{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_64385/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_64385","id":"gutenberg_64385","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64385","summary":null,"tags":["Authorship","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Journalism/Media/Writing","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG\n  AND\n  OTHER EXPLANATIONS\n\n\n\n\n  WHY AUTHORS\n  GO WRONG\n\n  AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS\n\n  BY\n\n  GRANT M. OVERTON\n  AUTHOR OF \u201cTHE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS\u201d\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n\n  NEW YORK\n  MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY\n  1919\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1919,\n  BY\n  MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  CHAPTER                                    PAGE\n\n     I. WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG                    1\n\n    II. A BARBARIC YAWP                        25\n\n   III. IN THE CRITICAL COURT                  39\n\n    IV. BOOK \u201cREVIEWING\u201d                       51\n\n     V. LITERARY EDITORS, BY ONE OF THEM      103\n\n    VI. WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS            119\n\n   VII. THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER         145\n\n  VIII. WRITING A NOVEL                       173\n\n\n\n\n  WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG\n  AND\n  OTHER EXPLANATIONS\n\n\n\n\n  WHY AUTHORS GO\n  WRONG\n\n  AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nWHY AUTHORS GO WRONG\n\n\nThe subject of _Why Authors Go Wrong_ is one to answering which a\nbook might adequately be devoted and perhaps we shall write a book\nabout it one of these days, but not now. When, as and if written the\nbook dealing with the question will necessarily show the misleading\nnature of Mr. Arnold Bennett\u2019s title, _The Truth About an Author_--a\nreadable little volume which does not tell the truth about an author\nin general, but only what we are politely requested to accept as the\ntruth about Arnold Bennett. Mr. Bennett may or may not be telling the\ntruth about himself in that book; his regard for the truth in respect\nof the characters of his fiction has been variable. Perhaps he is more\nscrupulous when it comes to himself, but we are at liberty to doubt it.\nFor a man who will occasionally paint other persons--even fictionary\npersons--as worse than they really are may not unnaturally be expected\nto depict himself as somewhat better than he is.\n\nWe must not stay with Mr. Bennett any longer just now. It is enough\nthat he has not been content to wait for the curtain to rise and has\ninsisted on thrusting himself into our prologue. Exit; and let us get\nback where we were.\n\nWe were indicating that _Why Authors Go Wrong_ is an extensive subject.\nIt is so extensive because there are many authors and many, many more\nreaders. It is extensive because it is a moral and not a literary\nquestion, a human and not an artistic problem. It is extensive because\nit is really unanswerable and anything that is essentially unanswerable\nnecessitates prolonged efforts to answer it, this on the well-known\ntheory that it is better that many be bored than that a few remain\ndissatisfied.\n\n\n2\n\nLet us take up these considerations one by one.\n\nIt seems unlikely that any one will misunderstand the precise subject\nitself. What, exactly, is meant by an author \u201cgoing wrong\u201d? The\nfamiliar euphemism, as perhaps most frequently used, is anything but\nambiguous. Ambiguous-sounding words are generally fraught with a deadly\nand specific meaning--another illustration of the eternal paradox of\nsound and sense.\n\nBut as used in the instance of an author, \u201cgoing wrong\u201d has a great\nvariety of meanings. An author has gone wrong, for example, when he has\ndeliberately done work under his best; he has gone wrong when he has\nwritten for sentimental or \u00e6sthetic reasons and not, as he should, for\nmoney primarily; he has gone wrong when he tries to uplift or educate\nhis readers; he has gone wrong when he has written too many books,\nor has not written enough books, or has written too fast or not fast\nenough, or has written what he saw and not what he felt, or what he\nfelt and not what he saw, or posed in any fashion whatsoever.\n\nEzra Pound, for example, has gone atrociously wrong by becoming a\nFrench Decadent instead of remaining a son of Idaho and growing up to\nbe an American. Of course as a French Decadent he will always be a\nfailure; as Benjamin De Casseres puts it, \u201cthe reality underlying his\nexquisite art is bourgeois and American. He is a ghost materialized by\ncunning effects of lights and mirrors.\u201d\n\n\n3\n\nMr. Robert W. Chambers went wrong in an entirely different fashion. The\nusual charge brought against Mr. Chambers is that he consented to do\nless than his best because it profited him. This is entirely untrue.\nMr. Chambers\u2019s one mistake was that he did not write to make money.\nEvery writer should, because writing is a business and a business is\nsomething which can only be decently conducted with that end in view.\nFancy a real estate business which should not be conducted to make\nmoney! We should have to stop it immediately. It would be a menace to\nthe community, for there is no telling what wickedness of purpose might\nlie behind it. A business not conducted primarily to make money is not\na business but a blind; and very likely a cover for operations of a\ncriminal character. The safety of mankind lies in knowing motives and\nis imperilled by any enterprise that disguises them.\n\nAnd so for Mr. Chambers to refrain deliberately from writing to make\nmoney was a very wrong thing for him to do. Far from having a wicked\nmotive, he had a highly creditable motive, which does not excuse him in\nthe least. His praiseworthy purpose was to write the best that was in\nhim for the sake of giving pleasure to the widest possible number of\nhis readers. There does not seem to be much doubt that he has done it;\nthose who most disapprove of him will hardly deny that the vast sales\nof his half a hundred stories are incontestable evidence of his success\nin his aim. But what is the result? On every hand he is misjudged\nand condemned. He is accused of acting on the right motive, which\nis called wrong! He is not blamed, as he should be, for acting on a\nwrong motive, which would, if understood, have been called right! What\nhe should have done, of course, was to write sanely and consistently\nto make money, as did Amelia Barr. Mrs. Barr was not a victim of\nwidespread contemporary injustice and Mr. Chambers is and will remain\nso.\n\nTake another illustration--Mr. Winston Churchill. One of the ablest\nliving American novelists, he has gone so wrong that it cannot\nhonestly be supposed he will ever go right again. His earlier novels\nwere not only delightful but actually important. His later novels are\nintolerable. In such a novel as _The Inside of the Cup_ Mr. Churchill\nis not writing with the honorable and matter-of-course object of\nselling a large number of copies and getting an income from them; he is\nwriting with the dishonorable and unavowed object of setting certain\nideas before you, the contemplation of which will, in his opinion, do\nyou good. He wants you to think about the horror of a clergyman in\nleading strings to his wealthiest parishioner. As a fact, there is no\nhorror in such a situation and Mr. Churchill cannot conjure up any.\nThere is no horror, there are only two fools. Now if a man is a fool,\nhe\u2019s a fool; he cannot become anything else, least of all a sensible\nman. A clergyman in thrall to a rich individual of his congregation\nis a fool; and to picture him as painfully emancipating himself and\nbecoming not only sensible but, as it were, heroic is to ask us to\naccept a contradiction in terms. For a fool is not a man who lacks\nsense, but a man who cannot acquire sense. Not even a miracle can make\nhim sensible; if it could there would be no trouble with _The Inside\nof the Cup_, for a miracle, being, as G. K. Chesterton says, merely an\nexceptional occurrence, will always be acquiesced in by the intelligent\nreader.\n\n\n4\n\nIt would be possible to continue at great length giving examples of\nauthors who have gone wrong and specifying the fifty-seven varieties\nof ways they have erred. But the mere enumeration of fallen authors\nis terribly depressing and quite useless. If we are to accomplish any\ngood end we must try to find out why they have allowed themselves to be\ndeceived or betrayed and what can be done in the shape of rescue work\nor preventive effort in the future. Perhaps we can reclaim some of them\nand guide others aright.\n\nAfter a consideration of cases--we shall not clog the discussion with\nstatistics and shall confine ourselves to general results--we have been\nled by all the evidence to the conclusion that the principal trouble\nis with the authors. Little or none of the blame for the unfortunate\nsituation rests on their readers. Indeed, in the majority of cases the\nreaders are the great and unyielding force making for sanity and virtue\nin the author. Without the persistent moral pressure exerted by their\nreaders many, many more authors would certainly stray from the path of\nbusiness rectitude--not literary rectitude, for there is no such thing.\nWhat is humanly right is right in letters and nothing is right in\nletters that is wrong in the world.\n\nThe commonest way in which authors go wrong is one already stated: By\nceasing to write primarily for money, for a living and as much more as\nmay come the writer\u2019s way. The commonest reason why authors go wrong in\nthis way is comical--or would be if it were not so common. They feel\nashamed to write for money first and last; they are seized with an\nabsurd idea that there is something implicitly disgraceful in acting\nupon such a motive. And so to avoid something that they falsely imagine\nto be disgraceful they do something that they know is disgraceful; they\nwrite from some other motive and let the reader innocently think they\nare writing with the old and normal and honorable motive.\n\nSo widespread is this delusion that it is absolutely necessary\nto digress for a moment and explain why writing to make money is\nrespectable! Why is anything respectable? Because it meets a human\nnecessity and meets it in an open and aboveboard fashion without\ndetriment to society in general or the individual in particular. All\nlawful business conforms to this definition and writing for money\ncertainly does. Writing--or painting or sculpturing or anything\nelse--not done to make money is not respectable because (1) it meets no\nhuman necessity, (2) it is not done openly and aboveboard, (3) it is\ninvariably detrimental to society, and (4) it is nearly always harmful\nto individuals, and most harmful to the individual engaged upon it.\n\nIt is useless to say that a man who writes or paints or carves for\nsomething other than money meets a human necessity--a spiritual\nthirst for beauty, perhaps. There is no spiritual thirst for beauty\nwhich cannot be satisfied completely by work done for an adequate and\nmonetary reward. And to satisfy the human longing for the beautiful\nwithout requiring a proper price is to demoralize society by showing\nmen that they can have something for nothing.\n\n\n5\n\nNow it is just here that the moral pressure of the great body of\nreaders is felt, a pressure that is constantly misunderstood by the\nauthor. So surely as the writer has turned from writing to make money\nand has taken up writing for art\u2019s sake (whatever that means) or\nwriting for some ethical purpose or writing in the interest of some\npropaganda, though it be merely the propaganda of his own poor, single\nintellect--just so surely as he has done this his readers find him\nout. Whether they then continue to read him or not depends entirely on\nwhat they think of his new and unavowed (but patent) motive. Of course\nreaders ought to be stern; having caught their author in a wrong motive\nthey ought to punish him by deserting him instantly. But readers are\nhuman; they are even surprisingly selfish at times; they are capable of\nconsidering their own enjoyment, and, dreadful to say, they are capable\nof considering it first. So if, as in the case of Mr. Chambers, they\nfind his new motive friendly and flattering they read him more than\never; on the other hand, if they find the changed purpose disagreeable\nor tiresome, aiming to uplift them or to shock them unpleasantly or\n(sometimes) to make fun of them, they quit that author cold. And\nthey hardly ever come back. Usually the author is not perspicacious\nenough to grasp the cause of the defection; it is amazing how seldom\nauthors think there can be anything wrong with themselves. Usually the\nabandoned author goes right over and joins a small sect of highbrows\nand proclaims the deplorable state of his national literature. \u201cThe\npublic be damned!\u201d he says in effect, but the public is not damned, it\nis he that is damned, and the public has done its utmost to save him.\n\nSometimes an author deliberately does work that is less than his\nbest, but he never does this with the idea of making money, or, if he\nentertains that idea, he fools no one but himself. There are known and\neven (we believe) recorded instances of an author ridiculing his own\noutput and avowing with what he probably thought audacious candor:\n\u201cOf course, this latest story of mine is junk--but it\u2019ll sell 100,000\ncopies!\u201d\n\nIt never does. The author is perfectly truthful in describing the book\nas worthless. If he implies as he always will in such a case that he\ndeliberately did less than his best he is an unconscious liar. It was\nhis best and its worthlessness was solely the result of his total\ninsincerity. For a man or woman may write a very bad book and write it\nwith an utter sincerity that will sell hundreds of thousands of copies;\nbut no one can write a very fine book insincerely and have it sell.\n\nThe author who thinks that he has written a rather inferior novel for\nthe sake of huge royalties has actually written the best he has in\nhim, namely, a piece of cheese. The author who has actually written\nbeneath his best has not done it for money, but to avoid making money.\nHe thinks it is his best; he thinks it is something utterly artistic,\n\u00e6sthetically wonderful, highbrowedly pure, lofty and serene; he scorns\nmoney; to make money by it would be to soil it. What he cannot see is\nthat it is not his best; that it is very likely quite his worst; that\nwhen he has done his best he will unavoidably make money unless, like\nthe misguided mortal we have just mentioned, deep insincerity vitiates\nhis work.\n\nWe are therefore ready, before going further, to formulate certain\nparadoxical principles governing all literary work.\n\n\n6\n\nTo understand why authors go wrong we must first understand how authors\nmay go right. The paradoxical rules which if observed will hold the\nauthor to the path of virtue and rectitude may be formulated briefly as\nfollows:\n\n1. An author must write to make money first of all, and every other\npurpose must be secondary to this purpose of money making.\n\nThe paradoxy inherent in this principle is that while writing the\nauthor must never for a single moment think of the money he may make.\n\n2. Every writer must have a stern and insistent moral purpose in his\nwriting, and especially must he be animated by this purpose if he is\nwriting fiction.\n\nThe paradoxy here is that never, under any circumstances, may the\nwriter exhibit his moral purpose in his work.\n\n3. A writer must not write too much nor must he write too little. He is\nwriting too much if his successive books sell better and better; he is\nwriting too little if each book shows declining sales.\n\nThis may appear paradoxical, but consider: If the writer\u2019s work is\nselling with accelerated speed the market for his wares will very\nquickly be over-supplied. This happened to Mr. Kipling one day. He had\nthe wisdom to stop writing almost entirely, to let his production fall\nto an attenuated trickle; with the result that saturation was avoided,\nand there is now and will long continue to be a good, brisk, steady\ndemand for his product.\n\nOn the other hand, consider the case of Mrs. Blank (the reader will\nnot expect us to be either so ungallant or so professionally unethical\nor so commercially unfair as to give her name). Mrs. Blank wrote a\nbook every two or three years, and each was more of a plug than its\npredecessor. She began writing a book a year, and the third volume\nunder her altered schedule was a best seller. It was also her best\nnovel.\n\n\n7\n\nThen why? why? why? do the authors go wrong? Because, if we must say\nit in plain English, they disregard every principle of successful\nauthorship. When they have written a book or two and have made money\nthey get it into their heads that it is ignoble to write for money\nand they try to write for something else--for Art, usually. But it\nis impossible to write for Art, for Art is not an end but a means.\nWhen they do not try to write for Art they try to write for an Ethical\nPurpose, but they exhibit it as inescapably as if the book were a\npulpit and the reader were sitting in a pew. Indeed, some modern\nfiction cannot be read unless you are sitting in a pew, and a very\nstiff and straight backed pew at that; not one of these old fashioned,\nroomy, high walled family pews such as Dickens let us sit in, pews\nin which one could be comfortable and easy and which held the whole\nfamily, pews in which you could box the children\u2019s ears lightly without\ndoing it publicly; no! the pews the novelists make us sit in these\ndays are these confounded modern pews which stop with a jab in the\nsmall of your back and which are no better than public benches, but are\nintensely more uncomfortable--pews in which, to ease your misery, you\ncan do nothing but look for the mote in your neighbor\u2019s eye and the\nwrong color in your neighbor\u2019s cravat.\n\nBecause--to get back to the whys of the authors--because when they are\npopular they overpopularize themselves, and when they are unpopular\nthey lack the gumption to write more steadily and fight more gamely\nfor recognition. We don\u2019t mean critical recognition, but popular\nrecognition. How can an author expect the public, his public, any\npublic to go on swallowing him in increased amounts at meals placed\never closer together--for any length of time? And how, equally, can an\nauthor expect a public, his public, or any public, to acquire a taste\nfor his work when he serves them a sample once a week, then once a\nmonth, then once a year? Why, a person could not acquire a taste for\nolives that way.\n\n\n8\n\nWe have no desire to be personal for the sake of being personal, but\nwe have every desire to be personal in this discussion for the sake\nof being impersonal, pointed, helpful and clear. It is time to take a\nperfectly fresh and perfectly illustrative example of how not to write\nfiction. We shall take the case of Mr. Owen Johnson and his new novel,\n_Virtuous Wives_.\n\nMr. Johnson will be suspected by the dense and conventional censors\nof American literature of having written _Virtuous Wives_ to make\nmoney. Alackaday, no! If he had a much better book might have come\nfrom his typewriter. Mr. Johnson was not thinking primarily of\nmoney, as he should have been (prior to the actual writing of the\nstory). He was filled with a moral and uplifting aim. He had been\nshocked to the marrow by the spectacle of the lives led by some New\nYork women--the kind Alice Duer Miller writes discreetly about. The\nparticipation of America in the war had not begun. The performances of\nan inconsiderable few were unduly conspicuous. Mr. Johnson decided to\nwrite a novel that would hold up these disgusting triflers (and worse)\nto the scorn of sane and decent Americans. He set to work. He finished\nhis book. It was serialized in one of the several magazines which have\ndisplaced forever the old Sunday school library in the field of Awful\nWarning literature. In these forums Mr. Galsworthy and Gouverneur\nMorris inscribe our present-day chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta\nfamily, and writ large over their instalments, as part of the editorial\nblurb, we read the expression of a fervent belief that Vice has never\nbeen so Powerfully, Brilliantly and Convincingly Depicted in All Its\nHorror by Any Pen. But we divagate.\n\nMr. Johnson\u2019s novel was printed serially and appeared then as a book\nwith a solemn preface--the final indecent exhibition, outside of the\nstory itself, of his serious moral purpose. And as a book it is failing\nutterly of its purpose. It has sold and is selling and Mr. Johnson is\nmaking and will make money out of it--which is what he did not want.\nWhat he did want he made impossible when he unmasked his great aim.\n\nThe world may be perverse, but you have to take it as it is. The world\nmay be childish, but none of us will live to see it grow up. If the\nworld thinks you write with the honest and understandable object of\nmaking a living it attributes no ulterior motive to you. The world\nsays: \u201cJohn Smith, the butcher, sells me beefsteak in order to buy Mrs.\nSmith a new hat and the little Smiths shoes.\u201d The world buys the steaks\nand relishes them. But if John Smith tells the world and his wife\nevery time they come to his shop: \u201cI am selling you this large, juicy\nsteak to give you good red blood and make you Fit,\u201d then the world and\nhis wife are resentful and say: \u201cWe think we don\u2019t like your large,\njuicy steaks. We are red blooded enough to have our own preferences.\nWe will just go on down the street to the delicatessen--we mean the\nLiberty food shop--and buy some de-Hohenzollernized frankfurters, the\nwell-known Liberty sausage. To hell with the Kaiser!\u201d And so John Smith\nmerely makes money. Oh, yes, he makes money; a large, juicy steak is a\nlarge, juicy steak no matter how deadly the good intent in selling it.\nBut John Smith is defeated in his real purpose. He does not furnish the\nworld and his wife with the red corpuscles he yearned to give them.\n\n\n9\n\nAt this juncture we seem to hear exasperated cries of this character:\n\u201cWhat do you mean by saying that an author must write for money first\nand last and yet must have a stern moral purpose? How can the two be\nreconciled? Why must he think of money until he begins to write and\nnever after he begins to write? We understand why the moral object must\nnot obtrude itself, but why need it be there at all?\u201d\n\nCan a man serve two masters? Can he serve money and morality? Foolish\nquestion No. 58,914! He not only can but he always does when his work\nis good.\n\nA painter--a good painter--is a man who burns to enrich the world with\nhis work and is determined to make the world pay him decently for it.\nA good sculptor is a man who has gritted his teeth with a resolution\nto give the world certain beautiful figures for which the world must\nreward him--or he will know the reason why! A good corset manufacturer\nis a man who is filled with an almost holy yearning to make people more\nshapely and more comfortable than he found them--and he is fanatically\nresolved that they shall acknowledge his achievement by making him rich!\n\nFor that\u2019s the whole secret. How is a man to know that he has painted\ngreat portraits or landscapes or carved lovely monuments or made\nthousands shapelier and more easeful if not by the money they paid him?\nHow is an author to know that he has amused or instructed thousands if\nnot by the size of his royalty checks? By hearsay? By mind reading? By\nplucking the petals of a daisy--\u201cThey love me. They love me not\u201d?\n\nEvery man can and must serve two masters, but the one is the thing that\nmasters him and the other is the evidence of his mastery. Every man\nmust before beginning work fix his mind intently upon the making of\nmoney, the money which shall be an evidence of his mastery; every man\non beginning work and for the duration of the work must fix his mind\nintently and exclusively on the service of morality, the great master\nwhose slave he is in the execution of an Invisible Purpose. And no man\ndare let his moral purpose expose itself in his work, for to do that\nis to do a presumptuous and sacrilegious thing. The Great Moralizer,\nwho has in his hands each little one of us workers, holds his Purpose\ninvisible to us; how then can we venture to make visible what He keeps\ninvisible, how can we have the audacity to practice a technique that He\nHimself does not employ?\n\nFor He made the world and all that is in it. And He made it with a\nmoral end in view, as we most of us believe. But not the wisest of\nus pretends that that moral object is clearly visible. It does not\ndisclose itself to us directly; we are aware of it only indirectly; and\nare influenced by it forevermore. If the world was so made, who are\nwe that think ourselves so much more adroit than Him as to be able to\nexpose boldly what He veils and to reveal what He hath hidden?\n\nThere are those, of course, who see no moral explanation of the\nuniverse; but they are not always consistent. There is that famous\npassage of Joseph Conrad\u2019s in which he declines the ethical view\nand says he would fondly regard the panorama of creation as pure\nspectacle--the marvellous spectacle being, perchance, a moral end in\nitself. And yet no man ever wrote with a deeper manifestation and a\nmore perfect concealment of his moral purpose than Conrad; for exactly\nthe thing to which all his tales are passionate witnesses is the\nsense of fidelity, of loyalty, of endurance--above all, the sense of\nfidelity--that exists in mankind. Man, in the Conradist view, is a\ncreature of an inexhaustible loyalty to himself and to his fellows.\nThis inner and utter fidelity it is which makes the whole legend of\n_Lord Jim_, which is the despairing cry that rings out at the last\nin _Victory_, which reaches lyric heights in _Youth_, which is the\nprofound pathos of _The End of the Tether_, which, in its corruption\nby an incorruptible metal, the silver of the mine, forms the dreadful\ntragedy of _Nostromo_. An immortal, Conrad, but not the admiring and\npassive spectator he diffidently declares himself to be!\n\n\n10\n\nHave we covered all the cases? Obviously not. It is no more possible\nto deal with all the authors who go wrong than it is to call all\nthe sinners to repentance. But sin is primarily a question between\nthe sinner and his own conscience, and the errors of authors are\ninvariably questions between the authors and the public. The public\nis the best conscience many an author has; and the substitution of a\nprivate self-justification for a public vindication has seldom been a\nmarkedly successful undertaking in human history. Yet there is a class\nof writers for whom no public vindication is possible; who affect,\nindeed, to scorn it; who set themselves up as little gods. They are the\nworshippers of Art. They are the ones who not only do not admit but\nwho deliberately deny a moral purpose in anything; who think that a\nsomething they call pure Beauty is the sole end of existence, of work,\nof life, and is alone to be worshipped. It is a cult of Baal.\n\nFor these Artists despise money, and in despising money they cheapen\nthemselves and become creatures of barter. They sneer at morality and\nreject it; immediately the world disappears: \u201cAnd the earth was without\nform, and void.\u201d They demoralize honest people with whom they come\nin contact by demolishing the possibly imperfect but really workable\nstandards which govern normal lives--and never replacing them. What\nis their Beauty? It is what each one of them thinks beautiful. What\nis their Art? It is what each cold little selfish soul among them\nchooses to call Art. What is their achievement? Self-destruction. They\nare the spiritual suicides, they are the moral defectives, they are\nthe outcasts of humanity, the lepers among the workers of the world.\nFor them there can be neither pity nor forgiveness; for they deny the\nbeauty of rewarded toil, the sincerity of honest labor, the mystical\nhumanity of man.\n\nOf them no more. Let us go back in a closing moment to the\ncontemplation of the great body of men and women who labor cheerfully\nand honorably, if rather often somewhat mistakenly, to make their\nliving, to do good work and make the world pay them for it, yet leaving\nwith the world the firm conviction that it has had a little the better\nof the bargain! These are the authors who \u201cgo wrong,\u201d and with whose\nwell-meant errors we have been dealing, not very methodically but\nperhaps not unhelpfully. Is there, then, no parting word of advice we\ncan give our authors? To be sure there is! When our authors are quite\nsure they will not go wrong, they may go write!\n\n\n\n\nA BARBARIC YAWP\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nA BARBARIC YAWP\n\n\nIt was the handy phrase to describe Walt Whitman: The \u201cbarbaric yawp.\u201d\nIn its elegant inelegance the neatly adjectived noun was felt to be\nreally brilliant. Stump speakers \u201cmade the eagle scream\u201d; a chap like\nWhitman had to be characterized handily too.\n\nThe epigrammatic mind is the card index mind. Now the remarkable thing\nabout the card index is its casualty list. People who card index things\nare people who proceed to forget those things. The same metal rod\nthat transfixes the perforated cards pierces the indexers\u2019 brains. A\nmechanical device has been called into play. Brains are unnecessary any\nmore. The day of pigeonholes was slightly better; for the pigeonholes\nwere not unlike the human brain in which things are tucked away\ntogether, because they really have some association with each other.\nBut the card index alphabetizes ruthlessly. Fancy an alphabetical brain!\n\nEpigrams are like that. A man cannot take the trouble to think; he\nfalls back on an epigram. He cannot take the trouble to remember and so\nhe card indexes. The upshot is that he can find nothing in the card\nindex and of course has no recollection to fall back on. Or he recalls\nthe epigram without having the slightest idea what it was meant to\nsignify.\n\nBut this is not to be about card indexes nor even about epigrams. It is\nto be a barbaric yawp, by which it is to be supposed was once meant the\nhappy consciousness and the proud wonder that struck into the heart of\nan American poet. Whitman was not so much a poet as the chanteyman of\nLongfellow\u2019s Ship of State. There was an hour when the chanteyman had\nan inspiration, when he saw as by an apocalyptic light all the people\nof these United States linked and joined in a common effort. Every man,\nwoman and child of the millions tailed on the rope; every one of them\nput his weight and muscle to the task. It was a tremendous hour. It was\nthe hour of a common effort. It was the hour for which, Walt felt, men\nhad risked their lives a century earlier. It was a revealed hour; it\nhad not yet arrived; but it was sure to come. And in the glow of that\nrevelation the singer lifted up his voice and sang.... God grant he may\nbe hearing the mighty chorus!\n\n\n2\n\nAmerica is not a land, but a people. And a people may have no land and\nstill they will remain a people. There has, for years, been no country\nof Poland; but there are Poles. There has been a country of Russia for\ncenturies, but there is to-day no Russian people. What makes a people?\nNot a land certainly. Not political forms nor political sovereignty.\nNot even political independence. Nor, for that matter, voices that\npretend or aspire to speak the thoughts of a nation. Poland has had\nsuch voices and Russia has had her artists, musicians, novelists, poets.\n\nThe thing that makes a people is a thing over which statesmen have\nno control. Geography throws no light on the subject. Nor does that\nstudy of the races of man which is called anthropology. It is not\na psychological secret (psychology covers a multitude of guesses).\nPhilosophy may evolve beautiful systems of thought, but systems of\nthought have nothing to do with the particular puzzle before us.\n\nThe secret must be sought elsewhere. Is it an inherited thing, this\nthing that makes a people? That can\u2019t be; ours is a mixed inheritance\nhere in America. Is it an abstract idea? Abstract ideas are never\nmore than architectural pencillings and seldom harden into concrete\nfoundations. Is it a common emotion? If it were we should be able to\nagree on a name for it. Is it an instinct? An instinct might be back of\nit.\n\nWhat is left? Can it be a religion? As such it should be easily\nrecognizable. But an element of religion? An act of faith?\n\nYes, for faith may exist with or without a creed, and the act of faith\nmay be deliberate or involuntary. Willed or unwilled the faith is\nheld; formulated or unformulated the essential creed is there. Let us\nlook at the people of America, men and women of very divergent types\nand tempers far apart; men and women of inextricable heredities and\nof confusing beliefs--even, ordinarily, of clashing purposes. Each\nbelieves a set of things, but the beliefs of them all can be reduced\nto a lowest common denominator, a belief in each other; just as the\nbeliefs of them all have a highest common multiple, a willingness to\ndie in defence of America. To some of them America means a past, to\nsome the past has no meaning; to some of them America means a future,\nto others a future is without significance. But to all of them America\nmeans a present to be safeguarded at the cost of their lives, if need\nbe; and the fact that the present is the translation of the past to\nsome and the reading of the future to others is incidental.\n\n\n3\n\nWe would apply these considerations to the affair of literature; and\nhaving been tiresomely generalizing we shall get down to cases that\nevery one can understand.\n\nThe point we have tried to make condenses to this: The present is\nsupremely important to us all. To some of us it is all important\nbecause of the past, and to some of us it is of immense moment because\nof the future, and to the greatest number (probably) the present is of\novershadowing concern because it _is_ the present--the time when they\ncount and make themselves count. It is now or never, as it always is in\nlife, though the urgency of the hour is not always so apparent.\n\nIt was now or never with the armies in the field, with the men training\nin the camps, with the coal miners, the shipbuilders, the food savers\nin the kitchens. It is just as much now or never with the poets, the\nnovelists, the essayists--with the workers in every line, although they\nmay not see so distinctly the immediacy of the hour. Everybody saw the\nnecessity of doing things to win the war; many can see the necessity\nof doing things that will constitute a sort of winning after the war.\nThere is always something to be won. If it is not a war it is an after\nthe war. \u201cPeace hath its victories no less renowned than war\u201d is a fine\nsounding line customarily recited without the slightest recognition of\nits real meaning. The poet did not mean that the victories of peace\nwere as greatly acclaimed as the victories of war, but that the sum\ntotal of their renown was as great or greater because they are more\nenduring.\n\n\n4\n\nNow for the cases.\n\nIt is the duty, the opportunity and the privilege of America now, in\nthe present hour, to make it impossible hereafter for any one to raise\nsuch a question as Bliss Perry brings up in his book _The American\nSpirit in Literature_, namely, whether there is an independent American\nliterature. Not only does Mr. Perry raise the question, but, stated\nas baldly as we have stated it, the query was thereupon discussed,\nwith great seriousness, by a well-known American book review! We are\nhappy to say that both Mr. Perry and the book review decided that\nthere _is_ such a thing as an American literature, and that American\nwriting is not a mere adjunct (perhaps a caudal appendage) of English\nliterature. All Americans will feel deeply gratified that they could\nhonorably come to such a conclusion. But not all Americans will feel\ngratified that the conclusion was reached on the strength of Emerson,\nLowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Whitman, Poe and others of the\nimmortal dead. Some Americans will wish with a faint and timid longing\nthat the conclusion might have been reached, or at least sustained,\non the strength of Tarkington, Robert Herrick, Edith Wharton, Mary\nJohnston, Gertrude Atherton, Mary S. Watts, William Allen White, Edgar\nLee Masters, Amy Lowell, Edna Ferber, Joseph Hergesheimer, Owen Wister\nand a dozen or so other living writers over whose relative importance\nas witnesses for the affirmative we have no desire to quarrel. Mr.\nHowells, we believe, was called to the stand.\n\nIf we had not seen it we should refuse to credit our senses. The idea\nof any one holding court to-day to decide the question as to the\nexistence of an independent American literature is incredibly funny.\nIt is the peculiarity of criticism that any one can set up a court\nanywhere at any time for any purpose and with unlimited jurisdiction.\nThere are no rules of procedure. There are no rules of evidence. There\nis no jury; the people who read books may sit packed in the court\nroom, but there must be no interruptions. Order in the court! Usually\nthe critic-judge sits alone, but sometimes there are special sessions\nwith a full bench. Writs are issued, subp\u0153nas served, witnesses are\ncalled and testimony is taken. An injunction may be applied for, either\ntemporary or permanent. Nothing is easier than to be held in contempt.\n\n\n5\n\nThe most striking peculiarity of procedure in the Critical Court is\nwith regard to what constitutes evidence. You might, in the innocence\nof your heart, suppose that a man\u2019s writings would constitute the only\nadmissible evidence. Not at all. His writings have really nothing to\ndo with the case. What is his Purpose? If, as a sincere individual,\nhe has anywhere exposed or stated his object in writing books counsel\nobjects to the admission of this Purpose as evidence on the ground that\nit is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial; and not sound Art. On the\nother hand if, as an artist, he has embodied his Purpose in his fiction\nso that every intelligent reader may discover it for himself and feel\nthe glow of a personal discovery, counsel will object to the admission\nof his books as evidence on the ground that they are incompetent,\nirrelevant and immaterial; and not the best proof. Counsel will demand\nthat the man himself be examined personally as to his purpose (if he\nis alive) or will demand a searching examination of his private life\n(if he be dead). The witness is always a culprit and browbeating the\nwitness is always in order. I am a highbrow and you are a lowbrow; what\nthe devil do you mean by writing a book anyway?\n\nBefore the trial begins the critic-judge enunciates certain principles\non which the verdict will be based and the verdict is based on those\nprinciples whether they find any application in the testimony or not.\nA favorite principle with the man on the bench is that all that is\nnot obscure is not Art. It isn\u2019t phrased as intelligibly as that,\nto be sure; a common way to put it is to lay down the rule that the\npopularity of a book (which means the extent to which it is understood\nand therefore appreciated) has nothing to do with the case, tra-la,\nhas nothing to do with the case. Another principle is that sound can\nbe greater than sense, which, in the lingo of the Highest Criticism,\nis the dictum that words and sentences can have a beauty apart from\nthe meaning (if any) that they seek to convey. And there really is\nsomething in this idea; for example, what could be lovelier than the\nold line, \u201cEeny, meeny, miny-mo\u201d? Shakespeare, a commercial fellow who\nwrote plays for a living, knew this when he let one of his characters\nsing:\n\n  \u201cWhen that I was and a little tiny boy,\n    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,\n  A foolish thing was but a toy,\n    For the rain it raineth every day.\u201d\n\nAnd a little earlier in _Twelfth Night_:\n\n  \u201cLike a mad lad,\n  Pare thy nails, dad;\n    Adieu, goodman devil.\u201d\n\nWhich is not only beautiful as sound, but without the least sense\nunless it hath the vulgarity to be looked for in the work of a\nmercenary playwright.\n\n\n6\n\nBut the strangest thing about the proceedings in the Critical Court\nis their lack of contemporary interest. Rarely, indeed, is anything\ndecided here until it has been decided everywhere else. For the\ngreat decisions are the decisions of life and not decisions on the\npast. A man has written twenty books and he is dead. He is ripe for\nconsideration by the Critical Court. A man has written two novels\nand has eighteen more ahead of him. The Critical Court will leave\nhim alone until he is past all helping. It seems never to occur to\nthe critic-judge that a young man who has written two novels is more\nimportant than a dead man who has written twenty novels. For the young\nman who has written two novels has some novels yet to be written;\nhe can be helped, strengthened, encouraged, advised, corrected,\nwarned, counselled, rebuked, praised, blamed, presented with bills of\nparticulars, and--heartened. If he has not genius nothing can put it\nin him, but if he has, many things can be done to help him exploit it.\nAnd a man who is dead cannot be affected by anything you say or do; the\ncritic-judge has lost his chance of shaping that writer\u2019s work and can\nno longer write a decree, only an epitaph.\n\nTo be brutally frank: Nobody cares what the Critical Court thinks\nof Whitman or Poe or Longfellow or Hawthorne. Everybody cares\nwhat Tarkington does next, what Mary Johnston tackles, what the\ndevelopments are in the William Allen White case, what becomes of\nJoseph Hergesheimer, whether Amy Lowell achieves great work in that\ncontrapuntal poetry she calls polyphonic prose. On these things depend\nthe present era in American literature and the possibilities of the\nfuture. And these things are more or less under our control.\n\nThe people of America not only believe that there is an independent\nAmerican literature, but they believe that there will continue to be.\nSome of them believe in the past of that literature, some of them\nbelieve in its future; but all of them believe in its present and its\npresence. Their voice may be stifled in the Critical Court (silence\nin the court!) but it is audible everywhere else. It is heard in the\nbookshops where piles of new fiction melt away, where new verse is in\nbrisk demand, where new biographies and historical works are bought\ndaily and where books on all sorts of weighty subjects flake down from\nthe shelves into the hands of customers.\n\nThe voice of the American people is articulate in the offices of\nnewspapers which deal with the news of new books. It makes a\nseismographic record in the ledgers of publishing houses. It comes to\nalmost every writer in letters of inquiry, comment and commendation.\nWhat, do you suppose, a writer like Gene Stratton-Porter cares whether\nthe Critical Court excludes her work or condemns it? She can re-read\nhundreds and thousands of letters from men and women who tell her how\nprofoundly her books have--tickled their fancy? pleased their love of\nverbal beauty? taxed their intellectuals to understand? No, merely how\nprofoundly her books have altered their whole lives.\n\nHear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The Critical Court is in session. All who\nhave business with the court draw near and give attention!\n\n\n\n\nIN THE CRITICAL COURT\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nIN THE CRITICAL COURT\n\n\n_The Critical Court being in session, William Dean Howells, H. W.\nBoynton, W. C. Brownell, Wilson Follett and William Marion Reedy\nsitting, the case of Booth Tarkington, novelist, is called._\n\nCOUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: If it please the court, this case should\ngo over. The defendant, Mr. Tarkington, is not dead yet.\n\nMr. HOWELLS: I do not know how my colleagues feel, but I have no\nobjection to considering the work of Mr. Tarkington while he is alive.\n\nMr. FOLLETT: I think it would be better if we deferred the\nconsideration of Mr. Tarkington until it is a little older.\n\nCOUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE (_in this case Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday,\nbiographer of Tarkington_): \u201cIt\u201d?\n\nMr. FOLLETT: I mean his work, or works. Perhaps I should have said\n\u201cthem.\u201d\n\nMr. HOLLIDAY: \u201cThey,\u201d not \u201cthem.\u201d Exception. And \u201care\u201d instead of \u201cis.\u201d\nGentlemen, I have no wish to prejudice the case for my client, but I\nmust point out that if you wait until he is a little older he may be\ndead.\n\nMr. BOYNTON: So much the better. We can then consider his works in\ntheir complete state and with reference to his entire life.\n\nMr. HOLLIDAY: But it would then be impossible to give any assistance to\nMr. Tarkington. The chance to influence his work would have passed.\n\nMr. BROWNELL: That is relatively unimportant.\n\nMr. HOLLIDAY: I beg pardon but Mr. Tarkington feels it rather important\nto him.\n\nMr. BOYNTON: My dear Mr. Holliday, you really must remember that it is\nnot what seems important to Mr. Tarkington that can count with us, but\nwhat is important in our eyes.\n\nMr. HOLLIDAY: Self-importance.\n\nMr. BOYNTON (_stiffly_): Certainly not. Merely self-confidence. But\non my own behalf I may say this: I am unwilling to consider Mr.\nTarkington\u2019s works in this place at this time; but I am willing to\npass judgment in an article for a newspaper or a monthly magazine or\nsome other purely perishable medium. That should be sufficient for Mr.\nTarkington.\n\nMr. FOLLETT: I think the possibility of considering Mr. Tarkington must\nbe ruled out, anyway, as one or more of his so-called works have first\nappeared serially in the _Saturday Evening Post_.\n\nMr. HOLLIDAY (_noting the effect of this revelation on the members of\nthe court_): Very well, I will not insist. Booth, you will have to get\nalong the best you can with newspaper and magazine reviews and with\nwhat people write to you or tell you face to face. Be brave, Tark, and\ndo as you aren\u2019t done by. After all, a few million people read you\nand you make enough to live on. The court will pass on you after you\nare dead, and if you dictate any books on the ouija board the court\u2019s\nverdict may be helpful to you then; you might even manage the later\nHenry James manner.\n\nCLERK OF THE COURT (_Prof. William Lyon Phelps_): Next case! Mrs.\nAtherton please step forward!\n\nMrs. ATHERTON (_advancing with composure_): I can find no one to act\nfor me, so I will be my own counsel. I will say at the outset that I\ndo not care for the court, individually or collectively, nor for its\nverdict, whatever it may be.\n\nProf. PHELPS: I must warn you that anything you say may, and probably\nwill, be used against you.\n\nMrs. ATHERTON: Oh, I don\u2019t mind that; it\u2019s the things the members of\nthe court have said against me that I purpose to use against them.\n\nMr. BROWNELL: Are you, by any chance, referring to me, Madam?\n\nMrs. ATHERTON: I do not refer to persons, Mr. Brownell. I hit\nthem. No, I had Mr. Boynton particularly in mind. And perhaps Gene\nStratton-Porter. Is she here? (_Looks around menacingly_). No. Well, go\nahead with your nonsense.\n\nMr. HOWELLS (_rising_): I think I will withdraw from consideration of\nthis case. Mrs. Atherton has challenged me so often----\n\nMr. BOYNTON: No, stay. _I_ am going to stick it out----\n\nMr. FOLLETT: I think there is no question but that we should hold the\ndefendant in contempt.\n\nMrs. ATHERTON: Mutual, I assure you. (_She sweeps out of the room and a\nlarge section of the public quietly follows her._)\n\nCLERK PHELPS: Joseph Hergesheimer to the bar! (_A short, stocky fellow\nwith twinkling eyes steps forward._) Mr. Hergesheimer?\n\nMr. HERGESHEIMER: Right.\n\nMr. REEDY: Good boy, Joe!\n\nMr. FOLLETT: It won\u2019t do, it won\u2019t do at all. There\u2019s only _The Three\nBlack Pennys and Gold and Iron_ and a novel called _Java Head_ to go\nby. _Saturday Evening Post._ And bewilderingly unlike each other. Seem\nartistic but are too popular, I fancy, really to be sound.\n\nMr. HERGESHEIMER: With all respect, I should like to ask whether this\nis a court of record?\n\nMr. HOWELLS: It is.\n\nMr. HERGESHEIMER: In that case I think I shall press for a verdict\nwhich may be very helpful to me. I should like also to have the members\nof the court on record respecting my work.\n\nMr. BOYNTON: Just as I feared. My dear fellow, while we should like to\nbe helpful and will endeavor to give you advice to that end it must\nbe done unobtrusively ... current reviews ... we\u2019ll compare your work\nwith that of Hawthorne and Hardy or perhaps a standard Frenchman. That\nwill give you something to work for. But you cannot expect us to say\nanything definite about you at this stage of your work. Suppose we were\nto say what we really think, or what some really think, that you are\nthe most promising writer in America to-day, promising in the sense\nthat you have most of your work before you and in the sense that your\nwork is both popular and artistically fine. Don\u2019t you see the risk?\n\nMr. HERGESHEIMER: I do, and I also see that you would make your own\nreputation much more than you would make mine. I write a story. I risk\neverything with that story. You deliver a verdict. Why shouldn\u2019t you\ntake a decent chance, too?\n\nMr. FOLLETT: Why should I take any more chances than I have to with my\ncontemporaries? I pick them pretty carefully, I can tell you.\n\nMr. HERGESHEIMER: I shall write a novel to be published after my death.\nThere was Henry Adams. He stipulated that _The Education of Henry\nAdams_ should not be published until after his death; and everybody\nsays it is positively brilliant.\n\nMr. FOLLETT (_relieved_): That is a wise decision. But don\u2019t be\ndisheartened. I\u2019ll probably be able to get around to you in ten years,\nanyway. (_Mr. Hergesheimer bows and retires._)\n\nCLERK PHELPS: John Galsworthy!\n\nMr. FOLLETT (_brightening_): Some of the Englishmen! This is better!\nBesides, I know all about Galsworthy.\n\nMr. GALSWORTHY (_coming forward_): I feel much honored.\n\nCOUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: If the court please, I must state that for\nsome time now Mr. Galsworthy has been published serially in a magazine\nwith a circulation of one digit and six ciphers. Or one cipher and six\ndigits, I cannot remember which.\n\nMr. BROWNELL: What, six? Then he has more readers than can be counted\non the fingers of one hand. There are only five fingers on a hand. I\nthink this is conclusive.\n\nMr. BOYNTON: Oh, decidedly.\n\nMr. FOLLETT: But I put him in my book on modern novelists, all of whom\nwere hand picked.\n\nMr. GALSWORTHY (_with much calmness for one uttering a terrible\nheresy_): Perhaps that\u2019s the difficulty, really. All hand picked.\nDo you know, I rather believe in literary windfalls. But I beg to\nwithdraw. (_And he does._)\n\nTHE CLERK: Herbert George Wells!\n\nMr. WELLS (_sauntering up and speaking with a certain inattention_):\nRespecting my long novel, Joan and Peter, there are some points that\nneed to be made clear. Peter, you know, is called Petah by Joan. Petah\nis a sapient fellow. He is even able to admire the Germans because,\nafter all, they knew where they were going, they knew what they were\nafter, their education had them headed for something. It had, indeed.\nI think Petah overlooks the fact that it had headed them for Paris in\n1914.\n\nThe point that Oswald and I make in the book is that England and the\nEmpire, in 1914 and prior thereto, had not been headed for anything,\neducationally or otherwise, except Littleness in every field of\npolitical endeavor, except Stupidity in every province of human\naffairs. And the proof of this, we argue, is found in the first three\nyears of the Great War. No doubt. The first three years of the war\nprove so many things that this may well be among them; don\u2019t you think\nso?\n\nWithout detracting from the damning case which Oswald and I make out\nagainst England it does occur to me, as I poke over my material for a\nnew book, that as the proof of a pudding is in the eating so the proof\nof a nation at war is in the fighting. Indisputable as the bankruptcy\nof much British leadership has been, indisputable as it is that General\nGough lost tens of thousands of prisoners, hundreds of guns and vast\nstores of ammunition, it is equally indisputable that the Australians\nwho died like flies at the Dardanelles died like men, that the Tommies\nwho were shot by their own guns at Neuve Chapelle went forward like\nheroes, that the undersized and undernourished and unintellectual\nLondoners from Whitechapel who fell in Flanders gave up their immortal\nsouls like freemen and Englishmen and kinsmen of the Lion Heart.\n\nAnd if it comes to a question as to the blame for the war as\ndistinguished from the question as to the blame for the British conduct\nof the war, the latter being that with which _Joan and Peter_ is\nalmost wholly concerned, I should like to point out now, on behalf of\nmyself and the readers of my next book, that perhaps I am not entirely\nblameless. Perhaps I bear an infinitesimal portion of the terrible\nresponsibility which I have showed some unwillingness to place entirely\nand clearly on Germany.\n\nFor after all, it was Science that made the war and that waged it; it\nwas the idolatry of Science that had transformed the German nation by\ntransforming the German nature. It was the proofs of what Science could\ndo that convinced Prussia of her power, that made her confident that\nwith this new weapon she could overstride the earth. I had a part in\nsetting up that worship of Science. I have been not only one of its\nprophets but a high priest in its temple.\n\nAnd I am all the more dismayed, therefore, when I find myself, as in\n_Joan and Peter_, still kneeling at the shrine. What is the cure for\nwar? I ask. Petah tells us that our energies must have some other\noutlet. We must explore the poles and dig through the earth to China.\nHe himself will go back to Cambridge and get a medical degree; and if\nhe is good enough he\u2019ll do something on the border line between biology\nand chemistry. Joan will build model houses. And the really curious\nthing is that the pair of them seem disposed to run the unspeakable\nrisks of trying to educate still another generation, a generation\nwhich, should it have to fight a war with a conquering horde from Mars,\nmight blame Peter and Joan severely for the sacrifices involved, just\nas _they_ blame the old Victorians for the sacrifice of 1914-1918.\n\nMr. HOWELLS: In heaven\u2019s name, what is this tirade?\n\nMr. BROWNELL: Mr. Wells is merely writing his next book, that\u2019s all.\n\n(_As it is impossible to stop Mr. Wells the court adjourns without a\nday._)\n\n\n\n\nBOOK \u201cREVIEWING\u201d\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nBOOK \u201cREVIEWING\u201d\n\n\nOn the subject of _Book \u201cReviewing\u201d_ we feel we can speak freely,\nknowing all about the business, as we do, though by no means a\npractitioner, and having no convictions on the score of it. For\nwe point with pride to the fact that, though many times indicted,\na conviction has never been secured against us. However, it isn\u2019t\nconsidered good form (whatever that is) to talk about your own crimes.\nFor instance, after exhausting the weather, you should say pleasantly\nto your neighbor: \u201cWhat an interesting burglary you committed last\nnight! We were all quite stirred up!\u201d It is almost improper (much worse\nthan merely immoral) to exhibit your natural egoism by remarking: \u201cIf I\ndo say it, that murder I did on Tuesday was a particularly good job!\u201d\n\nFor this reason, if for no other, we would refrain, ordinarily, from\ntalking about book \u201creviewing\u201d; but since Robert Cortes Holliday has\nmentioned the subject in his _Walking-Stick Papers_ and thus introduced\nthe indelicate topic once and for all, there really seems no course\nopen but to pick up the theme and treat it in a serious, thoughtful\nway.\n\n\n2\n\nBook reviewing is so called because the books are not reviewed, or\nviewed (some say not even read). They are described with more or less\naccuracy and at a variable length. They are praised, condemned, weighed\nand solved by the use of logarithms. They are read, digested, quoted\nand tested for butter fat. They are examined, evalued, enjoyed and\nassessed; criticised, and frequently found fault with (not the same\nthing, of course); chronicled and even orchestrated by the few who\nnever write words without writing both words and music. James Huneker\ncould make Irvin Cobb sound like a performance by the Boston Symphony.\nOthers, like Benjamin De Casseres, have a dramatic gift. Mr. De\nCasseres writes book revues.\n\n\n3\n\nAny one can review a book and every one should be encouraged to do it.\nIt is unskilled labor. Good book reviewers earn from $150 to $230 a\nweek, working only in their spare time, like the good-looking young\nmen and women who sell the _Saturday Evening Post_, the _Ladies\u2019 Home\nJournal_ and the _Country Gentleman_ but who seldom earn over $100\na week. Book reviewing is one of the very few subjects not taught by\nthe correspondence schools, simply because there is nothing to teach.\nIt is so simple a child can operate it with perfect safety. Write for\ncircular giving full particulars and our handy phrasebook listing 2,567\nstandard phrases indispensable to any reviewer--FREE.\n\nIn reviewing a book there is no method to be followed. Like one of the\nplayerpianos, you shut the doors (i.e., close the covers) and play (or\nwrite) _by instinct_! Although no directions are necessary we will\nsuggest a few things to overcome the beginner\u2019s utterly irrational\nsense of helplessness.\n\nOne of the most useful comments in dealing with very scholarly volumes,\nsuch as _A History of the Statistical Process in Modern Philanthropical\nEnterprises_ by Jacob Jones, is as follows: \u201cMr. Jones\u2019s work shows\nsigns of haste.\u201d The peculiar advantage of this is that you do\nnot libel Mr. Jones; the haste may have been the printer\u2019s or the\npublisher\u2019s or almost anybody\u2019s but the postoffice\u2019s. In the case of a\npiece of light fiction the best way to start your review is by saying:\n\u201cA new book from the pen of Alice Apostrophe is always welcome.\u201d But\nsuppose the book is a first book? One of the finest opening sentences\nfor the review of a first book runs: \u201cFor a first novel, George\nLamplit\u2019s _Good Gracious!_ is a tale of distinct promise.\u201d Be careful\nto say \u201cdistinct\u201d; it is an adjective that fits perfectly over the\nshoulders of any average-chested noun. It gives the noun that upright,\nswagger carriage a careful writer likes his nouns to have.\n\n\n4\n\nBut clothes do not make the man and words do not make the book review.\nA book review must have a Structure, a Skeleton, if it be no more than\nthe skeleton in the book closet. It must have a backbone and a bite. It\nmust be able to stand erect and look the author in the face and tell\nhim to go to the Home for Indigent Authors which the Authors\u2019 League\nwill build one of these days after it has met running expenses.\n\nOur favorite book reviewer reviews the ordinary book in four lines and\na semi-colon. Unusual books drain his vital energy to the extent of a\nparagraph and a half, three adjectives to the square inch.\n\nHe makes it a point to have one commendatory phrase and one derogatory\nphrase, which gives a nicely balanced, \u201con the one hand ... on the\nother hand\u201d effect. He says that the book is attractively bound but\nbadly printed; well-written but deficient in emotional intensity; full\nof action but weak in characterization; has a good plot but is devoid\nof style.\n\nHe reads all the books he reviews. Every little while he pounces upon a\nmisquotation on page 438, or a misprint on page 279. Reviewers who do\nnot read the books they review may chance upon such details while idly\nturning the uncut leaves or while looking at the back cover, but they\nnever bring in three runs on the other side\u2019s error. They spot the fact\nthat the heroine\u2019s mother, who was killed in a train accident in the\nfourth chapter, buys a refrigerator in the twenty-third chapter, and\nthey indulge in an unpardonable witticism as to the heroine\u2019s mother\u2019s\nwhereabouts after her demise. But the wrong accent on the Greek word in\nChapter XVII gets by them; and as for the psychological impulse which\nled the hero to jump from Brooklyn Bridge on the Fourth of July they\nmiss it entirely and betray their neglect of their duty by alluding\nto him as a poor devil crazed with the heat. The fact is, of course,\nthat he did a Steve Brodie because he found something obscurely hateful\nin the Manhattan skyline. Day after day, while walking to his work on\nthe Brooklyn Rapid Transit, he gazed at the saw-toothed outline of the\nbuildings limned against the sky. Day by day his soul kept asking: \u201cWhy\n_don\u2019t_ they get a gold filling for that cavity between the Singer and\nWoolworth towers?\u201d And he would ask himself despondently: \u201cIs this what\nI live for?\u201d And gradually he felt that it was not. He felt that it\nmight be something to die about, however. And so, with the rashness\nof youth, he leaped. The George Meredith-Thomas Hardy irony came into\nthe story when he was pulled out of the river by his rival in Dorinda\u2019s\naffections, Gregory Anthracyte, owner of the magnificent steam yacht\n_Chuggermugger_.\n\nSo much for the anatomy of a book review. Put backbone into it. Read\nbefore you write. Look before you leap. Be just, be fair, be impartial;\nand when you damn, damn with faint praise, and when you praise, praise\nwith faint damns. Be all things to all books. Remember the author.\nReview as you would be reviewed by. If a book is nothing in your life\nit may be the fault of your life. And it is always less expensive to\nrevise your life than to revise the book. Your life is not printed from\nplates that cost a fortune to make and another fortune to throw away.\n\u201cLife is too short to read inferior books,\u201d eh? Books are too good\nto be guillotined by inferior lives--or inferior livers. Bacon said\nsome books were to be digested, but he neglected to mention a cure for\ndyspeptics.\n\n\n5\n\nBut when we say so much we have only touched the surface of a profound\nmatter. The truth of that matter, the full depth of it, may as well be\nplumbed at once. A book cannot be reviewed. It can only be written\nabout or around. It is insusceptible of such handling as is accorded a\nplay, for example.\n\nA man with more or less experience in seeing plays and with more or\nless knowledge of the drama goes to the first performance of a new\ncomedy or tragedy or whatnot. There it is before him in speech and\nmotion and color. It is acted. The play, structurally, is good or bad;\nthe acting is either good or bad. Every item of the performance is\ncapable of being resolved separately and estimated; and the collective\ninterest or importance of these items can be determined, is, in fact,\ndetermined once and for all by the performance itself. The observer\ngets their collective impact at once and his task is really nothing but\na consideration afterward in such detail as he cares to enter upon of\njust how that impact was secured. Did you ever, in your algebra days,\nor even in your arithmetically earnest childhood, \u201cfactor\u201d a quantity\nor a number? Take 91. A little difficult, 91, but after some mental\nand pencil investigation you found that it was obtained by multiplying\n13 by 7. Very well. You knew how the impact of 91 was produced; it was\nproduced by multiplying 13 by 7. You had reviewed the number 91 in the\nsense that you might review a play.\n\nNow it is impossible to review a book as you would factor a number or\na play. You can\u2019t be sure of the factors that make up the collective\nimpact of the book upon you. There\u2019s no way of getting at them.\nThey are summed up in the book itself and no book can be split into\nmultipliable parts. A book is not the author times an idea times the\nviews of the publisher. A book is unfactorable, often undecipherable.\nIt is a growth. It is a series of accretions about a central thought.\nThe central thought is like the grain of sand which the oyster has\npearled over. The central thought may even be a diseased thought and\nthe pearl may be a very lovely and brilliant pearl, superficially at\nleast, for all that. There is nothing to do with a book but to take\nit as it is or go at it hammer and tongs, scalpel and curette, chisel\nand auger--smashing it to pieces, scraping and cutting, boring and\ncleaving through the layers of words and subsidiary ideas and getting\ndown eventually to the heart of it, to the grain of sand, the irritant\nthought that was the earliest foundation.\n\nSuch surgery may be highly skilful or highly and wickedly destructive;\nit may uncover something worth while and it may not; naturally, you\ndon\u2019t go in for much of it, if you are wise, and as a general thing\nyou take a book as it is and not as it once was or as the author may,\nin the innocence of his heart or the subtlety of his experience, have\nintended it to be.\n\n\n6\n\nSurgery on a book is like surgery on a human being, for a book is\nalive; ordinarily the only justification for it is the chance of\nsaving life. If the operator can save the author\u2019s life (as an\nauthor) by cutting he ought to go ahead, of course. The fate of one\nbook is nothing as against the lives of books yet unwritten; the\nfeelings of the author are not necessarily of more account than the\nscreams of the sick child\u2019s parent. There have been such literary\noperations for which, in lieu of the $1,000 fee of medical practise,\nthe surgeon has been rewarded and more than repaid by a private letter\nof acknowledgement and heartfelt thanks. No matter how hard up the\nrecipient of such a letter may be, the missive seldom turns up in those\nauction rooms where the A. L. S. (or Autograph Letter with Signature)\nsometimes brings an unexpected and astonishingly large price.\n\n\n7\n\nThere is a good deal to be said for taking a book as it is. Most books,\nin fact, should be taken that way. For the number of books which\ncontain within them issues of life and death is always very small. You\nmay handle new books for a year and come upon only one such. And when\nyou do, unless you recognize its momentousness, no responsibility\nrests on _you_ to do anything except follow a routine procedure. In\nthis domain ignorance is a wholly valid excuse; no one would think\nof blaming a general practitioner of medicine for not removing the\npatient\u2019s vermiform appendix on principle, so to say. Unless he\napprehended conclusively that the man had appendicitis and unless he\nknew the technique of the operation he would certainly be blamed for\nperforming it. Similarly, unless the handler of new books is dead sure\nthat a fatality threatens Harold Bell Wright or John Galsworthy or Mary\nRoberts Rinehart, unless the new book of Mr. Wright or Mr. Galsworthy\nor Mrs. Rinehart is a recognizable and unmistakable symptom, unless,\nfurther, he knows what to uncover in that book and how to uncover it,\nhe has no business to take the matter in hand at all. Though the way of\nmost \u201creviewers\u201d with new books suggests that their fundamental motto\nmust be that one good botch deserves another.\n\nNot at all. Better, if you don\u2019t know what to do, to leave bad enough\nalone.\n\nBut since the book as it is forms 99 per cent. of the subject under\nconsideration this aspect of dealing with new books should be\nconsidered first and most extensively. Afterward we can revert to the\none percent. of books that require to go under the knife.\n\n\n8\n\nNow the secret of taking a book as it is was never very abstruse and is\nalways perfectly simple; nevertheless, it seems utterly to elude most\nof the persons who deal with new books. It is a secret only because it\nis forever hidden from their eyes. Or maybe they deliberately look the\nother way.\n\nThere exists in the world as at present constituted a person called\nthe reporter. He is, mostly, an adjunct of the daily newspaper; in\nsmall places, of the weekly newspaper. It is, however, in the cities\nof America that he is brought to his perfection and in this connection\nit is worth while pointing out what Irvin Cobb has already noted--the\ndifference between the New York reporter and the reporter of almost\nany other city in America. The New York reporter \u201cworks with\u201d his\nrival on another sheet; the reporter outside New York almost never\ndoes this. Cobb attributed the difference to the impossible tasks that\nconfront reporters in New York, impossible, that is, for single-handed\naccomplishment. A man who should attempt to cover alone some New York\nassignments, to \u201cbeat\u201d his fellow, would be lost. Of course where a\nNew York paper details half a dozen men to a job real competition\nbetween rival outfits is feasible and sometimes occurs. But the point\nhere is this: The New York reporter, by generally \u201cworking with\u201d his\nfellow from another daily, has made of his work a profession, with\nprofessional ideals and standards, a code, unwritten but delicate and\ndecidedly high rules of what is honorable and what is not. Elsewhere\nreporting remains a business, decently conducted to be sure, open in\nmany instances to manifestations of chivalry; but essentially keen,\nsharp-edged, cutthroat competition.\n\nNow it is of the reporter in his best and highest estate that we would\nspeak here--the reporter who is not only a keen and honest observer but\na happy recorder of what he sees and hears and a professional person\nwith ethical ideals in no respect inferior to those of any recognized\nprofessional man on earth.\n\nThere are many things which such a reporter will not do under any\npressure of circumstance or at the beck of any promise of reward. He\nwill not distort the facts, he will not suppress them, he will not put\nin people\u2019s mouths words that they did not say and he will not let\nthe reader take their words at face value if, in the reporter\u2019s own\nknowledge, the utterance should be perceptibly discounted. No reporter\ncan see and hear everything and no reporter\u2019s story can record even\neverything that the observer contrived to see and hear. It must record\nsuch things as will arouse in the reader\u2019s mind a correct image and a\njust impression.\n\nHow is this to be done? Why, there is no formula. There\u2019s no set of\nrules. There\u2019s nothing but a purpose animating every word the man\nwrites, a purpose served, and only half-consciously served, by a\nthousand turns of expression, a thousand choices of words. Like all\nhonest endeavors to effect a purpose the thing is spoiled, annulled,\nmade empty of result by deliberate art. Good reporters are neither\nborn nor made; they evolve themselves and without much help from\nany outside agency, either. They can be hindered but not prevented,\nhelped but not hurt. You may remember a saying that God helps those\nwho help themselves. The common interpretation of this is that when\na man gets up and does something of his own initiative Providence\nis pretty likely to play into his hands a little; not at all, that\nisn\u2019t what the proverb means. What it does mean is just this: That\nthose who help themselves, who really do lift themselves by their\nbootstraps, are helped by God; that it isn\u2019t they who do the lifting\nbut somebody bigger than themselves. Now there is no doubt whatever\nthat good reporters are good reporters because God makes them so. They\naren\u2019t good reporters at three years of age; they get to be. Does this\nseem discouraging? It ought to be immensely encouraging, heartening,\nactually \u201cuplifting\u201d in the finest sense of a tormented word. For if\nwe believed that good reporters were born and not made there would be\nno hope for any except the gifted few, endowed from the start; and if\nwe believed that good reporters were made and not born there would be\nabsolutely no excuse for any failures whatever--every one should be\npotentially a good reporter and it would be simply a matter of correct\ntraining. But if we believe that a good reporter is neither born nor\nmade, but makes himself with the aid of God we can be unqualifiedly\ncheerful. There is hope for almost any one under such a dispensation;\nmoreover, if we believe in God at all and in mankind at all we must\nbelieve that between God and mankind the supply of topnotch reporters\nwill never entirely fail. The two together will come pretty nearly\nmeeting the demand every day in the year.\n\n\n9\n\nPerhaps the reader is grumbling, in fact, we seem to hear murmurs. What\nhas all this about the genesis and nature of good reporters to do with\nthe publication of new books? Why, this: The only person who can deal\nadequately and amply with 99 new books out of a hundred--the 99 that\nrequire to be taken as they are--is the good reporter. He\u2019s the boy\nwho can read the new book as he would look and listen at a political\nconvention, or hop around at a fire--getting the facts, getting them\nstraight (yes, indeed, they do get them straight) and setting them\ndown, swiftly and selectively, to reproduce in the mind of the public\nthe precise effect of the book itself. The effect--not the means by\nwhich it was achieved, not the desirability of it having been achieved,\nnot the artistic quality of it, not the moral worth of it, not\nanything in the way of a corollary or lesson or a deduction, however\nobvious--just the effect. That\u2019s reporting. That\u2019s getting and giving\nthe news. And that\u2019s what the public wants.\n\nSome people seem to think there is something shameful in giving the\npublic what it wants. They would, one supposes, highly commend the\ngrocer who gave his customer something \u201cjust as good\u201d or (according to\nthe grocer) \u201cdecidedly better.\u201d But substitution, open or concealed, is\nan immoral practice. Nothing can justify it, no nobility of intention\ncan take it out of the class of deception and cheating.\n\nBut, they cry, the public does not want what is sufficiently good, let\nalone what is best for it; that is why it is wrong to give the public\nwhat it wants. So they shift their ground and think to escape on a high\nmoral plateau or table land. But the table land is a tip-table land.\nWhat they mean is that they are confidently setting their judgment of\nwhat the public ought to want against the public\u2019s plain decision what\nit does want. They are a few dozens against many millions, yet in their\nfew dozen intelligences is collected more wisdom than has been the\nage-long and cumulative inheritance of all the other sons of earth.\nThey really believe that.... Pitiable....\n\n\n10\n\nA new book is news. This might almost be set down as axiomatic and not\nas a proposition needing formal demonstration by the Euclidean process.\nYet it is susceptible of such demonstration and we shall demonstrate\naccordingly.\n\nIn the strict sense, anything that happens is news. Everybody remembers\nthe old distinction, that if a dog bites a man it is very likely not\nnews, but that if a man bites a dog it is news beyond all cavil. Such a\ngeneralization is useful and fairly harmless (like the generalization\nwe ourselves have just indulged in and are about proving) if--a big\nif--the broad exception be noted. If a dog bites John D. Rockefeller,\nJr., it is not only news but rather more important, or certainly\nmore interesting, news than if John Jones of Howlersville bites a\ndog. For the chances are that John Jones of Howlersville is a poor\ndemented creature, after all. Now the dog that bites Mr. Rockefeller\nis very likely a poor, demented creature, too; but the distinction\nlies in this: the dog bitten by John Jones is almost certainly not as\nwell-known or as interesting or as important in the lives of a number\nof people as Mr. Rockefeller. Pair off the cur that puts his teeth\nin the Rockefeller ankle, if you like, with the wretch who puts his\nteeth in an innocent canine bystander (it\u2019s the innocent bystander who\nalways gets hurt); do this and you still have to match up the hound of\nHowlersville with Mr. Rockefeller. And the scale of news values tips\nheavily away from Howlersville and in the direction of 26 Broadway.\n\nSo it is plain that not all that happens is news compared with some\nthat happens. The law of specific interest, an intellectual counterpart\nof the law of specific gravity in the physical world, rules in the\nworld of events. Any one handling news who disregards this law does so\nat his extreme peril, just as any one building a ship heavier than the\nwater it displaces may reasonably expect to see his fine craft sink\nwithout a trace.\n\nSince a new book is a thing happening it is news, subject to the broad\ncorrection we have been discussing above, namely, that in comparison\nwith other new books it may not be news at all, its specific interest\nmay be so slight as to be negligible entirely.\n\nBut if a particular new book _is_ news, if its specific interest is\nmoderately great, then obviously, we think, the person best fitted to\ndeal with it is a person trained to deal with news, namely, a reporter.\nNaturally we all prefer a good reporter.\n\n\n11\n\nThe question will at once be raised: How is the specific interest of a\nnew book to be determined? We answer: Just as the specific interest of\nany kind of potential news or actual news is determined--in competition\nwith the other news of the day and hour. What is news one day isn\u2019t\nnews another. This is a phenomenon of which the regular reader of\nevery daily paper is more or less consciously aware. There are some\ndays when \u201cthere\u2019s no news in the paper.\u201d There are other days when\nthe news in the paper is so big and so important that all the lesser\noccurrences which ordinarily get themselves chronicled are crowded\nout. Granting a white paper supply which does not at present exist, it\nwould, of course, be possible on the \u201cbig days\u201d to record all these\nlesser doings; and consistently, day in and day out, to print nicely\nproportioned accounts of every event attaining to a certain fixed\nlevel of specific interest. But the reader who may think he would\nlike this would speedily find out that he didn\u2019t. Some days he would\nhave a twelve page newspaper and other days (not Sundays, either) he\nwould have one of thirty-six pages. He would be lost, or rather, his\nattention would be lost in the jungle of events that all happened\nwithin twenty-four hours, with the profuse luxuriance of tropical\nvegetation shooting up skyward by inches and feet overnight. His\nnatural appetite for a knowledge of what his fellows were doing would\nbe alternately starved and overfed; malnutrition would lead to chronic\nand incurable dyspepsia; soon he would become a hateful misanthrope,\nshunning his fellow men and having a seizure every time Mr. Hearst\nbrought out the eighth edition (which is the earliest and first) of the\nNew York _Evening Journal_. It is really dreadful to think what havoc\na literal adhesion to the motto of the New York _Times_--\u201cAll the news\nthat\u2019s fit to print\u201d--would work in New York City.\n\nNo mortal has more than a certain amount of time daily and a certain\namount of attention (according to his mental habit and personal\ninterest) to bestow on the perusal of a newspaper, or news, or the\nprinted page of whatever kind. On Sunday he has much more, it is\nlikely, but still there is a limit and a perfectly finite bound.\nConsequently the whole problem for the persons engaged in gathering and\npreparing news for presentation to readers sums up in this: \u201cHow many\nof the day\u2019s doings attaining or exceeding a certain level of public\ninterest and importance, shall we set before our clients?\u201d Easily\nanswered, in most cases; and the size of the paper is the index of the\nanswer. Question Two: \u201c_What_ of the day\u2019s doings shall be served up in\nthe determined space?\u201d\n\nFor this question there is never an absolute or ready answer,\nand there never can be. On some of the affairs to be reported all\njournalists would agree; but they would differ in their estimates of\nthe relative worth of even these and the lengths at which they should\nbe treated; about lesser occurrences there would be no fixed percentage\nof agreement.\n\n\n12\n\nNow the application of all this to the business of giving the news of\nbooks should be fairly clear. A new book is news--and so, sometimes, is\nan old one, rediscovered. Since a new book is news it should be dealt\nwith by a news reporter. Not all that happens is news; not all the new\nbooks published are news; new books, like new events of all sorts, are\nnews when they compete successfully with a majority of their kind.\n\nThere is no more sense in _reporting_--that is, describing individually\nat greater or less length--all the new books than there would be in\nreporting every incident on the police blotters of a lively American\ncity. _Recording_ new books is another matter; somewhere, somehow,\nmost occurrences in this world get recorded in written words that\nreach nearly all who are interested in the happenings (as in letters)\nor are accessible to the interested few (as the police records). The\ndifference between the reporter and the recorder is not entirely a\ndifference of details given. The recorder usually follows a prescribed\nformula and makes his record conform thereto; the good reporter never\nhas a formula and never can have one. Let us see how this works out\nwith the news of books.\n\n\n13\n\nThe recorder of new books generally compiles a list of _Books Received_\nor _Books Just Published_ and he does it in this uninspired and\nconscientious manner:\n\n  IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William Allen White. A story of Kansas\n  in the last half-century, centered in a single town, showing its\n  evolution from prairie to an industrial city with difficult economic\n  and labor problems; the story told in the lives of a group of people,\n  pioneers and the sons of pioneers--their work, ambitions, personal\n  affairs, &c. New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.60.\n\nThat would be under the heading _Fiction_. An entry under the heading\n_Literary Studies_ or _Essays_ might read:\n\n  OUR POETS OF TO-DAY. By Howard Willard Cook. Volume II. in a series\n  of books on modern American writers. Sketches of sixty-eight American\n  poets, nearly all living, including Edgar Lee Masters, Amy Lowell,\n  Witter Bynner, Robert Service, Edgar Guest, Charles Divine, Carl\n  Sandburg, Joyce Kilmer, Sara Teasdale, George Edward Woodberry, Percy\n  Mackaye, Harriet W. Monroe, &c. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. $1.60.\n\nThese we hasten to say would be unusually full and satisfactory\nrecords, but they would be records just the same--formal and precise\nstatements of events, like the chronological facts affixed to dates\nin an almanac. If all records were like these there would be less\nobjection to them; but it is an astonishing truth that most records\nare badly kept. Why, one may never fathom; since the very formality\nand precision make a good record easy. Yet almost any of the principal\npages or magazines in the United States devoted to the news of new\nbooks is likely to make a record on this order:\n\n  IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William Allen White. Novel of contemporary\n  American life. New York, &c.\n\nSuch a record is, of course, worse than inadequate; it is actually\nmisleading. Mr. White\u2019s book happens to cover a period of fifty years.\n\u201cContemporary American life\u201d would characterize quite as well, or quite\nas badly, a story of New York and Tuxedo by Robert W. Chambers.\n\n\n14\n\nThe reporter works in entirely another manner. He is concerned to\npresent the facts about a new book in a way sufficiently arresting\nand entertaining to engage the reader. As Mr. Holliday says with fine\nperception, the true function of the describer of new books is simply\nto bring a particular volume to the attention of its proper public.\nTo do that it is absolutely necessary to \u201cgive the book,\u201d at least to\nthe extent of enabling the reader of the article to determine, with\nreasonable accuracy (1) whether the book is for him, that is, addressed\nto a public of which he is one, and (2) whether he wants to read it or\nnot.\n\nWhether the book is good or bad is not the point. A man interested in\nsociology may conceivably want to read a book on sociology even though\nit is an exceedingly bad book on that subject and even though he knows\nits worthlessness. He may want to profit by the author\u2019s mistakes;\nhe may want to write a book to correct them; or he may merely want\nto be amused at the spectacle of a fellow sociologist making a fool\nof himself, a spectacle by no means rare but hardly ever without a\ncapacity for giving joy to the mildly malicious.\n\nThe determination of the goodness or badness of a book is not and\nshould not be a deliberate purpose of the good book reporter. Why?\nWell, in many cases it is a task of supererogation. Take a reporter\nwho goes to cover a public meeting at which speeches are made. He does\nnot find it necessary to say that Mr. So-and-So\u2019s speech was good.\nHe records what Mr. So-and-So says, or a fair sample of it; which is\nenough. The reader can see for himself how good or bad it was and reach\na conclusion based on the facts as tempered by his personal beliefs,\ntastes and ideas.\n\nIn the same way, it is superfluous for the book reporter to say that\nMiss Such-and-Such\u2019s book on New York is rotten. All he need do is\nto set down the incredible fact that Miss Such-and-Such locates the\nWoolworth building at Broadway, Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third street,\nand refers to the Aquarium as the fisheries section of the Bronx Zoo.\nIf this should not appear a sufficient notice of the horrible nature\nof the volume the reporter may very properly give the truth about\nthe Woolworth building and the Aquarium for the benefit of people\nwho have never visited New York and might be unable to detect Miss\nSuch-and-Such\u2019s idiosyncrasies.\n\nThe rule holds in less tangible matters. Why should the book reporter\nask his reader to accept his dictum that the literary style of a writer\nis atrocious when he can easily prove it by a few sentences or a\nparagraph from the book?\n\n\n15\n\nYet books are still in the main \u201creviewed,\u201d instead of being given into\nthe hands of trained news reporters. Anything worse than the average\nbook \u201creview\u201d it would certainly be difficult to find in the length\nand breadth of America. And England, despite the possession of some\nbrilliant talents, is nearly as badly off.\n\nNo one who is not qualified as a critic should attempt to criticise new\nbooks.\n\nThere are but few critics in any generation--half a dozen or perhaps\na dozen men in any single one of the larger countries are all who\ncould qualify at a given time; that much seems evident. What is a\ncritic? A critic is a person with an education unusually wide either\nin life or in letters, and preferably in both. He is a person with\nhuge backgrounds. He has read thousands of books and has by one\nmeans or another abstracted the essence of thousands more. He has\nperhaps travelled a good deal, though this is not essential; but he\nhas certainly lived with a most peculiar and exceptional intensity,\ndescending to greater emotional and intellectual depths than the\nmajority of mankind and scaling higher summits; he has, in some degree,\nthe faculty of living other people\u2019s lives and sharing their human\nexperiences which is the faculty that, in a transcendent degree,\nbelongs to the novelist and storyteller. A critic knows the past and\nthe present so well that he is able to erect standards, or uncover old\nstandards, by which he can and does measure the worth of everything\nthat comes before him. He can actually show you, in exact and\ninescapable detail, how De Morgan compares with Dickens and how Gilbert\nK. Chesterton ranks with Swift and whether Thackeray learned more from\nFielding or from Daniel Defoe and he can trace the relation between a\nperiod in the life of Joseph Conrad and certain scenes and settings in\n_The Arrow of Gold_.\n\nSuch a man is a critic. Of course critics make mistakes but they are\nnot mistakes of ignorance, of personal unfitness for the task, of\npretension to a knowledge they haven\u2019t. They are mistakes of judgment;\nsuch mistakes as very eminent jurists sometimes make after years on the\nbench. The jurist is reversed by the higher court and the critic is\nreversed by the appellate decree of the future.\n\nThe mistakes of a real critic, like the mistakes of a real jurist,\nare always made on defensible, and sometimes very sound, grounds;\nthey are reasoned and seasoned conclusions even if they are not the\ncorrect conclusions. The mistakes of the 9,763 persons who assume\nthe critical ermine without any fitness to wear it are quite another\nmatter; and they are just the mistakes that would be made by a layman\nsitting in the jurist\u2019s seat. The jurist knows the precedents, the\nrules of evidence, the law; he is tolerant and admits exceptions into\nthe record. So the critic; with the difference that the true critic\nmerely presides and leaves the verdict to that great jury of true and\nright instincts which we call \u201cthe public.\u201d The genuine critic is\nconcerned chiefly to see that the case gets before the jury cleanly.\nWithout presuming to tell the jury what its verdict must be--except\nin extraordinary circumstances--he does instruct it what the verdict\nshould be on, what should be considered in arriving at it, what\nprinciples should guide the decision.\n\nBut the near-critic (God save the mark!) has it in his mind that he\nmust play judge and jury too. He doesn\u2019t like the writer\u2019s style, or\nthinks the plot is poor, or this bad or that defective. Instead of\ncarefully outlining the evidence on which the public might reach a\ncorrect verdict on these points he delivers a dictum. It doesn\u2019t go, of\ncourse, at least for long; and it never will.\n\nLet us be as specific as is possible in this, as specific, that is, as\na general discussion can be and remain widely applicable.\n\nI don\u2019t like the writer\u2019s style. I am not a person of critical\nequipment or pretensions. I am, we will say, a book reporter. I do not\ndeclare, with a fiat and a flourish, that the style is bad; I merely\npresent a chunk of it. There is the evidence, and nothing else is so\ncompetent, so relevant or so material, as the lawyers would say. I\nmay, in the necessity to be brief and the absence of space for an\nexcerpt, say that the style is adjectival, or adverbial, or diffuse,\nor involved or florid or something of that sort, _if I know it to be_.\nThese would be statements of fact. \u201cBad\u201d is a statement of opinion.\n\nI may call the plot \u201cweak\u201d if it is weak (a fact) and if I know\nweakness in a plot (which qualifies me to announce the fact). But if I\ncall the plot \u201cpoor\u201d I am taking a good deal upon myself. Its poorness\nis a matter of opinion. Some stories are spoiled by a strong plot\nwhich dominates the reader\u2019s interest almost to the exclusion of other\nthings--fine characterization, atmosphere, and so on.\n\nAnd even restrictions of space can hardly excuse the lack of courtesy,\nor worse, shown by the near-critic who calls the plot weak or the style\ndiffuse or involved, however much these may be facts, and who does not\nat least briefly explain in what way the style is diffuse (or involved)\nand wherein the weakness of the plot resides. But to put a finger on\nthe how or the where or the why requires a knowledge and an insight\nthat the near-critic does not possess and will not take the trouble to\nacquire; so we are asking him to do the impossible. Nevertheless we can\nask him to do the possible; and that is to leave off talking or writing\non matters he knows nothing about.\n\n\n16\n\nThe task of training good book reporters is not a thing to be easily\nand lightly undertaken. And the first essential in the making of such\na reporter is the inculcation of a considerable humility of mind. A\nnear-critic can afford to think he knows it all, but a book reporter\ncannot. Besides a sense of his own limitations the book reporter must\npossess and develop afresh from time to time a mental attitude which\nmay best be summed up in this distinction: When a piece of writing\nseems to him defective he must stop short and ask himself, \u201cIs this\ndefect a fact or is it my personal feeling?\u201d If it is a fact he must\nestablish it to his own, and then to the reader\u2019s, satisfaction. If\nit is his personal impression or feeling, merely, as he may conclude\non maturer reflection, he owes it to those who will read his article\neither not to record it or to record it as a personal thing. There is\nno sense in saying only the good things that can be said about a book\nthat has bad things in it. Such a course is dishonest. It is equally\ndishonest, and infinitely more common, to pass off private opinions as\nstatements of fact.\n\nWhen in doubt, the doubt should be resolved in favor of the author. A\ngood working test of fact versus personal opinion is this: If you, as a\nreporter, cannot put your finger on the apparent flaw, cannot give the\nhow or where or why of the thing that seems wrong, it must be treated\nas your personal feeling. A fact that you cannot buttress might as well\nnot be a fact at all--unless, of course, it is self-evident, in which\ncase you have only to state it or exhibit your evidence to command a\nuniversal assent.\n\nAll that we have been saying respecting the fact or fancy of a\nflaw in a piece of writing applies with equal force, naturally, to\nthe favorable as well as the unfavorable conclusion you, as a book\nreporter, may reach. Because a story strikes you as wonderful it does\nnot follow that it is wonderful. You are under a moral obligation,\nat least, to establish the wonder of it. The procedure for the book\nreporter who has to describe favorably and for the book reporter who\nhas to report unfavorably is the same. First comes the question of\nfact, then the citation, if possible, of evidence; and if that be\nimpossible the brief indication of the how, the where, the why of the\nmerit reported. If the meritoriousness remains a matter of personal\nimpression it ought so to be characterized but may warrantably be\nrecorded where an adverse impression would go unmentioned. The\npresumption is in favor of the author. It should be kept so.\n\n\n17\n\nIn all this there is nothing impossible, nothing millennial. But what\nhas been outlined of the work of the true book reporter is as far as\npossible from what we very generally get to-day. We get unthinking\npraise and unthinking condemnation; we do not expect analysis but\nwe have a right to expect straightaway exposition and a condensed\ntransliteration of the book being dealt with.\n\n\u201cPraise,\u201d we have just said, and \u201ccondemnation.\u201d That is what it is,\nand there is no room in the book reporter\u2019s task either for praise or\ncondemnation. He is not there to praise the book any more than a man is\nat a political convention to praise a nominating speech; he is there\nto describe the book, to describe the speech, to _report_ either. A\nnewspaperman who should begin his account of a meeting in this fashion,\n\u201cIn a lamentably poor speech, showing evidences of hasty preparation,\nElihu Root,\u201d &c., would be fired--and ought to be. No matter if a\nmajority of those who heard Mr. Root thought the same way about it.\n\n\n18\n\nThe book reporter will be governed in his work by the precise news\nvalue in the book he is dealing with at the moment he is dealing with\nit. This needs illustration.\n\nOn November 11, 1918, an armistice was concluded in Europe, terminating\na war that had lasted over four years. In that four years books\nrelating to the war then being waged had sold heavily, even at times\noutselling fiction. Had the war drawn to a gradual end the sales of\nthese war books would probably have lessened, little by little, until\nthey reached and maintained a fairly steady level. From this they would\ndoubtless have declined, as the end drew near, lower and lower, until\nthe foreseen end came, when the interest in them would have been as\ngreat, but not much greater, than the normal interest in works of a\nhistorical or biographical sort.\n\nBut the end came overnight; and suddenly the whole face of the world\nwas transformed. The reaction in the normal person was intense. In\nan instant war books of several pronounced types became intolerable\nreading. _How I Reacted to the War_, by Quintus Quintuple seemed\ntremendously unimportant. Even _Mr. Britling_ was, momentarily, utterly\nstale and out of date. Reminiscences of the German ex-Kaiser were\nneither interesting nor important; he was a fugitive in Holland.\n\nThe book reporter who had any sense of news values grasped this\nimmediately. Books that a month earlier would have been worth 1,000\nto 1,500 word articles were worth a few lines or no space at all.\nOn the other hand books which had a historical value and a place as\ninteresting public records, such as _Ambassador Morgenthau\u2019s Story_,\nwere not diminished either in interest or in importance.\n\nSome books which had been inconsequential were correspondingly exalted\nby the unprecedented turn of affairs. These were books on such\nsubjects as the re-education of disabled fighters, the principles\nwhich might underlie the formation of a league of nations, problems of\nreconstruction of every sort. They had been worth, some of them, very\nsmall articles a week earlier; now they were worth a column or two\napiece.\n\n\n19\n\nNo doubt we ought to conclude this possibly tedious essay with some\nobservations on the one per cent. of books which call for swift\nsurgery. But such an enterprise is, if not impossible, extraordinarily\ndifficult for the reason that the same operation is never called for\ntwice.\n\nIn a sense it is like cutting diamonds, or splitting a large stone\ninto smaller stones. The problem varies each time. The cutter respects\ncertain principles and follows a careful technique. That is all.\n\nWe shall, for the sake of the curious, take an actual instance. In\n1918 there was published a novel called _Foes_ by Mary Johnston, an\nAmerican novelist of an endowment so decided as fairly to entitle her\nto the designation \u201ca genius.\u201d\n\nMiss Johnston\u2019s first novel had appeared twenty years earlier. Her\nfirst four books--nay, her first two, the second being _To Have and to\nHold_--placed her firmly in the front rank of living romantic writers.\nThe thing that distinguished her romanticism was its sense of drama in\nhuman affairs and human destiny. Added to this was a command of live,\nnervous, highly poetic prose. History--romance; it did not matter. She\ncould set either movingly before you.\n\nHer work showed steady progress, reaching a sustained culmination in\nher two Civil War novels, _The Long Roll_ and _Cease Firing_. She\nexperimented a little, as in her poetic drama of the French Revolution,\n_The Goddess of Reason_, and in _The Fortunes of Garin_, a tapestry\nof medi\u00e6val France. _The Wanderers_ was a more decided venture, but a\nperfectly successful. Then came _Foes_.\n\nConsidered purely as a romantic narrative, as a story of friendship\ntransformed into hatred and the pursuit of a private feud under the\nguise of wreaking Divine vengeance, _Foes_ is a superb tale. Considered\nas a novel, _Foes_ is a terrible failure.\n\nWhy? Is it not sufficient to write a superb tale? Yes, if you have\nessayed nothing more. Is a novel anything more than \u201ca good story,\nwell told\u201d? Yes, if the writer essays to make more of it.\n\nThe novelist who has aimed at nothing beyond the \u201cgood story, well\ntold\u201d has a just grievance against any one who asks anything further.\nBut against the novelist who has endeavored to make his story, however\ngood, however well told, the vehicle for a human philosophy or a\nmetaphysical speculation, the reader has a just grievance--if the\nendeavor has been unsuccessful or if the philosophy is unsound.\n\nNow as to the soundness or unsoundness of a particular philosophy\nevery reader must pronounce for himself. The metaphysical idea which\nwas the basis of Miss Johnston\u2019s novel was this: All gods are one. All\ndeities are one. Christ, Buddha; it matters not. \u201cThere swam upon him\nanother great perspective. He saw Christ in light, Buddha in light.\nThe glorified--the unified. _Union._\u201d Upon this idea Miss Johnston\nreconciles her two foes.\n\nThis perfectly comprehensible mystical conception is the rock on which\nthe whole story is founded--and the rock on which it goes to pieces.\nIt will be seen at once that the conception is one which no Christian\ncan entertain and remain a Christian--nor any Buddhist, and remain\na Buddhist, either. To the vast majority of mankind, therefore, the\nphilosophy of _Foes_ was unsound and the novel was worthless except\nfor the superficial incidents and the lovely prose in which they were\nrecounted.\n\nIt might be thought that for those who accepted the mystical concept\nMiss Johnson imposed, _Foes_ would have been a novel of the first rank.\nNo, indeed; and for this reason:\n\nHer piece of mysticism was supposed to be arrived at and embraced by a\ndour Scotchman of about the year of Our Lord 1750. It was supposed to\ntransform the whole nature of that man so as to lead him to give over\na life-long enmity in which he had looked upon himself as a Divine\ninstrument to punish an evil-doer.\n\nNow however reasonable or sound or inspiring and inspiriting the\nmystical idea may have seemed to any reader, he could not but be\nfatally aware that, as presented, the thing was a flat impossibility.\nScotchmen of the year 1750 were Christians above all else. They were,\nif you like, savage Christians; some of them were irreligious, some of\nthem were God-defying, none of them were Deists in the all-inclusive\nsense that Miss Johnston prescribes. The idea that Christ and Buddha\nmight possibly be nothing but different manifestations of the Deity\nis an idea which could never have occurred to the eighteenth century\nScotch mind--and never did. Least of all could it have occurred to such\na man as Miss Johnston delineates in Alexander Jardine.\n\nThe thing is therefore utterly anachronistic. It is a historical\nanachronism, if you like, the history here being the history of the\nhuman spirit in its religious aspects. Every reader of the book, no\nmatter how willing he may have been to accept the novelist\u2019s underlying\nidea, was aware that the endeavor to convey it had utterly failed,\nwas aware that Miss Johnston had simply projected _her_ idea, _her_\nfavorite bit of mysticism, into the mind of one of her characters, a\nScotchman living a century and a half earlier! But the thoughts that\none may think in the twentieth century while tramping the Virginia\nhills are not thoughts that could have dawned in the mind of a Scottish\nlaird in the eighteenth century, not even though he lay in the\nflowering grass of the Roman Campagna.\n\n... And so there, in _Foes_, we have the book in a hundred which called\nfor something more than the intelligent and accurate work of the\nbook reporter. Here was a case of a good novelist, and a very, very\ngood one, gone utterly wrong. It was not sufficient to convey to the\nprospective reader a just idea of the story and of the qualities of it.\nIt was necessary to cut and slash, as cleanly and as swiftly and as\neconomically as possible--and as dispassionately--to the root of the\ntrouble. For if Miss Johnston were to repeat this sort of performance\nher reputation would suffer, not to speak of her royalties; readers\nwould be enraged or misled; young writers playing the sedulous ape\nwould inflict dreadful things upon us; tastes and tempers would be\nspoiled; publishers would lose money;--and, much the worst of all, the\nworld would be deprived of the splendid work Mary Johnston could do\nwhile she was doing the exceedingly bad work she did do.\n\nPerhaps the most disturbing thing about the blunder in _Foes_ was the\nfact that there was no necessity for it. The Christian religion, which\nwas the religion of Alexander Jardine, provides for reconciliation,\nindeed, it exacts it. There was the way for Miss Johnston to bring her\nfoes together. Of course, it would not have been intellectually so\nexciting. But there is such a thing as emotional appeal, and it is not\nalways base; there are emotions in the human so high and so lofty that\nit is wiser not to try to transcend them....\n\n\nThe appearance of part of the foregoing in _Books and the Book World_\nof _The Sun_, New York, brought a letter from Kansas which should find\na place in this volume. The letter, with the attempted answer, may as\nwell be given here. The writer is head of the English department in a\nState college. He wrote:\n\n\n20\n\n\u201cI hope that the mails lost for your college professors of English\nsubscribers their copies of _Books and the Book World_ [containing the\nforegoing observations on _Book Reporting_].... College professors do\nnot like to be disturbed--and most of us cannot be, for that matter.\nThe TNT in those pages was not meant for us, perhaps, but it should\nhave been.\n\n\u201cWhen I read _Book Reporting_ I dictated three pages of protest, but\ndid not send it on--thanks to my better judgment.... Then I decided,\nsince you had added so much to my perturbation, to ask you to help me.\n\n\u201cWe need it out here--literary help only, of course. This is the only\nState college on what was once known as the \u2018Great Plains.\u2019 W. F.\nCody won his sobriquet on Government land which is now our campus.\nOur students are the sons and daughters of pioneers who won over\ngrasshoppers, droughts, hot winds and one crop farms. They are so near\nto real life that the teaching of literature must be as real as the\nliterature--rather, it ought to be. That\u2019s where I want you to help me.\n\n\u201cI am not teaching literature here now as I was taught geology back in\nMissouri. That\u2019s as near as I shall tell you how I teach--it is bad\nenough and you might not help me if I did. (Perhaps, in fairness to\nyou, I should say that for several years never less than one-third of\nthose to whom we gave degrees have majored in English, and always as\nmany as the next two departments combined.)\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s what I am tired of and want to get away from:\n\n\u201c1. Testing students on reading a book by asking fact questions about\nwhat is in the book--memory work, you see.\n\n\u201c2. Demanding of students a scholarship in the study of literature that\nis so academic that it is Prussian.\n\n\u201c3. Demanding that students serve time in literature classes as a means\nof measuring their advance in the study of literature.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s what I want you to help me with in some definite concrete way:\n(Sounds like a college professor making an assignment--beg pardon.)\n\n\u201c1. Could you suggest a scheme of \u2018book reporting\u2019 for college students\nin literature classes? (An old book to a new person is news, isn\u2019t it?)\n\n\u201c2. Give me a list of books published during the last ten years that\nshould be included in college English laboratory classes in literature.\nI want your list. I have my own, but fear it is too academic.\n\n\u201c3. What are some of the things which should enter into the training\nof teachers of high school English? Part of our work, especially in\nthe summer, is to give such training to men and women who will teach\ncomposition and literature in Kansas high schools.\n\n\u201cYour help will not only be appreciated, but it will be used.\u201d\n\n\n21\n\nTo answer adequately these requests would take about six months\u2019 work\nand the answers would make a slender book. And then they would exhibit\nthe defects inseparable from a one man response. None of which excuses\na failure to attempt to answer, though it must extenuate failures in\nthe attempt.\n\nWe shall try to answer, in this place, though necessarily without\ncompleteness. If nothing better than a few suggestions is the result,\nwhy--suggestions may be all that is really needed.\n\nAnd first respecting the things our friend is tired of and wants to get\naway from:\n\n1. Fact questions about what is in the book--memory work--are not much\nuse if they stop with the outline of the story. What is _not_ in the\nbook may be more important than what is. Why did the author select this\nscene for narration and omit that other, intrinsically (it seems) the\nmore dramatically interesting of the two? See _The Flirt_, by Booth\nTarkington, where a double murder gets only a few lines and a small\nboy\u2019s doings occupy whole chapters.\n\n2. Scholarship is less important than wide reading, though the two\naren\u2019t mutually exclusive. A wide acquaintance doesn\u2019t preclude a few\nprofoundly intimate friendships. Textual study has spoiled Chaucer,\nShakespeare and Milton for most of us. Fifty years hence Kipling and\nMasefield will be spoiled in the same way.\n\n3. Time serving over literature is a waste of time. There are only\nthree ways to teach literature. The first is by directing students\nto books for _voluntary_ reading--hundreds of books, thousands.\nThe second is by class lectures--entertaining, idea\u2019d, anecdoted,\ncatholic in range and expository in character. The third is by\nconversation--argumentative at times, analytic at moments, but mostly\nby way of exchanging information and opinions.\n\nStudy books as you study people. Mix among them. You don\u2019t take notes\non people unless, perchance, in a diary. Keep a diary on books you\nread, if you like, but don\u2019t \u201ctake notes.\u201d Look for those qualities in\nbooks that you look for in people and make your acquaintances by the\nsame (perhaps unformulated) rules. To read snobbishly is as bad as to\npractise snobbery among your fellows.\n\n\n22\n\nWe go on to the first of our friend\u2019s requests for help. It is a scheme\nfor \u201cbook reporting\u201d for college students in literature classes and he\npremises that an old book to a new reader is news. Of course it is.\n\nLet the student take up a book that\u2019s new to him and read it by\nhimself, afterward writing a report of it to be read to the class. When\nhe comes to write his report he must keep in the forefront of his mind\nthis one thing:\n\nTo tell the others accurately enough about that book so that each one\nof them will know whether or not _he_ wants to read it.\n\nThat is all the book reporter ever tries for. No book is intended for\neverybody, but almost every book is intended for somebody. The problem\nof the book reporter is to find the reader.\n\nComparison may help. For instance, those who enjoy Milton\u2019s pastoral\npoetry will probably enjoy the long poem in Robert Nichols\u2019s _Ardours\nand Endurances_. Those who like Thackeray will like Mary S. Watts.\nThose who like Anna Katharine Green will thank you for sending them to\n_The Moonstone_, by one Wilkie Collins.\n\nMost stories depend upon suspense in the action for their main effect.\nYou must not \u201cgive away\u201d the story so as to spoil it for the reader. In\na mystery story you may state the mystery and appraise the solution or\neven characterize it--but you mustn\u2019t reveal it.\n\nTell \u2019em that Mr. Hergesheimer\u2019s _Java Head_ is an atmospheric marvel,\nbut will disappoint many readers who put action first. Tell \u2019em that\nWilliam Allen White writes (often) banally, but so saturates his novel\nwith his own bigheartedness that he makes you laugh and cry. Tell \u2019em\nthe truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as well as you can\nmake it out--and for heaven\u2019s sake ask yourself with every assertion:\n\u201cIs this a fact or is it my personal opinion?\u201d _And a fact, for your\npurpose, will be an opinion in which a large majority of readers will\nconcur._\n\n\n23\n\n\u201cGive me a list of books published during the last ten years that\nshould be included in college English laboratory classes in literature.\nI want your list. I have my own, but fear it is too academic.\u201d\n\nThe following list is an offhand attempt to comply with this request.\nIt is offered merely for the suggestions it may contain. If the ten\nyear restriction is rigid we ask pardon for such titles as may be a\nlittle older than that. Strike them out.\n\nFor Kansans: Willa Sibert Cather\u2019s novels, _O Pioneers!_ and _My\nAntonia_, chronicling people and epochs of Kansas-Nebraska. William\nAllen White\u2019s _A Certain Rich Man_ and _In the Heart of a Fool_, less\nfor their Kansas-ness than for their Americanism and humanity.\n\nFor Middle Westerners: Meredith Nicholson\u2019s _The Valley of Democracy_.\nZona Gale\u2019s _Birth_. Carl Sandburg\u2019s _Chicago Poems_. Edgar Lee\nMasters\u2019s _Spoon River Anthology_. Vachel Lindsay\u2019s longer poems.\nMary S. Watts\u2019s _Nathan Burke_ and _Van Cleve: His Friends and His\nFamily_. Lord Charnwood\u2019s life of Lincoln. William Dean Howells\u2019s _The\nLeatherwood God_. Booth Tarkington\u2019s _The Conquest of Canaan_ (first\npublished about fourteen years ago) and _The Magnificent Ambersons_.\nGene Stratton-Porter\u2019s _A Daughter of the Land_, her _Freckles_ and her\n_A Girl of the Limberlost_. One or two books by Harold Bell Wright.\n_The Passing of the Frontier_, by Emerson Hough, and other books in the\nChronicles of America series published by the Yale University Press.\n\nFor Americans: Mary S. Watts\u2019s _The Rise of Jennie Cushing_. Owen\nWister\u2019s _The Virginian_ (if not barred under the ten year rule). Booth\nTarkington\u2019s _The Flirt_. Novels with American settings by Gertrude\nAtherton and Stewart Edward White. Mary Johnston\u2019s _The Long Roll_\nand _Cease Firing_. Willa Sibert Cather\u2019s _The Song of the Lark_.\nEdith Wharton\u2019s _Ethan Frome_. Alice Brown\u2019s _The Prisoner_. Ellen\nGlasgow\u2019s _The Deliverance_. Corra Harris\u2019s _A Circuit-Rider\u2019s Wife_.\nAll of O. Henry. Margaret Deland\u2019s _The Iron Woman_. Earlier novels by\nWinston Churchill. Ernest Poole\u2019s _The Harbor_. Joseph Hergesheimer\u2019s\n_The Three Black Pennys_, his _Gold and Iron_ and his _Java Head_.\nHistorical books by Theodore Roosevelt. American biographies too\nnumerous to mention. _From Isolation to Leadership: A Review of\nAmerican Foreign Policy_ by Latan\u00e9 (published by the educational\ndepartment of Doubleday, Page & Company). Essays, such as those of\nAgnes Repplier.\n\nEach of these enumerations presupposes the books already named, or most\nof them. Don\u2019t treat them as pieces of literary workmanship. Many of\nthem aren\u2019t. Those that have fine literary workmanship have something\nelse, too--and it\u2019s the other thing, or things, that count. Fine art\nin a book is like good breeding in a person, a passport, not a Magna\nCharta. \u201cManners makyth man\u201d--yah!\n\n\n24\n\nWe are also asked:\n\n\u201cWhat are some of the things which should enter into the training of\nteachers of high school English?\u201d\n\nWe reply:\n\nA regard for literature, not as it reflects life, but as it moulds\nlives. A profound respect for an author who can find 100,000 readers, a\nrespect at least equal to that entertained for an author who can write\nsuperlatively well. For instance: Get it out of your head that you can\nafford to condescend toward a best seller, or to worship such a writer\nas Stevenson for his sheer craftsmanship.\n\nAn instinct for what will nourish the ordinary man or woman as keen\nas your perception of what will be relished by the fastidious reader.\nDon\u2019t insist that people must live on what you, or any one else,\ndeclare to be good for them. It is not for nothing that they \u201cdon\u2019t\nknow anything about literature, _but know what they like_.\u201d\n\nA confidence in the greater wisdom of the greatest number. Tarkington\ngot it right. The public wants the best it is capable of understanding;\nits understanding may not be the highest understanding, but \u201cthe writer\nwho stoops to conquer doesn\u2019t conquer.\u201d Neither does the writer who\nnever concedes anything. The public\u2019s standard can\u2019t always be wrong;\nthe private standards can\u2019t always be right.\n\nArnold Bennett says, quite rightly, that the classics are made and\nkept alive by \u201cthe passionate few.\u201d But the business of high school\nteachers of English is not with the passionate few--who will look after\nthemselves--but with the unimpassioned many. You can lead the student\nto Mr. Pope\u2019s Pierian spring, but you cannot make him drink. Unless\nyou can show him, in the Missourian sense, it\u2019s all off. If you can\u2019t\ntell what it is a girl likes in Grace S. Richmond how are you going to\nshow her what she\u2019ll like in Dickens? Unless you know what it is that\n\u201cthey\u201d get out of these books they _do_ read you won\u2019t be able to bait\nthe hook with the things you want them to read. Don\u2019t you think you\u2019ve\ngot a lot to learn yourself? And mightn\u2019t you do worse than sit down\nyourself and read attentively, at whatever personal cost, some of the\nbest sellers?\n\nIt all goes back to the size of the teacher\u2019s share of our common\nhumanity. A person who can\u2019t read a detective story for the sake of the\nthrills has no business teaching high school English. A person who is a\nliterary snob is unfit to teach high school English. A person who can\u2019t\nsense (better yet, share) the common feeling about a popular writer and\ncomprehend the basis of it and sympathize a little with it and express\nit more or less articulately in everyday speech is not qualified to\nteach high school English.\n\n\n25\n\nA word about writing \u201ccompositions\u201d in high school English classes.\nMake \u2019em write stories instead. If they want to tackle thumbnail\nsketches or abstracter writing--little essays--why, let \u2019em.\nAbstractions in thought and writing are like the ocean--it\u2019s fatally\neasy to get beyond your depth, and every one else\u2019s. Read what Sir\nArthur Quiller-Couch says about this in his _Studies in Literature_.\nOnce in a while a theologian urges us to \u201cget back to the Bible.\u201d Well,\nthere is one sense, at least, in which the world would do well to get\nback to the Bible, or to the Old Testament, at any rate. As Gardiner\npoints out in his _The Bible as English Literature_, it was the\nfortune or misfortune of ancient Hebrew that it had no abstractions.\nEverything was stated in terms of the five senses. There was no\nsuch word as \u201cvirtue\u201d; you said \u201csweet smellingness\u201d or \u201cpleasant\ntastingness\u201d or something like that. And everybody knew what you meant.\nWhereas \u201cvirtue\u201d means anything from personal chastity to a general\nmeritoriousness that nobody can define. The Greeks introduced abstract\nthinking and expression and some Germans blighted the world by their\nabuse.\n\nWhat should enter into the training of high school teachers of English?\nOnly humbleness, sanity, catholicity of viewpoint, humor, a continual\nwillingness to learn, a continuous faith in the people--and undying\nenthusiasm. Only these--and the love of books.\n\n\n\n\nLITERARY EDITORS\n\nBY ONE OF THEM\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nLITERARY EDITORS, BY ONE OF THEM\n\n\nThe very term \u201cliterary editor\u201d is a survival. It is meaningless, but\nwe continue to use it because no better designation has been found,\njust as people in monarchical countries continue to speak of \u201cKing\nGeorge\u201d or \u201cQueen Victoria of Spain.\u201d Besides, there is politeness\nto consider. No one wants to be the first to allude publicly and\ntruthfully to \u201cFigurehead George\u201d or \u201cSocial Leader Victoria.\u201d\n\nLiterary editors who are literary are not editors, and literary\neditors who are editors are no longer literary. Of old there were\nscholarly, sarcastic men (delightful fellows, personally) who sat in\ncubbyholes and read unremittingly. Afterward, at night, they set down\na few thoughtful, biting words about what they had read. These were\nprinted. Publishers who perused them felt as if knives had been stuck\nin their backs. Booksellers who read them looked up to ask each other\npathetically: \u201cBut what does it _mean_?\u201d Book readers who read them\nresolved that the publication of a new book should be, for them, the\nsignal to read an old one. It was good for the secondhand trade.\n\nWe\u2019ve changed all that, or, if we haven\u2019t, we\u2019re going to. Take a chap\nwho runs what is called a \u201cbook section.\u201d This is a separate section\nor supplement forming part of a daily or Sunday newspaper. Its pages\nare magazine size--half the size of newspaper pages. They number from\neight to twenty-eight, depending on the season and the advertising. The\nessential thing to realize about such a section is that it requires an\neditor to run it.\n\nIt does not require a literary man, or woman, at all. The editor of\nsuch a section need have no special education in the arts or letters.\nHe must have judgment, of course, and if he has not some taste for\nliterary matters he may not enjoy his work as he will if he has that\ntaste. But high-browism is fatal.\n\nCan our editor \u201creview\u201d a book? Perhaps not. It is no matter. Maybe he\nknows a good review when he sees it, which will matter a good deal.\nMaybe he can get capable people to deal with the books for him. Which\nwill matter more than anything else on earth in the handling of his\nbook section.\n\nA section will most certainly require, to run it, a man who can tell\na good review (another word-survival) and who can get good reviewers.\nIt will require a man, or woman, with a sharp, clear and very broad\nviewpoint. Such exist. What do we mean--viewpoint?\n\nThe right conception, it seems to us, starts with the proposition that\na new book is news (sometimes an old one is news too) and should be\ndealt with as such. Perhaps, we are dealing only with a state of mind,\nin all this, but states of mind are important. They are the only states\nwhere self-determination is a sure thing. To get on:\n\nYour literary editor is like unto a city editor, an individual whose\ndesk is usually not so far away but that you can study him in his\nhabitat. The city editor tries to distinguish the big news from the\nlittle news. The literary editor will wisely do the same. What is big\nnews in the world of books? Well, a book that appears destined to be\nread as widely fifty years hence as it is to-day on publication is big\nnews. And a book that will be read immediately by 100,000 people is\nbigger news. People who talk about news often overlook the ephemeral\nside of it. Much of the newsiness and importance of news resides in\nits transiency. What is news to-day isn\u2019t news to-morrow. But to-day\n100,000 people, more or less, will want to know about it.\n\nIllustration: Two events happen on the same day. One of them will be\nnoted carefully in histories written fifty years hence, but it affects,\nand interests, at the hour of its occurrence very few persons. Of\ncourse it is news, but there may easily, at that hour, be much bigger.\nFor another event occurring on that same day, though of a character\nwhich will make it forgotten fifty years later, at once and directly\naffects the lives of the hundred thousand.\n\nParallel: Two books are published on the same day. One of them will be\ndissected fifty years later by the H. W. Boyntons and Wilson Folletts\nof that time. But the number of persons who will read it within the\ntwelvemonth of its birth is small--in the hundreds. The other book will\nbe out of print and unremembered in five years. But within six months\nof its publication hundreds of thousands will read it. Among those\nhundreds of thousands there will be hundreds, and maybe thousands,\nwhose thoughts, ideas, opinions will be seriously modified and in some\ncases lastingly modified--whose very lives may change trend as a result\nof reading that book.\n\nNo need to ask which event and which book is the bigger news. News is\nnot the judgment of posterity on a book or event. News is not even the\nsum total of the effects of an event or a book on human society. News\nis the immediate importance, or interest, of an event or a book to the\ngreatest number of people.\n\nEleanor H. Porter writes a new story. One in every thousand persons\nin the United States, or perhaps more, wants to know about it, and\nat once. Isidor MacDougal (as Frank M. O\u2019Brien would say) writes a\nliterary masterpiece. Not one person in 500,000 cares, or would care\neven if the subject matter were made comprehensible to him. The oldtime\n\u201creviewer\u201d would write three solid columns about Isidor MacDougal\u2019s\nwork. The present-day literary editor puts it in competent hands for a\nsimplified description to be printed later; and meanwhile he slaps Mrs.\nPorter\u2019s novel on his front page.\n\nThe troubles of a literary editor are the troubles of his friend up\nthe aisle, the city editor. The worst of them is the occasional and\ninevitable error in giving out the assignment. All his reporters\nare good book reporters, but like the people on the city editor\u2019s\nstaff they have usually their limitations, whether temperamental or\nknowledgeable. Every once in a while the city editor sends to cover a\nfire a reporter who does speechified dinners beautifully but who has no\nsympathy with fires, who can\u2019t get through the fire lines, who writes\nthat the fire \u201cbroke out\u201d and burns up more words misdescribing the\nfacts than the copyreader can extinguish with blue air and blue pencil.\nJust so it will happen in the best regulated literary editor\u2019s sanctum\nthat, now and then, the editor will give the wrong book to the right\nman. Then he learns how unreasonable an author can be, if he doesn\u2019t\nknow already from the confidences of publishers.\n\nThe literary editor\u2019s point of view, we believe, must be that so\nwell expressed by Robert Cortes Holliday in the essay on _That\nReviewer \u201cCuss\u201d_ in the book _Walking-Stick Papers_. Few books that\nget published by established publishing houses are so poor or so\ncircumscribed as not to appeal to a body of readers somewhere, however\nsmall or scattered. The function of the book reporter is transcendently\nto find a book\u2019s waiting audience. If he can incidentally warn off\nthose who don\u2019t belong to that audience, so much the better. That\u2019s a\nharder thing to do, of course.\n\n\n2\n\nThe first requisite in a good book section is that it shall be\ninteresting. As regards the news of new books, this is not difficult\nwhere book reporters, with the reporter\u2019s attitude, are on the job.\nReporter\u2019s stories are sometimes badly written, but they are seldom\ndull. New books described by persons who have it firmly lodged in\ntheir noodles that they are \u201creviewing\u201d the books, fare badly. The\nreviewer-obsession manifests itself in different ways. Sometimes the\nnew book is made to march past the reviewer in column of squads,\ndeploying at page 247 into skirmish formation and coming at page 431\ninto company front. Very fine, but the reader wants to see them in the\ntrenches, or, headed by the author uttering inspiriting yells, going\nover the top. On other occasions the reviewer assumes the so-called\njudicial attitude, the true inwardness of which William Schwenk Gilbert\nwas perhaps the first to appreciate, with the possible exception of\nLewis Carroll. Then doth our reviewer tell us what will be famous a\ncentury hence. Much we care what will be famous a century hence. What\nbothers us is what we shall read to-morrow. Of course it may happen to\nbe one and the same book. Very well then, why not say so?\n\nThe main interest of the book section is served by getting crackajack\nbook reporters. They will suffice for the people who read the section\nbecause they are interested in books. If the literary editor stops\nthere, however, he might as well never have started. These people would\nread the book section anyway, unless it were filled throughout with\nabsolutely unreadable matter, as has been known to happen. Even then\nthey would doubtless scan the advertisements. At least, that is the\ntheory on which publishers hopefully proceed. There are book sections\nwhere the contributors always specify that their articles shall have a\nposition next to advertising matter.\n\nNo, the literary editor must interest people who do not especially\ncare about books as such. He can do it only by convincing them that\nbooks are just as full of life and just as much a part of a normal\nscheme of life as movies, or magazine cut-outs, or buying things on the\ninstalment plan. Many a plain person has been led to read books by the\nfact that books are sometimes sold for instalment payments. Anything\nso sold, the ordinary person at once realizes, must be something which\nwill fit into his scheme of existence. Acting on an instinct so old\nthat its origin is shrouded in the mists of antiquity, the ordinary\nperson pays the instalments. As a result, books are delivered at his\nresidence. At first he is frightened. But he who looks and runs away\nmay live to read another day. And from living to read it is but a step\nto reading to live.\n\nNow one way to interest people who don\u2019t care about books for books\u2019\nsake is to get up attractive pages, with pleasant or enticing\nheadlines, with pictures, with jokes in the corners of \u2019em, with some\nnew and original and not-hitherto-published matter in them, with poetry\n(all kinds), with large type, with signed articles so that the reader\ncan know who wrote it and like or hate him with the necessary personal\ntag. But these things aren\u2019t literary, at all. They are just plain\nhuman and fall in the field of action of every editor alive--though of\ncourse editors who are dead are exempt from dealing with them. That\nis why a literary editor has no need to be literary and, indeed, had\nbetter not be if it is going to prevent his being human.\n\nWe have been talking about the literary editor of a book section.\nThere are not many book sections in this country. There are hundreds\nof book pages--half-pages and whole pages and double pages. The word\n\u201ctechnique\u201d is a loathsome thing and really without any significance\nin this connection, inasmuch as there is no particular way of doing\nthe news of books well, and certainly no one way of doing it that is\ninvariably better than any other. But for convenience we may permit\nourselves to use the word \u201ctechnique\u201d for a moment; and, permission\ngranted, we will merely say that the technique of a book page or pages\nis entirely different from the technique of a book section--if you know\nwhat we mean.\n\nClarified (we hope) it comes down to this, that things which a fellow\nwould attempt in a book section he would not essay in a book page or\ndouble page. Conversely, things that will make a page successful may\nbe out of place in a section. It is by no means wholly a matter of\nnewspaper makeup, though there is that to it, too. But a man with a\nbook section, though not necessarily more ambitious, is otherwisely so.\nFor one thing, he expects to turn his reporters loose on more books\nthan his colleague who has only a page or so to turn around in. For\nanother, he will probably want to print a careful list of all books\nhe receives, of whatever sort, with a description of each as adequate\nas he can contrive in from twenty to fifty words, plus title, author,\nplace of publication, publisher and price. Such lists are scanned by\npublishers, booksellers, librarians, readers in search of books on\nspecial subjects--by pretty nearly everybody who reads the section at\nall. Even the rather prosaic quality of such a list has its value.\nA woman down in Texas writes to the literary editor that there is\ntoo much conscious cleverness in lots of the stuff he prints, \u201cbut\nthe lists of books are delightful\u201d! There you are. In editing a book\nsection you must be all things to all women.\n\nThe fellow with a page or two has quite other preoccupations. Where\u2019s\na photo, or a cartoon? Must have a headline to break the solidity of\nthis close-packed column of print. How about a funny column? That\ngifted person, Heywood Broun, taking charge of the book pages of the\nNew York _Tribune_, announces that he is in favor of anything that\nwill make book reviewing exciting. Nothing can make book reviewing\nexciting except book reporting and the books themselves; but if Broun\nis looking for excitement he will find it while filling the r\u00f4le of\na literary editor. Before long he will learn that everybody in the\nworld who is not the author of a book wants to review books--and\nsome who are authors are willing to double in both parts. Also, a\nconsiderable number of books are published annually in these still\nUnited States and a considerable percentage of those published find\ntheir way to the literary editor. It is no joke to receive, list with\ndescriptions and sort out for assignment or non-assignment an average\nof 1,500 volumes a year, nor to assign to your book reporters, with as\nmuch infallibility in choosing the reporter as possible, perhaps half\nof the 1,500. Likewise there are assignments which several reporters\nwant, a single book bespoken by four persons, maybe; and there are\nbook assignments that are received with horror or sometimes with\nunflinching bravery by the good soldier. To hand a man, for instance,\nthe extremely thick two-volume _History of Labour in the United States_\nby Professor Commons and his associates is like pinning a decoration on\nhim for limitless valor under fire--only the decoration bears a strong\nresemblance to the Iron Cross.\n\n\n3\n\nAdvertising?\n\nNewspapers depend upon advertising for their existence, let alone their\nprofits, in most instances. Of course, if there were no such things as\nadvertisements we should still have newspapers. The news must be had.\nPresumably people would simply pay more for it, or pay as much in a\nmore direct way.\n\nWhat is true of newspapers is true of parts of newspapers. The fact\nthat a new book is news, and, as such, a thing that must more or less\nwidely but indispensably be reported, is attested by the maintenance\nof book columns and pages in many newspapers where book advertising\nthere is none. The people who read the Boston _Evening Transcript_, for\nexample, would hardly endure the abolition of its book pages whether\npublishers used them to advertise in or not.\n\nAt the same time the publisher finds, and can find, no better medium\nthan a good live book page or book section; nor can he find any other\nmedium, nor can any other medium be created, in which his advertising\nwill reach his full audience. \u201cThe trade\u201d reads the excellent\n_Publishers\u2019 Weekly_, librarians have the journal of the American\nLibrary Association, readers have the newspapers and magazines of\ngeneral circulation on which they rely for the news of new books.\nBut the good book page or book section reaches all these groups.\nPublishers, authors, booksellers, librarians, book buyers--all read\nit. And if it is really good it spreads the book-reading habit. Even a\nbookshop seldom does that--we have one exception in mind, pretty well\nknown. People do not, ordinarily, read in a bookshop.\n\nOf course a literary editor who has any regard for the vitality of his\npage or section is interested in book advertising. There\u2019s something\nwrong with him if he isn\u2019t. If he isn\u2019t he doesn\u2019t measure up to his\njob, which is to get people to read books and find their way about\namong them. A book page or a book section without advertising is no\nmore satisfactory than a man or a woman without a sense of the value\nof money. It looks lopsided and it is lopsided. Readers resent it, and\nrightly. It\u2019s a beautiful fa\u00e7ade, but the side view is disappointing.\n\nThe interest the literary editor takes in book advertising need no more\nbe limited than the interest he takes in the growth or improvement\nof any other feature of his page or section. It has and can have no\nrelation to his editorial or news policy. The moment such a thing is\ntrue his usefulness is ended. An alliance between the pen and the\npocketbook is known the moment it is made and is transparent the moment\nit takes effect in print. A literary editor may resent, and keenly,\nas an editor, the fact that Bing, Bang & Company do not advertise\ntheir books in his domain. He is quite right to feel strongly about\nit. It has nothing to do with his handling of the Bing Bang books.\nThat is determined by their news value alone. He may give the Bing\nBang best seller a front page review and at the same time decline to\nmeet Mr. Bing or lunch with Mr. Bang. And he will be entirely honest\nand justified in his course, both ways. Puff & Boom advertise like\nthunder. The literary editor likes them both immensely, or, at least,\nhe appreciates their good judgment (necessarily it seems good to him in\nhis r\u00f4le as editor of the pages they use). But Puff & Boom\u2019s books are\none-stick stories. Well, it\u2019s up to Puff & Boom, isn\u2019t it?\n\nOh, well, first and last there\u2019s a lot to being a literary editor, new\nstyle. But first and last there\u2019s a lot to being a human. Any one who\ncan be human successfully can do the far lesser thing much better than\nany literary editor has yet done it.\n\n\n\n\nWHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nWHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS\n\n\nA big subject? Not necessarily. Discussed by an authority? No, indeed.\nOn the contrary, about to be written upon by an amateur recording\nimpressions extending a little over a year but formed in several\nrelationships--as a \u201cliterary editor,\u201d as an author and, involuntarily,\nas an author\u2019s agent--but all friendly. Also, perhaps, as a pretty\nregular reader of publishers\u2019 products. What will first appear as\nvastness in the subject will shrink on a moment\u2019s examination. For our\ntitle is concerned only with what _every_ publisher knows. A common\npiece of knowledge; or if not, after all, very \u201ccommon,\u201d at least\ncommonly held--by book publishers.\n\nTo state the main conclusion first: The one thing that every publisher\nknows, so far as a humble experience can deduce, is that what is called\n\u201cgeneral\u201d publishing--meaning fiction and other books of general\nappeal--is a highly speculative enterprise and hardly a business at\nall. The clearest analogy seems to be with the theatrical business.\nProducing books and producing plays is terrifyingly alike. Full of\nrisks. Requiring, unless genius is manifested, considerable money\ncapital. Likely to make, and far more likely to lose, small fortunes\novernight.... Fatally fascinating. More an art than an organization\nbut usually requiring an organization for the exhibition of the\nmost brilliant art--like opera. A habit comparable with hasheesh.\nHeart-lifting--and headachy. \u2019Twas the night before publication and all\nthrough the house not a creature was stirring, not even a stenographer.\nThe day dawned bright and clear and a re-order for fifty more copies\ncame in the afternoon mail.... Absentmindedly, the publisher-bridegroom\npulled a contract instead of the wedding ring from his pocket. \u201cWith\nthis royalty I thee wed,\u201d he murmured. And so she was published and\nthey lived happily ever after until she left him because he did not\nclothe the children suitably, using green cloth with purple stamping.\n\n\n2\n\nA fine old publishing house once went back over the record of about\n1,200 published books. This was a rather conservative firm, as little\nof a gambler as possible; its books had placed it, in every respect, in\nthe first rank of publishing houses.\n\nOf the 1,200 books just one in ten had made any sizable amount of\nmoney. The remaining 1,080 had either lost money, broken even, or made\nsums smaller than the interest on the money tied up in them. Most\nof the 120 profitable books had been highly profitable; it will not\nsurprise you to learn this when you reflect that these lucrative books\nhad each to foot the bill, more or less, for nine others. So much for\nthe analysis of figures. But what lay behind the figures? In some cases\nit was possible to tell why a particular book had sold. More often it\nwasn\u2019t.... Is this a business?\n\n\n3\n\nThorwald Alembert Jenkinson has a book published. It\u2019s not a bad book,\neither; very good novel, as a matter of fact. Sales rather poor. Mr.\nJenkinson\u2019s publisher takes his next book with a natural reluctance,\nbuoyed up by the certitude that this is a better story and has in it\nelements that promise popularity. The publisher\u2019s salesman goes on the\nroad. In Dodge City, Iowa, let us say, he enters a bookseller\u2019s and\nbegins to talk the new Jenkinson novel. At the sound of his voice and\nthe sight of the dummy the bookseller lifts repelling hands and backs\naway in horror.\n\n\u201cStock that?\u201d asks the bookseller rhetorically. \u201cNot on your life!\nWhy,\u201d with a gesture toward one shelf, \u201cthere\u2019s his first book. Twenty\ncopies and only two sold!\u201d\n\nThe new Jenkinson novel has a wretched advance sale. Readers, not\nseeing it in the bookshops, may yet call for it when they read a\nreview--not necessarily a favorable account--or when they see it\nadvertised. If Mr. Jenkinson wrote histories or biographies the\nbookseller\u2019s wholly human attitude would not much matter. But a novel\nis different. The customer wanting Jenkinson\u2019s _History of France_\nwould order it or go elsewhere, most likely. The customer wanting\nJenkinson\u2019s new novel is quite often content with Tarkington\u2019s instead.\n\nWhen you go to the ticket agency to get seats at a Broadway show and\nfind they have none left for _Whoop \u2019Er Up_ you grumble, and then buy\nseats at _Let\u2019s All Go_. Not that you really care. Not that any one\nreally cares. The man who produced _Whoop \u2019Er Up_ is also the producer\nof _Let\u2019s All Go_, both theatres are owned by a single group, the\nlibrettists are one and the same and the music of both is equally\nbad, proceeding from an identical source. Even the stagehands work\ninterchangeably on a strict union scale. But Mr. Jenkinson did not\nwrite Tarkington\u2019s novel, the two books are published by firms that\nhave not a dollar in common, and only the bookseller can preserve an\nevatanguayan indifference over your choice.\n\n\n4\n\nThe publisher\u2019s salesman comes to the bookseller\u2019s lair equipped with\ndummies. These show the book\u2019s exterior, its size, thickness, paper,\nbinding and (very important) its jacket. Within the dummy are blank\npages, or perhaps the first twenty pages of the book printed over and\nover to give the volume requisite thickness. The bookseller may read\nthese twenty pages. If the author has got plenty of action into them\nthe bookseller is favorably impressed. Mainly he depends for his idea\nof the book upon what the salesman and the publisher\u2019s catalogue tells\nhim. He has to. He can\u2019t read \u2019em all.\n\nSometimes the salesman can illustrate his remarks. Henry Leverage wrote\nan ingenious story called _Whispering Wires_ in which the explanation\nof a mysterious murder depended upon the telephone, converted by a\ntoo-gifted electrician into a single-shot pistol. Offering the story\nto the booksellers, Harry Apeler carried parts of a telephone receiver\nabout the country with him, unscrewing and screwing on again the\ndelicate disc that you put against your ear and showing how the deed\nwas done.\n\n\n5\n\nThe bookseller, like every one else, goes by experience. It is, or\nhas been, his experience that collections of short stories do not\nsell well. And this is true despite O. Henry, Fannie Hurst and Edna\nFerber. It is so true that publishers shy at short story volumes.\nWhere there is a name that will command attention--Alice Brown,\nTheodore Dreiser--or where a special appeal is possible, as in Edward\nJ. O\u2019Brien\u2019s _The Best Short Stories of 191-_, books made up of short\ntales may sell. But there are depressing precedents.\n\nIn his interesting article on _The Publishing Business_, appearing in\n1916 in the _Publishers\u2019 Weekly_ and since reprinted as a booklet,\nTemple Scott cites Henri Bergson\u2019s _Creative Evolution_ as a modern\ninstance of a special sort of book finding its own very special, but\nsurprisingly large, public. \u201cNine booksellers out of ten \u2018passed\u2019 it\nwhen the traveller brought it round,\u201d observes Mr. Scott. \u201cFortunately,\nfor the publisher, the press acted the part of the expert, and public\nattention was secured.\u201d Was the bookseller to blame? Most decidedly\nnot. _Creative Evolution_ is nothing to tie up your money in on a dim\nchance that somewhere an enthusiastic audience waits for the Bergsonian\ngospel.\n\nMr. Scott\u2019s article, which is inconclusive, in our opinion, points\nout clearly that as no two books are like each other no two books are\nreally the same article. Much fiction, to be sure, is of a single\nstamp; many books, and here we are by no means limited to fiction,\nhave whatever unity comes from the authorship of a single hand. This\nunity may exist, elusively, as in the stories of Joseph Conrad, or\nmay be confined almost wholly to the presence of the same name on two\ntitlepages, as in the fact that _The Virginian_ and _The Pentecost of\nCalamity_ are both the work of Owen Wister.\n\nNo! Two books are most often and emphatically _not_ the same article.\nMr. Scott is wholly right when he points out every book should have\nadvertising, or other attention, peculiar to itself. A method of\nreporting one book will not do for another, any more than a publisher\u2019s\ncircular describing one book will do to describe a second. The art of\nreporting books or other news, like the art of advertising books or\nother commodities, is one of endless differentiation. In the absence of\nreal originality, freshness and ideas, both objects go unachieved or\nelse are achieved by speciousness, not to say guile. You, for example,\ndo not really believe that by reading Hannibal Halcombe\u2019s _How to Heap\nUp Happiness_ you will be able to acquire the equivalent of a college\neducation in 52 weeks. But somewhere in _How to Heap Up Happiness_ Mr.\nHalcombe tells how he made money or how he learned to enjoy pictures\non magazine covers or a happy solution of his unoriginal domestic\ntroubles--any one of which you may crave to know and honest information\nof which will probably send you after the book.\n\n\n6\n\nAt this point in the discussion of our subject we have had the\nincredible folly to look back at our outline. Yes, there is an\noutline--or a thing of shreds and patches which once went by that\ndescription. What, you will say, wrecked so soon, after a mere\nintroduction of 1,500 words or so? Certainly. Outlines are to writers\nwhat architects\u2019 plans are to builders, or what red rags are supposed\nto be to bulls. Or, as the proverbial (our favorite adjective) chaff\nbefore the wind. Our outline says that the subject of selling books\nshould be subdivision (c) under division 1 of the three partitions of\nour subject. All Gaul and Poland are not the only objects divided in\nthree parts. Every serious subject is, likewise.\n\nNever mind. We shall have to struggle along as best we can. We have\nbeen talking about selling books, or what every publisher knows in\nregard to it. Well, then, every publisher knows that selling books as\nit has mainly to be conducted under present conditions, is just as much\na matter of merchandising as selling bonnets, bathrobes and birdseed.\nBut this is one of the things that people outside the publishing and\nbookselling businesses seldom grasp. A cultural air, for them, invests\nthe book business. The curse of the genteel hangs about it. It is\nalmost professional, like medicine and baseball. It has an odor, like\nsanctity.... All wrong.\n\nBonnets, bathrobes, birdseed, books. All are saleable if you go about\nit right. And how is that? you ask.\n\nThe best way to sell bonnets is to lay a great foundational demand for\nheadgear. The best way to sell bathrobes is to encourage bathing. The\nbest way to sell birdseed is to put a canary in every home. It might\nbe supposed that the best way to sell books would be to get people to\nread. Yes, it might be far more valuable in the end to stimulate and\nspread the reading habit than to try to sell 100,000 copies of any\nparticular book.\n\nOf course every publisher knows this and of course all the publishers,\nassociating themselves for the promotion of a common cause not\ninconceivably allied to the general welfare, spend time and money in\nthe effort to make readers--not of Mrs. Halcyon Hunter\u2019s _Love Has\nWings_ or Mr. Caspar Cartouche\u2019s _Martin the Magnificent_, but of\nbooks, just good books of any sort soever. Yes, of course....\n\nThis would be--beg pardon, is--the thing that actually and immediately\nas well as ultimately counts: Let us get people to read, to like to\nread, to _enjoy_ reading, and they will, sooner or later, read books.\nSooner or later they\u2019ll become book readers and book buyers. Sooner or\nlater books will sell as well as automobiles....\n\nOn the merely technical side of bookselling, on the immediate\nproblem of selling particular new novels, collections of short\nstories, histories, books of verse, and all the rest, the publishers\nhave, collectively at least, not much to learn from their fellow\nmerchants with the bonnets, bathrobes and birdseed. The mechanism\nof merchandising is so highly developed in America that many of the\nmethods resemble the interchangeable parts of standardized manufactures\neverywhere. Suppose we have a look at these methods.\n\n\n7\n\nThe lesson of flexibility has been fully mastered by at least two\nAmerican publishing houses. With their very large lists of new books\nthey contrive to avoid, as much as possible, fixed publication dates.\nWhile their rivals are pinning themselves fast six months ahead, these\npublishers are moving largely but conditionally six and nine months\nahead, and less largely but with swift certainty three months, two\nmonths, even one month from the passing moment. And they are absolutely\nright and profit by their rightness. For this reason: Everything that\nis printed has in it an element of that timeliness, that ephemerality\nif you like but also that widening ripple of human interest which is\nthe unique essence of what we call \u201cnews.\u201d This quality is present, in\na perceptible amount, even in the most serious sort of printed matter.\nLet us take, as an example, Darwin\u2019s _Origin of Species_. Oh! exclaims\nthe reader, there surely is a book with no ephemerality about it! No?\nBut there was an immense quantity of just that in its publication.\nIt came at the right hour. Fifty years earlier it would have gone\nunnoticed. To-day it is transcended by a body of biological knowledge\nthat Darwin knew not.\n\nFifty years, one way or the other, would have made a vast difference in\nthe reception, the import, the influence of even so epochal a book as\n_The Origin of Species_. Now a little reflection will show that, in the\ncase of lesser books, the matter of time is far more sharply important.\nDarwin\u2019s book was so massive that ten or twenty years either way might\nnot have mattered. But in such a case as John Spargo\u2019s _Bolshevism_ a\nfew months may matter. In the case of _Mr. Britling_ the month as well\nas the year mattered vitally. Time is everything, in the fate of many\na book, even as in the fate of a magazine article, a poem, an essay, a\nshort story. Arthur Guy Empey was on the very hour with _Over the Top_;\nbut the appearance of his _Tales from a Dugout_ a few days after the\nsigning of the armistice on November 11, 1918, was one of the minor\ntragedies of the war.\n\nTherefore the publisher who can, as nearly as human and mechanical\nconditions permit, preserve flexibility in his publishing plans, has\na very great advantage over inelastic competitors. That iron-clad\narrangements at half year ahead can be avoided the methods of two of\nthe most important American houses demonstrate. Either can get out a\nbook on a month\u2019s notice. More than once in a season this spells the\ndifference between a sale of 5,000 and one of 15,000 copies--that is,\nbetween not much more than \u201cbreaking even\u201d and making a handsome profit.\n\n\n8\n\nEvery book that is published requires advertising though perhaps\nno two books call for advertising in just the same way. One of\nthe best American publishing houses figures certain sums for\nadvertising--whatever form it may take--in its costs of manufacture\nand then the individual volumes have to take each their chances of\ngetting, each, its proper share of the money. Other houses have similar\nunsatisfactory devices for providing an advertising fund. The result is\ntoo often not unlike the revolving fund with which American railways\nwere furnished by Congress--it revolved so fast that there wasn\u2019t\nenough to go round long.\n\nA very big publishing house does differently. To the cost of\nmanufacture of each book is added a specific, flat and appropriate sum\nof money to advertise that particular book. The price of the book is\nfixed accordingly. When the book is published there is a definite sum\nready to advertise it. No book goes unadvertised. If the book \u201ccatches\non\u201d there is no trouble, naturally, about more advertising money; if\nit does not sell the advertising of it stops when the money set aside\nhas been exhausted and the publishers take their loss with a clear\nconscience; they have done their duty by the book. It may be added that\nthis policy has always paid. Combined with other distinctive methods it\nhas put the house which adopted it in the front rank.\n\n\n9\n\nWhether to publish a small, carefully selected list of books in a\nseason or a large and comprehensive list is not wholly decided by the\ncapital at the publisher\u2019s command. Despite the doubling of all costs\nof book manufacture, publishing is not yet an enterprise which requires\na great amount of capital, as compared with other industries of\ncorresponding volume. The older a publishing house the more likely it\nis to restrict its list of new books. It has more to lose and less to\ngain by taking a great number of risks in new publications. At the same\ntime it is subjected to severe competition because the capital required\nto become a book publisher is not large. Hence much caution, too much,\nno doubt, in many cases and every season. Still, promising manuscripts\nare lamentably few. \u201cLook at the stuff that gets published,\u201d is the\nclassic demonstration of the case.\n\nThe older the house, the stronger its already accumulated list, the\nmore conservative, naturally, it becomes, the less inclined to play\nwith loaded dice in the shape of manuscripts. Yet a policy of extreme\ncaution and conservatism is more dangerous and deadly than a dash of\nthe gambler\u2019s makeup. Two poor seasons together are noticed by the\ntrade; four poor seasons together may put a house badly behind. A\nseason with ten books only, all good, all selling moderately well,\nis perhaps more meritorious and more valuable in the long run than\na season with thirty books, nearly all poor except for one or two\nsensational successes. But the fellow who brings out the thirty books\nand has one or two decided best sellers is the fellow who will make\nlarge profits, attract attention and acquire prestige. It is far\nbetter to try everything you can that seems to have \u201ca chance\u201d than to\nmiss something awfully good. And, provided you drop the bad potatoes\nquickly, it will pay you better in the end.\n\nThere _must_ be a big success somewhere on your list. A row of\nrespectable and undistinguished books is the most serious of defeats.\n\n\n10\n\nSuppose you were a book publisher and had put out a novel or two by\nAuthor A. with excellent results on the profit side of the ledger.\nAuthor A. is plainly a valuable property, like a copper mine in war\ntime. A.\u2019s third manuscript comes along in due time. It is entirely\ndifferent from the first two so-successful novels; it is pretty certain\nto disappoint A.\u2019s \u201caudience.\u201d You canvass the subject with A., who\ncan\u2019t \u201csee\u201d your arguments and suggestions. It comes to this: Either\nyou publish the third novel or you lose A. Which, darling reader, would\nyou, if you were the publisher, do? Would you choose the lady and _The\nTiger_?\n\nYou are neatly started as a book publisher. You can\u2019t get advance sales\nfor your productions (to borrow a term from the theatre). You go to\nMemphis and Syracuse and interview booksellers. They say to you: \u201cFor\nheaven\u2019s sake, get authors whose names mean something! Why should we\nstock fiction by Horatius Hotaling when we can dispose of 125 copies of\nE. Phillips Oppenheim\u2019s latest in ten days from publication?\u201d Returning\nthoughtfully to New York, you happen to meet a Celebrated Author.\nToward the close of luncheon at the Brevoort he offers to let you have\na book of short stories. One of them (it will be the title-story, of\ncourse) was published in the _Saturday Evening Post_, bringing to Mr.\nLorimer, the editor, 2,500 letters and 117 telegrams of evenly divided\npraise and condemnation. Short stories are a stiff proposition; but the\nCelebrated Author has a name that will insure a certain advance sale\nand a fame that will insure reviewers\u2019 attention. For you to become his\npublisher will be as prestigious as it is adventitious.\n\nFrom ethical and other motives, you seek out the C. A.\u2019s present\npublisher--old, well-established house--and inquire if Octavo &\nDuodecimo will have any objection to your publishing the C. A.\u2019s book\nof tales. Mr. Octavo replies in friendly accents:\n\n\u201cNot a bit! Not a bit! Go to it! However, we\u2019ve lent ... (the C. A.)\n$2,500 at one time or another in advance moneys on a projected novel.\nTravel as far as you like with him, but remember that he can\u2019t give you\na novel until he has given us one or has repaid that $2,500.\u201d\n\nWhat to do? \u2019Tis indeed a pretty problem. If you pay Octavo & Duodecimo\n$2,500 you can have the C. A.\u2019s next novel--worth several times as much\nas any book of tales, at the least. On the other hand, there is no\ncertainty that the C. A. will deliver you the manuscript of a novel. He\nhas been going to deliver it to Octavo & Duodecimo for three years. And\nyou can\u2019t afford to tie up $2,500 on the chance that he\u2019ll do for you\nwhat he hasn\u2019t done for them. Because $2,500 is, to you, a lot of money.\n\nIn the particular instance where this happened (except for details, we\nnarrate an actual occurrence) the beginning publisher went ahead and\npublished the book of tales, and afterward another book of tales, and\nlet Octavo & Duodecimo keep their option on the C. A.\u2019s next novel, if\nhe ever writes any. The probabilities are that the C. A. will write\nshort stories for the rest of his life rather than deliver a novel\nfrom which he will receive not one cent until $2,500 has been deducted\nfrom the royalties.\n\n\n11\n\nEnglish authors are keenest on advance money. The English writer who\nwill undertake to do a book without some cash in hand before putting\npen to paper is a great rarity. An American publisher who wants\nEnglish manuscripts and goes to London without his checkbook won\u2019t\nget anywhere. A little real money will go far. It will be almost\nunnecessary for the publisher who has it to entrain for those country\nhouses where English novelists drink tea and train roses. Kent,\nSussex, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Wessex, &c., will go down to London. Mr.\nBritling will motor into town to talk about a contract. All the London\nclubs will be named as rendezvous. Visiting cards will reach the\npublisher\u2019s hotel, signifying the advent of Mr. Percival Fotheringay\nof Houndsditch, Bayswater, Wapping Old Stairs, London, B. C. Ah, yes,\nFotheringay; wonderful stories of Whitechapel and the East End, really!\nKnows the people--what?\n\nIt has to be said that advances on books seem to retard their delivery.\nWe have in mind a famous English author (though he might as well be\nAmerican, so far as this particular point is concerned) who got an\nadvance of $500 (wasn\u2019t it?) some years ago from Quarto & Folio--on a\nbook of essays. Quarto & Folio have carried that title in their spring\nand fall catalogues of forthcoming books ever since. Spring and fall\nthey despair afresh. Daylight saving did nothing to help them--an hour\ngained was a mere bagatelle in the cycles of time through which _Fads\nand Fatalities_ keeps moving in a regular and always equidistant orbit.\nIf some day the League of Nations shall ordain that the calendar be set\nahead six months Quarto & Folio may get the completed manuscript of\n_Fads and Fatalities_.\n\nAmerican authors are much less insistent on advance payments than their\ncousins 3,000 miles removed. A foremost American publishing house has\ntwo inflexible rules: No advance payments and no verdict on uncompleted\nmanuscripts. Inflexible--but it is to be suspected that though this\nhouse never bends the rule there are times when it has to break it.\nWhat won\u2019t bend must break. There are a few authors for whom any\npublisher will do anything except go to jail. Probably you would make\nthe same extensive efforts to retain your exclusive rights in a South\nAfrican diamond digging which had already produced a bunch of Kohinoors.\n\n\n12\n\nThere is a gentleman\u2019s agreement among publishers, arrived at some\nyears back, not to indulge in cutthroat competition for each other\u2019s\nauthors. This ethical principle, like most ethical principles now\nexisting, is dictated quite as much by considerations of keeping a\nwhole skin as by a sense of professional honor. There are some men in\nthe book publishing business whose honorable standards have a respect\nfor the other fellow\u2019s property first among their Fourteen Points.\nThere are others who are best controlled by a knowledge that to do\nso-and-so would be very unhealthy for themselves.\n\nThe agreement, like most unwritten laws, is interpreted with various\nshadings. Some of these are subtle and some of them are not. It is\nvariously applied by different men in different cases, sometimes\nunquestionably and sometimes doubtfully. But in the main it is pretty\nextensively and strictly upheld, in spirit as in letter.\n\nHow far it transgresses authors\u2019 privileges or limits authors\u2019\nopportunities would be difficult to say. In the nature of the case, any\nsuch understanding must operate to some extent to lessen the chances\nof an author receiving the highest possible compensation for his work.\nWhether this is offset by the favors and concessions, pecuniary and\notherwise, made to an author by a publisher to whom he adheres, can\u2019t\nbe settled. The relation of author and publisher, at best, calls for,\nand generally elicits, striking displays of loyalty on both sides.\nParticularly among Americans, the most idealistic people on earth.\n\nIn its practical working this publishers\u2019 understanding operates to\nprevent any publisher \u201capproaching\u201d an author who has an accepted\npublisher of his books. Unless you, as a publisher, are yourself\napproached by Author B., whose several books have been brought out by\nPublisher C., you are theoretically bound hand and foot. And even if\nAuthor B. comes to you there are circumstances under which you may\nwell find it desirable to talk B.\u2019s proposal over with C., hitherto\nhis publisher. After that talk you may wish B. were in Halifax. If\neverybody told the truth matters would be greatly simplified. Or would\nthey?\n\nIf you hear that Author D., who writes very good sellers, is\ndissatisfied with Publisher F., what is your duty in the circumstances?\nAuthor D. may not come to you, for there are many publishers for such\nas he to choose from. Shall we say it is your duty to acquaint D.,\nindirectly perhaps, with the manifest advantages of bringing you his\nnext novel? We\u2019ll say so.\n\nWhatever publishers agree to, authors are free. And every publisher\nknows how easy it is to lose an author. Why, they leave you like that!\n(Business of snapping fingers.) And for the lightest reasons! (Register\npain or maybe mournfulness.) If D. W. Griffith wanted to make a Movie\nof a Publisher Losing an Author he would find the action too swift for\nthe camera to record. Might as well try to film _The Birth of a Notion_.\n\n\n13\n\nOne of the most fascinating mysteries about publishers, at least\nto authors, is the method or methods by which they determine the\navailability of manuscripts. Fine word, availability. Noncommittal and\nall that. It has no taint of infallibility--which is the last attribute\na publisher makes pretensions to.\n\nThere are places where one man decides whether a manuscript will do and\nthere are places where it takes practically the whole clerical force\nand several plebiscites to accept or reject the author\u2019s offering.\nOne house which stands in the front rank in this country accepts and\nrejects mainly on the verdicts of outsiders--specialists, however, in\nvarious fields. Another foremost publishing house has a special test\nfor \u201cpopular\u201d novels in manuscript. An extra ration of chewing gum is\nserved out to all the stenographers and they are turned loose on the\ntype-written pages. If they react well the firm signs a contract and\nprints a first edition of from 5,000 to 25,000 copies, depending on\nwhether it is a first novel or not and the precise comments of the\ngirls at page 378.\n\nAlways the sales manager reads the manuscript, if it is at all\nseriously considered. What he says has much weight. He\u2019s the boy who\nwill have to sell the book to the trade and unless he can see things in\nit, or can be got to, there is practically no hope despite Dr. Munyon\u2019s\nindex finger.\n\nRecently a publishing house of national reputation has done a useful\nthing--we are not prepared to say it is wholly new--by establishing\na liaison officer. This person does not pass on manuscripts, unless\nincidentally by way of offering his verdict to be considered with\nthe verdicts of other department heads. But once a manuscript has\nbeen accepted by the house it goes straight to this man who reads it\nintensively and sets down, on separate sheets, everything about it that\nmight be useful to (a) the advertising manager, (b) the sales manager\nand his force, and (c) the editorial people handling the firm\u2019s book\npublicity effort.\n\n\n14\n\nA little knowledge of book publishing teaches immense humility. The\nnumber of known instances in which experienced publishers have erred in\njudgment is large. Authors always like to hear of these. But too much\nmust not be deduced from them. Every one has heard of the rejection\nof Henry Sydnor Harrison\u2019s novel _Queed_. Many have heard of the\npublisher who decided not to \u201cdo\u201d Vicente Blasco Iba\u00f1ez\u2019s _The Four\nHorsemen of the Apocalypse_. There was more than one of him, by the\nway, and in each case he had an exceedingly bad translation to take\nor reject (we are told), the only worthy translation, apparently,\nbeing that which was brought out with such sensational success in the\nearly fall of 1918. A publisher lost _Spoon River Anthology_ because\nof a delay in acceptance--he wanted the opinion of a confrere not\neasily reached. For every publisher\u2019s mistake of this sort there could\nprobably be cited an instance of perspicacity much more striking. Such\nwas the acceptance of Edward Lucas White\u2019s _El Supremo_ after many\nrejections. And how about the publisher who accepted _Queed_?\n\n\n15\n\nLet us conclude these haphazard and very likely unhelpful musings on an\nendless subject by telling a true story.\n\nIn the spring of 1919 one of the principal publishing houses in America\nand England undertook the publication of a very unusual sort of a\nnovel, semi-autobiographical, a work of love and leisure by a man who\nhad gained distinction as an executive. It was a fine piece of work,\nthough strange; had a delightful reminiscential quality. The book was\nmade up, a first edition of moderate size printed and bound. It was\nnot till this had been done and the book was ready to place on sale\nthat the head of this publishing house had an opportunity to read it.\n\nThe Head is a veteran publisher famous for his prescience in the matter\nof manuscripts and for honorable dealings.\n\nHe read the book through and was charmed by it; he looked at the book\nand was unhappy. He sent for everybody who had had to do with the\nmaking of this book. He held up his copy and fluttered pages and said,\nin effect:\n\n\u201cThis has been done all wrong. Here is a book of quite exceptional\nquality. I don\u2019t think it will sell. Only moderately, though perhaps\nrather steadily for some years to come. It won\u2019t make us money. To\nspeak of. But it deserves, intrinsically, better treatment. Better\nbinding. This is only ordinary six-months\u2019-selling novel binding. It\ndeserves larger type. Type with a more beautiful face. Fewer lines to\nthe page. Lovelier dress from cover to cover.\n\n\u201cThrow away the edition that has been printed. Destroy it or something.\nAt least, hide it. Don\u2019t let any of it get out. For this has been done\nwrong, all wrong. Do it over.\u201d\n\nSo they went away from his presence and did it right. It meant throwing\naway about $2,000. Or was it a $2,000 investment in the good opinion of\npeople who buy, read and love books?\n\n\n\n\nTHE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nTHE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER\n\n\nBy \u201cbest seller\u201d we may mean one of several things. Dr. Emmett Holt\u2019s\n_Care and Feeding of Children_, of which the fifty-eighth edition\nwas printed in the spring of 1919, is one kind of best seller; Owen\nWister\u2019s _The Virginian_ is quite another. The number of editions\nof a book is a very uncertain indication of sales to a person not\nfamiliar with book publishing. Editions may consist of as few as 500\ncopies or as many as 25,000 or even 50,000. The advance sale of Gene\nStratton-Porter\u2019s _A Daughter of the Land_ was, if we recall the figure\nexactly, 150,000 copies. These, therefore, were printed and distributed\nby the day when the book was placed on sale, or shortly thereafter. To\ncall this the \u201cfirst edition\u201d would be rather meaningless.\n\nOne thousand copies of a book of poems--unless it be an anthology--is a\nlarge edition indeed. But not for Edgar Guest, whose books sell in the\ntens of thousands. The sale, within a couple of years, of 31,000 copies\nof the poems of Alan Seeger was phenomenal.\n\nThe first book of essays of an American writer sold 6,000 copies within\nsix months of its publication. This upset most precedents of the\nbookselling trade. The author\u2019s royalties may have been $1,125. A few\nhundred dollars should be added to represent money received for the\ncasual publication of the essays in magazines before their appearance\nin the book. Of course the volume did not stop selling at the end of\nsix months.\n\nCompare these figures, however, with the income of one of the most\npopular American novelists. A single check for $75,000. Total payments,\nover a period of fifteen years, of $750,000 to $1,000,000. Yet it is\ndoubtful if the books of this novelist reached more than 65 per cent.\nof their possible audience.\n\nIt is a moderate estimate, in our opinion, that most books intended\nfor the \u201cgeneral reader,\u201d whether fiction or not, do not reach more\nthan one-quarter of the whole body of readers each might attain. With\nthe proper machinery of publicity and merchandising book sales in the\nUnited States could be quadrupled. We share this opinion with Harry\nBlackman Sell of the Chicago _Daily News_ and were interested to\nfind it independently confirmed by James H. Collins who, writing in\nthe _Saturday Evening Post_ of May 3, 1919, under the heading _When\nMerchandise Sells Itself_, said:\n\n\u201cBook publishing is one industry that suffers for lack of retail\noutlets. Even the popular novel sells in numbers far below the real\nbuying power of this nation of readers, because perhaps 25 per cent. of\nthe public can examine it and buy it at the city bookstores, while it\nis never seen by the rest of the public.\n\n\u201cFor lack of quantity production based on wide retail distribution the\nnovel sells for a dollar and a half.\n\n\u201cBut for a dollar you can buy a satisfactory watch.\n\n\u201cThat is made possible by quantity production. Quantity production of\ndollar watches is based on their sale in 50,000 miscellaneous shops,\nthrough the standard stock and the teaching of modern mercantile\nmethods. Book publishers have made experiments with the dollar novel,\nbut it sold just about the same number of copies as the $1.50 novel,\nbecause only about so many fiction buyers were reached through the\nbookstores. Now the standard-stock idea is being applied to books, with\nassortments of 50 or 100 proved titles carried by the druggist and\nstationer.\u201d\n\n\n2\n\nSpeaking rather offhandedly, we are of opinion that not more than two\nliving American writers of fiction have achieved anything like a 100\nper cent. sale of their books. These are Harold Bell Wright and Gene\nStratton-Porter.\n\nI am indebted to Mr. Frank K. Reilly, president of the Reilly & Lee\nCompany, Chicago, selling agents for the original editions of all Mr.\nWright\u2019s books, for the following figures:\n\n\u201cWe began,\u201d wrote Mr. Reilly, \u201cwith _That Printer of Udell\u2019s_--selling,\nas I remember the figures, about 20,000. Then _The Shepherd of the\nHills_--about 100,000, I think. Then the others in fast growing\nquantities. For _The Winning of Barbara Worth_ we took four orders\nin advance which totalled nearly 200,000 copies. On _When a Man\u2019s a\nMan_ we took the biggest single order ever placed for a novel at full\nprice--that is, a cloth-bound, \u2018regular\u2019 $1.35 book--250,000 copies\nfrom the Western News Company. The advance sale of this 1916 book was\nover 465,000.\u201d\n\nMr. Reilly wrote at the beginning of March, 1919, from French Lick,\nIndiana. At that time Mr. Wright\u2019s publishers had in hand a novel,\n_The Re-Creation of Brian Kent_, published August 21, 1919. They had\narranged for a first printing of 750,000 copies and were as certain of\nselling 500,000 copies before August 1 as you are of going to sleep\nsome time in the next twenty-four hours. It was necessary to make\npreparations for the sale of 1,000,000 copies of the new novel before\nAugust 21, 1920.\n\nThe sale of 1,000,000 copies of _The Re-Creation of Brian Kent_\nwithin a year of publication may be said to achieve a 100 per cent.\ncirculation so far as existing book merchandising facilities allow.\n\nThe sale, within ten years, of 670,733 copies of Gene Stratton-Porter\u2019s\nstory, _Freckles_, approaches a 100 per cent. sale but with far too\nmuch retardation.\n\n\n3\n\nHow has the 100 per cent. sale for the Harold Bell Wright books been\nbrought within hailing distance?\n\nBefore us lies a circular which must have been mailed to most\nbooksellers in the United States early in the spring of 1919. It is\nheaded: \u201cFirst Publicity Advertisement of Our $100,000 Campaign.\u201d\nBelow this legend is an advertisement of _The Re-Creation of Brian\nKent_. Below that is a statement that the advertisement will appear,\nsimultaneously with the book\u2019s publication, in \u201cmagazines and national\nand religious weeklies having millions upon millions of circulation.\nIn addition to this our newspaper advertising will cover all of the\nlarger cities of the United States.\u201d Then follows a list of \u201cmagazines,\nnational and religious weeklies covered by our signed advertising\ncontracts.\u201d\n\nThere are 132 of them. The range is from the _Atlantic Monthly_ and the\n_New Republic_ to _Vanity Fair_ and _Town Topics_ in one slant; from\n_System_ and _Physical Culture_ to _Zion\u2019s Herald_ and the _Catholic\nNews_; from _Life_ to _Needlecraft_; from the _Photoplay World_ to the\n_Girl\u2019s Companion_; from the _Outlook_ to the _Lookout_--and to and\nfro and back and forth in a web covering all America between the two\nPortlands.\n\nThere are about 140,000,000 persons in the United States and Great\nBritain together. Over 100,000,000 of them, we are told, have read a\nHarold Bell Wright book or seen a Harold Bell Wright movie.\n\nThe secret of the sale of Mr. Wright\u2019s books, so far as the external\nfactor is concerned, resides in the fact that his stories have been\nbrought to the attention of thousands upon thousands who, from one\nyear\u2019s end to the other, never have a new book of fiction thrust upon\ntheir attention by advertising or by sight of the book itself.\n\n\n4\n\nWe speak of the \u201cexternal factor.\u201d There is an external factor quite\nas much as an internal factor in the success of every best seller of\nwhatever sort. The tendency of everybody who gives any attention to the\nsubject, but particularly the book publisher, is to study the internal\nfactor almost to the exclusion of the other. What, you naturally ask\nyourself, are the qualities in this book that have made it sell so\nremarkably?\n\nThe internal factor is important. Its importance, doubtless, cannot be\noverrated. But it is not the whole affair. Before we go further let us\nlay down some general principles that are not often formulated clearly\nenough even in the minds of those to whom they import most.\n\n1. The internal factor--certain qualities of the book\nitself--predetermines its possible audience.\n\n2. The external factor--the extent to which it is brought to public\nattention, the manner in which it is presented to the public, the\nubiquity of copies for sale--determines its actual audience.\n\n3. The internal factor can make a best seller of a book with almost no\nhelp from the external factor, but cannot give it a 100 per cent. sale.\n\n4. The external factor cannot make a big seller where the internal\nfactor is not of the right sort; but it can always give a 100 per cent.\nsale.\n\n5. The internal factor is only partly in the publisher\u2019s control; the\nexternal factor is entirely controllable by the publisher.\n\nThere are two secrets of the best seller. One resides in the book\nitself, the other rests in the manner of its exploitation. One is\ninherent, the other is circumstantial. One is partly controllable by\nthe publisher, the other is wholly so. Since a book possessing certain\nqualities in a sufficient degree will sell heavily anyway, it is\nhuman nature to hunt ceaselessly for this thing which will triumph\nover every sort of handicap and obstacle. But it is a lazy way to do.\nIt is not good business. It cannot, ultimately, pay. The successful\nbook publisher of the future is going to be the publisher who works\nfor a 100 per cent. sale on all his books. When he gets a book with\nan internal factor which would make it a best seller anyway, it will\nsimply mean that he will have to exert himself markedly less to get\na 100 per cent. result. He will have such best sellers and will make\nlarge sums of money with them, but they will be incidents and not\nepochal events; for practically all his books will be good sellers.\n\n\n5\n\nBefore we go on to a discussion of the internal factor of the\nbest seller we want to stress once more, and constructively and\nsuggestively, the postnatal attention it should receive. The first\nyear and the second summer are fatal to far too many books as well as\nhumans. And this is true despite the differences between the two. If\n100,000 copies represent the 100 per cent. sale of a given volume you\nmay declare that it makes no difference whether that sale is attained\nin six months or six years. From the business standpoint of a quick\nturnover six months is a dozen times better, you may argue; and if\ninterest on invested money be thought of as compounding, the apparent\ndifference in favor of the six-months\u2019 sale is still more striking.\nThis would perhaps be true if the author\u2019s next book could invariably\nbe ready at the end of the six-months\u2019 period. Other ifs will occur to\nthose with some knowledge of the publishing business and a moderate\ncapacity for reflection.\n\nMost books are wrongly advertised and inadequately advertised, and\nrather frequently advertised in the wrong places.\n\nOf the current methods of advertising new fiction only one is\nunexceptionably good. This is the advertising which arrests the\nreader\u2019s attention and baits his interest by a few vivid sentences\noutlining the crisis of the story, the dilemma that confronts the\nhero or heroine, the problem of whether the hero or heroine acted\nrightly; or paints in a few swift strokes some exciting episode of\nthe action--ending with a question that will stick in the reader\u2019s\nmind. Such an advertisement should always have a drawing or other\nillustration if possible. It should be displayed in a generous space\nand should be placed broadcast but with much discrimination as to where\nit is to appear.\n\nA kind of advertisement somewhat allied to this, but not in use at\nall despite its assured selling power would consist of the simple\nreproduction of a photographed page of the book. The Detroit _News_\nhas used such reproduced pages so effectively as illustrations that\nit seems strange no publisher (so far as we know) has followed suit.\nStriking pages, and pages containing not merely objective thrill but\nthe flavor which makes the fascination of a particular book, can be\nfound in most novels. The Detroit _News_ selected a page of the highest\neffectiveness from so subtle a romance as Joseph Conrad\u2019s _The Arrow of\nGold_. This manner of advertising, telling from its complete restraint,\nis applicable to non-fiction. A page of a book of essays by Samuel\nCrothers would have to be poorly taken not to disclose, in its several\nhundred words, the charm and fun of his observations. Publishers of\nencyclop\u00e6dias have long employed this \u201cpage-from-the-book\u201d method of\nadvertisement with the best results.\n\nThe ordinary advertisement of a book, making a few flat assertions\nof the book\u2019s extraordinary merit, has become pretty hopelessly\nconventionalized. The punch is gone from it, we rather fear forever.\nIn all conscience, it is psychologically defective in that it tries\nto coerce attention and credence instead of trying to attract,\nfascinate or arouse the beholder. The advertiser is not different,\nessentially, from the public speaker. The public speaker who aims to\ncompel attention by mere thundering or by extraordinary assertions has\nno chance against the speaker who amuses, interests, or agreeably\npiques his audience, who stirs his auditors\u2019 curiosity or kindles their\ncollective imagination.\n\nThere is too little personality in the advertising of books, and when\nwe say personality we mean, in most cases, the author\u2019s personality.\nThe bald and unconvincing recital of the opinion of the _Westminster\nGazette_, that this is a book every Anglo-American should read, is as\nnothing compared with a few dozen words that could have been written\nof, or by, no man on earth except H. G. Wells.\n\nThe internal factor of H. G. Wells\u2019s novel _The Undying Fire_ is so big\nthat it constitutes a sort of a least common multiple of the hopes,\ndoubts and fears of hundreds of thousands of humans. A 100 per cent.\nsale of the book, under existing merchandising conditions, would be\n400,000 copies, at the very least. It ought to be advertised in every\nnational and religious weekly of 10,000 circulation or over in the\nUnited States, and in every periodical of that circulation reaching a\nrural audience. And it ought to be advertised, essentially, in this\nmanner:\n\n  SHALL MAN CURSE GOD AND DIE?\n        _No! Job Answered_\n  NO! H. G. WELLS TELLS STRICKEN EUROPE\n\n  _Read His New Short Novel, \u201cThe Undying Fire,\u201d\n      in Which He Holds Out the Hope that Men\n  May Yet Unite to Organize the World and\n  Save Mankind from Extinction_\n\nSuch an appeal to the hope, the aspiration, the unconquerable idealism\nof men everywhere, to the social instinct which has its roots in\nthousands of years of human history, cannot fail.\n\n\n6\n\nBooks are wrongly advertised, as we have said, and they are\ninadequately advertised, by which we mean in too few places; and\nperhaps \u201cinsufficiently advertised\u201d had been a more accurate phrase.\n\nIt is correct and essential to advertise books in periodicals appealing\nwholly or partly to book readers. It is just as essential to recruit\nreaders.\n\nBook readers can be recruited just as magazine readers are recruited.\nThe most important way of getting magazine readers is still the\nsubscription agent. Every community of any size in these United States\nshould have in it a man or woman of at least high school education and\nalert enthusiasm selling books of all the publishers. Where there is\na good bookstore such an agent is unnecessary or may be found in the\nowner of the store or an employee thereof. Most communities cannot\nsupport a store given over entirely to bookselling. In them let there\nbe agents giving their whole time or their spare time and operating\nwith practically no overhead expense. Where the agents receive salaries\nthese must be paid jointly by all the publishers whose books they\nhandle. This should naturally be done through a central bureau or\nselling agency. Efficient agencies already exist.\n\nThe \u201cbook agent\u201d is a classical joke. He is a classical joke because he\npeddled one book, and the wrong sort of a book, from door to door. You\nmust equip him with fifty books, new and alluring, of all publishers;\nand arm him with sheets and circulars describing enticingly a hundred\nothers. He must know individuals and their tastes and must have one or\nmore of the best book reviewing periodicals in the country. He must\nhave catalogues and news notes and special offers to put over. If he\ngives you all his time he must have assurance of a living, especially\nuntil he has a good start or exhibits his incapacity for pioneering. He\nmust have an incentive above and beyond any salary that may be paid him.\n\nBut the consideration of details in this place is impossible. The\nstructural outline and much adaptable detail is already in highly\nsuccessful use by periodicals of many sorts. In fundamentals it\nrequires no profounder skill than that of the clever copyist.\n\n\n7\n\nWe charged in the third count of our indictment that books are rather\nfrequently advertised in the wrong places. We had in mind the principle\nthat for every book considerable enough to get itself published by a\npublisher of standing there is, somewhere, a particular audience; just\nas there is a certain body of readers for every news item of enough\nmoment to get printed in a daily newspaper. A juster way of expressing\nthe trouble would be this: Books are rather frequently not advertised\nin the right places.\n\nThe clues to the right places must be sought in the book itself and its\nauthorship, always; and they are innumerable. As no two books are alike\nthe best thing to do will be to take a specific example. Harry Lauder\u2019s\n_A Minstrel in France_ will serve.\n\nThe first and most obvious thing to do is to advertise it in every\nvaudeville theatre in America. Wherever the programme includes motion\npictures flash the advertisement on the screen with a fifteen second\nmovie of Lauder himself. Posters and circulars in the lobby must serve\nif there are no screen pictures.\n\nThe next and almost equally obvious thing is to have Lauder make a\nphonograph record of some particularly effective passage in the book,\nmarketing the record in the usual way, at a popular price. Newspaper\nand magazine advertising must be used heavily and must be distributed\non the basis of circulation almost entirely.\n\n\n8\n\nThe external factor in the success of the best seller is so undeveloped\nand so rich in possibilities that one takes leave of it with regret;\nbut we must go on to some consideration of the internal factor that\nmakes for big sales--the quality or qualities in the book itself.\n\nWithout going into a long and elaborate investigation of best-seller\nbooks, sifting and reasoning until we reach rock bottom, we had better\nput down a few dogmas. These, then, are the essentials of best-selling\nfiction so far as our observation and intellect has carried us:\n\n1. A good story; which means, as a rule, plenty of surface action\nbut always means a crisis in the affairs of one or two most-likable\ncharacters, a crisis that is _satisfactorily_ solved.\n\nMark the italicized word. Not a \u201chappy ending\u201d in the twisted sense in\nwhich that phrase is used. Always a happy ending in the sense in which\nwe say, \u201cThat was a happy word\u201d--meaning a fit word, the \u201cmot juste\u201d\nof the French. Always a fitting ending, not always a \u201chappy ending\u201d in\nthe sense of a pleasant ending. The ending of _Mr. Britling Sees It\nThrough_ is not pleasant, but fitting and, to the majority of readers,\nuplifting, ennobling, fine.\n\n2. Depths below the surface action for those who care to plumb them.\n\nNo piece of fiction can sell largely unless it has a region of\nphilosophy, moral ideas--whatever you will to call it--for those who\ncrave and must have that mental immersion. The reader must not be led\nbeyond his depth but he must be able to go into deep water and swim as\nfar as his strength will carry him if he so desires.\n\n3. The ethical, social and moral implications of the surface action\nmust, in the end, accord with the instinctive desires of mankind. This\nis nothing like as fearful as it sounds, thus abstractly stated. The\ninstinctive desires of men are pretty well known. Any psychologist can\ntell you what they are. They are few, primitive and simple. They have\nnothing to do with man\u2019s reason except that man, from birth to death,\nemploys his reason in achieving the satisfaction of these instincts.\nThe two oldest and most firmly implanted are the instinct for\nself-preservation and the instinct to perpetuate the race. The social\ninstinct, much younger than either, is yet thousands upon thousands of\nyears old and quite as ineradicable.\n\nBecause it violates the self-preservative instinct no story of suicide\ncan have a wide human audience unless, in the words of Dick at the\nclose of Masefield\u2019s _Lost Endeavour_, we are filled with the feeling\nthat \u201clife goes on.\u201d The act of destruction must be, however blindly,\nan act of immolation on the altar of the race. Such is the feeling we\nget in reading Jack London\u2019s largely autobiographical _Martin Eden_;\nand, in a much more striking instance, the terrible act that closed\nthe life of the heroine in Tolstoy\u2019s _Anna Karenina_ falls well before\nthe end of the book. In _Anna Karenina_, as in _War and Peace_, the\nRussian novelist conveys to every reader an invincible conviction of\nthe unbreakable continuity of the life of the race. The last words of\n_Anna Karenina_ are not those which describe Anna\u2019s death under the car\nwheels but the infinitely hopeful words of Levin:\n\n\u201cI shall continue to be vexed with Ivan the coach-man, and get into\nuseless discussions, and express my thoughts blunderingly. I shall\nalways be blaming my wife for what annoys me, and repenting at once. I\nshall always feel a certain barrier between the Holy of Holies of my\ninmost soul, and the souls of others, even my wife\u2019s. I shall continue\nto pray without being able to explain to myself why. But my whole life,\nevery moment of my life, independently of whatever may happen to me,\nwill be, not meaningless as before, but full of the deep meaning which\nI shall have the power to impress upon it.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\nIt is because they appeal so strongly and simply and directly to our\ninstinctive desires that the stories of Jack London are so popular; it\nis their perfect appeal to our social instinct that makes the tales of\nO. Henry sell thousands of copies month after month. Not even Dickens\ntranscended O. Henry in the perfection of this appeal; and O. Henry set\nthe right value on Dickens as at least one of his stories shows.\n\nCivilization and education refine man\u2019s instinctive desires, modify the\npaths they take, but do not weaken them perceptibly from generation to\ngeneration except in a few individual cases. Read the second chapter\nof Harold Bell Wright\u2019s _The Shepherd of the Hills_ and observe the\ntremendous call to the instinct of race perpetuation, prefaced by a\ncharacter\u2019s comment on the careless breeding of man as contrasted\nwith man\u2019s careful breeding of animals. And if you think the appeal\nis crude, be very sure of this: The crudity is in yourself, in the\ninstinct that you are not accustomed to have set vibrating with such\nhealthy vigor.\n\n\n10\n\nAll this deals with broadest fundamentals. But they are what the\npublisher, judging his manuscript, must fathom. They are deeper down\nthan the sales manager need go, or the bookseller; deeper than the\ncritic need ordinarily descend in his examination into the book\u2019s\nqualities.\n\nOrdinarily it will be enough for the purpose to analyze a story along\nthe lines of human instinct as it has been modified by our society\nand our surroundings and conventionalized by habit. The publishers\nof Eleanor H. Porter\u2019s novel _Oh, Money! Money!_ were not only\nwholly correct but quite sufficiently acute in their six reasons for\npredicting--on the character of the story alone--a big sale.\n\nThe first of these was that the yarn dealt with the getting and\nspending of money, \u201cthe most interesting subject in the world,\u201d\nasserted the publishers--and while society continues to be organized\non its present basis their assertion is, as regards great masses of\nmankind, a demonstrable fact.\n\nThe second reason was allied to the first; the story would \u201cset every\nreader thinking how _he_ would spend the money.\u201d And the third: it\nwas a Cinderella story, giving the reader \u201cthe joy of watching a\ngirl who has never been fairly treated come out on top in spite of\nall odds.\u201d This is a powerful appeal to the modified instinct of\nself-preservation. The fourth reason--\u201cthe scene is laid in a little\nvillage and the whole book is a gem of country life and shrewd Yankee\nphilosophy\u201d--answers to the social hunger in the human heart. Fifth:\n\u201cA charming love theme with a happy ending.\u201d Sixth: \u201cThe story teaches\nan unobtrusive lesson ... that happiness must come from within, and\nthat money cannot buy it.\u201d To go behind such reasons is, for most\nminds, not to clarify but to confuse. Folks feel these things and care\nnothing about the source of the river of feeling.\n\n\n11\n\nWith the non-fictional book the internal factor making for large sales\nis as diverse as the kinds of non-fictional volumes. A textbook on a\nhitherto untreated subject of sudden interest to many thousands of\nreaders has every prospect of a large sale; but this is not the kind\nof internal factor that a publisher is likely to err in judging! Any\nalert business man acquiring correct information will profit by such an\nopportunity.\n\nBut there is a book called _In Tune with the Infinite_, the work of\na man named Ralph Waldo Trine, which has sold, at this writing, some\n530,000 copies, having been translated into eighteen languages. A man\nhas been discovered sitting on the banks of the Yukon reading it; it\nhas been observed in shops and little railway stations in Burmah and\nCeylon. This is what is called, not at all badly, an \u201cinspirational\nbook.\u201d Don\u2019t you think a publisher might well have erred in judging\nthat manuscript?\n\nMr. Trine\u2019s booklet, _The Greatest Thing Ever Known_, has sold 160,000\ncopies; his book _What All the World\u2019s A-Seeking_, is in its 138,000th.\nIt will not do to overlook the attractiveness of these titles. What,\nmost people will want to know, is \u201cthe greatest thing ever known\u201d? And\nit is human to suppose that what you are seeking is what all the world\nis after, and to want to read a book that holds out an implied promise\nto help you get it.\n\nThe tremendous internal factor of these books of Mr. Trine\u2019s is that\nthey articulate simple (but often beautiful) ideas that lie in the\nminds of hundreds of thousands of men and women, ideas unformulated and\nby the hundred thousand unutterable. For any man who can say the thing\nthat is everywhere felt, the audience is limitless.\n\nIn autobiography a truly big sale is not possible unless the narrative\nhas the fundamental qualities we have designated as necessary in the\nfictional best seller. All the popular autobiographies are stories\nthat appeal powerfully to our instinctive desires and this is the\nfact with such diverse revelations as those of Benjamin Franklin and\nBenvenuto Cellini, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Henry Adams. The sum of\nthe instinctive desires is always overwhelmingly in favor of normal\nhuman existences. For this reason the predetermined audience of Mr.\nTarkington\u2019s _Conquest of Canaan_ is many times greater than that of\nMr. Dreiser\u2019s _Sister Carrie_. A moment\u2019s reflection will show that\nthis is inevitable, since these instinctive desires of ours are so many\nresistless forces exerted simultaneously on us and combining, in a\nperiod of years, to make a single resultant force impelling us to lead\nnormal, sane, \u201chealthy\u201d and wholesome lives. On such lives, lived by\nthe vast majority of men and women everywhere, the security of every\nform of human society depends; indeed, the continued existence of man\non the face of the earth is dependent upon them.\n\nYou may say that Rousseau, Cellini, Marie Bashkirtseff, even Franklin\nand Henry Adams, led existences far from normal. The answer is that\nwe accept the stories of their lives in fact where we (or most of us)\nwould never accept them in fiction. We know that these lives were\nlived; and the very circumstance that they were abnormal lives makes\nus more eager to know about and understand them. What most of us care\nfor most is such a recital as Hamlin Garland\u2019s _A Son of the Middle\nBorder_. The secret of the influence of the life of Abraham Lincoln\nupon the American mind and the secret of the appeal made by Theodore\nRoosevelt, the man, to his countrymen in general during his lifetime\nis actually one and the same--the triumph of normal lives, lived\nnormally, lived up to the hilt, and overshadowing almost everything\nelse contemporary with them. Such men vindicate common lives, however\nhumbly lived. We see, as in an apocalyptic vision, what any one of us\nmay become; and in so far as any one of us has become so great we all\nof us share in his greatness.\n\n\n12\n\nBut perhaps the greatest element in predetermining the possible\naudience for a non-fiction book is its timeliness. Important, often\nenough, in the case of particular novels, the matter of timeliness\nis much more so with all other books soever. It cannot be overlooked\nin autobiography; _The Education of Henry Adams_ attracted a great\nhost of readers in 1918 and 1919 because it became accessible to them\nin 1918 and not in 1913 or 1929. In 1918 and 1919 the minds of men\nwere peculiarly troubled. Especially about education. H. G. Wells was\narticulating the disastrous doubts that beset numbers of us, first,\nin _Joan and Peter_, with its subtitle, _The Story of an Education_,\ndrawing up an indictment which, whatever its bias, distortion and\nunfairness yet contained a lot of terrible truth; and then, in _The\nUndying Fire_, dedicated \u201cto all schoolmasters and schoolmistresses\nand every teacher in the world,\u201d returning to the subject, but this\ntime constructively. Yes, a large number of persons were thinking about\neducation in 1918-19, and the ironical attitude of Henry Adams toward\nhis own was of keenest interest to them.\n\n\n13\n\nWe have discussed the internal factor which makes for a big sale in\nbooks rather sketchily because, as a whole, book publishers can tell\nit when they see it (all that is necessary) even though it may puzzle\nauthors who haven\u2019t mastered it. So far as authors are concerned we\nbelieve that this factor can, in many instances, be mastered. The\nenterprise is not different from developing a retentive memory, or\nskill over an audience in public speaking; but as with both these\nachievements no short cut is really possible and advice and suggestion\n(you can\u2019t honestly call it instruction) can go but a little way. No\nend of nonsense has been uttered on the subject of what it is in books\nthat makes them sell well, and nonsense will not cease to be uttered\nabout it while men write. What is of vastly more consequence than any\neffort to exploit the internal factor in best sellers is the failure\nto make every book published sell its best. If, in general, books sell\nnot more than one-quarter the number of copies they should sell, an\nestimate to which we adhere, then the immediate and largest gain to\npublishers, authors and public will be in securing 100 per cent. sales.\n\n\n14\n\nA word in closing about the familiar argument that the habits of our\npeople have changed, that they no longer have time to read books, that\nmotoring and movies have usurped the place of reading.\n\nIntercommunication is not a luxury but a necessity. Transportation\nis only a means of intercommunication. As the means of\nintercommunication--books, newspapers, mail services, railroads,\naircraft, telephones, automobiles, motion pictures--multiply the use\nof each and every one increases with one restriction: A new means of\nintercommunication paralleling but greatly improving an existing means\nwill largely displace it--as railroads have largely superseded canals.\n\nAs a means of a particular and indispensable kind of intercommunication\nnothing has yet appeared that parallels and at the same time decidedly\nimproves upon books. Newspapers and magazines do not and cannot, though\nthey most nearly offer the same service. You cannot go in your Ford\nto hear from the lips of Mr. Tarkington his new novel and seeing it\non the screen isn\u2019t the same thing as reading it--as we all know. And\nuntil some inventor enables us to sit down with an author and get his\nstory whole, at our own convenience and related in his own words, by\nsome device much more attractive than reading a book,--why, until then\nbooks will be bought and read in steadily increasing numbers. For with\nits exercise the taste for intercommunication intensifies. To have been\nsomewhere is to want to read about it, to have read about a place\nis to want to go there in innumerable instances. It is a superficial\nview that sees in the spread of automobiles and motion pictures an\narrest of reading. As time goes on and more and more people read books,\nboth absolutely and relatively to the growth of populations, shall we\nhear a wail that people\u2019s habits have changed and that the spread of\nbook-reading has checked the spread of automobiling and lessened the\nattendance at the picture shows? Possibly we shall hear that outcry but\nwe doubt it; nor does our doubt rest upon any feeling that books will\nnot be increasingly read.\n\n\n\n\nWRITING A NOVEL\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nWRITING A NOVEL\n\n\nThere are at least as many ways of writing a novel as there are\nnovelists and doubtless there are more; for it is to be presumed that\nevery novelist varies somewhat in his methods of labor. The literature\non the business of novel-writing is not extensive. Some observations\nand advice on the part of Mr. Arnold Bennett are, indeed, about all\nthe average reader encounters; we have forgotten whether they are\nembedded in _The Truth About An Author_ or in that other masterpiece,\n_How to Live on 2,400 Words a Day_. It may be remarked that there is\nno difficulty in living on 2,400 words a day, none at all, where the\nwriter receives five cents a word or better.\n\nBut there we go, talking about money, a shameful subject that\nhas only a backstairs relation to Art. Let us ascend the\nfront staircase together, first. Let us enter the parlor of\nBeauty-Is-Truth-Truth-Beauty, which, the poet assured us, is all\nwe know or need to know. Let us seat ourselves in lovely \u00e6sthetic\nsurroundings. If later we have to go out the back way maybe we can\naccomplish it unobserved.\n\nThere are only three motives for writing a novel. The first is to\nsatisfy the writer\u2019s self, the second is to please or instruct other\npersons, the third is to earn money. We will consider these motives in\norder.\n\n\n2\n\nThe best novels are written from a blending of all three motives. But\nit is doubtful if a good novel has ever been written in which the\ndesire to satisfy some instinct in himself was not present in the\nwriter\u2019s purpose.\n\nJust what this instinct is can\u2019t so easily be answered. Without\ndoubt the greatest part of it is the instinct of paternity. Into the\nphysiological aspects of the subject we shall not enter, though they\nare supported by a considerable body of evidence. The longing to\nfather--or mother--certain fictitious characters is not often to be\ndenied. Sometimes the story as a story, as an entity, is the beloved\nchild of its author. Did not Dickens father Little Nell? How, do you\nsuppose, Barrie has thought of himself in relation to some of his\nyoungsters? Any one who has read _Lore of Proserpine_ not only believes\nin fairies but understands the soul of Maurice Hewlett. The relation of\nthe creator of a story to his persons is not necessarily parental. It\nis always intensely human.\n\nO. Henry was variously a Big Brother (before the Big Brothers had been\nthought of), a father, an uncle, a friend, a distant cousin, a mere\nacquaintance, a sworn enemy of his people. It has to be so. For the\nwriter lives among the people he creates. The cap of Fortunatus makes\nhim invisible to them but he is always there--not to interfere with\nthem nor to shape their destinies but to watch them come together or\nfly apart, to hear what they say, to guess what they think (from what\nthey say and from the way they behave), to worry over them, applaud\nthem, frown; but forever as a recorder.\n\n\n3\n\nNone of the author\u2019s troubles must appear in the finished record.\nStill wearing Fortunatus\u2019s cap he is required to be as invisible to\nthe reader as to the people he describes. There are exceptions to this\nrule. Dickens was the most notable. Many readers prefer to have a tale\ntold them by a narrator frankly prejudiced in favor of some of the\ncharacters and against others. Many--but not a majority.\n\nIn the best novel that Booth Tarkington has so far written, _The\nFlirt_, the dominating figure is a heartless young woman to whom the\nreader continuously itches to administer prussic acid in a fatal\ndose. But Mr. Tarkington does not scald Cora Madison with boiling\ninvective nor blister her with hot irony. He relates her doings in the\nmain almost dispassionately; and set forth thus nakedly they are more\ndamnable than any amount of sound and fury could make them appear to\nbe. Mr. Tarkington does not wave the prussic acid bottle, though here\nand there, distilled through his narrative and perceptible more in the\nthings he selects to tell about than in his manner of telling them, the\nreader is conscious of a faint odor of almond blossoms, signifying that\nthe author has uncorked the acid bottle--perhaps that his restraint in\nnot emptying it may be the more emphasized.\n\nMay we set things down a little at random? Then let us seize this\nmoment to point out to the intending novel writer some omissions in\n_The Flirt_. Our pupil will, when he comes to write his novel, be\ncertain to think of the \u201cstrong scenes.\u201d He will be painfully eager\nto get them down. It is these scenes that will \u201cgrip\u201d the reader and\nassure his book of a sale of 100,000 copies.\n\nBattle, murder and sudden death are generally held to be the very meat\nof a strong scene. But when the drunkard Ray Vilas, Cora Madison\u2019s\ndiscarded lover, shoots down Valentine Corliss and then kills himself,\nMr. Tarkington does not fill pages with it. He takes scarce fifteen\nlines--perhaps a little over 100 words--to tell of the double slaying.\nNor does he relate what Ray Vilas and Cora said to each other in that\nlast interview which immediately preceded the crime. \u201cProbably,\u201d says\nMr. Tarkington, \u201cCora told him the truth, all of it; though of course\nshe seldom told quite the truth about anything in which she herself was\nconcerned\u201d--or words to that effect.\n\nWhere oh where is the strong scene? Ah, one man\u2019s strength is\nanother\u2019s weakness. _The Flirt_ is full of strong scenes but they are\ninfrequently the scenes which the intending novel writer, reviewing his\ntale before setting to work, would select as the most promising.\n\n\n4\n\nBesides the instinct of paternity--or perhaps in place of it--the\nnovelist may feel an instinct to build something, or to paint a\nbeautiful picture, or mold a lovely figure. This yearning of the\nartist, so-called, is sometimes denoted by the word \u201cself-expression,\u201d\na misnomer, if it be not a euphemism, for the longing to fatherhood.\nThere is just as much \u201cself-expression\u201d in the paternity of a boy or a\ngirl as in the creation of a book, a picture or a building. The child,\nin any case, has innumerable other ancestors; you are not the first to\nhave written such a book or painted such a picture.\n\nHow about the second motive in novel-writing, the desire to please or\ninstruct others? The only safe generalization about it seems to be\nthis: A novel written exclusively from this motive will be a bad novel.\nA novel is not, above everything, a didactic enterprise. Yet even\nthose enterprises of the human race which are in their essence purely\ndidactic, designed \u201cto warn, to comfort, to command,\u201d such as sermons\nand lessons in school, seldom achieve their greatest possible effect if\ninstruction or improvement be the preacher\u2019s or teacher\u2019s unadorned and\nunconcealed and only purpose.\n\nTake a school lesson. Teachers who get the best results are invariably\nfound to have added some element besides bare instruction to their\nwork. Sometimes they have made the lesson entertaining; sometimes they\nhave exercised that imponderable thing we call \u201cpersonal magnetism\u201d;\nsometimes they have supplied an incentive to learn that didn\u2019t exist in\nthe lesson itself.\n\nTake a sermon. If the auditor does not feel the presence in it of\nsomething besides the mere intelligence the words convey the sermon\nleaves the auditor cold.\n\nPure intellect is not a force in human affairs. Bach wrote music with a\nvery high intellectual content but the small leaven of sublime melody\nis present in his work that lasts through the centuries. Shakespeare\nand Beethoven employed intellect and emotionalism in the proportion\nof fifty-fifty. Sir Joshua Reynolds mixed his paint \u201cwith brains,\nsir\u201d; but the significant thing is that Sir Joshua did not use only\ngray matter on his palette. Those who economize on emotionalism in\none direction usually make up for it, not always consciously, in\nanother. Joseph Hergesheimer, writing _Java Head_, is very sparing\nin the emotionalism bound up with action and decidedly lavish in the\nemotionalism inseparable from sensuous coloring and \u201catmosphere.\u201d\n\nNo, a novel written wholly to instruct will never do; but neither\nwill a novel written entirely to please, to give \u00e6sthetic or sensuous\nenjoyment to the reader. Such a novel is like a portion of a fine\nFrench sauce--with nothing to spread it on. It is honey without a crust\nto dip.\n\n\n5\n\nWriting a novel purely to make money has a tainted air, thanks to\nthe long vogue of a false tradition. If so, _The Vicar of Wakefield_\nought to be banished from public libraries; for Goldsmith needed the\nmoney and made no bones about saying so. The facts are, of course,\nunascertainable; but we would be willing to wager, were there any way\nof deciding the bet, that more novels of the first rank have been\nwritten either solely or preponderantly to earn money than for any\nother reason whatever.\n\nIt isn\u2019t writing for the sake of the money that determines the merit of\nthe result; _that_ is settled by two other factors, the author\u2019s skill\nand the author\u2019s conscience. And the word \u201cskill\u201d here necessarily\nincludes each and every endowment the writer possesses as well as such\nproficiency as he may have acquired.\n\nSuppose A. and B. both to have material for a first-rate novel. Both\nare equally skilled in novel writing. Both are equally conscientious.\nA. writes his novel for his own satisfaction and to please and instruct\nothers. He is careful and honest about it. He delights in it. B. writes\nhis novel purely to make a few thousand dollars. He is, naturally,\ncareful and honest in doing the job; and he probably takes such\npleasure in it as a man may take in doing well anything he can do well,\nfrom laying a sewer to flying an airplane. We submit that B.\u2019s may\neasily be the better novel. It is true that B. is under a pressure that\nA. does not know and that B.\u2019s work may be affected in ways of which he\nis not directly aware by the necessity to sell his finished product.\nBut most of the best work in the world is done under some compulsion or\nother; and it is the sum of human experience that the compulsion to do\nwork which will find favor in the eyes of the worker\u2019s fellows is the\nhealthfullest compulsion of them all. Certainly it is more healthful\nthan the compulsion merely to please yourself. And if B. is under a\npressure A.\u2019s danger lies precisely in the fact that he is not under a\npressure, or under too slight a pressure. It is a tenable hypothesis\nthat Flaubert would have been a better novelist if he had had to make\na living by his pen. Some indirect evidence on the point may possibly\nbe found in the careers of certain writers whose first books were the\nproduct of a need to buy bread and butter; and whose later books were\nthe product of no need at all--nor met any.\n\nSo much for motives in novel-writing. You should write (1) because you\nneed the money, (2) to satisfy your own instincts, and (3) to please\nand, perchance, instruct other persons.\n\nTake a week or two to get your motives in order and then, and not until\nthen, read what follows, which has to do with how you are presently to\nproceed about the business of writing your novel.\n\n\n6\n\nIt is settled that you are going to write a novel. You have examined\nyour motive and found it pure and worthy of you. Comes now the great\nquestion of how to set about the business.\n\nAt this point let no one rise up and \u201cpoint out\u201d that Arnold Bennett\nhas told how. Arnold Bennett has told how to do everything--how to\nlive on twenty-four hours a day (but not how to enjoy it), how to write\nbooks, how to acquire culture, how to be yourself and manage yourself\n(in the unfortunate event that you cannot be someone else or have no\none, like a wife, to manage you), how to do everything, indeed, except\nrise up and call Arnold Bennett blessed.\n\nThe trouble with Mr. Bennett\u2019s directions is--they won\u2019t work.\n\nMr. Bennett tells you to write like everything and get as much of your\nnovel done as possible before the Era of Discouragement sets in. Then,\nno matter how great your Moment of Depression, you will be able to\nstand beside the table, fondly stroking a pile of pages a foot high,\nand reassure yourself, saying: \u201cWell, but here, at least, is so much\ndone. No! I cannot take my hand from the plough now! No! I must Go On.\nI must complete my destiny.\u201d (One\u2019s novel is always one\u2019s Destiny of\nthe moment.)\n\nIt sounds well, but the truth is that when you strike the Writer\u2019s\nDoldrums the sight of all that completed manuscript only enrages you to\nthe last degree. You are embittered by the spectacle of so much effort\nwasted. You feel like tearing it up or flinging it in the wastebasket.\nIf you are a Rudyard Kipling or an Edna Ferber, you do that thing. And\nyour wife or your mother carefully retrieves your _Recessional_ or\nyour _Dawn O\u2019Hara_ and sends it to the publisher who brings it out,\nregardless of expense, and sells a large number of copies--to the\nbooksellers, anyway.\n\nMr. Bennett also tells you how to plan the long, slow culminant\nmovement of your novel; how to walk in the park and compose those neat\nlittle climaxes which should so desirably terminate each chapter; how\nto---- But what\u2019s the use? Let us illustrate with a fable.\n\nOnce an American, meeting Mr. Bennett in London, saluted him, jocularly\n(he meant it jocularly) with the American Indian word of greeting:\n\u201cHow?\u201d\n\nMr. Bennett immediately began to tell him how and the American never\ngot away until George H. Doran, the publisher, who was standing near\nby, exclaimed:\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough, Enoch, for a dollar volume!\u201d\n\n(Mr. Doran, knowing Bennett well, calls him by his first name, a\ncircumstance that should be pointed out to G. K. Chesterton, who would\nevolve a touching paradox about the familiarity of the unfamiliar.)\n\nThat will do for Arnold. If we mention Arnold again it must distinctly\nbe understood that we have reference to some other Arnold--Benedict\nArnold or Matthew Arnold or Dorothy Arnold or Arnold Daly.\n\nWell, to get back (in order to get forward), you are about beginning\nyour novel (nice locution, \u201cabout beginning\u201d) and are naturally taking\nall the advice you can get, if it doesn\u2019t cost prohibitively, and this\nwe are about to give doesn\u2019t.\n\nThe first thing for you to do is not, necessarily, to decide on the\nsubject of your novel.\n\nIt is not absolutely indispensable to select the subject of a novel\nbefore beginning to write it. Many authors prefer to write a third\nor a half of the novel before definitely committing themselves to a\nparticular theme. For example, take _The Roll Call_, by Arnold--it\nmust have been Arnold Constable, or perhaps it was Matthew. _The Roll\nCall_ is a very striking illustration of the point we would make.\nSomewhere along toward the end of _The Roll Call_ the author decided\nthat the subject of the novel should be the war and its effect on the\nson of Hilda Lessways by her bigamous first husband--or, he wasn\u2019t\nexactly her husband, being a bigamist, but we will let it go at that.\nNow Hilda Lessways was, or became, the wife of Edwin Clayhanger;\nand George Cannon, Clayhanger\u2019s--would you say, stepson? Hilda\u2019s\nson, anyway--George Cannon, the son of a gun--oh, pardon, the son\nof Bigamist Cannon--the stepson of, or son of the wife of, Edwin\nClayhanger of the Five Towns--George Cannon.... Where were we?...\nHilda Lessways Clayhanger, the--well, wife--of Bigamist Cannon....\n\nThe relationships in this novel are very confusing, like the novel and\nthe subject of it, but if you can read the book you will see that it\nillustrates our point perfectly.\n\n\n7\n\nWell, go ahead and write. Don\u2019t worry about the subject. You know how\nit is, a person often can\u2019t see the forest for the trees. When you\u2019re\nwriting 70,000 words or maybe a few more you can\u2019t expect to see your\nway out of \u2019em very easily. When you are out of the trees you can look\nback and see the forest. And when you are out of the woods of words you\ncan glance over \u2019em and find out what they were all about.\n\nHowever, the 80,000 words have to be written, and it is up to you,\nsomehow or other, to set down the 90,000 parts of speech in a row. Now\n100,000 words cannot be written without taking thought. Any one who has\nactually inscribed 120,000 words knows that. Any one who has written\nthe 150,000 words necessary to make a good-sized novel (though William\nAllen White wouldn\u2019t call _that_ good measure) understands the terrible\ndifficulties that confront a mortal when he sits down to enter upon the\ntask of authorship, the task of putting on paper the 200,000 mono- or\npolysyllables that shall hold the reader breathless to the end, if only\nfrom the difficulty of pronouncing some of them.\n\nWhere to start? For those who are not yet equipped with self-starters\nwe here set down a few really first-class openings for either the\nspring or fall novel trade:\n\n\u201cMarinda was frightened. When she was frightened her eyes changed\ncolor. They were dark now, and glittering restlessly like the sea\nwhen the wind hauls northwest. Jack Hathaway, unfamiliar with weather\nsigns, took no heed of the impending squall. He laughed recklessly,\ndangerously....\u201d (Story of youth and struggle.)\n\n\u201cThe peasant combed the lice from his beard, spat and said, grumbling:\n\u2018Send us ploughs that we may till the soil and save Russia.... Send us\nploughs.\u2019\u201d (Realistic story of Russia.)\n\n\u201cDarkness, suave, dense, enfolding, lay over the soft loam of the\nfields. The girl, moving silently across the field, felt the mystery\nof the dark; the scent of the soil and the caress of the night alike\nenchanted her. Hidden in the folds of her dress, clutched tightly in\nher fingers, was the ribbon he had given her. With a quick indrawing\nof her breath she paused, and, screened by the utter blackness that\nenveloped her, pressed it to her lips....\u201d (Story of the countryside.\nSimple, trusting innocence. Lots of atmosphere. After crossing the\nfield the girl strikes across Haunted Heath, a description of which\nfills the second chapter.)\n\nAll these are pretty safe bets, if you\u2019re terribly hard up. Think them\nover. Practice them daily for a few weeks.\n\n\n8\n\nNow that you have some idea about writing a novel it may be as well for\nyou to consider the consequences before proceeding to the irrevocable\nact.\n\nOne of the consequences will certainly be the discovery of many\nthings in the completed manuscript that you never intended. This is\nno frivolous allusion to the typographical errors you will find--for\na typewriter is as capable of spoonerisms as the human tongue. We\nhave reference to things that you did not consciously put into your\nnarrative.\n\nAnd first let it be said that many things that seem to you unconscious\nin the work of skilled writers are deliberate art (as the phrase goes).\nThe trouble is that the deliberation usually spoils the art. An example\nmust be had and we will take it in a novel by the gifted American,\nJoseph Hergesheimer. Before proceeding further with this Manual for\nBeginners read _Java Head_ if you can; if not, never mind.\n\nNow in _Java Head_ the purpose of Mr. Hergesheimer was, aside from\nthe evocation of a beautiful bit of a vanished past, the delineation\nof several persons of whom one represented the East destroyed in the\nWest and another the West destroyed in the East. Edward Dunsack, back\nin Salem, Massachusetts, the victim of the opium habit, represented\nthe West destroyed in the East; the Chinese wife of Gerrit Ammidon\nrepresented the East destroyed in the West. Mr. Hergesheimer took an\nartist\u2019s pride in the fact that the double destruction was accomplished\nwith what seemed to him the greatest possible economy of means; almost\nthe only external agency employed, he pointed out, was opium. Very\nwell; this is \u00e6stheticism, pure and not so simple as it looks. It is a\nPattern. It is a musical phrase or theme presented as a certain flight\nof notes in the treble, repeated or echoed and inverted in the bass. It\nis a curve on one side of a staircase balanced by a curve on the other.\nIt is a thing of symmetry and grace and it is the expression, perfect\nin its way, of an idea. Kipling expressed very much the same idea when\nhe told us that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall\nmeet. Mr. Hergesheimer amplifies and extends. If the two are brought in\ncontact each is fatal to the other. Is that all?\n\nIt is not all, it is the mere beginning. When you examine _Java Head_\nwith the Pattern in mind you immediately discover that the Pattern\nis carried out in bewildering detail. Everything is symmetrically\narranged. For instance, many a reader must have been puzzled and\nbewildered by the heartbreaking episode at the close of the novel in\nwhich Roger Brevard denies the delightful girl Sidsall Ammidon. The\naffair bears no relation to the currents of the tale; it is just a\nlittle eddy to one side; it is unnecessarily cruel and wounding to our\nsensibilities. Why have it at all?\n\nThe answer is that in his main narrative Mr. Hergesheimer has set\nbefore us Gerrit Ammidon, a fellow so quixotic that he marries twice\nout of sheer chivalry. He has drawn for us the fantastic scroll of\nsuch a man, a sea-shape not to be matched on shore. Well, then,\ndown in the corner, he must inscribe for us another contrasting,\nbalancing, compensating, miniatured scroll--a land-shape in the person\nof Roger Brevard who is so unquixotic as to offset Gerrit Ammidon\ncompletely. Gerrit Ammidon will marry twice for incredible reasons\nand Roger Brevard will not even marry once for the most compelling\nof reasons--love. The beautiful melody proclaimed by the violins is\nbrutally parodied by the tubas.\n\n\n9\n\nIs it all right thus? It is not all right thus and it never can be so\nlong as life remains the unpatterned thing we discern it to be. If\nlife were completely patterned it would most certainly not be worth\nliving. When we say that life is unpatterned we mean, of course, that\nwe cannot read all its patterns (we like to assume that all patterns\nare there, because it comforts us to think of a fundamental Order and\nSymmetry).\n\nBut so long as life is largely unpatterned, or so long as we cannot\ndiscern all its patterns, life is eager, interesting, surprising and\naltogether distracting and lovely however bewildering and distressing,\ntoo. Different people take the unreadable differently. Some, like\nThomas Hardy, take it in defiant bitterness of spirit; some, like\nJoseph Conrad, take it in profound faith and wonder. Hardy sees the\ndisorder that he cannot fathom; Conrad admires the design that he can\nonly incompletely trace. To Hardy the world is a place where--\n\n  \u201cAs flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;\n  They kill us for their sport.\u201d\n\nTo Conrad the world is a place where men may continually make the\nglorious and heartening discovery that a solidarity exists among them;\nthat they are united by a bond as unbreakable as it is mysterious.\n\nAnd to others, as regrettably to Mr. Hergesheimer writing _Java Head_,\nthe world is a place where it is momentarily sufficient to trace\ncasual symmetries without thought of their relation to an ineluctable\nwhole.\n\n\n10\n\nWhat, then, is the novelist to do? Is it not obvious that he must not\nbusy himself too carefully with the business of patterning the things\nhe has to tell? For the moment he has traced everything out nicely and\nbeautifully he may know for a surety that he has cut himself off from\nthe larger design of Life. He has got his little corner of the Oriental\nrug all mapped out with the greatest exactitude. But he has lost touch\nwith the bigger intricacy beyond his corner. It is a prayer rug. He had\nbetter kneel down and pray.\n\nNow there are novels in which no pattern at all is traced; and these\nare as bad as those which minutely map a mere corner. These are\nmeaningless and confused stories in which nobody can discern any cause\nor effect, any order or law, any symmetry or proportion or expressed\nidea. These are the novels which have been justified as a \u201cslice of\nlife\u201d and which have brought into undeserved disrepute the frequently\npainstaking manner of their telling. The trouble is seldom primarily,\nas so many people think, with the material but with its presentation.\nYou may take almost any material you like and so present it as to make\nit mean something; and you may also take almost any material you like\nand so present it as to make it mean nothing to anybody. A heap of\nbricks is meaningless; but the same bricks are intelligible expressed\nas a building of whatever sort, or merely as a sidewalk with zigzags,\nperhaps, of a varicolor.\n\nThe point we would make--and we might as well try to drive it home\nwithout further ineffectual attempts at illustration--is that you must\ndo some patterning with your material, whether bricks for a building or\nlives for a story; but if you pattern too preciously your building will\nbe contemptible and your story without a soul. In your building you\nmust not be so decided as to leave no play for another\u2019s imagination,\ncontemplating the structure. In your narrative you must not be so\ndogmatic about two and two adding to four as to leave no room for a\nwild speculation that perhaps they came to five. For it is not the\ncertainty that two and two have always made four but the possibility\nthat some day they may make five that makes life worth living--and\nguessing about on the printed page.\n\n\n11\n\nPerhaps the most serious consequence of writing a novel is the\nrevelation of yourself it inevitably entails.\n\nWe are not thinking, principally, of the discovery you will make of the\nsize of your own soul. We have in mind the laying bare of yourself to\nothers.\n\nOf course you do reveal yourself to yourself when you write a book to\nreveal others to others. It has been supposed that a man cannot say or\ndo a thing which does not expose his nature. This is nonsense; you do\nnot expose your nature every time you take the subway, though a trip\ntherein may very well be an index to your manners. The fact remains\nthat no man ever made a book or a play or a song or a poem, with any\ncommand of the technique of his work, without in some measure giving\nhimself away. Where this is not enough of an inducement some other,\nsuch as a tin whistle with every bound copy, is offered; no small\naddition as it enables the reviewer to declare, hand on heart, that\n\u201cthis story is not to be whistled down the wind.\u201d Some have doubted\nBernard Shaw\u2019s Irishism, which seems the queerer as nearly everything\nhe has written has carried a shillelagh concealed between the covers.\nRecently Frank K. Reilly of Chicago gave away one-cent pieces to\nadvertise a book called _Penny of Top Hill Trail_. He might be said,\nand in fact he hereby is said, thus to have coppered his risk in\npublishing it.... All of which is likely to be mistaken for jesting.\nLet us therefore jest that we may be taken with utmost seriousness.\n\nThe revelation of yourself to yourself, which the mere act of writing a\nnovel brings to pass, may naturally be either pleasant or unpleasant.\nVery likely it is unpleasant in a majority of instances, a condition\nwhich need not necessarily reflect upon our poor human nature. If\nwe did not aspire so high for ourselves we should not suffer such\nawful disappointments on finding out where we actually get off. The\nonly moral, if there is one, lies in our ridiculous aim. Imagine the\nsickening of heart with which Oscar Wilde contemplated himself after\ncompleting _The Picture of Dorian Grey_! And imagine the lift it must\nhave given him to look within himself as he worked at _The Ballad of\nReading Gaol_! The circumstances of life and even the actual conduct of\na man are not necessarily here or there--or anywhere at all--in this\nintimate contemplation. There is one mirror before which we never pose.\nGod made man in His own image. God made His own image and put it in\nevery man.\n\nIt is there! Nothing in life transcends the wonder of the moment when,\neach for himself, we make this discovery. Then comes the struggle\nto remold ourselves nearer to our heart\u2019s desire. It succeeds or it\ndoesn\u2019t; perhaps it succeeds only slightly; anyway we try for it.\nThe sleeper, twisting and turning, dreaming and struggling, is the\nperfect likeness of ourselves in the waking hours of our whole earthly\nexistence. Because they have seen this some have thought life no\nbetter than a nightmare. Voltaire suggested that the earth and all that\ndwelt thereon was only the bad dream of a god on some other planet. We\nwould point out the bright side of this possibility: It presupposes the\nexistence somewhere of a mince pie so delicious and so powerful as to\nevoke the likenesses of C\u00e6sar and Samuel Gompers, giraffes, Mr. Taft,\nviolets, Mr. Roosevelt, Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovski, Billy Sunday, Wu-Ting\nFang, Helen of Troy and Mother Jones, groundhogs, H. G. Wells; perhaps\nBolshevism is the last writhe. Mince pie, unwisely eaten instead of\nthe dietetic nectar and ambrosia, may well explain the whole confused\nuniverse. And you and I--we can create another universe, equally\nexciting, by eating mince pie to-night!... You see there is a bright\nside to everything, for the mince pie is undoubtedly of a heavenly\nflavor.\n\nWe were saying, when sidetracked by the necessity of explaining the\nuniverse, that the self-revelation which writing a book entails is in\nmost cases depressing, but not by any means always so. Boswell was not\nmuch of a man judged by the standards of his own day or ours, either\none, yet Boswell knew himself better than he knew Dr. Johnson by the\ntime he had finished his life of the Doctor. It must have bucked him up\nimmensely to know that he was at least big enough himself to measure\na bigger man up and down, in and out, criss-cross and sideways,\nsetting down the complicated result without any error that the human\nintelligence can detect. It must have appeased the ironical soul of\nHenry Adams to realise that he was one of the very few men who had\nnever fooled himself about himself, and that evidence of his phenomenal\nachievement in the shape of the book _The Education of Henry Adams_,\nwould survive him after his death--or at least, after the difficulties\nof communicating with those on earth had noticeably increased (we make\nthis wise modification lest someone match Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s _Raymond,\nor Life After Death_ with a volume called _Henry, or Re-Education After\nDeath_).\n\nIt must have sent a thrill of pleasure through the by no means\ninsensitive frame of Joseph Conrad when he discovered, on completing\n_Nostromo_, that he had a profounder insight into the economic bases\nof modern social and political affairs than nine-tenths of the\nprofessional economists and sociologists--plus a knowledge of the\nhuman heart that they have never dreamed worth while. For Conrad saw\nclearly, and so saw simply; the \u201csilver of the mine\u201d of this, his\ngreatest story, was, it is true, an incorruptible metal, but it could\nand did alter the corruptible nature of man--and would continue to do\nso through generation after generation long after his Mediterranean\nsailor-hero had become dust.\n\nEven in the case of the humble and unknown writer whose completed\nmanuscript, after many tedious journeys, comes home to him at last,\nto be re-read regretfully but with an undying belief not so much in\nthe work itself as in what it was meant to express and so evidently\nfailed to--even in his case the great consolation is the attestation\nof a creed. Very bad men have died, as does the artist in Shaw\u2019s _The\nDoctor\u2019s Dilemma_, voicing with clarity and beauty the belief in which\nthey think they have lived or ought to have lived; but a piece of\nwork is always an actual living of some part of the creed that is in\nyou. It may be a failure but it has, with all its faults, a gallant\nquality, the quality of the deed done, which men have always admired,\nand because of which they have invented those things we call words to\nembody their praise.\n\nBut what of the consequences of revealing yourself to others? Writing\na novel will surely mean that you will incur them. We must speak of\nthem briefly; and then we may get on to the thing for which you are\ndoubtless waiting with terrible patience--the way to write the novel\nitself. Never fear! If you will but endure steadfastly you shall Know\nAll.\n\n\n12\n\n\u201cCertainly, publish everything,\u201d commented the New York _Times_\neditorially upon a proposal to give out earnings, or some other\ndetail, of private businesses. \u201cAll privacy is scandalous,\u201d added the\nnewspaper. In this satirical utterance lies the ultimate justification\nfor writing a novel.\n\nAll privacy is scandalous. If you don\u2019t believe it, read some of the\nprose of James Joyce. _A Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man_ will do\nfor a starter. _Ulysses_ is a follow-up. H. G. Wells likes the first,\nwhile deploring so much sewerage in the open street. You see, nothing\nbut a sincere conviction concerning the wickedness of leaving anything\nat all unmentioned in public could justify such narratives as Mr.\nJoyce\u2019s.\n\nIn a less repulsive sense, the scandal of privacy is what underlies\nany novel of what we generally call the \u201crealistic\u201d sort. Mr.\nDreiser, for instance, thinks it scandalous that we should not know\nand publicly proclaim the true nature of such men as Hurstwood in\nhis _Sister Carrie_. Mr. Hardy thinks it scandalous that the world\nshould not publicly acknowledge the purity of Tess Durbeyfield and\ntherefore he gives us a book in which she is, as the subtitle says,\n\u201cfaithfully presented.\u201d Gene Stratton-Porter thinks it scandalous not\nto tell the truth about such a boy as Freckles. The much-experienced\nMr. Tarkington, stirred to his marrow by what seems almost a world\nconspiracy to condone the insufferable conceit of the George Amberson\nMinafers among us, writes _The Magnificent Ambersons_ to make us\nconfess how we hate \u2019em--and how our instinctive faith in them is\nvindicated at last.\n\nEvery novelist who gains a public of any size or permanence\ndeliberately, and even joyfully, faces the consequences of the\nrevelation of himself to some thousands of his fellow-creatures.\nWe don\u2019t mean that he always delineates himself in the person of a\ncharacter, or several characters, in his stories. He may do that, of\ncourse, but the self-exposure is generally much more merciless. The\nnovelist can withhold from the character which, more or less, stands\nfor himself his baser qualities. What he cannot withhold from the\nreader is his own mind\u2019s limitations.\n\nA novel is bounded by the author\u2019s horizons. If a man can see only so\nfar and only so deep his book will show it. If he cannot look abroad,\nbut can perceive nothing beyond the nose on his face, that fact will be\nfully apparent to his co-spectators who turn the pages of his story. If\nhe can see only certain colors those who look on with him will be aware\nof his defect. Above all, if he can see persons as all bad or all good,\nall black or all white, he will be hanged in effigy along with the\npuppets he has put on paper.\n\nThis is the reason why every one should write a novel. There is only\none thing comparable with it as a means of self-immolation. That, of\ncourse, is tenure of public office. And as there are not nearly enough\npublic offices to serve the need of individual discipline, novelizing\nshould be encouraged, fomented--we had almost said, made compulsory.\nCompulsion, however, defeats its own ends. Let us elect to public\noffices, as we would choose to fill scholarships, those who cannot,\nthrough some misfortune, write novels; and let us induce all the other\npeople in the world that we can to put pen to paper--not that they may\nenrich the world with immortal stories, not that they may make money,\nbecome famous or come to know themselves, but solely that we may know\nthem for what they are.\n\nIf Albert Burleson had been induced to write a novel would we have\nmade him a Congressman and would President Wilson have made him\nPostmaster-General? If William, sometime of Germany, had written\na novel would the Germans have acquiesced in his theory of Divine\nRight? Georges Clemenceau wrote novels and was chosen of the people to\nlead them. Hall Caine and Marie Corelli and Rider Haggard and Arnold\nBennett have written novels which enable us to gauge them pretty\naccurately--and not one of them has yet been invited to help run the\nLeague of Nations. The reason is simple: We know them too well.\n\nAll privacy is scandalous. Thomas Dixon says: \u201cIt is positively\nimmoral that the world should run on without knowing the depths to\nwhich I can sink. I must write _The Way of a Man_ and make the world\nproperly contemptuous of me.\u201d Zona Gale reflects to herself: \u201cAfter\nall, with nothing but these few romances and these _Friendship Village_\nstories, people have no true insight into my real tastes, affinities,\npredilections, qualities of mind. I will write about a fruit and\npickle salesman, an ineffectual sort of person who becomes, almost\ninvoluntarily, a paperhanger. That will give them the idea of me they\nlack.\u201d\n\nWilliam Allen White, without consciously thinking anything of the\nkind, is dimly aware that people generally have a right to know him as\na big-hearted man who makes some mistakes but whose sympathy is with\nthe individual man and woman and whose passion is for social progress.\nThe best way to make people generally acquainted with William Allen\nWhite is to write a novel--say, _In The Heart of a Fool_, which they\nwill read.... The best way to get to know anybody is to get him to\ntalking about somebody else. Talk about one\u2019s self is a little too\nself-conscious.\n\nAnd there you have it! It is exactly because such a writer as H. G.\nWells is in reality pretty nearly always talking about himself that\nwe find it so difficult to appraise him rightly on the basis of his\nnovels. Self-consciousness is never absent from a Wells book. It is\nthis acute self-consciousness that makes so much of Henry James\nvalueless to the great majority of readers. They cannot get past it, or\nbehind it. The great test fails. Mr. James is dead, and the only way\nleft to get at the truth of Mr. Wells will be to make him Chancellor\nof the Exchequer or, in a socialized British republic, Secretary of\nUn-War....\n\nDare to be a Daniel Carson Goodman. Write That Novel. Don\u2019t\nprocrastinate, don\u2019t temporize. Do It Now, reserving all rights of\ntranslation of words into action in all countries, including the\nScandinavian. Full detailed instructions as to the actual writing\nfollow.\n\n\n13\n\nYou may not have noticed it, but even so successful a novelist as\nRobert W. Chambers is careful to respect the three unities that\nAristotle (wasn\u2019t it?) prescribed and the Greeks took always into\naccount. Not in a single one of his fifty novels does the popular Mr.\nChambers disregard the three Greek unities. Invariably he looks out for\nthe time, the place and the girl.\n\nIf Aristotle recommended it and Robert W. Chambers sticks to it,\nperhaps you, about to write your first novel, had better attend to it\nalso.\n\nNow, to work! About a title. Better have one, even if it\u2019s only\nprovisional, before you begin to write. If you can, get the real,\nright title at the outset. Sometimes having it will help you\nthrough--not to speak of such cases as Eleanor Hallowell Abbott\u2019s. The\nauthor of _Molly Make-Believe_, _The Sick-a-Bed Lady_ and _Old-Dad_\ngets her real, right title and then the story mushrooms out of it,\nlike a house afire. Ourselves, we are personally the same. We have\nthree corking titles for as many novels. One is written. The other two\nwe haven\u2019t to worry about. They have only to live up to their titles,\nwhich may be difficult for them but will make it easy for ourselves.\nWe have a Standard. Everything that lives up to the promise of our\nsuperlative title goes in, everything that is alien to it or unworthy\nof it, stays out. This, we may add parenthetically, was the original\nmotive in instituting titles of nobility. A man was made a Baron. Very\nwell, it was expected that he would conform his character and conduct\naccordingly. Things suitable to a Baron he would thenceforth be and do,\nthings unbefitting his new, exalted station he would kindly omit.... It\nworks better with books than with people, so cheer up. Your novel will\ncome out more satisfactorily than you think.\n\nWhich brings us to the matter of the ending. Should it be happy or\notherwise? More words have been wasted on this subject than on any\nother aspect of fictioneering. You must understand from the very first\nthat you, personally, have nothing whatever to say about the ending\nof your story. That will be decided by the people of your tale and the\nevents among which they live. In other words, the preponderant force in\ndetermining the ending is--inevitability.\n\nMost people misunderstand inevitability. Others merely worry about it,\nas if it were to-morrow\u2019s weather. Shall we take an umbrella, they ask\nanxiously, lest it rain inevitably? Or will the inevitable come off\nhot, so that an overcoat will be a nuisance? Nobody knows, not even\nthe weather forecaster in Washington. If there were a corresponding\nofficial whose duty it would be to forecast with equal inaccuracy the\nendings of novels life would go on much the same. Readers would still\nworry about the last page because they would know that the official\nprediction would be wrong at least half the time. If the Ending\nForecaster prophesied: \u201cLovers meet happily on page 378; villain\nprobably killed in train accident\u201d we would go drearily forward\nconfident that page 378 would disclose the heroine, under a lowering\nsky, clasped in the villain\u2019s arms while the hero lay prone under a\nstalled Rolls-Royce, trying to find out why the carburetor didn\u2019t\ncarburete.\n\nInevitability is not the same as heredity. Heredity can be rigorously\ncontrolled--novelists are the real eugenists--but inevitability is\nlike natural selection or the origin of species or mutations or O.\nHenry: It is the unexpected that happens. Environment has little in\ncommon with inevitability. In the pages of any competent novelist the\ngirl in the slums will sooner or later disclose her possession of the\nmost unlikely traits. Her bravery, her innocence will become even more\nmanifest than her beauty. The young feller from Fifth avenue, whose\nearliest environment included orange spoons and Etruscan pottery, will\nturn out to be a lowdown brute. Environment is what we want it to be,\ninevitability is what we are.\n\nYou think, of course, that you can pre-determine the outcome of\nthis story you are going to write. Yes, you can! You can no more\npre-determine the ending than you can pre-determine the girl your son\nwill marry. It\u2019s exactly like that. For you must come face to face,\nbefore you have written 50 pages of your book, with an appalling and\ninspiring Fact. You might as well face it here.\n\n\n14\n\nThe position of the novelist engaged in writing a novel can only be\nindicated by a shocking exaggeration which is this: He is not much\nbetter than a medium in a trance.\n\nNow of course such a statement calls for the most exact explanation.\nNobody can give it. Such a statement calls for indisputable evidence.\nNone exists. Such a statement, unexplained and unsupported by\ntestimony, is a gross and unscientific assumption not even worthy to\nbe damned by being called a hypothesis. You said it. Nevertheless, the\nthing\u2019s so.\n\nWe, personally, having written a novel--or maybe two--know what we\nare talking about. The immense and permanent curiosity of people all\nover the planet who read books at all fixes itself upon the question,\nin respect of the novelist: \u201c_How_ does he write?\u201d As Mary S. Watts\nremarks, that is the one thing no novelist can tell you. He doesn\u2019t\nknow himself. But though it is the one thing the novelist can\u2019t tell\nyou it is not one of those things that, in the words of Artemus Ward,\nno feller kin find out. Any one can find out by writing a novel.\n\nAnd to write one you need little beyond a few personalities firmly in\nmind, a typewriter and lots of white paper. An outline is superfluous\nand sometimes harmful. Put a sheet of paper in the machine and write\nthe title, in capital letters. Below, write: \u201cBy Theophrastus Such,\u201d or\nwhatever you happen unfortunately to be called or elect, in bad taste,\nto call yourself. Begin.\n\nYou will have the first few pages, the opening scene, possibly the\nfirst chapter, fairly in mind; you may have mental notes on one or two\nthings your people will say. Beyond that you have only the haziest\nidea of what it will all be about. Write.\n\nAs you write it will come to you. Somehow. What do you care how? Let\nthe psychologists stew over that.\n\nThey, in all probability, will figure out that the story has already\ncompletely formed itself, in all its essentials and in many details,\nin your subconscious mind, the lowermost cellar of your uninteresting\npersonality where moth and rust do not corrupt, whatever harm they\nmay do higher up, and where the cobwebs lie even more thickly than in\nyour alleged brain. As you write, and as the result of the mere act\nof writing, the story, lying dormant in your subcellar, slowly shakes\na leg, quivers, stretches, extends itself to its full length, yawns,\nrises with sundry anatomical contortions and advancing crosses the\nthreshold of your subconsciousness into the well-dusted and cleaned\nbasement of your consciousness whence it is but a step to full daylight\nand the shadow of printed black characters upon a to-and-fro travelling\npage.\n\nIn other words, you are an automaton; and to be an automaton in this\nworld of exuberant originality is a blissful thing.\n\nYour brain is not engaged at all. This is why writing fiction actually\nrests the brain. It is why those who are suffering from brain-fag\nfind recreation and enjoyment, health and mental strength in writing\na short story or a novel. The short story is a two weeks\u2019 vacation\nfor the tired mind. Writing a novel is a month, with full pay. It is\ntrue that readers are rather prone to resent the widespread habit of\nnovelists recuperating and recovering their mental faculties at their\nreaders\u2019 expense. This resentment is without any justification in fact,\nsince for every novelist who recovers from brain-fag by writing a work\nof fiction there are thousands of readers who restore their exhausted\nintellects with a complete rest by reading the aforesaid work of\nfiction.\n\nOf course the subconscious cellar theory of novel-writing is not final\nand authoritative. There is at least one other tenable explanation of\nhow novels are written, and we proceed to give it.\n\nThis is that the story is projected through the personality of the\nwriter who is, in all respects, no more than a mechanism and whose r\u00f4le\nmay be accurately compared to that of a telephone transmitter in a talk\nover the wire.\n\nThis theory has the important virtue of explaining convincingly all the\nworst novels, as well as all the best. For a telephone transmitter is\nnot responsible for what is spoken into it or for what it transmits.\nIt is not to blame for some very silly conversations. It has no merit\nbecause it forwards some very wise words. Similarly, if the novelist is\nmerely a transmitter, a peculiarly delicate and sensitive medium for\nconveying what is said and done somewhere else, perhaps on some other\nplane by some other variety of mortals, the novelist is in no wise to\nblame for the performances or utterances of his characters, or clients\nas they ought, in this view, to be called; the same novelist might, and\nprobably would, be the means of transmitting the news of splendid deeds\nand the superb utterances of glorious people, composing one story, and\nthe inanities, verbal or otherwise, of a lot of fourth dimensional\nGreenwich Villagers, constituting another and infinitely inferior\nstory.... To be sure this explanation, which relieves the novelist\nof almost all responsibility for his novels, ought also to take from\nhim all the credit for good work. If he is a painfully conscientious\nmortal he may grieve for years over this; but if his first or his\nsecond or his third book sells 100,000 copies he will probably be\nwilling, in the words of the poet, to take the cash and let the credit\ngo. Very greedy men invariably insist on not merely taking the cash\nbut claiming the credit as well; saintly men clutch at the credit and\ninstruct their publishers that all author\u2019s royalties are to be made\nover to the Fund for Heating the Igloos of Aged and Helpless Eskimos.\nBut the funny thing about the whole business is that the world, which\nhabitually withholds credit where credit is due, at other times insists\non bestowing credit anyway. There have been whole human philosophies\nbased upon the principle of Renunciation and even whole novels, such\nas those of Henry James. But it doesn\u2019t work. Renounce, if you like,\nall credit for the books which bear your name on the title-page. The\nworld will weave its laurel wreath and crown you with bays just the\nsame. Men have become baldheaded in a single night in the effort to\navoid unmerited honor and by noon the next day have looked as if they\nwere bacchantes or at least hardy perennials, so thick have been the\nvine leaves in their hair, or rather on the site of it.... Which takes\nus away from our subject. Where were we? Oh, yes, about writing your\nnovel....\n\nAs soon as you have done two or three days\u2019 stint on the book--you\nought to plan to write so many words a day or a week, and it\u2019s no\nmatter that you don\u2019t know what they will be--as soon as you\u2019ve got\na fairish start you will find that you have several persons in your\nstory who are, to all intents and purposes, as much alive as yourself\nand considerably more self-willed. They will promptly take the story\nin their hands and you will have nothing to do in the remaining 50,000\nwords or more but to set down what happens. The extreme physical\nfatigue consequent upon writing so many words is all you have to\nguard against. Play golf or tennis, if you can, so as to offset this\nphysical fatigue by the physical rest and intellectual exercise they\nrespectively afford. Auction bridge in the evenings, or, as Frank M.\nO\u2019Brien says, reading De Morgan and listening to the phonograph, will\ngive you the emotional outlet you seek.\n\n\n15\n\nNo doubt many who have read the foregoing will turn up their noses at\nthe well-meant advice it contains, considering that we have largely\njested on a serious subject. We take this occasion to declare most\nearnestly, at the conclusion of our remarks, that we have seldom been\nso serious in our life. Such occasional levities as we have allowed\nourselves to indulge in have been plain and obvious, and of no more\nimportance in the general scheme of what we have been discussing than\nthe story of the Irishman with which the gifted after-dinner speaker\ncircumspectly introduces his most burning thoughts.\n\nWe mean what we have said. Writing a novel is one of the most rounded\nforms of self-education. It is one of the most honorable too, since,\nunlike the holder of public office, the person who is getting the\neducation does not do so at the public expense. We have regard,\nnaturally, to the mere act of _writing_ the novel. If afterward it\nfinds a publisher and less probably a public--that has nothing to\ndo with the author, whose self-culture, intensive, satisfying and\nwholesome, has been completed before that time.\n\nWhether a novelist deserves any credit for the novel he writes is a\nquestion, but he will get the credit for it anyway and nothing matters\nwhere so wonderful an experience is to be gained. Next to being\nhypnotized, there is nothing like it; and it has the great advantage\nthat you know what you are doing whereas the hypnotic subject does\nnot. No preparation is necessary or even desirable since, even in\nso specific a detail as the outline of the story the people of your\nnarrative take things entirely in their own hands and reduce the\noutline to the now well-known status of a scrap of paper.... We talk of\n\u201cadvice\u201d in writing a novel. The best advice is not to take any.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES:\n\n\n  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.\n\n  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.\n\n  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.","title":"Why Authors Go Wrong, and Other Explanations","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":43901}