1. THE LAND OF THE SUN, _a third rate guide-book to Mexico, and
incidentally a Touter for one of its Railways_; by Christian
Reid, a woman who once wrote a good novel, superfluously
illustrated, 12mo. cloth, pp. 355. D. Appleton & Co., N. Y.,
$1.75.
2. LOVE IN IDLENESS, by F. Marion Crawford, author of ETC.,
_etc._, & etc., absurdly illustrated, crown 8vo., cloth,
gilt-edge, pp. 218. Macmillan & Co., N. Y., $2.00.
3. ADVICE TO LITERARY ASPIRANTS—_One Hundred Ways to Become
Famous for One Dollar_, by Mr. Arthur Lewis, illustrated,
12mo., pp. 247. Dodd, Rott & Co., N. Y., $1.00.
1. We are but too familiar, all of us, with the devices of the
quack-medicine advertiser, his trick of getting us to read his puff in
spite of ourselves. It is an old yet still successful dodge. The first
sentence in a column of the morning paper promises a little ten minute
romance. As we proceed our interest quickens. We inadvertently glance
to the end to learn whether the hero is destined to the rope or the
heroine reserved for the altar. There stands forth the mark of the Beast,
“_Butcher’s Bilious Bouncer_, sure cure for the Liver, price ten cents.”
According as nature has allied us to Democritus or to Archilochus we
laugh or swear at our gullibility while we turn to some other item, but
if fair-minded men we do not swear at the editor, for we know that he
lives by letting for hire his numberless columns with no restriction on
his advertisers save that their matter does not exclude his paper from
the United States Mail.
It is far different, however, when trusting in an author’s name or at
least in the imprint of a publisher of high standing, a man takes up a
book which he has bought in the expectation of finding it a readable or
at all events a genuine novel, but soon discovers it to be a string of
sausages, whose thin membrane of such romance as it does afford exists
merely to encase a solid stuffing of railroad advertisements, “scenic
route” business and such secondhand truck. Yet of such is the _Land of
the Sun_. Before reading it myself I tendered it to a friend in answer
to his request for the latest novel. A few days after, he returned it
saying, “It opens more like an advertisement of the Bullseye Parlor Car
Company.”
Now it so happens that the people who made the book are also publishers
of guide-books and among these of a guide-book to Mexico, _eo nomine_,
it had been fitter and more worthy their own high standing had they not
stooped to palm off such a farrago upon a man whose thoughts at the time
were not how to get to Mexico nor what could be seen if he went there,
but simply the means of beguiling an evening, lolling at ease in his
smoking jacket.
As to the lady who was once equal to writing _The Land of the Sky_, one
feels sorrow at her fall, and cannot help wondering if sin of this sort
yields her either profit or pleasure.
2. If a reader were asked to single out some one publisher whose name
should be guarantee that in buying a book one would get fair equivalent
for his money, not in paper and ink alone, but in the stuff of its ideas,
he would not often go amiss were he to name Macmillans. It is with double
pain therefore that he resents being led astray into paying Two Dollars
for such a trifling effusion as _Love in Idleness_. He is hurt not only
by the one and one-half dollars lost in excess of any just valuation of
the book, but also and perhaps by a less reparable loss of the confidence
long deserved by the class of Macmillan publications. In short he feels
that both publisher and writer have conspired to cinch him and the rest
of the reading public, and here, too, the heavier share of the reproach
must fall upon the man. If Mr. Marion Crawford, pluming himself upon
such past achievements as _Mr. Isaacs_, chooses to value the weakling of
his decadence at such extravagant figures that it must be listed at Two
Dollars if it is to appear in decent type, there is surely no need that
his accomplice be Macmillan. Doubtless there be publishers whose horns
would be exalted were Crawford’s name to shine upon their title pages,
but Macmillan is not of such cattle; he stands among the very topmost
already, wherefore he should be above impostures.
The book is freely illustrated, but the pictures have nothing to do with
the persons and incidents of the story.
3. As the editor of the Only Real Sure-Enough _Chip-Munk_ so truthfully
points out in his every issue, man is an imitative animal. But whether
it is equally true that there are hundreds and hundreds of imitation
chip-munks, all made like those calico cats that do duty as bric-a-brac,
I cannot say. Yet the undisputed statement, made in such a solemn way,
that man is imitative, must stand.
On ascending a certain beautiful little bay along the coast of Maine, the
traveller is confronted by the startling legend, painted on the face of
a great palisade: _This is Belfast, the Home of Gringo’s Vermifuge—One
Hundred Doses for One Dollar_.
And to-day at Franklin, Ohio, as the train stops at the water tank one
sees in the pasture opposite, an immense bill board, and on the board in
gigantic letters are the words: _This is Franklin, the Home of Jingo’s
Advice to Authors—One Hundred Places to sell Manuscript, One Dollar_.
That a place is needed to sell manuscript I will admit—in fact I am
looking for such a place, but I only require _one_ place, not a hundred.
So I am suspicious of Mr. Jingo: I think that he offers just ninety-nine
times more than is meet, and so I turn to Mr. Arthur Lewis of Albany,
who has in the press a book with a title suspiciously like the Ohio
publication. It is called _Advice to Literary Aspirants—One Hundred Ways
to Become Famous for One Dollar_. Advance sheets of this work show that
the author has expended considerable care on it. He marshals statistics
to show that only one out of 97,621 of the men who write books ever
secure even a tuppence worth of fame. In fact he proves that fame and
good writing have no more to do with each other than Art and Truth,
Virtue and Profession, Marriage and Constancy. He therefore concludes
that the Literary Aspirant should secure his Fame first and launch his
Literature afterward, and in this way take the tide at its flood and move
on to fortune. To this end the gifted author gives one hundred ways of
securing fame. He starts with Homicide and runs through to Arson and
Bridge Jumping, giving incidentally fourteen different kinds of Scandal
and how to bring it about.
In my own mind I have always made a distinction between illustrious men,
famous men and notorious men, but Mr. Lewis avers that in our day and
generation such fine shades are all obliterated by the bright iridescence
of the standard dollar. An author, he says, succeeds only as his books
sell, and if his name is on the lips of rumor, women especially will
besiege the stores and demand his tomes.
Now we must admit that the fine sophistry that Mr. Lewis brings to bear
is interesting, but is it Art? Further than this, does it fill a vacuum
in the great economic cosmos of Letters? I do not think that it does,
and therefore do not hesitate to flatly give it as my opinion that while
the author is sincere, the publishers are moved by no other motive than
to secure the money of ambitious young men and women, having first
victimized Mr. Lewis for the cost of plates and the first edition. That
the work, like all skillful sophistry, is inspiring to the young, there
is no doubt, but the final effect of the book on society I believe will
be damaging, and therefore I cannot conscientiously recommend it.