foundation in comparison with which all else is superstructure? I
mentioned the public which, appreciating criticism as an art, turns from
America to France for what it craves. Our sympathies respond to the call
of our own national life, and may not be satisfied by Frenchmen; if we
turn to them, we do so for some attraction which compensates for the
absence of intimate relation to our needs. What is it? Of course, French
mastery of form accounts in part for our intellectual absenteeism; but
it does not account for it wholly, not, I think, even in the main.
Consider the two schools of French criticism typified by Brunetière and
by Anatole France. Men like Brunetière seem to believe that what they
say is important, not merely to fellow dilettanti or to fellow scholars,
but to the public and to the mass of the public; they seem to write, not
to display their attainments, but to use their attainments to accomplish
their end; they put their whole strength, intellectual and moral, into
their argument; they seek to make converts, to crush enemies. They are
in earnest; they feel responsible; they take their office with high
seriousness. They seem to think that the soul and the character of the
people are as important as its economic comfort. The problem of a
contemporary, popular author—even if contemporary, even if popular—is to
them an important question; the intellectual, moral, and æsthetic ideals
which he is spreading through the country are to be tested rigorously,
then applauded or fought. They seek to be clear because they wish to
interest; they wish to interest because they wish to convince; they wish
to convince because they have convictions which they believe should
prevail.
The men like Anatole France—if there are any others like Anatole
France—have a different philosophy of life. They are doubtful of
endeavor, doubtful of progress, doubtful of new schools of art, doubtful
of new solutions whether in philosophy or economics; but they have a
quick sensitiveness to beauty and a profound sympathy with suffering
man. Not only do they face their doubts, but they make their readers
face them. They do not pretend; they do not conceal; they flatter no
conventions and no prejudices; they are sincere. Giving themselves
without reserve, they do not speak what they think will please you, but
rather try with all their art to please you with what they think.
In the French critics of both types—the men like Brunetière, the men
like Anatole France—there is this common, this invaluable
characteristic,—I mean intellectual candor. That is their great
attraction; that is the foundation of interest.
Intellectual candor does not mark American criticism. The fault is
primarily the publisher’s. It lies in the fundamental mistake that he
makes in the matter of publicity. Each publisher, that is, treats each
new book as if it were the only one that he had ever published, were
publishing, or ever should publish. He gives all his efforts to seeing
that it is praised. He repeats these exertions with some success for
each book that he prints. Meanwhile, every other publisher is doing as
much for every new book of his own. The natural result follows—a
monotony of praise which permits no books to stand out, and which,
however plausible in the particular instance, is, in the mass,
incredible.
But how is it that the publisher’s fiat produces praise? The answer is
implicit in the fact that criticism is supported, not by the public, but
by the publisher. Upon the money which the publisher of books is ready
to spend for advertising depends the publisher of book-reviews; upon him
in turn depends the critic.
Between the publisher of books anxious for favorable reviews and willing
to spend money, and the publisher of a newspaper anxious for
advertisements and supporting a dependent critic, the chance to trade is
perfect. Nothing sordid need be said or, indeed, perceived; all may be
left to the workings of human nature. Favorable reviews are printed,
advertisements are received; and no one, not even the principals, need
be certain that the reviews are not favorable because the books are
good, or that the advertisements are not given because the comment is
competent and just. Nevertheless, the Silent Bargain has been decorously
struck. Once reached, it tends of itself to become ever more close,
intimate, and inclusive. The publisher of books is continuously tempted
to push his advantage with the complaisant publisher of a newspaper; the
publisher of a newspaper is continuously tempted to pitch ever higher
and still higher the note of praise.
But the Silent Bargain is not made with newspapers only. Obviously,
critics can say nothing without the consent of some publisher;
obviously, their alternatives are silence or submission. They who write
for the magazines are wooed to constant surrender; they must, or they
think that they must, be tender of all authors who have commercial
relations with the house that publishes the periodical to which they are
contributing. Even they who write books are not exempt; they must, or
they feel that they must, deal gently with reputations commercially dear
to their publisher. If the critic is timid, or amiable, or intriguing,
or struck with poverty, he is certain, whatever his rank, to dodge, to
soften, to omit whatever he fears may displease the publisher on whom he
depends. Selfish considerations thus tend ever to emasculate criticism;
criticism thus tends ever to assume more and more nearly the most
dishonest and exasperating form of advertisement, that of the “reading
notice” which presents itself as sincere, spontaneous testimony.
Disingenuous criticism tends in its turn to puzzle and disgust the
public—and to hurt the publisher. The puff is a boomerang.
Its return blow is serious; it would be fatal, could readers turn away
wholly from criticism. What saves the publisher is that they cannot.
They have continuous, practical need of books, and must know about them.
The multitudinous paths of reading stretch away at every angle, and the
traveling crowd must gather and guess and wonder about the guide-post
criticism, even if each finger, contradicting every other, points to its
own road as that “To Excellence.”
Wayfarers in like predicament would question one another. It is so with
readers. Curiously enough, publishers declare that their best
advertising flows from this private talk. They all agree that, whereas
reviews sell nothing, the gossip of readers sells much. Curiously, I
say; for this gossip is not under their control; it is as often adverse
as favorable; it kills as much as it sells. Moreover, when it kills, it
kills in secret; it leaves the bewildered publisher without a clue to
the culprit or his motive. How, then, can it be superior to the
controlled, considerate flattery of the public press? It is odd that
publishers never seriously ask themselves this question, for the answer,
if I have it, is instructive. The dictum of the schoolgirl that a novel
is “perfectly lovely” or “perfectly horrid,” comes from the heart. The
comment of society women at afternoon tea, the talk of business men at
the club, if seldom of much critical value, is sincere. In circles in
which literature is loved, the witty things which clever men and clever
women say about books are inspired by the fear neither of God nor of
man. In circles falsely literary, parrot talk and affectation hold sway,
but the talkers have an absurd faith in one another. In short, all
private talk about books bears the stamp of sincerity. That is what
makes the power of the spoken word. It is still more potent when it
takes the form, not of casual mention, but of real discussion. When
opinions differ, talk becomes animated, warm, continuous. Listeners are
turned into partisans. A lively, unfettered dispute over a book by witty
men, no matter how prejudiced, or by clever women, no matter how
unlearned, does not leave the listener indifferent. He is tempted to
read that book.
Now, what the publisher needs in order to print with financial profit
the best work and much work, is the creation of a wide general interest
in literature. This vastly transcends in importance the fate of any one
book or group of books. Instead, then, of trying to start in the public
press a chorus of stupid praise, why should he not endeavor to obtain a
reproduction of what he acknowledges that his experience has taught him
is his main prop and support—the frank word, the unfettered dispute of
private talk? Let him remember what has happened when the vivacity of
public opinion has forced this reproduction. It is history that those
works have been best advertised over which critics have fought—Hugo’s
dramas, Wagner’s music, Whitman’s poems, Zola’s novels, Mrs. Stowe’s
_Uncle Tom_.
Does it not all suggest the folly of the Silent Bargain?
I have spoken always of tendencies. Public criticism never has been and
never will be wholly dishonest, even when in the toils of the Silent
Bargain; it never has been and never will be wholly honest, even with
that cuttlefish removed. But if beyond cavil it tended towards
sincerity, the improvement would be large. In the measure of that
tendency it would gain the public confidence without which it can
benefit no one—not even the publisher. For his own sake he should do
what he can to make the public regard the critic, not as a mere
megaphone for his advertisements, but as an honest man who speaks his
honest mind. To this end, he should deny his foolish taste for praise,
and, even to the hurt of individual ventures, use his influence to
foster independence in the critic.
In the way of negative help, he should cease to tempt lazy and
indifferent reviewers with ready-made notices, the perfunctory and
insincere work of some minor employee; he should stop sending out, as
“literary” notes, thinly disguised advertisements and irrelevant
personalities; he should no longer supply photographs of his authors in
affected poses that display their vanity much and their talent not at
all. That vulgarity he should leave to those who have soubrettes to
exploit; he should not treat his authors as if they were variety
artists—unless, indeed, they are just that, and he himself on the level
of the manager of a low vaudeville house. These cheap devices lower his
dignity as a publisher, they are a positive hurt to the reputation of
his authors, they make less valuable to him the periodical that prints
them, and they are an irritation and an insult to the critic, for, one
and all, they are attempts to insinuate advertising into his honest
columns. Frankly, they are modes of corruption, and degrade the whole
business of writing.
In the way of positive help, he should relieve of every commercial
preoccupation, not only the editors and contributors of any magazines
that he may control, but also those authors of criticism and critical
biography whose volumes he may print. Having cleaned his own house, he
should steadily demand of the publications in which he advertises, a
higher grade of critical writing, and should select the periodicals to
which to send his books for notice, not according to the partiality, but
according to the ability of their reviews. Thus he would do much to make
others follow his own good example.
II
What of the author? In respect of criticism, the publisher, of course,
has no absolute rights, not even that of having his books noticed at
all. His interests only have been in question, and, in the long run and
in the mass, these will not be harmed, but benefited, by criticism
honestly adverse. He has in his writers a hundred talents, and if his
selection is shrewd most of them bring profit. Frank criticism will but
help the task of judicious culling. But all that has been said assumes
the cheerful sacrifice of the particular author who must stake his all
upon his single talent. Does his comparative helplessness give him any
right to tender treatment?
It does not; in respect of rights his, precisely, is the predicament of
the publisher. If an author puts forth a book for sale, he obviously can
be accorded no privilege incompatible with the right of the public to
know its value. He cannot ask to have the public fooled for his benefit;
he cannot ask to have his feelings saved, if to save them the critic
must neglect to inform his readers. That is rudimentary. Nor may the
author argue more subtly that, until criticism is a science and truth
unmistakable, he should be given the benefit of the doubt. This was the
proposition behind the plea, strongly urged not so long ago, that all
criticism should be “sympathetic”; that is, that the particular critic
is qualified to judge those writers only whom, on the whole, he likes.
Love, it was declared, is the only key to understanding. The obvious
value of the theory to the Silent Bargain accounts for its popularity
with the commercial interests. Now, no one can quarrel with the
criticism of appreciation—it is full of charm and service; but to
pretend that it should be the only criticism is impertinent and vain. To
detect the frivolity of such a pretension, one has only to apply it to
public affairs; imagine a political campaign in which the candidates
were criticised only by their friends! No; the critic should attack
whatever he thinks is bad, and he is quite as likely to be right when he
does so as when he applauds what he thinks is good. In a task wherein
the interest of the public is the one that every time and all the time
should be served, mercy to the author is practically always a betrayal.
To the public, neither the vanity nor the purse of the author is of the
slightest consequence. Indeed, a criticism powerful enough to curb the
conceit of some authors, and to make writing wholly unprofitable to
others, would be an advantage to the public, to really meritorious
authors, and to the publisher.
And the publisher—to consider his interests again for a moment—would
gain not merely by the suppression of useless, but by the discipline of
spoiled, writers. For the Silent Bargain so works as to give to many an
author an exaggerated idea of his importance. It leads the publisher
himself—what with his complaisant reviewers, his literary notes, his
personal paragraphs, his widely distributed photographs—to do all that
he can to turn the author’s head. Sometimes he succeeds. When the
spoiled writer, taking all this _au grand sérieux_, asks why sales are
not larger, then how hard is the publisher pressed for an answer! If the
author chooses to believe, not the private but the public statement of
his merit, and bases upon it either a criticism of his publisher’s
energy or a demand for further publishing favors,—increase of
advertising, higher royalties, what not,—the publisher is in a
ridiculous and rather troublesome quandary. None but the initiated know
what he has occasionally to endure from the arrogance of certain
writers. Here fearless criticism should help him much.
But if the conceit of some authors offends, the sensitiveness of others
awakens sympathy. The author does his work in solitude; his material is
his own soul; his anxiety about a commercial venture is complicated with
the apprehension of the recluse who comes forth into the market-place
with his heart upon his sleeve. Instinctively he knows that, as his book
is himself, or at least a fragment of himself, criticism of it is truly
criticism of him, not of his intellectual ability merely, but of his
essential character, his real value as a man. Let no one laugh until he
has heard and survived the most intimate, the least friendly comment
upon his own gifts and traits, made in public for the delectation of his
friends and acquaintances and of the world at large. Forgivably enough,
the author is of all persons the one most likely to be unjust to critics
and to criticism. In all ages he has made bitter counter-charges, and
flayed the critics as they have flayed him. His principal complaints are
three: first, that all critics are disappointed authors; second, that
many are young and incompetent, or simply incompetent; third, that they
do not agree. Let us consider them in turn.
Although various critics write with success other things than criticism,
the first complaint is based, I believe, upon what is generally a fact.
It carries two implications: the first, that one cannot competently
judge a task which he is unable to perform himself; the second, that the
disappointed author is blinded by jealousy. As to the first, no writer
ever refrained out of deference to it from criticising, or even
discharging, his cook. As to the second, jealousy does not always blind:
sometimes it gives keenness of vision. The disappointed author turned
critic may indeed be incompetent; but, if he is so, it is for reasons
that his disappointment does not supply. If he is able, his
disappointment will, on the contrary, help his criticism. He will have a
wholesome contempt for facile success; he will measure by exacting
standards. Moreover, the thoughts of a talented man about an art for the
attainment of which he has striven to the point of despair are certain
to be valuable; his study of the masters has been intense; his study of
his contemporaries has had the keenness of an ambitious search for the
key to success. His criticism, even if saturated with envy, will have
value. In spite of all that partisans of sympathetic criticism may say,
hatred and malice may give as much insight into character as love.
Sainte-Beuve was a disappointed author, jealous of the success of
others.
But ability is necessary. Envy and malice, not reinforced by talent, can
win themselves small satisfaction, and do no more than transient harm;
for then they work at random and make wild and senseless charges. To be
dangerous to the author, to be valuable to the public, to give pleasure
to their possessor, they must be backed by acuteness to perceive and
judgment to proclaim real flaws only. The disappointed critic of ability
knows that the truth is what stings, and if he seeks disagreeable truth,
at least he seeks truth. He knows also that continual vituperation is as
dull as continual praise; if only to give relief to his censure, he will
note what is good. He will mix honey with the gall. So long as he speaks
truth, he does a useful work, and his motives are of no consequence to
any one but himself. Even if he speaks it with unnecessary roughness,
the author cannot legitimately complain. Did he suppose that he was
sending his book into a world of gentlemen only? Truth is truth, and a
boor may have it. That the standard of courtesy is sometimes hard to
square with that of perfect sincerity is the dilemma of the critic; but
the author can quarrel with the fact no more than with the circumstance
that in a noisy world he can write best where there is quiet. If he
suffers, let him sift criticism through his family; consoling himself,
meanwhile, with the reflection that there is criticism of criticism, and
that any important critic will ultimately know his pains. Leslie Stephen
was so sensitive that he rarely read reviews of his critical writings.
After all, the critic is also an author.
The second complaint of writers, that criticism is largely young and
incompetent,—or merely incompetent,—is well founded. The reason lies in
the general preference of publishers for criticism that is laudatory
even if absurd. Again we meet the Silent Bargain. The commercial
publisher of book-reviews, realizing that any fool can praise a book, is
apt to increase his profits by lowering the wage of his critic. At its
extreme point, his thrift requires a reviewer of small brains and less
moral courage; such a man costs less and is unlikely ever to speak with
offensive frankness. Thus it happens that, commonly in the newspapers
and frequently in periodicals of some literary pretension, the writers
of reviews are shiftless literary hacks, shallow, sentimental women, or
crude young persons full of indiscriminate enthusiasm for all printed
matter.
I spoke of the magazines. When their editors say that literary papers
are not popular, do they consider what writers they admit to the work,
with what payment they tempt the really competent, what limitations they
impose upon sincerity? Do they not really mean that the amiable in
manner or the remote in subject, which alone they consider expedient, is
not popular? Do they really believe that a brilliant writer, neither a
dilettante nor a Germanized scholar, uttering with fire and conviction
his full belief, would not interest the public? Do they doubt that such
a writer could be found, if sought? The reviews which they do print are
not popular; but that proves nothing in respect of better reviews.
Whatever the apparent limitations of criticism, it actually takes the
universe for its province. In subject it is as protean as life itself;
in manner it may be what you will. To say, then, that neither American
writers nor American readers can be found for it is to accuse the nation
of a poverty of intellect so great as to be incredible. No; commercial
timidity, aiming always to produce a magazine so inoffensive as to
insinuate itself into universal tolerance, is the fundamental cause of
the unpopularity of the average critical article; how can the public
fail to be indifferent to what lacks life, appositeness to daily needs,
conviction, intellectual and moral candor? At least one reason why we
have no Brunetière is that there is almost no periodical in which such a
man may write.
In the actual, not the possible, writers of our criticism there is, in
the lower ranks, a lack of skill, of seriousness, of reasonable
competence, and a cynical acceptance of the dishonest rôle they are
expected to play; in the higher ranks, there is a lack of any vital
message, a desire rather to win, without offending the publisher, the
approval of the ultra-literary and the scholarly, than really to reach
and teach the public. It is this degradation, this lack of earnestness,
and not lack of inherent interest in the general topic, which makes our
critical work unpopular, and deprives the whole literary industry of
that quickening and increase of public interest from which alone can
spring a vigorous and healthy growth. This feebleness will begin to
vanish the moment that the publishers of books, who support criticism,
say peremptorily that reviews that interest, not reviews that puff, are
what they want. When they say this, that is the kind of reviews they
will get. If that criticism indeed prove interesting, it will then be
printed up to the value of the buying power of the public, and it will
be supported where it should be—not by the publisher but by the people.
It is said in excuse that, as a city has the government, so the public
has the criticism, which it deserves. That is debatable; but, even so,
to whose interest is it that the taste of the public should be improved?
Honest criticism addressed to the public, by writers who study how to
interest it rather than how to flatter the producers of books, would
educate. The education of readers, always the soundest investment of the
publisher, can never be given by servile reviewers feebly echoing his
own interested advertisements. They are of no value—to the public, the
publisher, or the author.
The publisher of a newspaper of which reviews are an incident need not,
however, wait for the signal. If, acting on the assumption that his duty
is, not to the publisher but to the public, he will summon competent and
earnest reviewers to speak the truth as they see it, he will infallibly
increase the vivacity and interest of his articles and the pleasure and
confidence of his readers. He will not have any permanent loss of
advertising. Whenever he establishes his periodical as one read by
lovers of literature, he has the publishers at his mercy. But suppose
that his advertising decreases? Let him not make the common mistake of
measuring the value of a department by the amount of related advertising
that it attracts. The general excellence of his paper as an advertising
medium—supposing he has no aim beyond profit—is what he should seek. The
public which reads and enjoys books is worth attracting, even if the
publisher does not follow, for it buys other things than books.