved</i>): That is a wise decision. -But don’t be disheartened. I’ll probably be able to -get around to you in ten years, anyway. (<i>Mr. -Hergesheimer bows and retires.</i>)</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Clerk Phelps</span>: John Galsworthy!</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span> (<i>brightening</i>): Some of the Englishmen! -This is better! Besides, I know all about -Galsworthy.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Galsworthy</span> (<i>coming forward</i>): I feel -much honored.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Counsel for the Prosecution</span>: If the court -please, I must state that for some time now Mr. -Galsworthy has been published serially in a magazine -with a circulation of one digit and six ciphers. -Or one cipher and six digits, I cannot remember -which.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Brownell</span>: What, six? Then he has more -readers than can be counted on the fingers of one -hand. There are only five fingers on a hand. I -think this is conclusive.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Boynton</span>: Oh, decidedly.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Follett</span>: But I put him in my book on modern -novelists, all of whom were hand picked.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Galsworthy</span> (<i>with much calmness for one -uttering a terrible heresy</i>): Perhaps that’s the difficulty,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span> -really. All hand picked. Do you know, I -rather believe in literary windfalls. But I beg to -withdraw. (<i>And he does.</i>)</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">The Clerk</span>: Herbert George Wells!</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Wells</span> (<i>sauntering up and speaking with a -certain inattention</i>): Respecting my long novel, -Joan and Peter, there are some points that need to -be made clear. Peter, you know, is called Petah -by Joan. Petah is a sapient fellow. He is even -able to admire the Germans because, after all, they -knew where they were going, they knew what they -were after, their education had them headed for -something. It had, indeed. I think Petah overlooks -the fact that it had headed them for Paris -in 1914.</p> - -<p>The point that Oswald and I make in the book is -that England and the Empire, in 1914 and prior -thereto, had not been headed for anything, educationally -or otherwise, except Littleness in every -field of political endeavor, except Stupidity in every -province of human affairs. And the proof of this, -we argue, is found in the first three years of the -Great War. No doubt. The first three years of -the war prove so many things that this may well be -among them; don’t you think so?</p> - -<p>Without detracting from the damning case which -Oswald and I make out against England it does -occur to me, as I poke over my material for a new -book, that as the proof of a pudding is in the eating<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> -so the proof of a nation at war is in the fighting. -Indisputable as the bankruptcy of much British -leadership has been, indisputable as it is that General -Gough lost tens of thousands of prisoners, hundreds -of guns and vast stores of ammunition, it is -equally indisputable that the Australians who died -like flies at the Dardanelles died like men, that the -Tommies who were shot by their own guns at -Neuve Chapelle went forward like heroes, that the -undersized and undernourished and unintellectual -Londoners from Whitechapel who fell in Flanders -gave up their immortal souls like freemen and Englishmen -and kinsmen of the Lion Heart.</p> - -<p>And if it comes to a question as to the blame for -the war as distinguished from the question as to -the blame for the British conduct of the war, the -latter being that with which <i>Joan and Peter</i> is almost -wholly concerned, I should like to point out -now, on behalf of myself and the readers of my -next book, that perhaps I am not entirely blameless. -Perhaps I bear an infinitesimal portion of the terrible -responsibility which I have showed some unwillingness -to place entirely and clearly on Germany.</p> - -<p>For after all, it was Science that made the war -and that waged it; it was the idolatry of Science that -had transformed the German nation by transforming -the German nature. It was the proofs of what -Science could do that convinced Prussia of her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span> -power, that made her confident that with this new -weapon she could overstride the earth. I had a -part in setting up that worship of Science. I have -been not only one of its prophets but a high priest -in its temple.</p> - -<p>And I am all the more dismayed, therefore, when -I find myself, as in <i>Joan and Peter</i>, still kneeling at -the shrine. What is the cure for war? I ask. -Petah tells us that our energies must have some -other outlet. We must explore the poles and dig -through the earth to China. He himself will go -back to Cambridge and get a medical degree; and -if he is good enough he’ll do something on the -border line between biology and chemistry. Joan -will build model houses. And the really curious -thing is that the pair of them seem disposed to run -the unspeakable risks of trying to educate still another -generation, a generation which, should it have -to fight a war with a conquering horde from Mars, -might blame Peter and Joan severely for the sacrifices -involved, just as <i>they</i> blame the old Victorians -for the sacrifice of 1914-1918.</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Howells</span>: In heaven’s name, what is this -tirade?</p> - -<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Brownell</span>: Mr. Wells is merely writing his -next book, that’s all.</p> - -<p>(<i>As it is impossible to stop Mr. Wells the court -adjourns without a day.</i>)</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span></p> - - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span> -<p class="ph1">BOOK “REVIEWING”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">IV<br /> - - -<small>BOOK “REVIEWING”</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap">ON the subject of <i>Book “Reviewing”</i> we feel -we can speak freely, knowing all about the -business, as we do, though by no means a practitioner, -and having no convictions on the score of -it. For we point with pride to the fact that, though -many times indicted, a conviction has never been -secured against us. However, it isn’t considered -good form (whatever that is) to talk about your -own crimes. For instance, after exhausting the -weather, you should say pleasantly to your neighbor: -“What an interesting burglary you committed -last night! We were all quite stirred up!” It is -almost improper (much worse than merely immoral) -to exhibit your natural egoism by remarking: -“If I do say it, that murder I did on Tuesday -was a particularly good job!”</p> - -<p>For this reason, if for no other, we would refrain, -ordinarily, from talking about book “reviewing”; -but since Robert Cortes Holliday has mentioned -the subject in his <i>Walking-Stick Papers</i> and -thus introduced the indelicate topic once and for -all, there really seems no course open but to pick<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> -up the theme and treat it in a serious, thoughtful -way.</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>Book reviewing is so called because the books are -not reviewed, or viewed (some say not even read). -They are described with more or less accuracy and -at a variable length. They are praised, condemned, -weighed and solved by the use of logarithms. -They are read, digested, quoted and tested for butter -fat. They are examined, evalued, enjoyed and -assessed; criticised, and frequently found fault with -(not the same thing, of course); chronicled and -even orchestrated by the few who never write -words without writing both words and music. -James Huneker could make Irvin Cobb sound like -a performance by the Boston Symphony. Others, -like Benjamin De Casseres, have a dramatic gift. -Mr. De Casseres writes book revues.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Any one can review a book and every one should -be encouraged to do it. It is unskilled labor. -Good book reviewers earn from $150 to $230 a -week, working only in their spare time, like the -good-looking young men and women who sell the -<i>Saturday Evening Post</i>, the <i>Ladies’ Home Journal</i> -and the <i>Country Gentleman</i> but who seldom earn<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> -over $100 a week. Book reviewing is one of the -very few subjects not taught by the correspondence -schools, simply because there is nothing to teach. -It is so simple a child can operate it with perfect -safety. Write for circular giving full particulars -and our handy phrasebook listing 2,567 standard -phrases indispensable to any reviewer—FREE.</p> - -<p>In reviewing a book there is no method to be -followed. Like one of the playerpianos, you shut -the doors (i.e., close the covers) and play (or -write) <i>by instinct</i>! Although no directions are -necessary we will suggest a few things to overcome -the beginner’s utterly irrational sense of helplessness.</p> - -<p>One of the most useful comments in dealing with -very scholarly volumes, such as <i>A History of the -Statistical Process in Modern Philanthropical Enterprises</i> -by Jacob Jones, is as follows: “Mr. Jones’s -work shows signs of haste.” The peculiar advantage -of this is that you do not libel Mr. Jones; the -haste may have been the printer’s or the publisher’s -or almost anybody’s but the postoffice’s. In the -case of a piece of light fiction the best way to start -your review is by saying: “A new book from the -pen of Alice Apostrophe is always welcome.” But -suppose the book is a first book? One of the finest -opening sentences for the review of a first book -runs: “For a first novel, George Lamplit’s <i>Good -Gracious!</i> is a tale of distinct promise.” Be careful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span> -to say “distinct”; it is an adjective that fits -perfectly over the shoulders of any average-chested -noun. It gives the noun that upright, swagger -carriage a careful writer likes his nouns to have.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>But clothes do not make the man and words do -not make the book review. A book review must -have a Structure, a Skeleton, if it be no more than -the skeleton in the book closet. It must have a -backbone and a bite. It must be able to stand -erect and look the author in the face and tell him -to go to the Home for Indigent Authors which the -Authors’ League will build one of these days after -it has met running expenses.</p> - -<p>Our favorite book reviewer reviews the ordinary -book in four lines and a semi-colon. Unusual -books drain his vital energy to the extent of a -paragraph and a half, three adjectives to the square -inch.</p> - -<p>He makes it a point to have one commendatory -phrase and one derogatory phrase, which gives a -nicely balanced, “on the one hand ... on the -other hand” effect. He says that the book is attractively -bound but badly printed; well-written but -deficient in emotional intensity; full of action but -weak in characterization; has a good plot but is -devoid of style.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>He reads all the books he reviews. Every little -while he pounces upon a misquotation on page 438, -or a misprint on page 279. Reviewers who do not -read the books they review may chance upon such -details while idly turning the uncut leaves or while -looking at the back cover, but they never bring in -three runs on the other side’s error. They spot the -fact that the heroine’s mother, who was killed in -a train accident in the fourth chapter, buys a refrigerator -in the twenty-third chapter, and they -indulge in an unpardonable witticism as to the heroine’s -mother’s whereabouts after her demise. But -the wrong accent on the Greek word in Chapter -XVII gets by them; and as for the psychological -impulse which led the hero to jump from Brooklyn -Bridge on the Fourth of July they miss it entirely -and betray their neglect of their duty by alluding -to him as a poor devil crazed with the heat. The -fact is, of course, that he did a Steve Brodie because -he found something obscurely hateful in the -Manhattan skyline. Day after day, while walking -to his work on the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, he -gazed at the saw-toothed outline of the buildings -limned against the sky. Day by day his soul kept -asking: “Why <i>don’t</i> they get a gold filling for that -cavity between the Singer and Woolworth towers?” -And he would ask himself despondently: “Is this -what I live for?” And gradually he felt that it -was not. He felt that it might be something to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> -die about, however. And so, with the rashness of -youth, he leaped. The George Meredith-Thomas -Hardy irony came into the story when he was -pulled out of the river by his rival in Dorinda’s -affections, Gregory Anthracyte, owner of the magnificent -steam yacht <i>Chuggermugger</i>.</p> - -<p>So much for the anatomy of a book review. Put -backbone into it. Read before you write. Look -before you leap. Be just, be fair, be impartial; -and when you damn, damn with faint praise, and -when you praise, praise with faint damns. Be all -things to all books. Remember the author. Review -as you would be reviewed by. If a book is -nothing in your life it may be the fault of your -life. And it is always less expensive to revise your -life than to revise the book. Your life is not -printed from plates that cost a fortune to make -and another fortune to throw away. “Life is too -short to read inferior books,” eh? Books are too -good to be guillotined by inferior lives—or inferior -livers. Bacon said some books were to be digested, -but he neglected to mention a cure for dyspeptics.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>But when we say so much we have only touched -the surface of a profound matter. The truth of -that matter, the full depth of it, may as well be -plumbed at once. A book cannot be reviewed. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> -can only be written about or around. It is insusceptible -of such handling as is accorded a play, -for example.</p> - -<p>A man with more or less experience in seeing -plays and with more or less knowledge of the -drama goes to the first performance of a new comedy -or tragedy or whatnot. There it is before him -in speech and motion and color. It is acted. The -play, structurally, is good or bad; the acting is -either good or bad. Every item of the performance -is capable of being resolved separately -and estimated; and the collective interest or importance -of these items can be determined, is, in -fact, determined once and for all by the performance -itself. The observer gets their collective impact -at once and his task is really nothing but a -consideration afterward in such detail as he cares -to enter upon of just how that impact was secured. -Did you ever, in your algebra days, or even in your -arithmetically earnest childhood, “factor” a quantity -or a number? Take 91. A little difficult, 91, -but after some mental and pencil investigation you -found that it was obtained by multiplying 13 by 7. -Very well. You knew how the impact of 91 was -produced; it was produced by multiplying 13 by 7. -You had reviewed the number 91 in the sense that -you might review a play.</p> - -<p>Now it is impossible to review a book as you -would factor a number or a play. You can’t be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> -sure of the factors that make up the collective impact -of the book upon you. There’s no way of -getting at them. They are summed up in the book -itself and no book can be split into multipliable -parts. A book is not the author times an idea times -the views of the publisher. A book is unfactorable, -often undecipherable. It is a growth. It is -a series of accretions about a central thought. The -central thought is like the grain of sand which the -oyster has pearled over. The central thought may -even be a diseased thought and the pearl may be a -very lovely and brilliant pearl, superficially at least, -for all that. There is nothing to do with a book -but to take it as it is or go at it hammer and tongs, -scalpel and curette, chisel and auger—smashing it -to pieces, scraping and cutting, boring and cleaving -through the layers of words and subsidiary -ideas and getting down eventually to the heart of -it, to the grain of sand, the irritant thought that -was the earliest foundation.</p> - -<p>Such surgery may be highly skilful or highly and -wickedly destructive; it may uncover something -worth while and it may not; naturally, you don’t go -in for much of it, if you are wise, and as a general -thing you take a book as it is and not as it -once was or as the author may, in the innocence of -his heart or the subtlety of his experience, have -intended it to be.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span></p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>Surgery on a book is like surgery on a human -being, for a book is alive; ordinarily the only justification -for it is the chance of saving life. If the -operator can save the author’s life (as an author) -by cutting he ought to go ahead, of course. The -fate of one book is nothing as against the lives of -books yet unwritten; the feelings of the author -are not necessarily of more account than the -screams of the sick child’s parent. There have -been such literary operations for which, in lieu of -the $1,000 fee of medical practise, the surgeon has -been rewarded and more than repaid by a private -letter of acknowledgement and heartfelt thanks. -No matter how hard up the recipient of such a letter -may be, the missive seldom turns up in those -auction rooms where the A. L. S. (or Autograph -Letter with Signature) sometimes brings an unexpected -and astonishingly large price.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>There is a good deal to be said for taking a book -as it is. Most books, in fact, should be taken that -way. For the number of books which contain -within them issues of life and death is always very -small. You may handle new books for a year and -come upon only one such. And when you do, unless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span> -you recognize its momentousness, no responsibility -rests on <i>you</i> to do anything except follow a -routine procedure. In this domain ignorance is a -wholly valid excuse; no one would think of blaming -a general practitioner of medicine for not removing -the patient’s vermiform appendix on principle, -so to say. Unless he apprehended conclusively -that the man had appendicitis and unless he knew -the technique of the operation he would certainly -be blamed for performing it. Similarly, unless the -handler of new books is dead sure that a fatality -threatens Harold Bell Wright or John Galsworthy -or Mary Roberts Rinehart, unless the new -book of Mr. Wright or Mr. Galsworthy or -Mrs. Rinehart is a recognizable and unmistakable -symptom, unless, further, he knows what to -uncover in that book and how to uncover it, he has -no business to take the matter in hand at all. -Though the way of most “reviewers” with new -books suggests that their fundamental motto must -be that one good botch deserves another.</p> - -<p>Not at all. Better, if you don’t know what to -do, to leave bad enough alone.</p> - -<p>But since the book as it is forms 99 per cent. of -the subject under consideration this aspect of dealing -with new books should be considered first and -most extensively. Afterward we can revert to the -one percent. of books that require to go under the -knife.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span></p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>Now the secret of taking a book as it is was -never very abstruse and is always perfectly simple; -nevertheless, it seems utterly to elude most of the -persons who deal with new books. It is a secret -only because it is forever hidden from their eyes. -Or maybe they deliberately look the other way.</p> - -<p>There exists in the world as at present constituted -a person called the reporter. He is, mostly, -an adjunct of the daily newspaper; in small places, -of the weekly newspaper. It is, however, in the -cities of America that he is brought to his perfection -and in this connection it is worth while pointing -out what Irvin Cobb has already noted—the -difference between the New York reporter and the -reporter of almost any other city in America. The -New York reporter “works with” his rival on another -sheet; the reporter outside New York almost -never does this. Cobb attributed the difference to -the impossible tasks that confront reporters in New -York, impossible, that is, for single-handed accomplishment. -A man who should attempt to -cover alone some New York assignments, to “beat” -his fellow, would be lost. Of course where a New -York paper details half a dozen men to a job real -competition between rival outfits is feasible and -sometimes occurs. But the point here is this: The -New York reporter, by generally “working with”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> -his fellow from another daily, has made of his -work a profession, with professional ideals and -standards, a code, unwritten but delicate and decidedly -high rules of what is honorable and what -is not. Elsewhere reporting remains a business, -decently conducted to be sure, open in many instances -to manifestations of chivalry; but essentially -keen, sharp-edged, cutthroat competition.</p> - -<p>Now it is of the reporter in his best and highest -estate that we would speak here—the reporter who -is not only a keen and honest observer but a happy -recorder of what he sees and hears and a professional -person with ethical ideals in no respect inferior -to those of any recognized professional man -on earth.</p> - -<p>There are many things which such a reporter will -not do under any pressure of circumstance or at -the beck of any promise of reward. He will not -distort the facts, he will not suppress them, he will -not put in people’s mouths words that they did not -say and he will not let the reader take their words -at face value if, in the reporter’s own knowledge, -the utterance should be perceptibly discounted. No -reporter can see and hear everything and no reporter’s -story can record even everything that the -observer contrived to see and hear. It must record -such things as will arouse in the reader’s mind a -correct image and a just impression.</p> - -<p>How is this to be done? Why, there is no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> -formula. There’s no set of rules. There’s nothing -but a purpose animating every word the man -writes, a purpose served, and only half-consciously -served, by a thousand turns of expression, a thousand -choices of words. Like all honest endeavors -to effect a purpose the thing is spoiled, annulled, -made empty of result by deliberate art. Good reporters -are neither born nor made; they evolve -themselves and without much help from any outside -agency, either. They can be hindered but not prevented, -helped but not hurt. You may remember a -saying that God helps those who help themselves. -The common interpretation of this is that when a -man gets up and does something of his own initiative -Providence is pretty likely to play into his -hands a little; not at all, that isn’t what the proverb -means. What it does mean is just this: That those -who help themselves, who really do lift themselves -by their bootstraps, are helped by God; that it isn’t -they who do the lifting but somebody bigger than -themselves. Now there is no doubt whatever that -good reporters are good reporters because God -makes them so. They aren’t good reporters at -three years of age; they get to be. Does this seem -discouraging? It ought to be immensely encouraging, -heartening, actually “uplifting” in the finest -sense of a tormented word. For if we believed -that good reporters were born and not made there -would be no hope for any except the gifted few,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span> -endowed from the start; and if we believed that -good reporters were made and not born there would -be absolutely no excuse for any failures whatever—every -one should be potentially a good reporter -and it would be simply a matter of correct training. -But if we believe that a good reporter is -neither born nor made, but makes himself with the -aid of God we can be unqualifiedly cheerful. There -is hope for almost any one under such a dispensation; -moreover, if we believe in God at all and in -mankind at all we must believe that between God -and mankind the supply of topnotch reporters will -never entirely fail. The two together will come -pretty nearly meeting the demand every day in the -year.</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>Perhaps the reader is grumbling, in fact, we seem -to hear murmurs. What has all this about the -genesis and nature of good reporters to do with -the publication of new books? Why, this: The -only person who can deal adequately and amply -with 99 new books out of a hundred—the 99 that -require to be taken as they are—is the good reporter. -He’s the boy who can read the new book -as he would look and listen at a political convention, -or hop around at a fire—getting the facts, getting -them straight (yes, indeed, they do get them -straight) and setting them down, swiftly and selectively,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> -to reproduce in the mind of the public -the precise effect of the book itself. The effect—not -the means by which it was achieved, not the -desirability of it having been achieved, not the -artistic quality of it, not the moral worth of it, not -anything in the way of a corollary or lesson or -a deduction, however obvious—just the effect. -That’s reporting. That’s getting and giving the -news. And that’s what the public wants.</p> - -<p>Some people seem to think there is something -shameful in giving the public what it wants. They -would, one supposes, highly commend the grocer -who gave his customer something “just as good” -or (according to the grocer) “decidedly better.” -But substitution, open or concealed, is an immoral -practice. Nothing can justify it, no nobility of -intention can take it out of the class of deception -and cheating.</p> - -<p>But, they cry, the public does not want what is -sufficiently good, let alone what is best for it; that -is why it is wrong to give the public what it wants. -So they shift their ground and think to escape on -a high moral plateau or table land. But the table -land is a tip-table land. What they mean is that -they are confidently setting their judgment of what -the public ought to want against the public’s plain -decision what it does want. They are a few dozens -against many millions, yet in their few dozen intelligences -is collected more wisdom than has been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> -the age-long and cumulative inheritance of all the -other sons of earth. They really believe that.... -Pitiable....</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>A new book is news. This might almost be set -down as axiomatic and not as a proposition needing -formal demonstration by the Euclidean process. -Yet it is susceptible of such demonstration and we -shall demonstrate accordingly.</p> - -<p>In the strict sense, anything that happens is news. -Everybody remembers the old distinction, that if -a dog bites a man it is very likely not news, but -that if a man bites a dog it is news beyond all cavil. -Such a generalization is useful and fairly harmless -(like the generalization we ourselves have just -indulged in and are about proving) if—a big if—the -broad exception be noted. If a dog bites John -D. Rockefeller, Jr., it is not only news but rather -more important, or certainly more interesting, news -than if John Jones of Howlersville bites a dog. -For the chances are that John Jones of Howlersville -is a poor demented creature, after all. Now -the dog that bites Mr. Rockefeller is very likely -a poor, demented creature, too; but the distinction -lies in this: the dog bitten by John Jones is almost -certainly not as well-known or as interesting or as -important in the lives of a number of people as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> -Mr. Rockefeller. Pair off the cur that puts his -teeth in the Rockefeller ankle, if you like, with -the wretch who puts his teeth in an innocent canine -bystander (it’s the innocent bystander who always -gets hurt); do this and you still have to match up -the hound of Howlersville with Mr. Rockefeller. -And the scale of news values tips heavily away -from Howlersville and in the direction of 26 -Broadway.</p> - -<p>So it is plain that not all that happens is news -compared with some that happens. The law of -specific interest, an intellectual counterpart of the -law of specific gravity in the physical world, rules -in the world of events. Any one handling news -who disregards this law does so at his extreme -peril, just as any one building a ship heavier than -the water it displaces may reasonably expect to -see his fine craft sink without a trace.</p> - -<p>Since a new book is a thing happening it is news, -subject to the broad correction we have been discussing -above, namely, that in comparison with -other new books it may not be news at all, its specific -interest may be so slight as to be negligible -entirely.</p> - -<p>But if a particular new book <i>is</i> news, if its specific -interest is moderately great, then obviously, -we think, the person best fitted to deal with it is -a person trained to deal with news, namely, a reporter. -Naturally we all prefer a good reporter.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span></p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>The question will at once be raised: How is the -specific interest of a new book to be determined? -We answer: Just as the specific interest of any kind -of potential news or actual news is determined—in -competition with the other news of the day and -hour. What is news one day isn’t news another. -This is a phenomenon of which the regular reader -of every daily paper is more or less consciously -aware. There are some days when “there’s no -news in the paper.” There are other days when -the news in the paper is so big and so important -that all the lesser occurrences which ordinarily get -themselves chronicled are crowded out. Granting -a white paper supply which does not at present exist, -it would, of course, be possible on the “big -days” to record all these lesser doings; and consistently, -day in and day out, to print nicely proportioned -accounts of every event attaining to a -certain fixed level of specific interest. But the -reader who may think he would like this would -speedily find out that he didn’t. Some days he -would have a twelve page newspaper and other -days (not Sundays, either) he would have one of -thirty-six pages. He would be lost, or rather, his -attention would be lost in the jungle of events that -all happened within twenty-four hours, with the -profuse luxuriance of tropical vegetation shooting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span> -up skyward by inches and feet overnight. His -natural appetite for a knowledge of what his fellows -were doing would be alternately starved and -overfed; malnutrition would lead to chronic and -incurable dyspepsia; soon he would become a hateful -misanthrope, shunning his fellow men and having -a seizure every time Mr. Hearst brought out -the eighth edition (which is the earliest and first) -of the New York <i>Evening Journal</i>. It is really -dreadful to think what havoc a literal adhesion to -the motto of the New York <i>Times</i>—“All the news -that’s fit to print”—would work in New York City.</p> - -<p>No mortal has more than a certain amount of -time daily and a certain amount of attention (according -to his mental habit and personal interest) -to bestow on the perusal of a newspaper, or news, -or the printed page of whatever kind. On Sunday -he has much more, it is likely, but still there is a -limit and a perfectly finite bound. Consequently -the whole problem for the persons engaged in -gathering and preparing news for presentation to -readers sums up in this: “How many of the day’s -doings attaining or exceeding a certain level of -public interest and importance, shall we set before -our clients?” Easily answered, in most cases; and -the size of the paper is the index of the answer. -Question Two: “<i>What</i> of the day’s doings shall be -served up in the determined space?”</p> - -<p>For this question there is never an absolute or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span> -ready answer, and there never can be. On some of -the affairs to be reported all journalists would -agree; but they would differ in their estimates of -the relative worth of even these and the lengths at -which they should be treated; about lesser occurrences -there would be no fixed percentage of agreement.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>Now the application of all this to the business of -giving the news of books should be fairly clear. -A new book is news—and so, sometimes, is an old -one, rediscovered. Since a new book is news it -should be dealt with by a news reporter. Not all -that happens is news; not all the new books published -are news; new books, like new events of all -sorts, are news when they compete successfully -with a majority of their kind.</p> - -<p>There is no more sense in <i>reporting</i>—that is, describing -individually at greater or less length—all -the new books than there would be in reporting -every incident on the police blotters of a lively -American city. <i>Recording</i> new books is another -matter; somewhere, somehow, most occurrences in -this world get recorded in written words that reach -nearly all who are interested in the happenings (as -in letters) or are accessible to the interested few -(as the police records). The difference between the -reporter and the recorder is not entirely a difference<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> -of details given. The recorder usually follows a prescribed -formula and makes his record conform -thereto; the good reporter never has a formula and -never can have one. Let us see how this works out -with the news of books.</p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>The recorder of new books generally compiles a -list of <i>Books Received</i> or <i>Books Just Published</i> and -he does it in this uninspired and conscientious manner:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William -Allen White. A story of Kansas in the last -half-century, centered in a single town, showing -its evolution from prairie to an industrial -city with difficult economic and labor problems; -the story told in the lives of a group of -people, pioneers and the sons of pioneers—their -work, ambitions, personal affairs, &c. -New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.60.</p></div> - -<p>That would be under the heading <i>Fiction</i>. An entry -under the heading <i>Literary Studies</i> or <i>Essays</i> -might read:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>OUR POETS OF TO-DAY. By Howard Willard -Cook. Volume II. in a series of books on -modern American writers. Sketches of sixty-eight -American poets, nearly all living, including<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span> -Edgar Lee Masters, Amy Lowell, -Witter Bynner, Robert Service, Edgar Guest, -Charles Divine, Carl Sandburg, Joyce Kilmer, -Sara Teasdale, George Edward Woodberry, -Percy Mackaye, Harriet W. Monroe, &c. -New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. $1.60.</p></div> - -<p>These we hasten to say would be unusually full -and satisfactory records, but they would be records -just the same—formal and precise statements of -events, like the chronological facts affixed to dates -in an almanac. If all records were like these -there would be less objection to them; but it is an -astonishing truth that most records are badly kept. -Why, one may never fathom; since the very formality -and precision make a good record easy. -Yet almost any of the principal pages or magazines -in the United States devoted to the news of new -books is likely to make a record on this order:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William -Allen White. Novel of contemporary American -life. New York, &c.</p></div> - -<p>Such a record is, of course, worse than inadequate; -it is actually misleading. Mr. White’s book -happens to cover a period of fifty years. “Contemporary -American life” would characterize quite -as well, or quite as badly, a story of New York -and Tuxedo by Robert W. Chambers.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span></p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>The reporter works in entirely another manner. -He is concerned to present the facts about a new -book in a way sufficiently arresting and entertaining -to engage the reader. As Mr. Holliday says -with fine perception, the true function of the describer -of new books is simply to bring a particular -volume to the attention of its proper public. -To do that it is absolutely necessary to “give the -book,” at least to the extent of enabling the reader -of the article to determine, with reasonable accuracy -(1) whether the book is for him, that is, addressed -to a public of which he is one, and (2) -whether he wants to read it or not.</p> - -<p>Whether the book is good or bad is not the point. -A man interested in sociology may conceivably -want to read a book on sociology even though it is -an exceedingly bad book on that subject and even -though he knows its worthlessness. He may want -to profit by the author’s mistakes; he may want to -write a book to correct them; or he may merely -want to be amused at the spectacle of a fellow sociologist -making a fool of himself, a spectacle by -no means rare but hardly ever without a capacity -for giving joy to the mildly malicious.</p> - -<p>The determination of the goodness or badness -of a book is not and should not be a deliberate -purpose of the good book reporter. Why? Well,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> -in many cases it is a task of supererogation. Take -a reporter who goes to cover a public meeting at -which speeches are made. He does not find it -necessary to say that Mr. So-and-So’s speech was -good. He records what Mr. So-and-So says, or a -fair sample of it; which is enough. The reader -can see for himself how good or bad it was and -reach a conclusion based on the facts as tempered -by his personal beliefs, tastes and ideas.</p> - -<p>In the same way, it is superfluous for the book -reporter to say that Miss Such-and-Such’s book on -New York is rotten. All he need do is to set down -the incredible fact that Miss Such-and-Such locates -the Woolworth building at Broadway, Fifth Avenue -and Twenty-third street, and refers to the Aquarium -as the fisheries section of the Bronx Zoo. If this -should not appear a sufficient notice of the horrible -nature of the volume the reporter may very properly -give the truth about the Woolworth building and the -Aquarium for the benefit of people who have never -visited New York and might be unable to detect -Miss Such-and-Such’s idiosyncrasies.</p> - -<p>The rule holds in less tangible matters. Why -should the book reporter ask his reader to accept -his dictum that the literary style of a writer is -atrocious when he can easily prove it by a few sentences -or a paragraph from the book?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span></p> - - -<h3>15</h3> - -<p>Yet books are still in the main “reviewed,” instead -of being given into the hands of trained news -reporters. Anything worse than the average book -“review” it would certainly be difficult to find in -the length and breadth of America. And England, -despite the possession of some brilliant talents, is -nearly as badly off.</p> - -<p>No one who is not qualified as a critic should -attempt to criticise new books.</p> - -<p>There are but few critics in any generation—half -a dozen or perhaps a dozen men in any single -one of the larger countries are all who could qualify -at a given time; that much seems evident. -What is a critic? A critic is a person with an education -unusually wide either in life or in letters, -and preferably in both. He is a person with huge -backgrounds. He has read thousands of books -and has by one means or another abstracted the -essence of thousands more. He has perhaps -travelled a good deal, though this is not essential; -but he has certainly lived with a most peculiar and -exceptional intensity, descending to greater emotional -and intellectual depths than the majority of -mankind and scaling higher summits; he has, in -some degree, the faculty of living other people’s -lives and sharing their human experiences which is -the faculty that, in a transcendent degree, belongs<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span> -to the novelist and storyteller. A critic knows the -past and the present so well that he is able to erect -standards, or uncover old standards, by which he -can and does measure the worth of everything that -comes before him. He can actually show you, in -exact and inescapable detail, how De Morgan compares -with Dickens and how Gilbert K. Chesterton -ranks with Swift and whether Thackeray learned -more from Fielding or from Daniel Defoe and he -can trace the relation between a period in the life -of Joseph Conrad and certain scenes and settings in -<i>The Arrow of Gold</i>.</p> - -<p>Such a man is a critic. Of course critics make -mistakes but they are not mistakes of ignorance, of -personal unfitness for the task, of pretension to a -knowledge they haven’t. They are mistakes of -judgment; such mistakes as very eminent jurists -sometimes make after years on the bench. The -jurist is reversed by the higher court and the critic -is reversed by the appellate decree of the future.</p> - -<p>The mistakes of a real critic, like the mistakes of -a real jurist, are always made on defensible, and -sometimes very sound, grounds; they are reasoned -and seasoned conclusions even if they are not the -correct conclusions. The mistakes of the 9,763 persons -who assume the critical ermine without any -fitness to wear it are quite another matter; and -they are just the mistakes that would be made -by a layman sitting in the jurist’s seat. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span> -jurist knows the precedents, the rules of evidence, -the law; he is tolerant and admits exceptions into -the record. So the critic; with the difference that -the true critic merely presides and leaves the verdict -to that great jury of true and right instincts -which we call “the public.” The genuine critic is -concerned chiefly to see that the case gets before the -jury cleanly. Without presuming to tell the jury -what its verdict must be—except in extraordinary -circumstances—he does instruct it what the verdict -should be on, what should be considered in arriving -at it, what principles should guide the decision.</p> - -<p>But the near-critic (God save the mark!) has it -in his mind that he must play judge and jury too. -He doesn’t like the writer’s style, or thinks the plot -is poor, or this bad or that defective. Instead of -carefully outlining the evidence on which the public -might reach a correct verdict on these points he -delivers a dictum. It doesn’t go, of course, at -least for long; and it never will.</p> - -<p>Let us be as specific as is possible in this, as specific, -that is, as a general discussion can be and -remain widely applicable.</p> - -<p>I don’t like the writer’s style. I am not a person -of critical equipment or pretensions. I am, we -will say, a book reporter. I do not declare, with -a fiat and a flourish, that the style is bad; I merely -present a chunk of it. There is the evidence, and -nothing else is so competent, so relevant or so material,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span> -as the lawyers would say. I may, in the -necessity to be brief and the absence of space for -an excerpt, say that the style is adjectival, or adverbial, -or diffuse, or involved or florid or something -of that sort, <i>if I know it to be</i>. These would -be statements of fact. “Bad” is a statement of -opinion.</p> - -<p>I may call the plot “weak” if it is weak (a fact) -and if I know weakness in a plot (which qualifies -me to announce the fact). But if I call the plot -“poor” I am taking a good deal upon myself. Its -poorness is a matter of opinion. Some stories are -spoiled by a strong plot which dominates the reader’s -interest almost to the exclusion of other things—fine -characterization, atmosphere, and so on.</p> - -<p>And even restrictions of space can hardly excuse -the lack of courtesy, or worse, shown by the near-critic -who calls the plot weak or the style diffuse or -involved, however much these may be facts, and -who does not at least briefly explain in what way -the style is diffuse (or involved) and wherein the -weakness of the plot resides. But to put a finger -on the how or the where or the why requires a -knowledge and an insight that the near-critic does -not possess and will not take the trouble to acquire; -so we are asking him to do the impossible. Nevertheless -we can ask him to do the possible; and that -is to leave off talking or writing on matters he -knows nothing about.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span></p> - - -<h3>16</h3> - -<p>The task of training good book reporters is not -a thing to be easily and lightly undertaken. And -the first essential in the making of such a reporter -is the inculcation of a considerable humility of -mind. A near-critic can afford to think he knows -it all, but a book reporter cannot. Besides a sense -of his own limitations the book reporter must possess -and develop afresh from time to time a mental -attitude which may best be summed up in this distinction: -When a piece of writing seems to him -defective he must stop short and ask himself, “Is -this defect a fact or is it my personal feeling?” If -it is a fact he must establish it to his own, and -then to the reader’s, satisfaction. If it is his personal -impression or feeling, merely, as he may conclude -on maturer reflection, he owes it to those -who will read his article either not to record it or -to record it as a personal thing. There is no sense -in saying only the good things that can be said -about a book that has bad things in it. Such a -course is dishonest. It is equally dishonest, and -infinitely more common, to pass off private opinions -as statements of fact.</p> - -<p>When in doubt, the doubt should be resolved in -favor of the author. A good working test of -fact versus personal opinion is this: If you, as a -reporter, cannot put your finger on the apparent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> -flaw, cannot give the how or where or why of the -thing that seems wrong, it must be treated as your -personal feeling. A fact that you cannot buttress -might as well not be a fact at all—unless, of course, -it is self-evident, in which case you have only to -state it or exhibit your evidence to command a universal -assent.</p> - -<p>All that we have been saying respecting the fact -or fancy of a flaw in a piece of writing applies with -equal force, naturally, to the favorable as well as -the unfavorable conclusion you, as a book reporter, -may reach. Because a story strikes you as wonderful -it does not follow that it is wonderful. You -are under a moral obligation, at least, to establish -the wonder of it. The procedure for the book reporter -who has to describe favorably and for the -book reporter who has to report unfavorably is the -same. First comes the question of fact, then the -citation, if possible, of evidence; and if that be -impossible the brief indication of the how, the -where, the why of the merit reported. If the meritoriousness -remains a matter of personal impression -it ought so to be characterized but may warrantably -be recorded where an adverse impression -would go unmentioned. The presumption is in -favor of the author. It should be kept so.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span></p> - - -<h3>17</h3> - -<p>In all this there is nothing impossible, nothing -millennial. But what has been outlined of the -work of the true book reporter is as far as possible -from what we very generally get to-day. We get -unthinking praise and unthinking condemnation; -we do not expect analysis but we have a right to -expect straightaway exposition and a condensed -transliteration of the book being dealt with.</p> - -<p>“Praise,” we have just said, and “condemnation.” -That is what it is, and there is no room in -the book reporter’s task either for praise or condemnation. -He is not there to praise the book -any more than a man is at a political convention -to praise a nominating speech; he is there to describe -the book, to describe the speech, to <i>report</i> -either. A newspaperman who should begin his account -of a meeting in this fashion, “In a lamentably -poor speech, showing evidences of hasty preparation, -Elihu Root,” &c., would be fired—and ought -to be. No matter if a majority of those who heard -Mr. Root thought the same way about it.</p> - - -<h3>18</h3> - -<p>The book reporter will be governed in his work -by the precise news value in the book he is dealing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span> -with at the moment he is dealing with it. This -needs illustration.</p> - -<p>On November 11, 1918, an armistice was concluded -in Europe, terminating a war that had lasted -over four years. In that four years books relating -to the war then being waged had sold heavily, -even at times outselling fiction. Had the war -drawn to a gradual end the sales of these war books -would probably have lessened, little by little, until -they reached and maintained a fairly steady level. -From this they would doubtless have declined, as -the end drew near, lower and lower, until the foreseen -end came, when the interest in them would -have been as great, but not much greater, than the -normal interest in works of a historical or biographical -sort.</p> - -<p>But the end came overnight; and suddenly the -whole face of the world was transformed. The reaction -in the normal person was intense. In an -instant war books of several pronounced types became -intolerable reading. <i>How I Reacted to the -War</i>, by Quintus Quintuple seemed tremendously -unimportant. Even <i>Mr. Britling</i> was, momentarily, -utterly stale and out of date. Reminiscences -of the German ex-Kaiser were neither interesting -nor important; he was a fugitive in Holland.</p> - -<p>The book reporter who had any sense of news -values grasped this immediately. Books that a -month earlier would have been worth 1,000 to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span> -1,500 word articles were worth a few lines or no -space at all. On the other hand books which had -a historical value and a place as interesting public -records, such as <i>Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story</i>, -were not diminished either in interest or in importance.</p> - -<p>Some books which had been inconsequential were -correspondingly exalted by the unprecedented turn -of affairs. These were books on such subjects as -the re-education of disabled fighters, the principles -which might underlie the formation of a league of -nations, problems of reconstruction of every sort. -They had been worth, some of them, very small -articles a week earlier; now they were worth a -column or two apiece.</p> - - -<h3>19</h3> - -<p>No doubt we ought to conclude this possibly tedious -essay with some observations on the one per -cent. of books which call for swift surgery. But -such an enterprise is, if not impossible, extraordinarily -difficult for the reason that the same operation -is never called for twice.</p> - -<p>In a sense it is like cutting diamonds, or splitting -a large stone into smaller stones. The problem -varies each time. The cutter respects certain principles -and follows a careful technique. That is all.</p> - -<p>We shall, for the sake of the curious, take an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span> -actual instance. In 1918 there was published a -novel called <i>Foes</i> by Mary Johnston, an American -novelist of an endowment so decided as fairly to -entitle her to the designation “a genius.”</p> - -<p>Miss Johnston’s first novel had appeared twenty -years earlier. Her first four books—nay, her first -two, the second being <i>To Have and to Hold</i>—placed -her firmly in the front rank of living romantic -writers. The thing that distinguished her -romanticism was its sense of drama in human affairs -and human destiny. Added to this was a -command of live, nervous, highly poetic prose. -History—romance; it did not matter. She could -set either movingly before you.</p> - -<p>Her work showed steady progress, reaching a -sustained culmination in her two Civil War novels, -<i>The Long Roll</i> and <i>Cease Firing</i>. She experimented -a little, as in her poetic drama of the -French Revolution, <i>The Goddess of Reason</i>, and in -<i>The Fortunes of Garin</i>, a tapestry of mediæval -France. <i>The Wanderers</i> was a more decided venture, -but a perfectly successful. Then came <i>Foes</i>.</p> - -<p>Considered purely as a romantic narrative, as a -story of friendship transformed into hatred and the -pursuit of a private feud under the guise of wreaking -Divine vengeance, <i>Foes</i> is a superb tale. Considered -as a novel, <i>Foes</i> is a terrible failure.</p> - -<p>Why? Is it not sufficient to write a superb tale? -Yes, if you have essayed nothing more. Is a novel<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span> -anything more than “a good story, well told”? -Yes, if the writer essays to make more of it.</p> - -<p>The novelist who has aimed at nothing beyond -the “good story, well told” has a just grievance -against any one who asks anything further. But -against the novelist who has endeavored to make -his story, however good, however well told, the -vehicle for a human philosophy or a metaphysical -speculation, the reader has a just grievance—if the -endeavor has been unsuccessful or if the philosophy -is unsound.</p> - -<p>Now as to the soundness or unsoundness of a -particular philosophy every reader must pronounce -for himself. The metaphysical idea which was the -basis of Miss Johnston’s novel was this: All gods -are one. All deities are one. Christ, Buddha; it -matters not. “There swam upon him another great -perspective. He saw Christ in light, Buddha in -light. The glorified—the unified. <i>Union.</i>” Upon -this idea Miss Johnston reconciles her two foes.</p> - -<p>This perfectly comprehensible mystical conception -is the rock on which the whole story is founded—and -the rock on which it goes to pieces. It will -be seen at once that the conception is one which -no Christian can entertain and remain a Christian—nor -any Buddhist, and remain a Buddhist, either. -To the vast majority of mankind, therefore, the -philosophy of <i>Foes</i> was unsound and the novel was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span> -worthless except for the superficial incidents and -the lovely prose in which they were recounted.</p> - -<p>It might be thought that for those who accepted -the mystical concept Miss Johnson imposed, <i>Foes</i> -would have been a novel of the first rank. No, -indeed; and for this reason:</p> - -<p>Her piece of mysticism was supposed to be arrived -at and embraced by a dour Scotchman of -about the year of Our Lord 1750. It was supposed -to transform the whole nature of that man so as to -lead him to give over a life-long enmity in which -he had looked upon himself as a Divine instrument -to punish an evil-doer.</p> - -<p>Now however reasonable or sound or inspiring -and inspiriting the mystical idea may have seemed -to any reader, he could not but be fatally aware -that, as presented, the thing was a flat impossibility. -Scotchmen of the year 1750 were Christians above -all else. They were, if you like, savage Christians; -some of them were irreligious, some of them were -God-defying, none of them were Deists in the all-inclusive -sense that Miss Johnston prescribes. The -idea that Christ and Buddha might possibly be -nothing but different manifestations of the Deity is -an idea which could never have occurred to the -eighteenth century Scotch mind—and never did. -Least of all could it have occurred to such a man -as Miss Johnston delineates in Alexander Jardine.</p> - -<p>The thing is therefore utterly anachronistic. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> -is a historical anachronism, if you like, the history -here being the history of the human spirit in its -religious aspects. Every reader of the book, no -matter how willing he may have been to accept the -novelist’s underlying idea, was aware that the endeavor -to convey it had utterly failed, was aware -that Miss Johnston had simply projected <i>her</i> idea, -<i>her</i> favorite bit of mysticism, into the mind of one -of her characters, a Scotchman living a century and -a half earlier! But the thoughts that one may -think in the twentieth century while tramping the -Virginia hills are not thoughts that could have -dawned in the mind of a Scottish laird in the eighteenth -century, not even though he lay in the flowering -grass of the Roman Campagna.</p> - -<p>... And so there, in <i>Foes</i>, we have the book -in a hundred which called for something more than -the intelligent and accurate work of the book reporter. -Here was a case of a good novelist, and -a very, very good one, gone utterly wrong. It was -not sufficient to convey to the prospective reader -a just idea of the story and of the qualities of it. -It was necessary to cut and slash, as cleanly and as -swiftly and as economically as possible—and as -dispassionately—to the root of the trouble. For -if Miss Johnston were to repeat this sort of performance -her reputation would suffer, not to speak -of her royalties; readers would be enraged or misled; -young writers playing the sedulous ape would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span> -inflict dreadful things upon us; tastes and tempers -would be spoiled; publishers would lose money;—and, -much the worst of all, the world would be deprived -of the splendid work Mary Johnston could -do while she was doing the exceedingly bad work -she did do.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the -blunder in <i>Foes</i> was the fact that there was no -necessity for it. The Christian religion, which was -the religion of Alexander Jardine, provides for -reconciliation, indeed, it exacts it. There was the -way for Miss Johnston to bring her foes together. -Of course, it would not have been intellectually so -exciting. But there is such a thing as emotional -appeal, and it is not always base; there are emotions -in the human so high and so lofty that it is -wiser not to try to transcend them....</p> - - -<p>The appearance of part of the foregoing in <i>Books -and the Book World</i> of <i>The Sun</i>, New York, -brought a letter from Kansas which should find a -place in this volume. The letter, with the attempted -answer, may as well be given here. The writer is -head of the English department in a State college. -He wrote:</p> - - -<h3>20</h3> - -<p>“I hope that the mails lost for your college professors -of English subscribers their copies of <i>Books<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span> -and the Book World</i> [containing the foregoing observations -on <i>Book Reporting</i>].... College professors -do not like to be disturbed—and most of -us cannot be, for that matter. The TNT in those -pages was not meant for us, perhaps, but it should -have been.</p> - -<p>“When I read <i>Book Reporting</i> I dictated three -pages of protest, but did not send it on—thanks to -my better judgment.... Then I decided, since -you had added so much to my perturbation, to ask -you to help me.</p> - -<p>“We need it out here—literary help only, of -course. This is the only State college on what was -once known as the ‘Great Plains.’ W. F. Cody -won his sobriquet on Government land which is now -our campus. Our students are the sons and daughters -of pioneers who won over grasshoppers, -droughts, hot winds and one crop farms. They -are so near to real life that the teaching of literature -must be as real as the literature—rather, it -ought to be. That’s where I want you to help me.</p> - -<p>“I am not teaching literature here now as I was -taught geology back in Missouri. That’s as near -as I shall tell you how I teach—it is bad enough -and you might not help me if I did. (Perhaps, -in fairness to you, I should say that for several -years never less than one-third of those to whom -we gave degrees have majored in English, and always<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span> -as many as the next two departments combined.)</p> - -<p>“Here’s what I am tired of and want to get -away from:</p> - -<p>“1. Testing students on reading a book by asking -fact questions about what is in the book—memory -work, you see.</p> - -<p>“2. Demanding of students a scholarship in the -study of literature that is so academic that it is -Prussian.</p> - -<p>“3. Demanding that students serve time in literature -classes as a means of measuring their advance -in the study of literature.</p> - -<p>“Here’s what I want you to help me with in some -definite concrete way: (Sounds like a college professor -making an assignment—beg pardon.)</p> - -<p>“1. Could you suggest a scheme of ‘book reporting’ -for college students in literature classes? -(An old book to a new person is news, isn’t it?)</p> - -<p>“2. Give me a list of books published during -the last ten years that should be included in college -English laboratory classes in literature. I want -your list. I have my own, but fear it is too academic.</p> - -<p>“3. What are some of the things which should -enter into the training of teachers of high school -English? Part of our work, especially in the summer, -is to give such training to men and women<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span> -who will teach composition and literature in Kansas -high schools.</p> - -<p>“Your help will not only be appreciated, but it -will be used.”</p> - - -<h3>21</h3> - -<p>To answer adequately these requests would take -about six months’ work and the answers would -make a slender book. And then they would exhibit -the defects inseparable from a one man response. -None of which excuses a failure to attempt to answer, -though it must extenuate failures in the attempt.</p> - -<p>We shall try to answer, in this place, though -necessarily without completeness. If nothing better -than a few suggestions is the result, why—suggestions -may be all that is really needed.</p> - -<p>And first respecting the things our friend is tired -of and wants to get away from:</p> - -<p>1. Fact questions about what is in the book—memory -work—are not much use if they stop with -the outline of the story. What is <i>not</i> in the book -may be more important than what is. Why did the -author select this scene for narration and omit that -other, intrinsically (it seems) the more dramatically -interesting of the two? See <i>The Flirt</i>, by Booth -Tarkington, where a double murder gets only a -few lines and a small boy’s doings occupy whole -chapters.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span>2. Scholarship is less important than wide reading, -though the two aren’t mutually exclusive. A -wide acquaintance doesn’t preclude a few profoundly -intimate friendships. Textual study has spoiled -Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton for most of us. -Fifty years hence Kipling and Masefield will be -spoiled in the same way.</p> - -<p>3. Time serving over literature is a waste of -time. There are only three ways to teach literature. -The first is by directing students to books for -<i>voluntary</i> reading—hundreds of books, thousands. -The second is by class lectures—entertaining, idea’d, -anecdoted, catholic in range and expository in character. -The third is by conversation—argumentative -at times, analytic at moments, but mostly by -way of exchanging information and opinions.</p> - -<p>Study books as you study people. Mix among -them. You don’t take notes on people unless, perchance, -in a diary. Keep a diary on books you -read, if you like, but don’t “take notes.” Look for -those qualities in books that you look for in people -and make your acquaintances by the same (perhaps -unformulated) rules. To read snobbishly is -as bad as to practise snobbery among your fellows.</p> - - -<h3>22</h3> - -<p>We go on to the first of our friend’s requests -for help. It is a scheme for “book reporting” for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> -college students in literature classes and he premises -that an old book to a new reader is news. Of -course it is.</p> - -<p>Let the student take up a book that’s new to him -and read it by himself, afterward writing a report -of it to be read to the class. When he comes -to write his report he must keep in the forefront of -his mind this one thing:</p> - -<p>To tell the others accurately enough about that -book so that each one of them will know whether -or not <i>he</i> wants to read it.</p> - -<p>That is all the book reporter ever tries for. -No book is intended for everybody, but almost -every book is intended for somebody. The problem -of the book reporter is to find the reader.</p> - -<p>Comparison may help. For instance, those who -enjoy Milton’s pastoral poetry will probably enjoy -the long poem in Robert Nichols’s <i>Ardours and -Endurances</i>. Those who like Thackeray will like -Mary S. Watts. Those who like Anna Katharine -Green will thank you for sending them to <i>The -Moonstone</i>, by one Wilkie Collins.</p> - -<p>Most stories depend upon suspense in the action -for their main effect. You must not “give away” -the story so as to spoil it for the reader. In a mystery -story you may state the mystery and appraise -the solution or even characterize it—but you mustn’t -reveal it.</p> - -<p>Tell ’em that Mr. Hergesheimer’s <i>Java Head</i> is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span> -an atmospheric marvel, but will disappoint many -readers who put action first. Tell ’em that William -Allen White writes (often) banally, but so -saturates his novel with his own bigheartedness -that he makes you laugh and cry. Tell ’em the -truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth -as well as you can make it out—and for heaven’s -sake ask yourself with every assertion: “Is this -a fact or is it my personal opinion?” <i>And a fact, -for your purpose, will be an opinion in which a -large majority of readers will concur.</i></p> - - -<h3>23</h3> - -<p>“Give me a list of books published during the -last ten years that should be included in college -English laboratory classes in literature. I want -your list. I have my own, but fear it is too academic.”</p> - -<p>The following list is an offhand attempt to comply -with this request. It is offered merely for the -suggestions it may contain. If the ten year restriction -is rigid we ask pardon for such titles as may -be a little older than that. Strike them out.</p> - -<p>For Kansans: Willa Sibert Cather’s novels, -<i>O Pioneers!</i> and <i>My Antonia</i>, chronicling people -and epochs of Kansas-Nebraska. William Allen -White’s <i>A Certain Rich Man</i> and <i>In the Heart of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span> -a Fool</i>, less for their Kansas-ness than for their -Americanism and humanity.</p> - -<p>For Middle Westerners: Meredith Nicholson’s -<i>The Valley of Democracy</i>. Zona Gale’s <i>Birth</i>. Carl -Sandburg’s <i>Chicago Poems</i>. Edgar Lee Masters’s -<i>Spoon River Anthology</i>. Vachel Lindsay’s longer -poems. Mary S. Watts’s <i>Nathan Burke</i> and <i>Van -Cleve: His Friends and His Family</i>. Lord Charnwood’s -life of Lincoln. William Dean Howells’s -<i>The Leatherwood God</i>. Booth Tarkington’s <i>The -Conquest of Canaan</i> (first published about fourteen -years ago) and <i>The Magnificent Ambersons</i>. Gene -Stratton-Porter’s <i>A Daughter of the Land</i>, her -<i>Freckles</i> and her <i>A Girl of the Limberlost</i>. One or -two books by Harold Bell Wright. <i>The Passing -of the Frontier</i>, by Emerson Hough, and other -books in the Chronicles of America series published -by the Yale University Press.</p> - -<p>For Americans: Mary S. Watts’s <i>The Rise of -Jennie Cushing</i>. Owen Wister’s <i>The Virginian</i> (if -not barred under the ten year rule). Booth Tarkington’s -<i>The Flirt</i>. Novels with American settings -by Gertrude Atherton and Stewart Edward White. -Mary Johnston’s <i>The Long Roll</i> and <i>Cease Firing</i>. -Willa Sibert Cather’s <i>The Song of the Lark</i>. Edith -Wharton’s <i>Ethan Frome</i>. Alice Brown’s <i>The Prisoner</i>. -Ellen Glasgow’s <i>The Deliverance</i>. Corra -Harris’s <i>A Circuit-Rider’s Wife</i>. All of O. Henry. -Margaret Deland’s <i>The Iron Woman</i>. Earlier<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span> -novels by Winston Churchill. Ernest Poole’s <i>The -Harbor</i>. Joseph Hergesheimer’s <i>The Three Black -Pennys</i>, his <i>Gold and Iron</i> and his <i>Java Head</i>. Historical -books by Theodore Roosevelt. American -biographies too numerous to mention. <i>From Isolation -to Leadership: A Review of American Foreign -Policy</i> by Latané (published by the educational department -of Doubleday, Page & Company). Essays, -such as those of Agnes Repplier.</p> - -<p>Each of these enumerations presupposes the -books already named, or most of them. Don’t treat -them as pieces of literary workmanship. Many of -them aren’t. Those that have fine literary workmanship -have something else, too—and it’s the -other thing, or things, that count. Fine art in a -book is like good breeding in a person, a passport, -not a Magna Charta. “Manners makyth man”—yah!</p> - - -<h3>24</h3> - -<p>We are also asked:</p> - -<p>“What are some of the things which should enter -into the training of teachers of high school English?”</p> - -<p>We reply:</p> - -<p>A regard for literature, not as it reflects life, but -as it moulds lives. A profound respect for an author -who can find 100,000 readers, a respect at least -equal to that entertained for an author who can<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span> -write superlatively well. For instance: Get it out -of your head that you can afford to condescend -toward a best seller, or to worship such a writer -as Stevenson for his sheer craftsmanship.</p> - -<p>An instinct for what will nourish the ordinary -man or woman as keen as your perception of what -will be relished by the fastidious reader. Don’t -insist that people must live on what you, or any -one else, declare to be good for them. It is not for -nothing that they “don’t know anything about literature, -<i>but know what they like</i>.”</p> - -<p>A confidence in the greater wisdom of the greatest -number. Tarkington got it right. The public -wants the best it is capable of understanding; its -understanding may not be the highest understanding, -but “the writer who stoops to conquer doesn’t -conquer.” Neither does the writer who never concedes -anything. The public’s standard can’t always -be wrong; the private standards can’t always -be right.</p> - -<p>Arnold Bennett says, quite rightly, that the -classics are made and kept alive by “the passionate -few.” But the business of high school teachers of -English is not with the passionate few—who will -look after themselves—but with the unimpassioned -many. You can lead the student to Mr. Pope’s -Pierian spring, but you cannot make him drink. -Unless you can show him, in the Missourian sense, -it’s all off. If you can’t tell what it is a girl likes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span> -in Grace S. Richmond how are you going to show -her what she’ll like in Dickens? Unless you know -what it is that “they” get out of these books they -<i>do</i> read you won’t be able to bait the hook with the -things you want them to read. Don’t you think -you’ve got a lot to learn yourself? And mightn’t -you do worse than sit down yourself and read attentively, -at whatever personal cost, some of the -best sellers?</p> - -<p>It all goes back to the size of the teacher’s share -of our common humanity. A person who can’t -read a detective story for the sake of the thrills -has no business teaching high school English. A -person who is a literary snob is unfit to teach high -school English. A person who can’t sense (better -yet, share) the common feeling about a popular -writer and comprehend the basis of it and sympathize -a little with it and express it more or less articulately -in everyday speech is not qualified to teach -high school English.</p> - - -<h3>25</h3> - -<p>A word about writing “compositions” in high -school English classes. Make ’em write stories instead. -If they want to tackle thumbnail sketches -or abstracter writing—little essays—why, let ’em. -Abstractions in thought and writing are like the -ocean—it’s fatally easy to get beyond your depth,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> -and every one else’s. Read what Sir Arthur -Quiller-Couch says about this in his <i>Studies in Literature</i>. -Once in a while a theologian urges us to -“get back to the Bible.” Well, there is one sense, -at least, in which the world would do well to get -back to the Bible, or to the Old Testament, at any -rate. As Gardiner points out in his <i>The Bible as -English Literature</i>, it was the fortune or misfortune -of ancient Hebrew that it had no abstractions. -Everything was stated in terms of the five senses. -There was no such word as “virtue”; you said -“sweet smellingness” or “pleasant tastingness” or -something like that. And everybody knew what -you meant. Whereas “virtue” means anything -from personal chastity to a general meritoriousness -that nobody can define. The Greeks introduced abstract -thinking and expression and some Germans -blighted the world by their abuse.</p> - -<p>What should enter into the training of high -school teachers of English? Only humbleness, -sanity, catholicity of viewpoint, humor, a continual -willingness to learn, a continuous faith in the people—and -undying enthusiasm. Only these—and -the love of books.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> - -<p class="ph1">LITERARY EDITORS<br /> - - -<small>BY ONE OF THEM</small></p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">V<br /> - - -<small>LITERARY EDITORS, BY ONE OF THEM</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap">THE very term “literary editor” is a survival. -It is meaningless, but we continue to use it -because no better designation has been found, just -as people in monarchical countries continue to speak -of “King George” or “Queen Victoria of Spain.” -Besides, there is politeness to consider. No one -wants to be the first to allude publicly and truthfully -to “Figurehead George” or “Social Leader -Victoria.”</p> - -<p>Literary editors who are literary are not editors, -and literary editors who are editors are no longer -literary. Of old there were scholarly, sarcastic -men (delightful fellows, personally) who sat in -cubbyholes and read unremittingly. Afterward, at -night, they set down a few thoughtful, biting words -about what they had read. These were printed. -Publishers who perused them felt as if knives had -been stuck in their backs. Booksellers who read -them looked up to ask each other pathetically: “But -what does it <i>mean</i>?” Book readers who read them -resolved that the publication of a new book should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> -be, for them, the signal to read an old one. It was -good for the secondhand trade.</p> - -<p>We’ve changed all that, or, if we haven’t, we’re -going to. Take a chap who runs what is called -a “book section.” This is a separate section or -supplement forming part of a daily or Sunday -newspaper. Its pages are magazine size—half the -size of newspaper pages. They number from eight -to twenty-eight, depending on the season and the -advertising. The essential thing to realize about -such a section is that it requires an editor to run -it.</p> - -<p>It does not require a literary man, or woman, at -all. The editor of such a section need have no -special education in the arts or letters. He must -have judgment, of course, and if he has not some -taste for literary matters he may not enjoy his -work as he will if he has that taste. But high-browism -is fatal.</p> - -<p>Can our editor “review” a book? Perhaps not. -It is no matter. Maybe he knows a good review -when he sees it, which will matter a good deal. -Maybe he can get capable people to deal with the -books for him. Which will matter more than anything -else on earth in the handling of his book -section.</p> - -<p>A section will most certainly require, to run it, -a man who can tell a good review (another word-survival) -and who can get good reviewers. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -will require a man, or woman, with a sharp, clear -and very broad viewpoint. Such exist. What do -we mean—viewpoint?</p> - -<p>The right conception, it seems to us, starts with -the proposition that a new book is news (sometimes -an old one is news too) and should be dealt with -as such. Perhaps, we are dealing only with a state -of mind, in all this, but states of mind are important. -They are the only states where self-determination -is a sure thing. To get on:</p> - -<p>Your literary editor is like unto a city editor, an -individual whose desk is usually not so far away -but that you can study him in his habitat. The city -editor tries to distinguish the big news from the -little news. The literary editor will wisely do the -same. What is big news in the world of books? -Well, a book that appears destined to be read as -widely fifty years hence as it is to-day on publication -is big news. And a book that will be read -immediately by 100,000 people is bigger news. -People who talk about news often overlook the -ephemeral side of it. Much of the newsiness and -importance of news resides in its transiency. What -is news to-day isn’t news to-morrow. But to-day -100,000 people, more or less, will want to know -about it.</p> - -<p>Illustration: Two events happen on the same day. -One of them will be noted carefully in histories -written fifty years hence, but it affects, and interests,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> -at the hour of its occurrence very few persons. -Of course it is news, but there may easily, at that -hour, be much bigger. For another event occurring -on that same day, though of a character which -will make it forgotten fifty years later, at once and -directly affects the lives of the hundred thousand.</p> - -<p>Parallel: Two books are published on the same -day. One of them will be dissected fifty years -later by the H. W. Boyntons and Wilson Folletts -of that time. But the number of persons who will -read it within the twelvemonth of its birth is small—in -the hundreds. The other book will be out of -print and unremembered in five years. But within -six months of its publication hundreds of thousands -will read it. Among those hundreds of -thousands there will be hundreds, and maybe thousands, -whose thoughts, ideas, opinions will be seriously -modified and in some cases lastingly modified—whose -very lives may change trend as a result of -reading that book.</p> - -<p>No need to ask which event and which book is -the bigger news. News is not the judgment of -posterity on a book or event. News is not even -the sum total of the effects of an event or a book -on human society. News is the immediate importance, -or interest, of an event or a book to the -greatest number of people.</p> - -<p>Eleanor H. Porter writes a new story. One in -every thousand persons in the United States, or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> -perhaps more, wants to know about it, and at once. -Isidor MacDougal (as Frank M. O’Brien would -say) writes a literary masterpiece. Not one person -in 500,000 cares, or would care even if the subject -matter were made comprehensible to him. The -oldtime “reviewer” would write three solid columns -about Isidor MacDougal’s work. The present-day -literary editor puts it in competent hands for a -simplified description to be printed later; and meanwhile -he slaps Mrs. Porter’s novel on his front -page.</p> - -<p>The troubles of a literary editor are the troubles -of his friend up the aisle, the city editor. The -worst of them is the occasional and inevitable error -in giving out the assignment. All his reporters are -good book reporters, but like the people on the -city editor’s staff they have usually their limitations, -whether temperamental or knowledgeable. Every -once in a while the city editor sends to cover a fire -a reporter who does speechified dinners beautifully -but who has no sympathy with fires, who can’t get -through the fire lines, who writes that the fire -“broke out” and burns up more words misdescribing -the facts than the copyreader can extinguish -with blue air and blue pencil. Just so it will happen -in the best regulated literary editor’s sanctum -that, now and then, the editor will give the wrong -book to the right man. Then he learns how unreasonable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> -an author can be, if he doesn’t know -already from the confidences of publishers.</p> - -<p>The literary editor’s point of view, we believe, -must be that so well expressed by Robert Cortes -Holliday in the essay on <i>That Reviewer “Cuss”</i> in -the book <i>Walking-Stick Papers</i>. Few books that -get published by established publishing houses are -so poor or so circumscribed as not to appeal to a -body of readers somewhere, however small or scattered. -The function of the book reporter is transcendently -to find a book’s waiting audience. If -he can incidentally warn off those who don’t belong -to that audience, so much the better. That’s a -harder thing to do, of course.</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>The first requisite in a good book section is that -it shall be interesting. As regards the news of new -books, this is not difficult where book reporters, -with the reporter’s attitude, are on the job. Reporter’s -stories are sometimes badly written, but -they are seldom dull. New books described by persons -who have it firmly lodged in their noodles that -they are “reviewing” the books, fare badly. The -reviewer-obsession manifests itself in different -ways. Sometimes the new book is made to march -past the reviewer in column of squads, deploying -at page 247 into skirmish formation and coming<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span> -at page 431 into company front. Very fine, but -the reader wants to see them in the trenches, or, -headed by the author uttering inspiriting yells, going -over the top. On other occasions the reviewer -assumes the so-called judicial attitude, the true -inwardness of which William Schwenk Gilbert was -perhaps the first to appreciate, with the possible exception -of Lewis Carroll. Then doth our reviewer -tell us what will be famous a century hence. Much -we care what will be famous a century hence. -What bothers us is what we shall read to-morrow. -Of course it may happen to be one and the same -book. Very well then, why not say so?</p> - -<p>The main interest of the book section is served -by getting crackajack book reporters. They will -suffice for the people who read the section because -they are interested in books. If the literary editor -stops there, however, he might as well never have -started. These people would read the book section -anyway, unless it were filled throughout with absolutely -unreadable matter, as has been known to -happen. Even then they would doubtless scan the -advertisements. At least, that is the theory on -which publishers hopefully proceed. There are -book sections where the contributors always specify -that their articles shall have a position next to advertising -matter.</p> - -<p>No, the literary editor must interest people who -do not especially care about books as such. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span> -can do it only by convincing them that books are -just as full of life and just as much a part of a -normal scheme of life as movies, or magazine cut-outs, -or buying things on the instalment plan. -Many a plain person has been led to read books by -the fact that books are sometimes sold for instalment -payments. Anything so sold, the ordinary -person at once realizes, must be something which -will fit into his scheme of existence. Acting on an -instinct so old that its origin is shrouded in the -mists of antiquity, the ordinary person pays the instalments. -As a result, books are delivered at his -residence. At first he is frightened. But he who -looks and runs away may live to read another day. -And from living to read it is but a step to reading -to live.</p> - -<p>Now one way to interest people who don’t care -about books for books’ sake is to get up attractive -pages, with pleasant or enticing headlines, with pictures, -with jokes in the corners of ’em, with some -new and original and not-hitherto-published matter -in them, with poetry (all kinds), with large type, -with signed articles so that the reader can know -who wrote it and like or hate him with the necessary -personal tag. But these things aren’t literary, -at all. They are just plain human and fall in the -field of action of every editor alive—though of -course editors who are dead are exempt from dealing -with them. That is why a literary editor has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> -no need to be literary and, indeed, had better not -be if it is going to prevent his being human.</p> - -<p>We have been talking about the literary editor -of a book section. There are not many book sections -in this country. There are hundreds of book -pages—half-pages and whole pages and double -pages. The word “technique” is a loathsome thing -and really without any significance in this connection, -inasmuch as there is no particular way of doing -the news of books well, and certainly no one -way of doing it that is invariably better than any -other. But for convenience we may permit ourselves -to use the word “technique” for a moment; -and, permission granted, we will merely say that -the technique of a book page or pages is entirely -different from the technique of a book section—if -you know what we mean.</p> - -<p>Clarified (we hope) it comes down to this, that -things which a fellow would attempt in a book section -he would not essay in a book page or double -page. Conversely, things that will make a page -successful may be out of place in a section. It is -by no means wholly a matter of newspaper makeup, -though there is that to it, too. But a man with -a book section, though not necessarily more ambitious, -is otherwisely so. For one thing, he expects -to turn his reporters loose on more books than his -colleague who has only a page or so to turn around -in. For another, he will probably want to print a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span> -careful list of all books he receives, of whatever -sort, with a description of each as adequate as he -can contrive in from twenty to fifty words, plus -title, author, place of publication, publisher and -price. Such lists are scanned by publishers, booksellers, -librarians, readers in search of books on special -subjects—by pretty nearly everybody who reads -the section at all. Even the rather prosaic quality -of such a list has its value. A woman down in -Texas writes to the literary editor that there is too -much conscious cleverness in lots of the stuff he -prints, “but the lists of books are delightful”! -There you are. In editing a book section you must -be all things to all women.</p> - -<p>The fellow with a page or two has quite other -preoccupations. Where’s a photo, or a cartoon? -Must have a headline to break the solidity of this -close-packed column of print. How about a funny -column? That gifted person, Heywood Broun, -taking charge of the book pages of the New York -<i>Tribune</i>, announces that he is in favor of anything -that will make book reviewing exciting. Nothing -can make book reviewing exciting except book reporting -and the books themselves; but if Broun is -looking for excitement he will find it while filling -the rôle of a literary editor. Before long he will -learn that everybody in the world who is not the -author of a book wants to review books—and some -who are authors are willing to double in both parts.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> -Also, a considerable number of books are published -annually in these still United States and a considerable -percentage of those published find their way -to the literary editor. It is no joke to receive, list -with descriptions and sort out for assignment or -non-assignment an average of 1,500 volumes a -year, nor to assign to your book reporters, with as -much infallibility in choosing the reporter as possible, -perhaps half of the 1,500. Likewise there -are assignments which several reporters want, a -single book bespoken by four persons, maybe; and -there are book assignments that are received with -horror or sometimes with unflinching bravery by -the good soldier. To hand a man, for instance, -the extremely thick two-volume <i>History of Labour -in the United States</i> by Professor Commons and his -associates is like pinning a decoration on him for -limitless valor under fire—only the decoration bears -a strong resemblance to the Iron Cross.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Advertising?</p> - -<p>Newspapers depend upon advertising for their -existence, let alone their profits, in most instances. -Of course, if there were no such things as advertisements -we should still have newspapers. The news -must be had. Presumably people would simply<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span> -pay more for it, or pay as much in a more direct -way.</p> - -<p>What is true of newspapers is true of parts of -newspapers. The fact that a new book is news, -and, as such, a thing that must more or less widely -but indispensably be reported, is attested by the -maintenance of book columns and pages in many -newspapers where book advertising there is none. -The people who read the Boston <i>Evening Transcript</i>, -for example, would hardly endure the abolition -of its book pages whether publishers used them -to advertise in or not.</p> - -<p>At the same time the publisher finds, and can -find, no better medium than a good live book page -or book section; nor can he find any other medium, -nor can any other medium be created, in which his -advertising will reach his full audience. “The -trade” reads the excellent <i>Publishers’ Weekly</i>, librarians -have the journal of the American Library -Association, readers have the newspapers and magazines -of general circulation on which they rely for -the news of new books. But the good book page -or book section reaches all these groups. Publishers, -authors, booksellers, librarians, book buyers—all -read it. And if it is really good it spreads the -book-reading habit. Even a bookshop seldom does -that—we have one exception in mind, pretty well -known. People do not, ordinarily, read in a bookshop.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>Of course a literary editor who has any regard -for the vitality of his page or section is interested -in book advertising. There’s something wrong -with him if he isn’t. If he isn’t he doesn’t measure -up to his job, which is to get people to read books -and find their way about among them. A book -page or a book section without advertising is no -more satisfactory than a man or a woman without -a sense of the value of money. It looks lopsided -and it is lopsided. Readers resent it, and rightly. -It’s a beautiful façade, but the side view is disappointing.</p> - -<p>The interest the literary editor takes in book -advertising need no more be limited than the interest -he takes in the growth or improvement of -any other feature of his page or section. It has -and can have no relation to his editorial or news -policy. The moment such a thing is true his usefulness -is ended. An alliance between the pen and -the pocketbook is known the moment it is made -and is transparent the moment it takes effect in -print. A literary editor may resent, and keenly, -as an editor, the fact that Bing, Bang & Company -do not advertise their books in his domain. He is -quite right to feel strongly about it. It has nothing -to do with his handling of the Bing Bang books. -That is determined by their news value alone. He -may give the Bing Bang best seller a front page -review and at the same time decline to meet Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span> -Bing or lunch with Mr. Bang. And he will be entirely -honest and justified in his course, both ways. -Puff & Boom advertise like thunder. The literary -editor likes them both immensely, or, at least, he -appreciates their good judgment (necessarily it -seems good to him in his rôle as editor of the pages -they use). But Puff & Boom’s books are one-stick -stories. Well, it’s up to Puff & Boom, isn’t it?</p> - -<p>Oh, well, first and last there’s a lot to being a -literary editor, new style. But first and last there’s -a lot to being a human. Any one who can be human -successfully can do the far lesser thing much -better than any literary editor has yet done it.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WHAT_EVERY_PUBLISHER">WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER -KNOWS</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak">VI<br /> - - -<small>WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap">A BIG subject? Not necessarily. Discussed by -an authority? No, indeed. On the contrary, -about to be written upon by an amateur recording -impressions extending a little over a year but formed -in several relationships—as a “literary editor,” as an -author and, involuntarily, as an author’s agent—but -all friendly. Also, perhaps, as a pretty regular -reader of publishers’ products. What will first appear -as vastness in the subject will shrink on a -moment’s examination. For our title is concerned -only with what <i>every</i> publisher knows. A common -piece of knowledge; or if not, after all, very “common,” -at least commonly held—by book publishers.</p> - -<p>To state the main conclusion first: The one -thing that every publisher knows, so far as a humble -experience can deduce, is that what is called -“general” publishing—meaning fiction and other -books of general appeal—is a highly speculative enterprise -and hardly a business at all. The clearest -analogy seems to be with the theatrical business. -Producing books and producing plays is terrifyingly -alike. Full of risks. Requiring, unless genius is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span> -manifested, considerable money capital. Likely to -make, and far more likely to lose, small fortunes -overnight.... Fatally fascinating. More an art -than an organization but usually requiring an organization -for the exhibition of the most brilliant art—like -opera. A habit comparable with hasheesh. -Heart-lifting—and headachy. ’Twas the night before -publication and all through the house not a -creature was stirring, not even a stenographer. The -day dawned bright and clear and a re-order for fifty -more copies came in the afternoon mail.... Absentmindedly, -the publisher-bridegroom pulled a -contract instead of the wedding ring from his pocket. -“With this royalty I thee wed,” he murmured. And -so she was published and they lived happily ever -after until she left him because he did not clothe -the children suitably, using green cloth with purple -stamping.</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>A fine old publishing house once went back over -the record of about 1,200 published books. This -was a rather conservative firm, as little of a gambler -as possible; its books had placed it, in every respect, -in the first rank of publishing houses.</p> - -<p>Of the 1,200 books just one in ten had made any -sizable amount of money. The remaining 1,080 -had either lost money, broken even, or made sums -smaller than the interest on the money tied up in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span> -them. Most of the 120 profitable books had been -highly profitable; it will not surprise you to learn -this when you reflect that these lucrative books had -each to foot the bill, more or less, for nine others. -So much for the analysis of figures. But what lay -behind the figures? In some cases it was possible -to tell why a particular book had sold. More often -it wasn’t.... Is this a business?</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Thorwald Alembert Jenkinson has a book published. -It’s not a bad book, either; very good novel, -as a matter of fact. Sales rather poor. Mr. Jenkinson’s -publisher takes his next book with a natural -reluctance, buoyed up by the certitude that this -is a better story and has in it elements that promise -popularity. The publisher’s salesman goes on -the road. In Dodge City, Iowa, let us say, he enters -a bookseller’s and begins to talk the new Jenkinson -novel. At the sound of his voice and the sight of -the dummy the bookseller lifts repelling hands and -backs away in horror.</p> - -<p>“Stock that?” asks the bookseller rhetorically. -“Not on your life! Why,” with a gesture toward -one shelf, “there’s his first book. Twenty copies -and only two sold!”</p> - -<p>The new Jenkinson novel has a wretched advance -sale. Readers, not seeing it in the bookshops, may<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> -yet call for it when they read a review—not necessarily -a favorable account—or when they see it advertised. -If Mr. Jenkinson wrote histories or biographies -the bookseller’s wholly human attitude -would not much matter. But a novel is different. -The customer wanting Jenkinson’s <i>History of -France</i> would order it or go elsewhere, most likely. -The customer wanting Jenkinson’s new novel is -quite often content with Tarkington’s instead.</p> - -<p>When you go to the ticket agency to get seats at -a Broadway show and find they have none left for -<i>Whoop ’Er Up</i> you grumble, and then buy seats at -<i>Let’s All Go</i>. Not that you really care. Not that -any one really cares. The man who produced -<i>Whoop ’Er Up</i> is also the producer of <i>Let’s All Go</i>, -both theatres are owned by a single group, the librettists -are one and the same and the music of both -is equally bad, proceeding from an identical source. -Even the stagehands work interchangeably on a -strict union scale. But Mr. Jenkinson did not write -Tarkington’s novel, the two books are published -by firms that have not a dollar in common, and only -the bookseller can preserve an evatanguayan indifference -over your choice.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>The publisher’s salesman comes to the bookseller’s -lair equipped with dummies. These show the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> -book’s exterior, its size, thickness, paper, binding -and (very important) its jacket. Within the -dummy are blank pages, or perhaps the first twenty -pages of the book printed over and over to give the -volume requisite thickness. The bookseller may -read these twenty pages. If the author has got -plenty of action into them the bookseller is favorably -impressed. Mainly he depends for his idea of -the book upon what the salesman and the publisher’s -catalogue tells him. He has to. He can’t read ’em all.</p> - -<p>Sometimes the salesman can illustrate his remarks. -Henry Leverage wrote an ingenious story -called <i>Whispering Wires</i> in which the explanation -of a mysterious murder depended upon the telephone, -converted by a too-gifted electrician into a -single-shot pistol. Offering the story to the booksellers, -Harry Apeler carried parts of a telephone -receiver about the country with him, unscrewing -and screwing on again the delicate disc that you put -against your ear and showing how the deed was -done.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>The bookseller, like every one else, goes by experience. -It is, or has been, his experience that -collections of short stories do not sell well. And -this is true despite O. Henry, Fannie Hurst and -Edna Ferber. It is so true that publishers shy at -short story volumes. Where there is a name that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span> -will command attention—Alice Brown, Theodore -Dreiser—or where a special appeal is possible, as in -Edward J. O’Brien’s <i>The Best Short Stories of -191-</i>, books made up of short tales may sell. But -there are depressing precedents.</p> - -<p>In his interesting article on <i>The Publishing Business</i>, -appearing in 1916 in the <i>Publishers’ Weekly</i> -and since reprinted as a booklet, Temple Scott cites -Henri Bergson’s <i>Creative Evolution</i> as a modern -instance of a special sort of book finding its own -very special, but surprisingly large, public. “Nine -booksellers out of ten ‘passed’ it when the traveller -brought it round,” observes Mr. Scott. “Fortunately, -for the publisher, the press acted the part of -the expert, and public attention was secured.” Was -the bookseller to blame? Most decidedly not. -<i>Creative Evolution</i> is nothing to tie up your money -in on a dim chance that somewhere an enthusiastic -audience waits for the Bergsonian gospel.</p> - -<p>Mr. Scott’s article, which is inconclusive, in our -opinion, points out clearly that as no two books are -like each other no two books are really the same article. -Much fiction, to be sure, is of a single stamp; -many books, and here we are by no means limited to -fiction, have whatever unity comes from the authorship -of a single hand. This unity may exist, elusively, -as in the stories of Joseph Conrad, or may -be confined almost wholly to the presence of the -same name on two titlepages, as in the fact that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> -<i>The Virginian</i> and <i>The Pentecost of Calamity</i> are -both the work of Owen Wister.</p> - -<p>No! Two books are most often and emphatically -<i>not</i> the same article. Mr. Scott is wholly -right when he points out every book should have advertising, -or other attention, peculiar to itself. A -method of reporting one book will not do for another, -any more than a publisher’s circular describing -one book will do to describe a second. The art -of reporting books or other news, like the art of advertising -books or other commodities, is one of endless -differentiation. In the absence of real originality, -freshness and ideas, both objects go unachieved -or else are achieved by speciousness, not to -say guile. You, for example, do not really believe -that by reading Hannibal Halcombe’s <i>How to Heap -Up Happiness</i> you will be able to acquire the equivalent -of a college education in 52 weeks. But somewhere -in <i>How to Heap Up Happiness</i> Mr. Halcombe -tells how he made money or how he learned to enjoy -pictures on magazine covers or a happy solution -of his unoriginal domestic troubles—any one of -which you may crave to know and honest information -of which will probably send you after the book.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>At this point in the discussion of our subject we -have had the incredible folly to look back at our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span> -outline. Yes, there is an outline—or a thing of -shreds and patches which once went by that description. -What, you will say, wrecked so soon, after -a mere introduction of 1,500 words or so? Certainly. -Outlines are to writers what architects’ -plans are to builders, or what red rags are supposed -to be to bulls. Or, as the proverbial (our favorite -adjective) chaff before the wind. Our outline says -that the subject of selling books should be subdivision -(c) under division 1 of the three partitions of -our subject. All Gaul and Poland are not the only -objects divided in three parts. Every serious subject -is, likewise.</p> - -<p>Never mind. We shall have to struggle along as -best we can. We have been talking about selling -books, or what every publisher knows in regard to -it. Well, then, every publisher knows that selling -books as it has mainly to be conducted under present -conditions, is just as much a matter of merchandising -as selling bonnets, bathrobes and birdseed. -But this is one of the things that people outside the -publishing and bookselling businesses seldom grasp. -A cultural air, for them, invests the book business. -The curse of the genteel hangs about it. It is almost -professional, like medicine and baseball. It -has an odor, like sanctity.... All wrong.</p> - -<p>Bonnets, bathrobes, birdseed, books. All are -saleable if you go about it right. And how is that? -you ask.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>The best way to sell bonnets is to lay a great -foundational demand for headgear. The best way -to sell bathrobes is to encourage bathing. The best -way to sell birdseed is to put a canary in every home. -It might be supposed that the best way to sell books -would be to get people to read. Yes, it might be -far more valuable in the end to stimulate and spread -the reading habit than to try to sell 100,000 copies -of any particular book.</p> - -<p>Of course every publisher knows this and of -course all the publishers, associating themselves for -the promotion of a common cause not inconceivably -allied to the general welfare, spend time and money -in the effort to make readers—not of Mrs. Halcyon -Hunter’s <i>Love Has Wings</i> or Mr. Caspar Cartouche’s -<i>Martin the Magnificent</i>, but of books, just -good books of any sort soever. Yes, of course....</p> - -<p>This would be—beg pardon, is—the thing that -actually and immediately as well as ultimately -counts: Let us get people to read, to like to read, -to <i>enjoy</i> reading, and they will, sooner or later, read -books. Sooner or later they’ll become book readers -and book buyers. Sooner or later books will sell as -well as automobiles....</p> - -<p>On the merely technical side of bookselling, on -the immediate problem of selling particular new -novels, collections of short stories, histories, books -of verse, and all the rest, the publishers have, collectively -at least, not much to learn from their fellow<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span> -merchants with the bonnets, bathrobes and -birdseed. The mechanism of merchandising is so -highly developed in America that many of the methods -resemble the interchangeable parts of standardized -manufactures everywhere. Suppose we have a -look at these methods.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>The lesson of flexibility has been fully mastered -by at least two American publishing houses. With -their very large lists of new books they contrive to -avoid, as much as possible, fixed publication dates. -While their rivals are pinning themselves fast six -months ahead, these publishers are moving largely -but conditionally six and nine months ahead, and -less largely but with swift certainty three months, -two months, even one month from the passing moment. -And they are absolutely right and profit by -their rightness. For this reason: Everything that -is printed has in it an element of that timeliness, that -ephemerality if you like but also that widening ripple -of human interest which is the unique essence of -what we call “news.” This quality is present, in a -perceptible amount, even in the most serious sort of -printed matter. Let us take, as an example, Darwin’s -<i>Origin of Species</i>. Oh! exclaims the reader, -there surely is a book with no ephemerality about -it! No? But there was an immense quantity of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span> -just that in its publication. It came at the right -hour. Fifty years earlier it would have gone unnoticed. -To-day it is transcended by a body of -biological knowledge that Darwin knew not.</p> - -<p>Fifty years, one way or the other, would have -made a vast difference in the reception, the import, -the influence of even so epochal a book as <i>The -Origin of Species</i>. Now a little reflection will show -that, in the case of lesser books, the matter of time -is far more sharply important. Darwin’s book was -so massive that ten or twenty years either way might -not have mattered. But in such a case as John -Spargo’s <i>Bolshevism</i> a few months may matter. In -the case of <i>Mr. Britling</i> the month as well as the -year mattered vitally. Time is everything, in the -fate of many a book, even as in the fate of a magazine -article, a poem, an essay, a short story. Arthur -Guy Empey was on the very hour with <i>Over -the Top</i>; but the appearance of his <i>Tales from a -Dugout</i> a few days after the signing of the armistice -on November 11, 1918, was one of the minor -tragedies of the war.</p> - -<p>Therefore the publisher who can, as nearly as human -and mechanical conditions permit, preserve -flexibility in his publishing plans, has a very great -advantage over inelastic competitors. That iron-clad -arrangements at half year ahead can be avoided -the methods of two of the most important American -houses demonstrate. Either can get out a book<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span> -on a month’s notice. More than once in a season -this spells the difference between a sale of 5,000 -and one of 15,000 copies—that is, between not much -more than “breaking even” and making a handsome -profit.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>Every book that is published requires advertising -though perhaps no two books call for advertising -in just the same way. One of the best American -publishing houses figures certain sums for advertising—whatever -form it may take—in its costs of -manufacture and then the individual volumes have -to take each their chances of getting, each, its proper -share of the money. Other houses have similar unsatisfactory -devices for providing an advertising -fund. The result is too often not unlike the revolving -fund with which American railways were -furnished by Congress—it revolved so fast that -there wasn’t enough to go round long.</p> - -<p>A very big publishing house does differently. To -the cost of manufacture of each book is added a specific, -flat and appropriate sum of money to advertise -that particular book. The price of the book is -fixed accordingly. When the book is published -there is a definite sum ready to advertise it. No -book goes unadvertised. If the book “catches on” -there is no trouble, naturally, about more advertising -money; if it does not sell the advertising of it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span> -stops when the money set aside has been exhausted -and the publishers take their loss with a clear conscience; -they have done their duty by the book. It -may be added that this policy has always paid. -Combined with other distinctive methods it has put -the house which adopted it in the front rank.</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>Whether to publish a small, carefully selected list -of books in a season or a large and comprehensive -list is not wholly decided by the capital at the publisher’s -command. Despite the doubling of all costs -of book manufacture, publishing is not yet an enterprise -which requires a great amount of capital, -as compared with other industries of corresponding -volume. The older a publishing house the more -likely it is to restrict its list of new books. It has -more to lose and less to gain by taking a great number -of risks in new publications. At the same time -it is subjected to severe competition because the capital -required to become a book publisher is not large. -Hence much caution, too much, no doubt, in many -cases and every season. Still, promising manuscripts -are lamentably few. “Look at the stuff that -gets published,” is the classic demonstration of the -case.</p> - -<p>The older the house, the stronger its already accumulated -list, the more conservative, naturally, it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span> -becomes, the less inclined to play with loaded dice -in the shape of manuscripts. Yet a policy of extreme -caution and conservatism is more dangerous -and deadly than a dash of the gambler’s makeup. -Two poor seasons together are noticed by the trade; -four poor seasons together may put a house badly -behind. A season with ten books only, all good, -all selling moderately well, is perhaps more meritorious -and more valuable in the long run than a -season with thirty books, nearly all poor except for -one or two sensational successes. But the fellow -who brings out the thirty books and has one or two -decided best sellers is the fellow who will make large -profits, attract attention and acquire prestige. It -is far better to try everything you can that seems to -have “a chance” than to miss something awfully -good. And, provided you drop the bad potatoes -quickly, it will pay you better in the end.</p> - -<p>There <i>must</i> be a big success somewhere on your -list. A row of respectable and undistinguished -books is the most serious of defeats.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>Suppose you were a book publisher and had put -out a novel or two by Author A. with excellent results -on the profit side of the ledger. Author A. -is plainly a valuable property, like a copper mine in -war time. A.’s third manuscript comes along in due<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> -time. It is entirely different from the first two so-successful -novels; it is pretty certain to disappoint -A.’s “audience.” You canvass the subject with -A., who can’t “see” your arguments and suggestions. -It comes to this: Either you publish the third novel -or you lose A. Which, darling reader, would you, -if you were the publisher, do? Would you choose -the lady and <i>The Tiger</i>?</p> - -<p>You are neatly started as a book publisher. You -can’t get advance sales for your productions (to borrow -a term from the theatre). You go to Memphis -and Syracuse and interview booksellers. They say -to you: “For heaven’s sake, get authors whose -names mean something! Why should we stock fiction -by Horatius Hotaling when we can dispose of -125 copies of E. Phillips Oppenheim’s latest in ten -days from publication?” Returning thoughtfully -to New York, you happen to meet a Celebrated Author. -Toward the close of luncheon at the Brevoort -he offers to let you have a book of short stories. -One of them (it will be the title-story, of course) -was published in the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i>, bringing -to Mr. Lorimer, the editor, 2,500 letters and -117 telegrams of evenly divided praise and condemnation. -Short stories are a stiff proposition; but -the Celebrated Author has a name that will insure -a certain advance sale and a fame that will insure -reviewers’ attention. For you to become his publisher -will be as prestigious as it is adventitious.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>From ethical and other motives, you seek out the -C. A.’s present publisher—old, well-established house—and -inquire if Octavo & Duodecimo will have any -objection to your publishing the C. A.’s book of -tales. Mr. Octavo replies in friendly accents:</p> - -<p>“Not a bit! Not a bit! Go to it! However, -we’ve lent ... (the C. A.) $2,500 at one time or -another in advance moneys on a projected novel. -Travel as far as you like with him, but remember -that he can’t give you a novel until he has given us -one or has repaid that $2,500.”</p> - -<p>What to do? ’Tis indeed a pretty problem. If -you pay Octavo & Duodecimo $2,500 you can have -the C. A.’s next novel—worth several times as much -as any book of tales, at the least. On the other -hand, there is no certainty that the C. A. will deliver -you the manuscript of a novel. He has been -going to deliver it to Octavo & Duodecimo for three -years. And you can’t afford to tie up $2,500 on -the chance that he’ll do for you what he hasn’t done -for them. Because $2,500 is, to you, a lot of money.</p> - -<p>In the particular instance where this happened -(except for details, we narrate an actual occurrence) -the beginning publisher went ahead and published -the book of tales, and afterward another book -of tales, and let Octavo & Duodecimo keep their -option on the C. A.’s next novel, if he ever writes -any. The probabilities are that the C. A. will write -short stories for the rest of his life rather than deliver<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -a novel from which he will receive not one cent -until $2,500 has been deducted from the royalties.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>English authors are keenest on advance money. -The English writer who will undertake to do a book -without some cash in hand before putting pen to -paper is a great rarity. An American publisher who -wants English manuscripts and goes to London -without his checkbook won’t get anywhere. A little -real money will go far. It will be almost unnecessary -for the publisher who has it to entrain for those -country houses where English novelists drink tea -and train roses. Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, Yorkshire, -Wessex, &c., will go down to London. Mr. -Britling will motor into town to talk about a contract. -All the London clubs will be named as rendezvous. -Visiting cards will reach the publisher’s -hotel, signifying the advent of Mr. Percival Fotheringay -of Houndsditch, Bayswater, Wapping Old -Stairs, London, B. C. Ah, yes, Fotheringay; wonderful -stories of Whitechapel and the East End, -really! Knows the people—what?</p> - -<p>It has to be said that advances on books seem to -retard their delivery. We have in mind a famous -English author (though he might as well be American, -so far as this particular point is concerned) -who got an advance of $500 (wasn’t it?) some years<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span> -ago from Quarto & Folio—on a book of essays. -Quarto & Folio have carried that title in their spring -and fall catalogues of forthcoming books ever since. -Spring and fall they despair afresh. Daylight saving -did nothing to help them—an hour gained was -a mere bagatelle in the cycles of time through which -<i>Fads and Fatalities</i> keeps moving in a regular and -always equidistant orbit. If some day the League -of Nations shall ordain that the calendar be set -ahead six months Quarto & Folio may get the completed -manuscript of <i>Fads and Fatalities</i>.</p> - -<p>American authors are much less insistent on advance -payments than their cousins 3,000 miles removed. -A foremost American publishing house has -two inflexible rules: No advance payments and no -verdict on uncompleted manuscripts. Inflexible—but -it is to be suspected that though this house never -bends the rule there are times when it has to break -it. What won’t bend must break. There are a few -authors for whom any publisher will do anything -except go to jail. Probably you would make the -same extensive efforts to retain your exclusive -rights in a South African diamond digging which -had already produced a bunch of Kohinoors.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>There is a gentleman’s agreement among publishers, -arrived at some years back, not to indulge<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span> -in cutthroat competition for each other’s authors. -This ethical principle, like most ethical principles -now existing, is dictated quite as much by considerations -of keeping a whole skin as by a sense of professional -honor. There are some men in the book -publishing business whose honorable standards have -a respect for the other fellow’s property first among -their Fourteen Points. There are others who are -best controlled by a knowledge that to do so-and-so -would be very unhealthy for themselves.</p> - -<p>The agreement, like most unwritten laws, is interpreted -with various shadings. Some of these are -subtle and some of them are not. It is variously -applied by different men in different cases, sometimes -unquestionably and sometimes doubtfully. -But in the main it is pretty extensively and strictly -upheld, in spirit as in letter.</p> - -<p>How far it transgresses authors’ privileges or -limits authors’ opportunities would be difficult to -say. In the nature of the case, any such understanding -must operate to some extent to lessen the -chances of an author receiving the highest possible -compensation for his work. Whether this is offset -by the favors and concessions, pecuniary and otherwise, -made to an author by a publisher to whom he -adheres, can’t be settled. The relation of author -and publisher, at best, calls for, and generally elicits, -striking displays of loyalty on both sides. Particularly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> -among Americans, the most idealistic people -on earth.</p> - -<p>In its practical working this publishers’ understanding -operates to prevent any publisher “approaching” -an author who has an accepted publisher -of his books. Unless you, as a publisher, are yourself -approached by Author B., whose several books -have been brought out by Publisher C., you are -theoretically bound hand and foot. And even if -Author B. comes to you there are circumstances under -which you may well find it desirable to talk -B.’s proposal over with C., hitherto his publisher. -After that talk you may wish B. were in Halifax. -If everybody told the truth matters would be greatly -simplified. Or would they?</p> - -<p>If you hear that Author D., who writes very good -sellers, is dissatisfied with Publisher F., what is your -duty in the circumstances? Author D. may not -come to you, for there are many publishers for such -as he to choose from. Shall we say it is your duty -to acquaint D., indirectly perhaps, with the manifest -advantages of bringing you his next novel? We’ll -say so.</p> - -<p>Whatever publishers agree to, authors are free. -And every publisher knows how easy it is to lose -an author. Why, they leave you like that! (Business -of snapping fingers.) And for the lightest reasons! -(Register pain or maybe mournfulness.) If -D. W. Griffith wanted to make a Movie of a Publisher<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> -Losing an Author he would find the action -too swift for the camera to record. Might as well -try to film <i>The Birth of a Notion</i>.</p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>One of the most fascinating mysteries about publishers, -at least to authors, is the method or methods -by which they determine the availability of -manuscripts. Fine word, availability. Noncommittal -and all that. It has no taint of infallibility—which -is the last attribute a publisher makes pretensions -to.</p> - -<p>There are places where one man decides whether -a manuscript will do and there are places where it -takes practically the whole clerical force and several -plebiscites to accept or reject the author’s offering. -One house which stands in the front rank in this -country accepts and rejects mainly on the verdicts -of outsiders—specialists, however, in various fields. -Another foremost publishing house has a special -test for “popular” novels in manuscript. An extra -ration of chewing gum is served out to all the stenographers -and they are turned loose on the type-written -pages. If they react well the firm signs a -contract and prints a first edition of from 5,000 to -25,000 copies, depending on whether it is a first -novel or not and the precise comments of the girls -at page 378.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>Always the sales manager reads the manuscript, -if it is at all seriously considered. What he says -has much weight. He’s the boy who will have to -sell the book to the trade and unless he can see things -in it, or can be got to, there is practically no hope -despite Dr. Munyon’s index finger.</p> - -<p>Recently a publishing house of national reputation -has done a useful thing—we are not prepared -to say it is wholly new—by establishing a liaison -officer. This person does not pass on manuscripts, -unless incidentally by way of offering his verdict -to be considered with the verdicts of other department -heads. But once a manuscript has been accepted -by the house it goes straight to this man who -reads it intensively and sets down, on separate -sheets, everything about it that might be useful to -(a) the advertising manager, (b) the sales manager -and his force, and (c) the editorial people handling -the firm’s book publicity effort.</p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>A little knowledge of book publishing teaches immense -humility. The number of known instances -in which experienced publishers have erred in judgment -is large. Authors always like to hear of these. -But too much must not be deduced from them. -Every one has heard of the rejection of Henry Sydnor -Harrison’s novel <i>Queed</i>. Many have heard of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> -the publisher who decided not to “do” Vicente -Blasco Ibañez’s <i>The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i>. -There was more than one of him, by the -way, and in each case he had an exceedingly bad -translation to take or reject (we are told), the only -worthy translation, apparently, being that which was -brought out with such sensational success in the -early fall of 1918. A publisher lost <i>Spoon River -Anthology</i> because of a delay in acceptance—he -wanted the opinion of a confrere not easily reached. -For every publisher’s mistake of this sort there could -probably be cited an instance of perspicacity much -more striking. Such was the acceptance of Edward -Lucas White’s <i>El Supremo</i> after many rejections. -And how about the publisher who accepted <i>Queed</i>?</p> - - -<h3>15</h3> - -<p>Let us conclude these haphazard and very likely -unhelpful musings on an endless subject by telling a -true story.</p> - -<p>In the spring of 1919 one of the principal publishing -houses in America and England undertook the -publication of a very unusual sort of a novel, semi-autobiographical, -a work of love and leisure by a -man who had gained distinction as an executive. It -was a fine piece of work, though strange; had a delightful -reminiscential quality. The book was made -up, a first edition of moderate size printed and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> -bound. It was not till this had been done and the -book was ready to place on sale that the head of this -publishing house had an opportunity to read it.</p> - -<p>The Head is a veteran publisher famous for his -prescience in the matter of manuscripts and for honorable -dealings.</p> - -<p>He read the book through and was charmed by -it; he looked at the book and was unhappy. He -sent for everybody who had had to do with the making -of this book. He held up his copy and fluttered -pages and said, in effect:</p> - -<p>“This has been done all wrong. Here is a book -of quite exceptional quality. I don’t think it will -sell. Only moderately, though perhaps rather steadily -for some years to come. It won’t make us -money. To speak of. But it deserves, intrinsically, -better treatment. Better binding. This is -only ordinary six-months’-selling novel binding. It -deserves larger type. Type with a more beautiful -face. Fewer lines to the page. Lovelier dress -from cover to cover.</p> - -<p>“Throw away the edition that has been printed. -Destroy it or something. At least, hide it. Don’t -let any of it get out. For this has been done wrong, -all wrong. Do it over.”</p> - -<p>So they went away from his presence and did it -right. It meant throwing away about $2,000. Or -was it a $2,000 investment in the good opinion of -people who buy, read and love books?</p> - - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> -<p class="ph1">THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak">VII<br /> - - -<small>THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap">BY “best seller” we may mean one of several -things. Dr. Emmett Holt’s <i>Care and Feeding -of Children</i>, of which the fifty-eighth edition -was printed in the spring of 1919, is one kind of -best seller; Owen Wister’s <i>The Virginian</i> is quite -another. The number of editions of a book is a -very uncertain indication of sales to a person not -familiar with book publishing. Editions may consist -of as few as 500 copies or as many as 25,000 -or even 50,000. The advance sale of Gene Stratton-Porter’s -<i>A Daughter of the Land</i> was, if we recall -the figure exactly, 150,000 copies. These, -therefore, were printed and distributed by the day -when the book was placed on sale, or shortly thereafter. -To call this the “first edition” would be -rather meaningless.</p> - -<p>One thousand copies of a book of poems—unless -it be an anthology—is a large edition indeed. But -not for Edgar Guest, whose books sell in the tens -of thousands. The sale, within a couple of years, -of 31,000 copies of the poems of Alan Seeger was -phenomenal.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span>The first book of essays of an American writer -sold 6,000 copies within six months of its publication. -This upset most precedents of the bookselling -trade. The author’s royalties may have -been $1,125. A few hundred dollars should be -added to represent money received for the casual -publication of the essays in magazines before their -appearance in the book. Of course the volume did -not stop selling at the end of six months.</p> - -<p>Compare these figures, however, with the income -of one of the most popular American novelists. A -single check for $75,000. Total payments, over a -period of fifteen years, of $750,000 to $1,000,000. -Yet it is doubtful if the books of this novelist -reached more than 65 per cent. of their possible -audience.</p> - -<p>It is a moderate estimate, in our opinion, that -most books intended for the “general reader,” -whether fiction or not, do not reach more than one-quarter -of the whole body of readers each might -attain. With the proper machinery of publicity -and merchandising book sales in the United States -could be quadrupled. We share this opinion with -Harry Blackman Sell of the Chicago <i>Daily News</i> -and were interested to find it independently confirmed -by James H. Collins who, writing in the <i>Saturday -Evening Post</i> of May 3, 1919, under the heading -<i>When Merchandise Sells Itself</i>, said:</p> - -<p>“Book publishing is one industry that suffers for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span> -lack of retail outlets. Even the popular novel sells -in numbers far below the real buying power of this -nation of readers, because perhaps 25 per cent. of -the public can examine it and buy it at the city bookstores, -while it is never seen by the rest of the public.</p> - -<p>“For lack of quantity production based on wide -retail distribution the novel sells for a dollar and -a half.</p> - -<p>“But for a dollar you can buy a satisfactory -watch.</p> - -<p>“That is made possible by quantity production. -Quantity production of dollar watches is based on -their sale in 50,000 miscellaneous shops, through -the standard stock and the teaching of modern mercantile -methods. Book publishers have made experiments -with the dollar novel, but it sold just -about the same number of copies as the $1.50 novel, -because only about so many fiction buyers were -reached through the bookstores. Now the standard-stock -idea is being applied to books, with assortments -of 50 or 100 proved titles carried by the druggist -and stationer.”</p> - - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>Speaking rather offhandedly, we are of opinion -that not more than two living American writers of -fiction have achieved anything like a 100 per cent.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span> -sale of their books. These are Harold Bell Wright -and Gene Stratton-Porter.</p> - -<p>I am indebted to Mr. Frank K. Reilly, president -of the Reilly & Lee Company, Chicago, selling -agents for the original editions of all Mr. Wright’s -books, for the following figures:</p> - -<p>“We began,” wrote Mr. Reilly, “with <i>That -Printer of Udell’s</i>—selling, as I remember the figures, -about 20,000. Then <i>The Shepherd of the -Hills</i>—about 100,000, I think. Then the others in -fast growing quantities. For <i>The Winning of -Barbara Worth</i> we took four orders in advance -which totalled nearly 200,000 copies. On <i>When a -Man’s a Man</i> we took the biggest single order ever -placed for a novel at full price—that is, a cloth-bound, -‘regular’ $1.35 book—250,000 copies from -the Western News Company. The advance sale of -this 1916 book was over 465,000.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Reilly wrote at the beginning of March, -1919, from French Lick, Indiana. At that time -Mr. Wright’s publishers had in hand a novel, <i>The -Re-Creation of Brian Kent</i>, published August 21, -1919. They had arranged for a first printing of -750,000 copies and were as certain of selling 500,000 -copies before August 1 as you are of going to -sleep some time in the next twenty-four hours. It -was necessary to make preparations for the sale of -1,000,000 copies of the new novel before August -21, 1920.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span>The sale of 1,000,000 copies of <i>The Re-Creation -of Brian Kent</i> within a year of publication may be -said to achieve a 100 per cent. circulation so far as -existing book merchandising facilities allow.</p> - -<p>The sale, within ten years, of 670,733 copies of -Gene Stratton-Porter’s story, <i>Freckles</i>, approaches -a 100 per cent. sale but with far too much retardation.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>How has the 100 per cent. sale for the Harold -Bell Wright books been brought within hailing distance?</p> - -<p>Before us lies a circular which must have been -mailed to most booksellers in the United States -early in the spring of 1919. It is headed: “First -Publicity Advertisement of Our $100,000 Campaign.” -Below this legend is an advertisement of -<i>The Re-Creation of Brian Kent</i>. Below that is a -statement that the advertisement will appear, simultaneously -with the book’s publication, in “magazines -and national and religious weeklies having millions -upon millions of circulation. In addition to this -our newspaper advertising will cover all of the larger -cities of the United States.” Then follows a list -of “magazines, national and religious weeklies covered -by our signed advertising contracts.”</p> - -<p>There are 132 of them. The range is from the -<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> and the <i>New Republic</i> to <i>Vanity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span> -Fair</i> and <i>Town Topics</i> in one slant; from <i>System</i> -and <i>Physical Culture</i> to <i>Zion’s Herald</i> and the -<i>Catholic News</i>; from <i>Life</i> to <i>Needlecraft</i>; from the -<i>Photoplay World</i> to the <i>Girl’s Companion</i>; from the -<i>Outlook</i> to the <i>Lookout</i>—and to and fro and back -and forth in a web covering all America between -the two Portlands.</p> - -<p>There are about 140,000,000 persons in the -United States and Great Britain together. Over -100,000,000 of them, we are told, have read a Harold -Bell Wright book or seen a Harold Bell Wright -movie.</p> - -<p>The secret of the sale of Mr. Wright’s books, so -far as the external factor is concerned, resides in -the fact that his stories have been brought to the -attention of thousands upon thousands who, from -one year’s end to the other, never have a new book -of fiction thrust upon their attention by advertising -or by sight of the book itself.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>We speak of the “external factor.” There is an -external factor quite as much as an internal factor -in the success of every best seller of whatever sort. -The tendency of everybody who gives any attention -to the subject, but particularly the book publisher, -is to study the internal factor almost to the -exclusion of the other. What, you naturally ask<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span> -yourself, are the qualities in this book that have -made it sell so remarkably?</p> - -<p>The internal factor is important. Its importance, -doubtless, cannot be overrated. But it is not -the whole affair. Before we go further let us lay -down some general principles that are not often -formulated clearly enough even in the minds of -those to whom they import most.</p> - -<p>1. The internal factor—certain qualities of the -book itself—predetermines its possible audience.</p> - -<p>2. The external factor—the extent to which it is -brought to public attention, the manner in which -it is presented to the public, the ubiquity of copies -for sale—determines its actual audience.</p> - -<p>3. The internal factor can make a best seller of -a book with almost no help from the external factor, -but cannot give it a 100 per cent. sale.</p> - -<p>4. The external factor cannot make a big seller -where the internal factor is not of the right sort; -but it can always give a 100 per cent. sale.</p> - -<p>5. The internal factor is only partly in the publisher’s -control; the external factor is entirely controllable -by the publisher.</p> - -<p>There are two secrets of the best seller. One -resides in the book itself, the other rests in the manner -of its exploitation. One is inherent, the other -is circumstantial. One is partly controllable by -the publisher, the other is wholly so. Since a book -possessing certain qualities in a sufficient degree will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> -sell heavily anyway, it is human nature to hunt -ceaselessly for this thing which will triumph over -every sort of handicap and obstacle. But it is a -lazy way to do. It is not good business. It cannot, -ultimately, pay. The successful book publisher -of the future is going to be the publisher who -works for a 100 per cent. sale on all his books. -When he gets a book with an internal factor which -would make it a best seller anyway, it will simply -mean that he will have to exert himself markedly -less to get a 100 per cent. result. He will have -such best sellers and will make large sums of money -with them, but they will be incidents and not -epochal events; for practically all his books will be -good sellers.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Before we go on to a discussion of the internal -factor of the best seller we want to stress once more, -and constructively and suggestively, the postnatal -attention it should receive. The first year and the -second summer are fatal to far too many books as -well as humans. And this is true despite the differences -between the two. If 100,000 copies represent -the 100 per cent. sale of a given volume you -may declare that it makes no difference whether -that sale is attained in six months or six years. -From the business standpoint of a quick turnover -six months is a dozen times better, you may argue;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span> -and if interest on invested money be thought of as -compounding, the apparent difference in favor of -the six-months’ sale is still more striking. This -would perhaps be true if the author’s next book -could invariably be ready at the end of the six-months’ -period. Other ifs will occur to those with -some knowledge of the publishing business and a -moderate capacity for reflection.</p> - -<p>Most books are wrongly advertised and inadequately -advertised, and rather frequently advertised -in the wrong places.</p> - -<p>Of the current methods of advertising new fiction -only one is unexceptionably good. This is the -advertising which arrests the reader’s attention and -baits his interest by a few vivid sentences outlining -the crisis of the story, the dilemma that confronts -the hero or heroine, the problem of whether the -hero or heroine acted rightly; or paints in a few -swift strokes some exciting episode of the action—ending -with a question that will stick in the reader’s -mind. Such an advertisement should always have -a drawing or other illustration if possible. It -should be displayed in a generous space and should -be placed broadcast but with much discrimination as -to where it is to appear.</p> - -<p>A kind of advertisement somewhat allied to this, -but not in use at all despite its assured selling power -would consist of the simple reproduction of a photographed -page of the book. The Detroit <i>News</i> has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> -used such reproduced pages so effectively as illustrations -that it seems strange no publisher (so far -as we know) has followed suit. Striking pages, -and pages containing not merely objective thrill but -the flavor which makes the fascination of a particular -book, can be found in most novels. The -Detroit <i>News</i> selected a page of the highest effectiveness -from so subtle a romance as Joseph Conrad’s -<i>The Arrow of Gold</i>. This manner of advertising, -telling from its complete restraint, is applicable -to non-fiction. A page of a book of essays -by Samuel Crothers would have to be poorly taken -not to disclose, in its several hundred words, the -charm and fun of his observations. Publishers of -encyclopædias have long employed this “page-from-the-book” -method of advertisement with the best -results.</p> - -<p>The ordinary advertisement of a book, making -a few flat assertions of the book’s extraordinary -merit, has become pretty hopelessly conventionalized. -The punch is gone from it, we rather fear -forever. In all conscience, it is psychologically defective -in that it tries to coerce attention and credence -instead of trying to attract, fascinate or -arouse the beholder. The advertiser is not different, -essentially, from the public speaker. The public -speaker who aims to compel attention by mere -thundering or by extraordinary assertions has no -chance against the speaker who amuses, interests,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span> -or agreeably piques his audience, who stirs his auditors’ -curiosity or kindles their collective imagination.</p> - -<p>There is too little personality in the advertising -of books, and when we say personality we mean, -in most cases, the author’s personality. The bald -and unconvincing recital of the opinion of the -<i>Westminster Gazette</i>, that this is a book every Anglo-American -should read, is as nothing compared -with a few dozen words that could have been written -of, or by, no man on earth except H. G. Wells.</p> - -<p>The internal factor of H. G. Wells’s novel <i>The -Undying Fire</i> is so big that it constitutes a sort of -a least common multiple of the hopes, doubts and -fears of hundreds of thousands of humans. A 100 -per cent. sale of the book, under existing merchandising -conditions, would be 400,000 copies, at the -very least. It ought to be advertised in every national -and religious weekly of 10,000 circulation -or over in the United States, and in every periodical -of that circulation reaching a rural audience. And -it ought to be advertised, essentially, in this manner:</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Shall Man Curse God and Die?</span><br /> -<i>No! Job Answered</i><br /> -<span class="smcap">No! H. G. Wells Tells Stricken Europe</span><br /> -<i>Read His New Short Novel, “The Undying Fire,”<br /> -in Which He Holds Out the Hope that Men<br /><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> -May Yet Unite to Organize the World and<br /> -Save Mankind from Extinction</i></p> - -<p>Such an appeal to the hope, the aspiration, the -unconquerable idealism of men everywhere, to the -social instinct which has its roots in thousands of -years of human history, cannot fail.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>Books are wrongly advertised, as we have said, -and they are inadequately advertised, by which we -mean in too few places; and perhaps “insufficiently -advertised” had been a more accurate phrase.</p> - -<p>It is correct and essential to advertise books in -periodicals appealing wholly or partly to book readers. -It is just as essential to recruit readers.</p> - -<p>Book readers can be recruited just as magazine -readers are recruited. The most important way -of getting magazine readers is still the subscription -agent. Every community of any size in these -United States should have in it a man or woman -of at least high school education and alert enthusiasm -selling books of all the publishers. Where -there is a good bookstore such an agent is unnecessary -or may be found in the owner of the store or -an employee thereof. Most communities cannot -support a store given over entirely to bookselling. -In them let there be agents giving their whole time<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> -or their spare time and operating with practically -no overhead expense. Where the agents receive -salaries these must be paid jointly by all the publishers -whose books they handle. This should naturally -be done through a central bureau or selling -agency. Efficient agencies already exist.</p> - -<p>The “book agent” is a classical joke. He is a -classical joke because he peddled one book, and the -wrong sort of a book, from door to door. You -must equip him with fifty books, new and alluring, -of all publishers; and arm him with sheets and circulars -describing enticingly a hundred others. He -must know individuals and their tastes and must -have one or more of the best book reviewing periodicals -in the country. He must have catalogues and -news notes and special offers to put over. If he -gives you all his time he must have assurance of a -living, especially until he has a good start or exhibits -his incapacity for pioneering. He must have -an incentive above and beyond any salary that may -be paid him.</p> - -<p>But the consideration of details in this place is impossible. -The structural outline and much adaptable -detail is already in highly successful use by -periodicals of many sorts. In fundamentals it requires -no profounder skill than that of the clever -copyist.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span></p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>We charged in the third count of our indictment -that books are rather frequently advertised in the -wrong places. We had in mind the principle that -for every book considerable enough to get itself -published by a publisher of standing there is, somewhere, -a particular audience; just as there is a certain -body of readers for every news item of enough -moment to get printed in a daily newspaper. A -juster way of expressing the trouble would be this: -Books are rather frequently not advertised in the -right places.</p> - -<p>The clues to the right places must be sought in -the book itself and its authorship, always; and they -are innumerable. As no two books are alike the -best thing to do will be to take a specific example. -Harry Lauder’s <i>A Minstrel in France</i> will serve.</p> - -<p>The first and most obvious thing to do is to advertise -it in every vaudeville theatre in America. -Wherever the programme includes motion pictures -flash the advertisement on the screen with a fifteen -second movie of Lauder himself. Posters and circulars -in the lobby must serve if there are no screen -pictures.</p> - -<p>The next and almost equally obvious thing is to -have Lauder make a phonograph record of some -particularly effective passage in the book, marketing -the record in the usual way, at a popular price.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span> -Newspaper and magazine advertising must be used -heavily and must be distributed on the basis of circulation -almost entirely.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>The external factor in the success of the best -seller is so undeveloped and so rich in possibilities -that one takes leave of it with regret; but we must -go on to some consideration of the internal factor -that makes for big sales—the quality or qualities in -the book itself.</p> - -<p>Without going into a long and elaborate investigation -of best-seller books, sifting and reasoning -until we reach rock bottom, we had better put down -a few dogmas. These, then, are the essentials of -best-selling fiction so far as our observation and -intellect has carried us:</p> - -<p>1. A good story; which means, as a rule, plenty -of surface action but always means a crisis in the -affairs of one or two most-likable characters, a crisis -that is <i>satisfactorily</i> solved.</p> - -<p>Mark the italicized word. Not a “happy ending” -in the twisted sense in which that phrase is -used. Always a happy ending in the sense in which -we say, “That was a happy word”—meaning a fit -word, the “mot juste” of the French. Always a -fitting ending, not always a “happy ending” in the -sense of a pleasant ending. The ending of <i>Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> -Britling Sees It Through</i> is not pleasant, but fitting -and, to the majority of readers, uplifting, ennobling, -fine.</p> - -<p>2. Depths below the surface action for those who -care to plumb them.</p> - -<p>No piece of fiction can sell largely unless it has -a region of philosophy, moral ideas—whatever you -will to call it—for those who crave and must have -that mental immersion. The reader must not be -led beyond his depth but he must be able to go into -deep water and swim as far as his strength will -carry him if he so desires.</p> - -<p>3. The ethical, social and moral implications of -the surface action must, in the end, accord with the -instinctive desires of mankind. This is nothing like -as fearful as it sounds, thus abstractly stated. -The instinctive desires of men are pretty well -known. Any psychologist can tell you what they -are. They are few, primitive and simple. They -have nothing to do with man’s reason except that -man, from birth to death, employs his reason in -achieving the satisfaction of these instincts. The -two oldest and most firmly implanted are the instinct -for self-preservation and the instinct to perpetuate -the race. The social instinct, much younger -than either, is yet thousands upon thousands of years -old and quite as ineradicable.</p> - -<p>Because it violates the self-preservative instinct -no story of suicide can have a wide human audience<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span> -unless, in the words of Dick at the close of Masefield’s -<i>Lost Endeavour</i>, we are filled with the feeling -that “life goes on.” The act of destruction -must be, however blindly, an act of immolation on -the altar of the race. Such is the feeling we get -in reading Jack London’s largely autobiographical -<i>Martin Eden</i>; and, in a much more striking instance, -the terrible act that closed the life of the heroine -in Tolstoy’s <i>Anna Karenina</i> falls well before the -end of the book. In <i>Anna Karenina</i>, as in <i>War and -Peace</i>, the Russian novelist conveys to every reader -an invincible conviction of the unbreakable continuity -of the life of the race. The last words of -<i>Anna Karenina</i> are not those which describe Anna’s -death under the car wheels but the infinitely hopeful -words of Levin:</p> - -<p>“I shall continue to be vexed with Ivan the coach-man, -and get into useless discussions, and express -my thoughts blunderingly. I shall always be blaming -my wife for what annoys me, and repenting at -once. I shall always feel a certain barrier between -the Holy of Holies of my inmost soul, and the souls -of others, even my wife’s. I shall continue to pray -without being able to explain to myself why. But -my whole life, every moment of my life, independently -of whatever may happen to me, will be, not -meaningless as before, but full of the deep meaning -which I shall have the power to impress upon it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span></p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>It is because they appeal so strongly and simply -and directly to our instinctive desires that the stories -of Jack London are so popular; it is their perfect -appeal to our social instinct that makes the tales -of O. Henry sell thousands of copies month after -month. Not even Dickens transcended O. Henry -in the perfection of this appeal; and O. Henry set -the right value on Dickens as at least one of his -stories shows.</p> - -<p>Civilization and education refine man’s instinctive -desires, modify the paths they take, but do not -weaken them perceptibly from generation to generation -except in a few individual cases. Read the -second chapter of Harold Bell Wright’s <i>The Shepherd -of the Hills</i> and observe the tremendous call -to the instinct of race perpetuation, prefaced by a -character’s comment on the careless breeding of man -as contrasted with man’s careful breeding of animals. -And if you think the appeal is crude, be very -sure of this: The crudity is in yourself, in the instinct -that you are not accustomed to have set vibrating -with such healthy vigor.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>All this deals with broadest fundamentals. But -they are what the publisher, judging his manuscript,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span> -must fathom. They are deeper down than the sales -manager need go, or the bookseller; deeper than -the critic need ordinarily descend in his examination -into the book’s qualities.</p> - -<p>Ordinarily it will be enough for the purpose to -analyze a story along the lines of human instinct -as it has been modified by our society and our surroundings -and conventionalized by habit. The publishers -of Eleanor H. Porter’s novel <i>Oh, Money! -Money!</i> were not only wholly correct but quite sufficiently -acute in their six reasons for predicting—on -the character of the story alone—a big sale.</p> - -<p>The first of these was that the yarn dealt with the -getting and spending of money, “the most interesting -subject in the world,” asserted the publishers—and -while society continues to be organized on its -present basis their assertion is, as regards great -masses of mankind, a demonstrable fact.</p> - -<p>The second reason was allied to the first; the -story would “set every reader thinking how <i>he</i> -would spend the money.” And the third: it was a -Cinderella story, giving the reader “the joy of -watching a girl who has never been fairly treated -come out on top in spite of all odds.” This is a -powerful appeal to the modified instinct of self-preservation. -The fourth reason—“the scene is laid -in a little village and the whole book is a gem of -country life and shrewd Yankee philosophy”—answers -to the social hunger in the human heart.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> -Fifth: “A charming love theme with a happy ending.” -Sixth: “The story teaches an unobtrusive -lesson ... that happiness must come from within, -and that money cannot buy it.” To go behind such -reasons is, for most minds, not to clarify but to confuse. -Folks feel these things and care nothing -about the source of the river of feeling.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>With the non-fictional book the internal factor -making for large sales is as diverse as the kinds -of non-fictional volumes. A textbook on a hitherto -untreated subject of sudden interest to many thousands -of readers has every prospect of a large sale; -but this is not the kind of internal factor that a -publisher is likely to err in judging! Any alert -business man acquiring correct information will -profit by such an opportunity.</p> - -<p>But there is a book called <i>In Tune with the Infinite</i>, -the work of a man named Ralph Waldo -Trine, which has sold, at this writing, some 530,000 -copies, having been translated into eighteen languages. -A man has been discovered sitting on the -banks of the Yukon reading it; it has been observed -in shops and little railway stations in Burmah and -Ceylon. This is what is called, not at all badly, an -“inspirational book.” Don’t you think a publisher -might well have erred in judging that manuscript?</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>Mr. Trine’s booklet, <i>The Greatest Thing Ever -Known</i>, has sold 160,000 copies; his book <i>What -All the World’s A-Seeking</i>, is in its 138,000th. It -will not do to overlook the attractiveness of these -titles. What, most people will want to know, is -“the greatest thing ever known”? And it is human -to suppose that what you are seeking is what all the -world is after, and to want to read a book that holds -out an implied promise to help you get it.</p> - -<p>The tremendous internal factor of these books -of Mr. Trine’s is that they articulate simple (but -often beautiful) ideas that lie in the minds of hundreds -of thousands of men and women, ideas unformulated -and by the hundred thousand unutterable. -For any man who can say the thing that is -everywhere felt, the audience is limitless.</p> - -<p>In autobiography a truly big sale is not possible -unless the narrative has the fundamental qualities -we have designated as necessary in the fictional best -seller. All the popular autobiographies are stories -that appeal powerfully to our instinctive desires and -this is the fact with such diverse revelations as those -of Benjamin Franklin and Benvenuto Cellini, Jean -Jacques Rousseau and Henry Adams. The sum of -the instinctive desires is always overwhelmingly in -favor of normal human existences. For this reason -the predetermined audience of Mr. Tarkington’s -<i>Conquest of Canaan</i> is many times greater -than that of Mr. Dreiser’s <i>Sister Carrie</i>. A moment’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -reflection will show that this is inevitable, -since these instinctive desires of ours are so many -resistless forces exerted simultaneously on us and -combining, in a period of years, to make a single -resultant force impelling us to lead normal, sane, -“healthy” and wholesome lives. On such lives, -lived by the vast majority of men and women everywhere, -the security of every form of human society -depends; indeed, the continued existence of man -on the face of the earth is dependent upon them.</p> - -<p>You may say that Rousseau, Cellini, Marie Bashkirtseff, -even Franklin and Henry Adams, led existences -far from normal. The answer is that we -accept the stories of their lives in fact where we -(or most of us) would never accept them in fiction. -We know that these lives were lived; and the -very circumstance that they were abnormal lives -makes us more eager to know about and understand -them. What most of us care for most is such a -recital as Hamlin Garland’s <i>A Son of the Middle -Border</i>. The secret of the influence of the life of -Abraham Lincoln upon the American mind and -the secret of the appeal made by Theodore Roosevelt, -the man, to his countrymen in general during -his lifetime is actually one and the same—the triumph -of normal lives, lived normally, lived up to -the hilt, and overshadowing almost everything else -contemporary with them. Such men vindicate common -lives, however humbly lived. We see, as in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> -an apocalyptic vision, what any one of us may become; -and in so far as any one of us has become so -great we all of us share in his greatness.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>But perhaps the greatest element in predetermining -the possible audience for a non-fiction book is -its timeliness. Important, often enough, in the case -of particular novels, the matter of timeliness is much -more so with all other books soever. It cannot be -overlooked in autobiography; <i>The Education of -Henry Adams</i> attracted a great host of readers in -1918 and 1919 because it became accessible to them -in 1918 and not in 1913 or 1929. In 1918 and -1919 the minds of men were peculiarly troubled. -Especially about education. H. G. Wells was articulating -the disastrous doubts that beset numbers -of us, first, in <i>Joan and Peter</i>, with its subtitle, <i>The -Story of an Education</i>, drawing up an indictment -which, whatever its bias, distortion and unfairness -yet contained a lot of terrible truth; and then, in -<i>The Undying Fire</i>, dedicated “to all schoolmasters -and schoolmistresses and every teacher in the -world,” returning to the subject, but this time constructively. -Yes, a large number of persons were -thinking about education in 1918-19, and the ironical -attitude of Henry Adams toward his own was -of keenest interest to them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span></p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>We have discussed the internal factor which -makes for a big sale in books rather sketchily because, -as a whole, book publishers can tell it when -they see it (all that is necessary) even though it may -puzzle authors who haven’t mastered it. So far as -authors are concerned we believe that this factor can, -in many instances, be mastered. The enterprise is -not different from developing a retentive memory, -or skill over an audience in public speaking; but as -with both these achievements no short cut is really -possible and advice and suggestion (you can’t honestly -call it instruction) can go but a little way. No -end of nonsense has been uttered on the subject of -what it is in books that makes them sell well, and -nonsense will not cease to be uttered about it while -men write. What is of vastly more consequence -than any effort to exploit the internal factor in best -sellers is the failure to make every book published -sell its best. If, in general, books sell not more than -one-quarter the number of copies they should sell, -an estimate to which we adhere, then the immediate -and largest gain to publishers, authors and public -will be in securing 100 per cent. sales.</p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>A word in closing about the familiar argument -that the habits of our people have changed, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span> -they no longer have time to read books, that motoring -and movies have usurped the place of reading.</p> - -<p>Intercommunication is not a luxury but a necessity. -Transportation is only a means of intercommunication. -As the means of intercommunication—books, -newspapers, mail services, railroads, aircraft, -telephones, automobiles, motion pictures—multiply -the use of each and every one increases with -one restriction: A new means of intercommunication -paralleling but greatly improving an existing means -will largely displace it—as railroads have largely -superseded canals.</p> - -<p>As a means of a particular and indispensable kind -of intercommunication nothing has yet appeared -that parallels and at the same time decidedly improves -upon books. Newspapers and magazines do -not and cannot, though they most nearly offer the -same service. You cannot go in your Ford to hear -from the lips of Mr. Tarkington his new novel and -seeing it on the screen isn’t the same thing as reading -it—as we all know. And until some inventor -enables us to sit down with an author and get his -story whole, at our own convenience and related in -his own words, by some device much more attractive -than reading a book,—why, until then books -will be bought and read in steadily increasing numbers. -For with its exercise the taste for intercommunication -intensifies. To have been somewhere -is to want to read about it, to have read about a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> -place is to want to go there in innumerable instances. -It is a superficial view that sees in the -spread of automobiles and motion pictures an arrest -of reading. As time goes on and more and -more people read books, both absolutely and relatively -to the growth of populations, shall we hear -a wail that people’s habits have changed and that -the spread of book-reading has checked the spread -of automobiling and lessened the attendance at the -picture shows? Possibly we shall hear that outcry -but we doubt it; nor does our doubt rest upon -any feeling that books will not be increasingly read.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span> -<p class="ph1">WRITING A NOVEL</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak">VIII<br /> - - -<small>WRITING A NOVEL</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap">THERE are at least as many ways of writing -a novel as there are novelists and doubtless -there are more; for it is to be presumed that every -novelist varies somewhat in his methods of labor. -The literature on the business of novel-writing is -not extensive. Some observations and advice on -the part of Mr. Arnold Bennett are, indeed, about -all the average reader encounters; we have forgotten -whether they are embedded in <i>The Truth About -An Author</i> or in that other masterpiece, <i>How to Live -on 2,400 Words a Day</i>. It may be remarked that -there is no difficulty in living on 2,400 words a day, -none at all, where the writer receives five cents a -word or better.</p> - -<p>But there we go, talking about money, a shameful -subject that has only a backstairs relation to -Art. Let us ascend the front staircase together, -first. Let us enter the parlor of Beauty-Is-Truth-Truth-Beauty, -which, the poet assured us, is all we -know or need to know. Let us seat ourselves in -lovely æsthetic surroundings. If later we have to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span> -go out the back way maybe we can accomplish it -unobserved.</p> - -<p>There are only three motives for writing a novel. -The first is to satisfy the writer’s self, the second -is to please or instruct other persons, the third is -to earn money. We will consider these motives in -order.</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>The best novels are written from a blending of -all three motives. But it is doubtful if a good -novel has ever been written in which the desire to -satisfy some instinct in himself was not present -in the writer’s purpose.</p> - -<p>Just what this instinct is can’t so easily be answered. -Without doubt the greatest part of it -is the instinct of paternity. Into the physiological -aspects of the subject we shall not enter, though -they are supported by a considerable body of evidence. -The longing to father—or mother—certain -fictitious characters is not often to be denied. -Sometimes the story as a story, as an entity, is -the beloved child of its author. Did not Dickens -father Little Nell? How, do you suppose, Barrie -has thought of himself in relation to some of his -youngsters? Any one who has read <i>Lore of Proserpine</i> -not only believes in fairies but understands -the soul of Maurice Hewlett. The relation of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> -creator of a story to his persons is not necessarily -parental. It is always intensely human.</p> - -<p>O. Henry was variously a Big Brother (before -the Big Brothers had been thought of), a father, -an uncle, a friend, a distant cousin, a mere acquaintance, -a sworn enemy of his people. It has -to be so. For the writer lives among the people -he creates. The cap of Fortunatus makes him invisible -to them but he is always there—not to interfere -with them nor to shape their destinies but to -watch them come together or fly apart, to hear what -they say, to guess what they think (from what they -say and from the way they behave), to worry over -them, applaud them, frown; but forever as a recorder.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>None of the author’s troubles must appear in -the finished record. Still wearing Fortunatus’s cap -he is required to be as invisible to the reader as to -the people he describes. There are exceptions to -this rule. Dickens was the most notable. Many -readers prefer to have a tale told them by a narrator -frankly prejudiced in favor of some of the -characters and against others. Many—but not a -majority.</p> - -<p>In the best novel that Booth Tarkington has so -far written, <i>The Flirt</i>, the dominating figure is a -heartless young woman to whom the reader continuously<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span> -itches to administer prussic acid in a fatal -dose. But Mr. Tarkington does not scald Cora -Madison with boiling invective nor blister her with -hot irony. He relates her doings in the main -almost dispassionately; and set forth thus nakedly -they are more damnable than any amount of sound -and fury could make them appear to be. Mr. -Tarkington does not wave the prussic acid bottle, -though here and there, distilled through his narrative -and perceptible more in the things he selects to -tell about than in his manner of telling them, the -reader is conscious of a faint odor of almond blossoms, -signifying that the author has uncorked the -acid bottle—perhaps that his restraint in not emptying -it may be the more emphasized.</p> - -<p>May we set things down a little at random? -Then let us seize this moment to point out to the -intending novel writer some omissions in <i>The Flirt</i>. -Our pupil will, when he comes to write his novel, -be certain to think of the “strong scenes.” He will -be painfully eager to get them down. It is these -scenes that will “grip” the reader and assure his -book of a sale of 100,000 copies.</p> - -<p>Battle, murder and sudden death are generally -held to be the very meat of a strong scene. But -when the drunkard Ray Vilas, Cora Madison’s discarded -lover, shoots down Valentine Corliss and -then kills himself, Mr. Tarkington does not fill -pages with it. He takes scarce fifteen lines—perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span> -a little over 100 words—to tell of the double -slaying. Nor does he relate what Ray Vilas and -Cora said to each other in that last interview which -immediately preceded the crime. “Probably,” says -Mr. Tarkington, “Cora told him the truth, all of -it; though of course she seldom told quite the truth -about anything in which she herself was concerned”—or -words to that effect.</p> - -<p>Where oh where is the strong scene? Ah, one -man’s strength is another’s weakness. <i>The Flirt</i> -is full of strong scenes but they are infrequently the -scenes which the intending novel writer, reviewing -his tale before setting to work, would select as the -most promising.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>Besides the instinct of paternity—or perhaps in -place of it—the novelist may feel an instinct to -build something, or to paint a beautiful picture, or -mold a lovely figure. This yearning of the artist, -so-called, is sometimes denoted by the word “self-expression,” -a misnomer, if it be not a euphemism, -for the longing to fatherhood. There is just as -much “self-expression” in the paternity of a boy -or a girl as in the creation of a book, a picture or -a building. The child, in any case, has innumerable -other ancestors; you are not the first to have -written such a book or painted such a picture.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>How about the second motive in novel-writing, -the desire to please or instruct others? The only -safe generalization about it seems to be this: A -novel written exclusively from this motive will be -a bad novel. A novel is not, above everything, a -didactic enterprise. Yet even those enterprises of -the human race which are in their essence purely -didactic, designed “to warn, to comfort, to command,” -such as sermons and lessons in school, seldom -achieve their greatest possible effect if instruction -or improvement be the preacher’s or teacher’s -unadorned and unconcealed and only purpose.</p> - -<p>Take a school lesson. Teachers who get the -best results are invariably found to have added -some element besides bare instruction to their work. -Sometimes they have made the lesson entertaining; -sometimes they have exercised that imponderable -thing we call “personal magnetism”; sometimes -they have supplied an incentive to learn that didn’t -exist in the lesson itself.</p> - -<p>Take a sermon. If the auditor does not feel -the presence in it of something besides the mere -intelligence the words convey the sermon leaves the -auditor cold.</p> - -<p>Pure intellect is not a force in human affairs. -Bach wrote music with a very high intellectual content -but the small leaven of sublime melody is present -in his work that lasts through the centuries. -Shakespeare and Beethoven employed intellect and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span> -emotionalism in the proportion of fifty-fifty. Sir -Joshua Reynolds mixed his paint “with brains, sir”; -but the significant thing is that Sir Joshua did not -use only gray matter on his palette. Those who -economize on emotionalism in one direction usually -make up for it, not always consciously, in another. -Joseph Hergesheimer, writing <i>Java Head</i>, is very -sparing in the emotionalism bound up with action -and decidedly lavish in the emotionalism inseparable -from sensuous coloring and “atmosphere.”</p> - -<p>No, a novel written wholly to instruct will never -do; but neither will a novel written entirely to -please, to give æsthetic or sensuous enjoyment to -the reader. Such a novel is like a portion of a fine -French sauce—with nothing to spread it on. It is -honey without a crust to dip.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Writing a novel purely to make money has a -tainted air, thanks to the long vogue of a false -tradition. If so, <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i> ought to -be banished from public libraries; for Goldsmith -needed the money and made no bones about saying -so. The facts are, of course, unascertainable; but -we would be willing to wager, were there any way -of deciding the bet, that more novels of the first -rank have been written either solely or preponderantly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span> -to earn money than for any other reason -whatever.</p> - -<p>It isn’t writing for the sake of the money that -determines the merit of the result; <i>that</i> is settled -by two other factors, the author’s skill and the -author’s conscience. And the word “skill” here -necessarily includes each and every endowment the -writer possesses as well as such proficiency as he -may have acquired.</p> - -<p>Suppose A. and B. both to have material for a -first-rate novel. Both are equally skilled in novel -writing. Both are equally conscientious. A. writes -his novel for his own satisfaction and to please and -instruct others. He is careful and honest about it. -He delights in it. B. writes his novel purely to -make a few thousand dollars. He is, naturally, -careful and honest in doing the job; and he probably -takes such pleasure in it as a man may take -in doing well anything he can do well, from laying -a sewer to flying an airplane. We submit that B.’s -may easily be the better novel. It is true that B. -is under a pressure that A. does not know and that -B.’s work may be affected in ways of which he is -not directly aware by the necessity to sell his finished -product. But most of the best work in the -world is done under some compulsion or other; -and it is the sum of human experience that the compulsion -to do work which will find favor in the -eyes of the worker’s fellows is the healthfullest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span> -compulsion of them all. Certainly it is more -healthful than the compulsion merely to please -yourself. And if B. is under a pressure A.’s danger -lies precisely in the fact that he is not under a -pressure, or under too slight a pressure. It is a -tenable hypothesis that Flaubert would have been -a better novelist if he had had to make a living by -his pen. Some indirect evidence on the point may -possibly be found in the careers of certain writers -whose first books were the product of a need to -buy bread and butter; and whose later books were -the product of no need at all—nor met any.</p> - -<p>So much for motives in novel-writing. You -should write (1) because you need the money, (2) -to satisfy your own instincts, and (3) to please and, -perchance, instruct other persons.</p> - -<p>Take a week or two to get your motives in order -and then, and not until then, read what follows, -which has to do with how you are presently to proceed -about the business of writing your novel.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>It is settled that you are going to write a novel. -You have examined your motive and found it pure -and worthy of you. Comes now the great question -of how to set about the business.</p> - -<p>At this point let no one rise up and “point out” -that Arnold Bennett has told how. Arnold Bennett<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span> -has told how to do everything—how to live on -twenty-four hours a day (but not how to enjoy it), -how to write books, how to acquire culture, how to -be yourself and manage yourself (in the unfortunate -event that you cannot be someone else or -have no one, like a wife, to manage you), how to -do everything, indeed, except rise up and call -Arnold Bennett blessed.</p> - -<p>The trouble with Mr. Bennett’s directions is—they -won’t work.</p> - -<p>Mr. Bennett tells you to write like everything and -get as much of your novel done as possible before -the Era of Discouragement sets in. Then, no matter -how great your Moment of Depression, you will -be able to stand beside the table, fondly stroking a -pile of pages a foot high, and reassure yourself, -saying: “Well, but here, at least, is so much done. -No! I cannot take my hand from the plough now! -No! I must Go On. I must complete my destiny.” -(One’s novel is always one’s Destiny of -the moment.)</p> - -<p>It sounds well, but the truth is that when you -strike the Writer’s Doldrums the sight of all that -completed manuscript only enrages you to the last -degree. You are embittered by the spectacle of so -much effort wasted. You feel like tearing it up -or flinging it in the wastebasket. If you are a -Rudyard Kipling or an Edna Ferber, you do that -thing. And your wife or your mother carefully retrieves<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span> -your <i>Recessional</i> or your <i>Dawn O’Hara</i> and -sends it to the publisher who brings it out, regardless -of expense, and sells a large number of copies—to -the booksellers, anyway.</p> - -<p>Mr. Bennett also tells you how to plan the long, -slow culminant movement of your novel; how to -walk in the park and compose those neat little climaxes -which should so desirably terminate each -chapter; how to—— But what’s the use? Let us -illustrate with a fable.</p> - -<p>Once an American, meeting Mr. Bennett in London, -saluted him, jocularly (he meant it jocularly) -with the American Indian word of greeting: -“How?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Bennett immediately began to tell him how -and the American never got away until George H. -Doran, the publisher, who was standing near by, -exclaimed:</p> - -<p>“That’s enough, Enoch, for a dollar volume!”</p> - -<p>(Mr. Doran, knowing Bennett well, calls him by -his first name, a circumstance that should be pointed -out to G. K. Chesterton, who would evolve a touching -paradox about the familiarity of the unfamiliar.)</p> - -<p>That will do for Arnold. If we mention Arnold -again it must distinctly be understood that we have -reference to some other Arnold—Benedict Arnold -or Matthew Arnold or Dorothy Arnold or Arnold -Daly.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>Well, to get back (in order to get forward), you -are about beginning your novel (nice locution, -“about beginning”) and are naturally taking all the -advice you can get, if it doesn’t cost prohibitively, -and this we are about to give doesn’t.</p> - -<p>The first thing for you to do is not, necessarily, -to decide on the subject of your novel.</p> - -<p>It is not absolutely indispensable to select the -subject of a novel before beginning to write it. -Many authors prefer to write a third or a half of -the novel before definitely committing themselves -to a particular theme. For example, take <i>The Roll -Call</i>, by Arnold—it must have been Arnold -Constable, or perhaps it was Matthew. <i>The Roll Call</i> -is a very striking illustration of the point we would -make. Somewhere along toward the end of <i>The -Roll Call</i> the author decided that the subject of the -novel should be the war and its effect on the son of -Hilda Lessways by her bigamous first husband—or, -he wasn’t exactly her husband, being a bigamist, -but we will let it go at that. Now Hilda Lessways -was, or became, the wife of Edwin Clayhanger; -and George Cannon, Clayhanger’s—would you say, -stepson? Hilda’s son, anyway—George Cannon, -the son of a gun—oh, pardon, the son of Bigamist -Cannon—the stepson of, or son of the -wife of, Edwin Clayhanger of the Five Towns—George -Cannon.... Where were we?...<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span> -Hilda Lessways Clayhanger, the—well, wife—of -Bigamist Cannon....</p> - -<p>The relationships in this novel are very confusing, -like the novel and the subject of it, but if -you can read the book you will see that it illustrates -our point perfectly.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Well, go ahead and write. Don’t worry about -the subject. You know how it is, a person often -can’t see the forest for the trees. When you’re -writing 70,000 words or maybe a few more you -can’t expect to see your way out of ’em very easily. -When you are out of the trees you can look back -and see the forest. And when you are out of the -woods of words you can glance over ’em and find -out what they were all about.</p> - -<p>However, the 80,000 words have to be written, -and it is up to you, somehow or other, to set down -the 90,000 parts of speech in a row. Now 100,000 -words cannot be written without taking thought. -Any one who has actually inscribed 120,000 words -knows that. Any one who has written the 150,000 -words necessary to make a good-sized novel -(though William Allen White wouldn’t call <i>that</i> -good measure) understands the terrible difficulties -that confront a mortal when he sits down to enter -upon the task of authorship, the task of putting on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span> -paper the 200,000 mono- or polysyllables that shall -hold the reader breathless to the end, if only from -the difficulty of pronouncing some of them.</p> - -<p>Where to start? For those who are not yet -equipped with self-starters we here set down a few -really first-class openings for either the spring or -fall novel trade:</p> - -<p>“Marinda was frightened. When she was -frightened her eyes changed color. They were -dark now, and glittering restlessly like the sea when -the wind hauls northwest. Jack Hathaway, unfamiliar -with weather signs, took no heed of the -impending squall. He laughed recklessly, dangerously....” -(Story of youth and struggle.)</p> - -<p>“The peasant combed the lice from his beard, -spat and said, grumbling: ‘Send us ploughs that we -may till the soil and save Russia.... Send us -ploughs.’” (Realistic story of Russia.)</p> - -<p>“Darkness, suave, dense, enfolding, lay over the -soft loam of the fields. The girl, moving silently -across the field, felt the mystery of the dark; the -scent of the soil and the caress of the night alike -enchanted her. Hidden in the folds of her dress, -clutched tightly in her fingers, was the ribbon he -had given her. With a quick indrawing of her -breath she paused, and, screened by the utter blackness -that enveloped her, pressed it to her lips....” -(Story of the countryside. Simple, trusting -innocence. Lots of atmosphere. After crossing the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span> -field the girl strikes across Haunted Heath, a -description of which fills the second chapter.)</p> - -<p>All these are pretty safe bets, if you’re terribly -hard up. Think them over. Practice them daily -for a few weeks.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>Now that you have some idea about writing a -novel it may be as well for you to consider the consequences -before proceeding to the irrevocable act.</p> - -<p>One of the consequences will certainly be the discovery -of many things in the completed manuscript -that you never intended. This is no frivolous -allusion to the typographical errors you will find—for -a typewriter is as capable of spoonerisms as -the human tongue. We have reference to things -that you did not consciously put into your narrative.</p> - -<p>And first let it be said that many things that -seem to you unconscious in the work of skilled -writers are deliberate art (as the phrase goes). -The trouble is that the deliberation usually spoils -the art. An example must be had and we will take -it in a novel by the gifted American, Joseph -Hergesheimer. Before proceeding further with -this Manual for Beginners read <i>Java Head</i> if you -can; if not, never mind.</p> - -<p>Now in <i>Java Head</i> the purpose of Mr. Hergesheimer -was, aside from the evocation of a beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span> -bit of a vanished past, the delineation of several -persons of whom one represented the East -destroyed in the West and another the West -destroyed in the East. Edward Dunsack, back in -Salem, Massachusetts, the victim of the opium -habit, represented the West destroyed in the East; -the Chinese wife of Gerrit Ammidon represented -the East destroyed in the West. Mr. Hergesheimer -took an artist’s pride in the fact that the -double destruction was accomplished with what -seemed to him the greatest possible economy of -means; almost the only external agency employed, -he pointed out, was opium. Very well; this is -æstheticism, pure and not so simple as it looks. -It is a Pattern. It is a musical phrase or theme -presented as a certain flight of notes in the treble, -repeated or echoed and inverted in the bass. It is -a curve on one side of a staircase balanced by a -curve on the other. It is a thing of symmetry and -grace and it is the expression, perfect in its way, -of an idea. Kipling expressed very much the same -idea when he told us that East is East and West -is West and never the twain shall meet. Mr. -Hergesheimer amplifies and extends. If the two -are brought in contact each is fatal to the other. -Is that all?</p> - -<p>It is not all, it is the mere beginning. When -you examine <i>Java Head</i> with the Pattern in mind -you immediately discover that the Pattern is carried<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span> -out in bewildering detail. Everything is symmetrically -arranged. For instance, many a reader -must have been puzzled and bewildered by the -heartbreaking episode at the close of the novel in -which Roger Brevard denies the delightful girl -Sidsall Ammidon. The affair bears no relation to -the currents of the tale; it is just a little eddy to -one side; it is unnecessarily cruel and wounding to -our sensibilities. Why have it at all?</p> - -<p>The answer is that in his main narrative Mr. -Hergesheimer has set before us Gerrit Ammidon, -a fellow so quixotic that he marries twice out of -sheer chivalry. He has drawn for us the fantastic -scroll of such a man, a sea-shape not to be matched -on shore. Well, then, down in the corner, he must -inscribe for us another contrasting, balancing, -compensating, miniatured scroll—a land-shape in -the person of Roger Brevard who is so unquixotic -as to offset Gerrit Ammidon completely. Gerrit -Ammidon will marry twice for incredible reasons -and Roger Brevard will not even marry once for -the most compelling of reasons—love. The beautiful -melody proclaimed by the violins is brutally -parodied by the tubas.</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>Is it all right thus? It is not all right thus and -it never can be so long as life remains the unpatterned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span> -thing we discern it to be. If life were completely -patterned it would most certainly not be -worth living. When we say that life is unpatterned -we mean, of course, that we cannot read all its -patterns (we like to assume that all patterns are -there, because it comforts us to think of a fundamental -Order and Symmetry).</p> - -<p>But so long as life is largely unpatterned, or so -long as we cannot discern all its patterns, life is -eager, interesting, surprising and altogether distracting -and lovely however bewildering and distressing, -too. Different people take the unreadable -differently. Some, like Thomas Hardy, take it in -defiant bitterness of spirit; some, like Joseph -Conrad, take it in profound faith and wonder. -Hardy sees the disorder that he cannot fathom; -Conrad admires the design that he can only incompletely -trace. To Hardy the world is a place -where—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;</div> -<div class="verse">They kill us for their sport.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>To Conrad the world is a place where men may -continually make the glorious and heartening discovery -that a solidarity exists among them; that -they are united by a bond as unbreakable as it is -mysterious.</p> - -<p>And to others, as regrettably to Mr. Hergesheimer -writing <i>Java Head</i>, the world is a place<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span> -where it is momentarily sufficient to trace casual -symmetries without thought of their relation to an -ineluctable whole.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>What, then, is the novelist to do? Is it not -obvious that he must not busy himself too carefully -with the business of patterning the things he has -to tell? For the moment he has traced everything -out nicely and beautifully he may know for a -surety that he has cut himself off from the larger -design of Life. He has got his little corner of the -Oriental rug all mapped out with the greatest exactitude. -But he has lost touch with the bigger -intricacy beyond his corner. It is a prayer rug. He -had better kneel down and pray.</p> - -<p>Now there are novels in which no pattern at all -is traced; and these are as bad as those which -minutely map a mere corner. These are meaningless -and confused stories in which nobody can -discern any cause or effect, any order or law, any -symmetry or proportion or expressed idea. These -are the novels which have been justified as a “slice -of life” and which have brought into undeserved -disrepute the frequently painstaking manner of -their telling. The trouble is seldom primarily, as -so many people think, with the material but with -its presentation. You may take almost any material -you like and so present it as to make it mean<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span> -something; and you may also take almost any -material you like and so present it as to make it -mean nothing to anybody. A heap of bricks is -meaningless; but the same bricks are intelligible -expressed as a building of whatever sort, or merely -as a sidewalk with zigzags, perhaps, of a varicolor.</p> - -<p>The point we would make—and we might as -well try to drive it home without further ineffectual -attempts at illustration—is that you must do some -patterning with your material, whether bricks for -a building or lives for a story; but if you pattern -too preciously your building will be contemptible -and your story without a soul. In your building -you must not be so decided as to leave no play for -another’s imagination, contemplating the structure. -In your narrative you must not be so dogmatic -about two and two adding to four as to leave no -room for a wild speculation that perhaps they came -to five. For it is not the certainty that two and two -have always made four but the possibility that -some day they may make five that makes life worth -living—and guessing about on the printed page.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>Perhaps the most serious consequence of writing -a novel is the revelation of yourself it inevitably -entails.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span>We are not thinking, principally, of the discovery -you will make of the size of your own soul. We -have in mind the laying bare of yourself to others.</p> - -<p>Of course you do reveal yourself to yourself -when you write a book to reveal others to others. -It has been supposed that a man cannot say or do -a thing which does not expose his nature. This is -nonsense; you do not expose your nature every -time you take the subway, though a trip therein -may very well be an index to your manners. The -fact remains that no man ever made a book or a -play or a song or a poem, with any command of the -technique of his work, without in some measure -giving himself away. Where this is not enough -of an inducement some other, such as a tin whistle -with every bound copy, is offered; no small addition -as it enables the reviewer to declare, hand on heart, -that “this story is not to be whistled down the -wind.” Some have doubted Bernard Shaw’s Irishism, -which seems the queerer as nearly everything -he has written has carried a shillelagh concealed -between the covers. Recently Frank K. Reilly of -Chicago gave away one-cent pieces to advertise a -book called <i>Penny of Top Hill Trail</i>. He might -be said, and in fact he hereby is said, thus to have -coppered his risk in publishing it.... All of -which is likely to be mistaken for jesting. Let us -therefore jest that we may be taken with utmost -seriousness.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span>The revelation of yourself to yourself, which the -mere act of writing a novel brings to pass, may -naturally be either pleasant or unpleasant. Very -likely it is unpleasant in a majority of instances, -a condition which need not necessarily reflect upon -our poor human nature. If we did not aspire so -high for ourselves we should not suffer such awful -disappointments on finding out where we actually -get off. The only moral, if there is one, lies in our -ridiculous aim. Imagine the sickening of heart -with which Oscar Wilde contemplated himself after -completing <i>The Picture of Dorian Grey</i>! And -imagine the lift it must have given him to look -within himself as he worked at <i>The Ballad of Reading -Gaol</i>! The circumstances of life and even the -actual conduct of a man are not necessarily here or -there—or anywhere at all—in this intimate contemplation. -There is one mirror before which we -never pose. God made man in His own image. -God made His own image and put it in every man.</p> - -<p>It is there! Nothing in life transcends the -wonder of the moment when, each for himself, we -make this discovery. Then comes the struggle to -remold ourselves nearer to our heart’s desire. It -succeeds or it doesn’t; perhaps it succeeds only -slightly; anyway we try for it. The sleeper, twisting -and turning, dreaming and struggling, is the -perfect likeness of ourselves in the waking hours -of our whole earthly existence. Because they have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span> -seen this some have thought life no better than a -nightmare. Voltaire suggested that the earth and -all that dwelt thereon was only the bad dream of a -god on some other planet. We would point out -the bright side of this possibility: It presupposes -the existence somewhere of a mince pie so delicious -and so powerful as to evoke the likenesses of -Cæsar and Samuel Gompers, giraffes, Mr. Taft, -violets, Mr. Roosevelt, Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovski, -Billy Sunday, Wu-Ting Fang, Helen of Troy and -Mother Jones, groundhogs, H. G. Wells; perhaps -Bolshevism is the last writhe. Mince pie, unwisely -eaten instead of the dietetic nectar and ambrosia, -may well explain the whole confused universe. -And you and I—we can create another universe, -equally exciting, by eating mince pie to-night!... -You see there is a bright side to everything, for the -mince pie is undoubtedly of a heavenly flavor.</p> - -<p>We were saying, when sidetracked by the necessity -of explaining the universe, that the self-revelation -which writing a book entails is in most cases -depressing, but not by any means always so. Boswell -was not much of a man judged by the standards -of his own day or ours, either one, yet Boswell -knew himself better than he knew Dr. Johnson -by the time he had finished his life of the Doctor. -It must have bucked him up immensely to know -that he was at least big enough himself to measure -a bigger man up and down, in and out, criss-cross<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span> -and sideways, setting down the complicated result -without any error that the human intelligence can -detect. It must have appeased the ironical soul of -Henry Adams to realise that he was one of the -very few men who had never fooled himself about -himself, and that evidence of his phenomenal -achievement in the shape of the book <i>The Education -of Henry Adams</i>, would survive him after his -death—or at least, after the difficulties of communicating -with those on earth had noticeably increased -(we make this wise modification lest someone -match Sir Oliver Lodge’s <i>Raymond, or Life -After Death</i> with a volume called <i>Henry, or Re-Education -After Death</i>).</p> - -<p>It must have sent a thrill of pleasure through the -by no means insensitive frame of Joseph Conrad -when he discovered, on completing <i>Nostromo</i>, that -he had a profounder insight into the economic bases -of modern social and political affairs than nine-tenths -of the professional economists and sociologists—plus -a knowledge of the human heart that -they have never dreamed worth while. For Conrad -saw clearly, and so saw simply; the “silver of -the mine” of this, his greatest story, was, it is true, -an incorruptible metal, but it could and did alter -the corruptible nature of man—and would continue -to do so through generation after generation long -after his Mediterranean sailor-hero had become -dust.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span>Even in the case of the humble and unknown -writer whose completed manuscript, after many -tedious journeys, comes home to him at last, to -be re-read regretfully but with an undying belief -not so much in the work itself as in what it was -meant to express and so evidently failed to—even -in his case the great consolation is the attestation -of a creed. Very bad men have died, as does the -artist in Shaw’s <i>The Doctor’s Dilemma</i>, voicing -with clarity and beauty the belief in which they -think they have lived or ought to have lived; but a -piece of work is always an actual living of some part -of the creed that is in you. It may be a failure but -it has, with all its faults, a gallant quality, the quality -of the deed done, which men have always admired, -and because of which they have invented those -things we call words to embody their praise.</p> - -<p>But what of the consequences of revealing yourself -to others? Writing a novel will surely mean -that you will incur them. We must speak of them -briefly; and then we may get on to the thing for -which you are doubtless waiting with terrible patience—the -way to write the novel itself. Never -fear! If you will but endure steadfastly you shall -Know All.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>“Certainly, publish everything,” commented the -New York <i>Times</i> editorially upon a proposal to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span> -give out earnings, or some other detail, of private -businesses. “All privacy is scandalous,” added the -newspaper. In this satirical utterance lies the ultimate -justification for writing a novel.</p> - -<p>All privacy is scandalous. If you don’t believe -it, read some of the prose of James Joyce. <i>A Portrait -of The Artist As a Young Man</i> will do for a -starter. <i>Ulysses</i> is a follow-up. H. G. Wells likes -the first, while deploring so much sewerage in the -open street. You see, nothing but a sincere conviction -concerning the wickedness of leaving anything -at all unmentioned in public could justify -such narratives as Mr. Joyce’s.</p> - -<p>In a less repulsive sense, the scandal of privacy -is what underlies any novel of what we generally -call the “realistic” sort. Mr. Dreiser, for instance, -thinks it scandalous that we should not know and -publicly proclaim the true nature of such men as -Hurstwood in his <i>Sister Carrie</i>. Mr. Hardy thinks -it scandalous that the world should not publicly -acknowledge the purity of Tess Durbeyfield and -therefore he gives us a book in which she is, as the -subtitle says, “faithfully presented.” Gene Stratton-Porter -thinks it scandalous not to tell the truth -about such a boy as Freckles. The much-experienced -Mr. Tarkington, stirred to his marrow -by what seems almost a world conspiracy to condone -the insufferable conceit of the George -Amberson Minafers among us, writes <i>The Magnificent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span> -Ambersons</i> to make us confess how we hate -’em—and how our instinctive faith in them is -vindicated at last.</p> - -<p>Every novelist who gains a public of any size or -permanence deliberately, and even joyfully, faces -the consequences of the revelation of himself to -some thousands of his fellow-creatures. We don’t -mean that he always delineates himself in the person -of a character, or several characters, in his -stories. He may do that, of course, but the self-exposure -is generally much more merciless. The -novelist can withhold from the character which, -more or less, stands for himself his baser qualities. -What he cannot withhold from the reader is his -own mind’s limitations.</p> - -<p>A novel is bounded by the author’s horizons. If -a man can see only so far and only so deep his -book will show it. If he cannot look abroad, but -can perceive nothing beyond the nose on his face, -that fact will be fully apparent to his co-spectators -who turn the pages of his story. If he can see -only certain colors those who look on with him will -be aware of his defect. Above all, if he can see -persons as all bad or all good, all black or all white, -he will be hanged in effigy along with the puppets -he has put on paper.</p> - -<p>This is the reason why every one should write -a novel. There is only one thing comparable with -it as a means of self-immolation. That, of course,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span> -is tenure of public office. And as there are not -nearly enough public offices to serve the need of -individual discipline, novelizing should be encouraged, -fomented—we had almost said, made compulsory. -Compulsion, however, defeats its own -ends. Let us elect to public offices, as we would -choose to fill scholarships, those who cannot, -through some misfortune, write novels; and let us -induce all the other people in the world that we can -to put pen to paper—not that they may enrich the -world with immortal stories, not that they may -make money, become famous or come to know -themselves, but solely that we may know them for -what they are.</p> - -<p>If Albert Burleson had been induced to write a -novel would we have made him a Congressman -and would President Wilson have made him Postmaster-General? -If William, sometime of Germany, -had written a novel would the Germans have -acquiesced in his theory of Divine Right? Georges -Clemenceau wrote novels and was chosen of the -people to lead them. Hall Caine and Marie Corelli -and Rider Haggard and Arnold Bennett have -written novels which enable us to gauge them pretty -accurately—and not one of them has yet been invited -to help run the League of Nations. The -reason is simple: We know them too well.</p> - -<p>All privacy is scandalous. Thomas Dixon says: -“It is positively immoral that the world should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span> -run on without knowing the depths to which I can -sink. I must write <i>The Way of a Man</i> and make -the world properly contemptuous of me.” Zona -Gale reflects to herself: “After all, with nothing but -these few romances and these <i>Friendship Village</i> -stories, people have no true insight into my real -tastes, affinities, predilections, qualities of mind. -I will write about a fruit and pickle salesman, an -ineffectual sort of person who becomes, almost involuntarily, -a paperhanger. That will give them -the idea of me they lack.”</p> - -<p>William Allen White, without consciously thinking -anything of the kind, is dimly aware that people -generally have a right to know him as a big-hearted -man who makes some mistakes but whose -sympathy is with the individual man and woman -and whose passion is for social progress. The best -way to make people generally acquainted with -William Allen White is to write a novel—say, -<i>In The Heart of a Fool</i>, which they will read.... -The best way to get to know anybody is to get him -to talking about somebody else. Talk about one’s -self is a little too self-conscious.</p> - -<p>And there you have it! It is exactly because -such a writer as H. G. Wells is in reality pretty -nearly always talking about himself that we find it -so difficult to appraise him rightly on the basis of -his novels. Self-consciousness is never absent -from a Wells book. It is this acute self-consciousness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span> -that makes so much of Henry James valueless -to the great majority of readers. They cannot get -past it, or behind it. The great test fails. Mr. -James is dead, and the only way left to get at the -truth of Mr. Wells will be to make him Chancellor -of the Exchequer or, in a socialized British republic, -Secretary of Un-War....</p> - -<p>Dare to be a Daniel Carson Goodman. Write -That Novel. Don’t procrastinate, don’t temporize. -Do It Now, reserving all rights of translation of -words into action in all countries, including the -Scandinavian. Full detailed instructions as to the -actual writing follow.</p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>You may not have noticed it, but even so successful -a novelist as Robert W. Chambers is careful -to respect the three unities that Aristotle (wasn’t -it?) prescribed and the Greeks took always into -account. Not in a single one of his fifty novels -does the popular Mr. Chambers disregard the three -Greek unities. Invariably he looks out for the -time, the place and the girl.</p> - -<p>If Aristotle recommended it and Robert W. -Chambers sticks to it, perhaps you, about to write -your first novel, had better attend to it also.</p> - -<p>Now, to work! About a title. Better have one, -even if it’s only provisional, before you begin to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span> -write. If you can, get the real, right title at the -outset. Sometimes having it will help you through—not -to speak of such cases as Eleanor Hallowell -Abbott’s. The author of <i>Molly Make-Believe</i>, <i>The -Sick-a-Bed Lady</i> and <i>Old-Dad</i> gets her real, right -title and then the story mushrooms out of it, like -a house afire. Ourselves, we are personally the -same. We have three corking titles for as many -novels. One is written. The other two we haven’t -to worry about. They have only to live up to their -titles, which may be difficult for them but will make -it easy for ourselves. We have a Standard. -Everything that lives up to the promise of our -superlative title goes in, everything that is alien to -it or unworthy of it, stays out. This, we may add -parenthetically, was the original motive in instituting -titles of nobility. A man was made a Baron. -Very well, it was expected that he would conform -his character and conduct accordingly. Things -suitable to a Baron he would thenceforth be and -do, things unbefitting his new, exalted station he -would kindly omit.... It works better with books -than with people, so cheer up. Your novel will -come out more satisfactorily than you think.</p> - -<p>Which brings us to the matter of the ending. -Should it be happy or otherwise? More words -have been wasted on this subject than on any other -aspect of fictioneering. You must understand -from the very first that you, personally, have nothing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span> -whatever to say about the ending of your story. -That will be decided by the people of your tale and -the events among which they live. In other words, -the preponderant force in determining the ending -is—inevitability.</p> - -<p>Most people misunderstand inevitability. Others -merely worry about it, as if it were to-morrow’s -weather. Shall we take an umbrella, they ask -anxiously, lest it rain inevitably? Or will the inevitable -come off hot, so that an overcoat will be -a nuisance? Nobody knows, not even the weather -forecaster in Washington. If there were a corresponding -official whose duty it would be to forecast -with equal inaccuracy the endings of novels life -would go on much the same. Readers would still -worry about the last page because they would know -that the official prediction would be wrong at least -half the time. If the Ending Forecaster prophesied: -“Lovers meet happily on page 378; villain -probably killed in train accident” we would go -drearily forward confident that page 378 would disclose -the heroine, under a lowering sky, clasped in -the villain’s arms while the hero lay prone under a -stalled Rolls-Royce, trying to find out why the carburetor -didn’t carburete.</p> - -<p>Inevitability is not the same as heredity. Heredity -can be rigorously controlled—novelists are the -real eugenists—but inevitability is like natural selection -or the origin of species or mutations or O.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span> -Henry: It is the unexpected that happens. Environment -has little in common with inevitability. -In the pages of any competent novelist the girl in -the slums will sooner or later disclose her possession -of the most unlikely traits. Her bravery, her -innocence will become even more manifest than -her beauty. The young feller from Fifth avenue, -whose earliest environment included orange spoons -and Etruscan pottery, will turn out to be a lowdown -brute. Environment is what we want it to be, inevitability -is what we are.</p> - -<p>You think, of course, that you can pre-determine -the outcome of this story you are going to write. -Yes, you can! You can no more pre-determine the -ending than you can pre-determine the girl your -son will marry. It’s exactly like that. For you -must come face to face, before you have written -50 pages of your book, with an appalling and inspiring -Fact. You might as well face it here.</p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>The position of the novelist engaged in writing -a novel can only be indicated by a shocking exaggeration -which is this: He is not much better than -a medium in a trance.</p> - -<p>Now of course such a statement calls for the most -exact explanation. Nobody can give it. Such a -statement calls for indisputable evidence. None exists.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span> -Such a statement, unexplained and unsupported -by testimony, is a gross and unscientific assumption -not even worthy to be damned by being -called a hypothesis. You said it. Nevertheless, the -thing’s so.</p> - -<p>We, personally, having written a novel—or maybe -two—know what we are talking about. The -immense and permanent curiosity of people all over -the planet who read books at all fixes itself upon -the question, in respect of the novelist: “<i>How</i> -does he write?” As Mary S. Watts remarks, that -is the one thing no novelist can tell you. He -doesn’t know himself. But though it is the one -thing the novelist can’t tell you it is not one of -those things that, in the words of Artemus Ward, -no feller kin find out. Any one can find out by -writing a novel.</p> - -<p>And to write one you need little beyond a few -personalities firmly in mind, a typewriter and lots -of white paper. An outline is superfluous and -sometimes harmful. Put a sheet of paper in the -machine and write the title, in capital letters. Below, -write: “By Theophrastus Such,” or whatever -you happen unfortunately to be called or elect, in -bad taste, to call yourself. Begin.</p> - -<p>You will have the first few pages, the opening -scene, possibly the first chapter, fairly in mind; you -may have mental notes on one or two things your<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span> -people will say. Beyond that you have only the -haziest idea of what it will all be about. Write.</p> - -<p>As you write it will come to you. Somehow. -What do you care how? Let the psychologists -stew over that.</p> - -<p>They, in all probability, will figure out that the -story has already completely formed itself, in all -its essentials and in many details, in your subconscious -mind, the lowermost cellar of your uninteresting -personality where moth and rust do not corrupt, -whatever harm they may do higher up, and -where the cobwebs lie even more thickly than in -your alleged brain. As you write, and as the result -of the mere act of writing, the story, lying -dormant in your subcellar, slowly shakes a leg, -quivers, stretches, extends itself to its full length, -yawns, rises with sundry anatomical contortions -and advancing crosses the threshold of your subconsciousness -into the well-dusted and cleaned basement -of your consciousness whence it is but a step -to full daylight and the shadow of printed black -characters upon a to-and-fro travelling page.</p> - -<p>In other words, you are an automaton; and to be -an automaton in this world of exuberant originality -is a blissful thing.</p> - -<p>Your brain is not engaged at all. This is why -writing fiction actually rests the brain. It is why -those who are suffering from brain-fag find recreation -and enjoyment, health and mental strength in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span> -writing a short story or a novel. The short story -is a two weeks’ vacation for the tired mind. Writing -a novel is a month, with full pay. It is true -that readers are rather prone to resent the widespread -habit of novelists recuperating and recovering -their mental faculties at their readers’ expense. -This resentment is without any justification in fact, -since for every novelist who recovers from brain-fag -by writing a work of fiction there are thousands -of readers who restore their exhausted intellects -with a complete rest by reading the aforesaid work -of fiction.</p> - -<p>Of course the subconscious cellar theory of novel-writing -is not final and authoritative. There is at -least one other tenable explanation of how novels -are written, and we proceed to give it.</p> - -<p>This is that the story is projected through the -personality of the writer who is, in all respects, no -more than a mechanism and whose rôle may be -accurately compared to that of a telephone transmitter -in a talk over the wire.</p> - -<p>This theory has the important virtue of explaining -convincingly all the worst novels, as well as all -the best. For a telephone transmitter is not responsible -for what is spoken into it or for what it -transmits. It is not to blame for some very silly -conversations. It has no merit because it forwards -some very wise words. Similarly, if the novelist is -merely a transmitter, a peculiarly delicate and sensitive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span> -medium for conveying what is said and done -somewhere else, perhaps on some other plane by -some other variety of mortals, the novelist is in no -wise to blame for the performances or utterances of -his characters, or clients as they ought, in this view, -to be called; the same novelist might, and probably -would, be the means of transmitting the news of -splendid deeds and the superb utterances of glorious -people, composing one story, and the inanities, verbal -or otherwise, of a lot of fourth dimensional -Greenwich Villagers, constituting another and infinitely -inferior story.... To be sure this explanation, -which relieves the novelist of almost all responsibility -for his novels, ought also to take from -him all the credit for good work. If he is a painfully -conscientious mortal he may grieve for years -over this; but if his first or his second or his third -book sells 100,000 copies he will probably be willing, -in the words of the poet, to take the cash and -let the credit go. Very greedy men invariably insist -on not merely taking the cash but claiming the -credit as well; saintly men clutch at the credit and -instruct their publishers that all author’s royalties -are to be made over to the Fund for Heating the -Igloos of Aged and Helpless Eskimos. But the -funny thing about the whole business is that the -world, which habitually withholds credit where -credit is due, at other times insists on bestowing -credit anyway. There have been whole human<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span> -philosophies based upon the principle of Renunciation -and even whole novels, such as those of Henry -James. But it doesn’t work. Renounce, if you -like, all credit for the books which bear your name -on the title-page. The world will weave its laurel -wreath and crown you with bays just the same. -Men have become baldheaded in a single night in -the effort to avoid unmerited honor and by noon -the next day have looked as if they were bacchantes -or at least hardy perennials, so thick have been the -vine leaves in their hair, or rather on the site of it.... -Which takes us away from our subject. -Where were we? Oh, yes, about writing your -novel....</p> - -<p>As soon as you have done two or three days’ -stint on the book—you ought to plan to write so -many words a day or a week, and it’s no matter -that you don’t know what they will be—as soon -as you’ve got a fairish start you will find that you -have several persons in your story who are, to all -intents and purposes, as much alive as yourself and -considerably more self-willed. They will promptly -take the story in their hands and you will have -nothing to do in the remaining 50,000 words or -more but to set down what happens. The extreme -physical fatigue consequent upon writing so many -words is all you have to guard against. Play golf -or tennis, if you can, so as to offset this physical -fatigue by the physical rest and intellectual exercise<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span> -they respectively afford. Auction bridge in the -evenings, or, as Frank M. O’Brien says, reading -De Morgan and listening to the phonograph, will -give you the emotional outlet you seek.</p> - - -<h3>15</h3> - -<p>No doubt many who have read the foregoing will -turn up their noses at the well-meant advice it contains, -considering that we have largely jested on a -serious subject. We take this occasion to declare -most earnestly, at the conclusion of our remarks, -that we have seldom been so serious in our life. -Such occasional levities as we have allowed ourselves -to indulge in have been plain and obvious, -and of no more importance in the general scheme -of what we have been discussing than the story -of the Irishman with which the gifted after-dinner -speaker circumspectly introduces his most burning -thoughts.</p> - -<p>We mean what we have said. Writing a novel -is one of the most rounded forms of self-education. -It is one of the most honorable too, since, unlike the -holder of public office, the person who is getting -the education does not do so at the public expense. -We have regard, naturally, to the mere act of <i>writing</i> -the novel. If afterward it finds a publisher and -less probably a public—that has nothing to do with -the author, whose self-culture, intensive, satisfying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span> -and wholesome, has been completed before that -time.</p> - -<p>Whether a novelist deserves any credit for the -novel he writes is a question, but he will get the -credit for it anyway and nothing matters where -so wonderful an experience is to be gained. Next -to being hypnotized, there is nothing like it; and -it has the great advantage that you know what you -are doing whereas the hypnotic subject does not. -No preparation is necessary or even desirable since, -even in so specific a detail as the outline of the -story the people of your narrative take things entirely -in their own hands and reduce the outline to -the now well-known status of a scrap of paper.... -We talk of “advice” in writing a novel. 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