There is no formula to fit the best seller. The Bible and Shakespeare
are best sellers, and among authors of our time, such kindred souls
as Henry Adams and Harold Bell Wright are emphatically in this class,
though Wright somewhat more emphatically than Adams. The novel, “Main
Street”, which included among its targets people who buy best sellers,
is itself a best seller. The inhabitants of Main Street would seem
to have a counter-weight in a balancing number of those who laugh at
them. Thus, at all events, the country is safe. Complacency finds its
complement in ridicule.
I admire both “Main Street” and its author; I rejoice in his success;
but the cyclonic popularity of the book--if foreseen--might
conceivably have tempered its zeal. To prove that people need it as
much as they apparently want it, it should circulate only among the
élite and be either vaguely irritating or downright incomprehensible
to the general. Instead of being caviar, it is shredded wheat. The
other alternative is that there are two million five hundred thousand
élite in America, allowing conservatively five readers to every copy,
and remembering that the sale has considerably increased since I began
to write this article. Now to believe that there are millions of the
élite in America is to believe that this is indeed God’s country; such
a belief would put the believer forever on Main Street. The publishers
do not regret the popularity of the book; and I hope Mr. Lewis has no
qualms. He now has leisure to write even a better one, which he is
certainly capable of doing.
Although Emerson’s squirrel did not envy the mountain, that was because
he was Emerson’s squirrel, not a real one. Nearly everything small
would like to be big. Many of the German dramatists who scorn Sudermann
have unsuccessfully tried to copy his methods--so I read in the work of
a German critic. There is no doubt that Henry James would have rejoiced
in an enormous public, though in his art he followed the Rehoboam
method. The small colleges have their distinct and inimitable merits;
of which most of them are quietly and justly proud; but a few of them
advertise the benefits of smallness so energetically that if it always
paid to advertise, they would lose the quality advertised, as Professor
Briggs has said in his own way.
Almost every great poet, dramatist, and novelist has been famous and
popular in his own lifetime. Exceptions are only apparent; either the
author has died young or his best work has appeared posthumously. Let
no sour author trust in posterity. Posterity is far more cruel than the
contemporary public; contemporaries abuse, but posterity forgets. When
an author is really great, posterity ratifies contemporary opinion.
Unfortunately, however, the fact that greatness is popular does not
mean that popularity is a true indication of greatness. Where a once
popular author is gone but not forgotten, I mean, when he is damned by
posterity, there were dissenters while he was yet alive. Remember the
exalted position of Southey and remember what Byron said of him.
Leaving out the rare appearances of genius, there is always I think
a discernible reason why a poem, novel, or play is popular. When
somebody frowns and says, “I cannot understand why Harold Bell Wright
should sell by the million,” he is simply saying that he does not
understand human nature. Although many individuals are cruel and
selfish, the average person can be easily touched by an imaginary hero
or villain--David was instantly stirred by the story of the ewe lamb,
yet perhaps at that moment Bathsheba was in the room with her knitting.
No critic believes that “Lightnin’” is as good a play as “Riders to the
Sea”, but “Lightnin’”, which I am sorry to say bored me, is exactly
the kind of thing that we call sure fire. It hit the centre of the
bull’s eye, and, as in most plays and stories, the impelling force was
a luscious mixture of sweetness and melodrama. It was what people call
“wholesome”, which depends perhaps somewhat on the stomach. The vogue
of “Lightnin’” is more interesting than the play; I mean we can learn
more from it.
The two novelists whose books enjoy the biggest sales in America are
Gene Stratton-Porter and Harold Bell Wright. In part they owe their
circulation to the invincible sentimentality in the human breast.
America has no monopoly of this emotion. These two authors are surely
not inferior to the beknighted Hall Caine, Marie Corelli, and the late
Mrs. Barclay in England, to the late Georges Ohnet in France, to a
hundred sloppy novelists in Germany. Every human heart has a percentage
of slush. Why should we be surprised at the vogue of Harold Bell Wright
when we remember the Dempsey-Carpentier fight? What must Tex Rickard
really think of the intelligence of the public? Nothing like this had
been seen since the days of Barnum--the expectation of millions whipped
to just the right froth, so that whether the fighters were in condition
or not, the public was precisely ripe for picking. It was a shame not
to take the money. And how fortunate that Dempsey won, as I fervently
hoped he would! If he had lost, the world would have wallowed in a
trough of sentimentality. In France, the home of art and intelligence,
in Paris, the home of intellectual cynicism and mockery, Carpentier
would have eclipsed not only Marshal Foch, but all the poets and
dramatists. He might have had any decoration. His wife and child would
have come to America; it is terrifying to think of the sentimental gush
that would have been slobbered on this excellent family. Carpentier
is undoubtedly a good fellow and an attractive personality, and I
understand that Dempsey is not popular. But for one thing we should
all be grateful to Jack Dempsey--he saved us from ourselves.
I am informed on good authority that one of our motion picture
actresses--not _the_ one--receives weekly five hundred sentimental
letters from American men. The private irregularities of a millionaire
apparently interest more newspaper readers than disarmament or the
League of Nations. Therefore let no one wonder at the vogue of Harold
Bell Wright, and let no one waste any ammunition on it. His books are
certainly better reading than the sensations just mentioned. Any one of
his novels costs less than a ticket to a musical comedy, and gives more
in return.
A word of encouragement to public librarians. Along with ministers of
the gospel and teachers in the grade schools, public librarians form
the finest class of people in America, because they do the most good.
Their opportunities for helpfulness come every day, and most of them
are eager to take advantage of the chance. Now their bugbear is Harold
Bell Wright. Every time a boy or girl asks for Harold, they vainly try
to give him something else. And their souls are filled with distress
when the child walks off with Harold under his arm.
I believe it is better that the infant, whether in or out of his teens,
should read Harold Bell Wright than not read at all. And surely his
elders, who inhale sentimentality in other forms, cannot justly cast a
stone. Wright knows how to tell a story adapted to an elementary grade
of intelligence; the reader discovers that books are a permanent source
of happiness; with them at any moment he may change his environment
and his companions, and live in a world of excitement. After a time,
he will in many instances proceed to better and more subtle books,
and find happiness of a finer kind. He is in the garden of printed
pages; let him not forget that the one who led him through the gates
was Harold Bell Wright. My pity goes out to the boy or girl who is not
brought up with books; who grows up without any insurance against life.
Personally, I have had enough of Harold Bell Wright. I have read every
word of two of his books--“When a Man’s a Man”, and “Helen of the
Old House”. This “Helen of the Old House” has the ingredients nicely
mixed. It is filled with dripping sentiment. There is not a single real
character, no one who resembles a complex human being. Each person
is put there to support the thesis--which is, that the only way out
of labor troubles is for employer and employé to work harmoniously
together. An employé who strikes without good reason is every whit as
bad as a German imperialist, says Harold Bell Wright; and an employer
who is only a profiteer is bad in just the same way. Granted. Let us
then organize against both offenders--against the corrupt capitalist
and against Bolshevism. Here Harold is undoubtedly Wright.
Whatever may be this book’s offenses against literary art--and I saw
enough without looking for them--it is really a sermon preached on
the labor question. And as his solution is correct, true statement
being usually unoriginal, it is possible that many of his readers
will profit by his discourse, skilfully adapted as it is to their
comprehension. I believe his motive is excellent; he wishes to use his
prodigious popularity to help his country and humanity. He knows well
enough that the shortest cut to the ordinary intelligence is by the
sentimental route, and like a spellbinder, his muzzle velocity is very
high. The difficulty is that if the world could be saved by sentimental
melodrama, we should have been saved long ago. Nearly all sentimental
melodramas are on the side of virtue; as were the novels of Oliver
Optic and Horatio Alger, Jr.
I have no particular desire to join the army of those who satirize
virtue. As between virtue and vice, even in this ridiculous world,
virtue actually seems to me less absurd than vice.
The case of Gene Stratton-Porter is not quite so easy as that of her
running mate. The publishers tell us that nine million copies of her
books have been sold. With five readers to each copy, this means a
circulation of forty-five million. She is a public institution, like
Yellowstone Park, and I should not think she would care any more than
a mountain for adverse criticism. She does, though. Wise men know
that more than half the things that appear in print are not true, and
yet many have such a superstitious reverence for type that an attack
or a misrepresentation fills them with real agony. Even those whose
position seems immovable--Pope, Tennyson, Henry James--suffered torture
when they read an adverse criticism printed in an ephemeral paper,
and written by a nobody. One of Yale’s greatest presidents, in the
eighteenth century, saw an unfavorable criticism of his book in an
English journal, and he immediately fainted away.
Gene Stratton-Porter lives in a swamp, arrays herself in man’s clothes,
and sallies forth in all weathers to study the secrets of nature. I
believe she knows every bug, bird, and beast in the woods. I believe
she recognizes every sound in a forest, and can tell you what caused
it. She is primarily a naturalist, one of the foremost in America, and
has published a number of books on flora and fauna, illustrated with
photographs of her own taking. These books--which are closest to her
heart--have only a moderate sale. Thus she hit upon the plan of writing
sentimental novels, in which her observation of nature is brought to
the attention of America. I have no doubt that she has led millions
of boys and girls into the study of natural objects; that she has
accomplished in this way much permanent good.
She is as full of energy as Roosevelt, and as hearty an American. She
could have retired on a fortune long ago, but she will never retire
until the day of her death, which I hope may be long distant. She is
eaten up with ambition, and with the joy of life; few have more fun
in their daily existence than she. I have no doubt that if the public
could see some of the letters which she receives by the cartload, they
would share her belief that she has not lived in vain.
I have read three of her novels--“A Girl of the Limberlost”, “A
Daughter of the Land”, and the one just published, “Her Father’s
Daughter”. The first of these with all its nature lore, was rather
too sentimental for me, and the third impossible; but I defy any
unprejudiced person to read “A Daughter of the Land” to the end,
without enthusiasm for the story. The style is so crude that one must
determine not to be stopped by it; one must not quit. Apart from the
lack of stylistic art, one will find an admirable story, with a real
plot and real characters; nothing is shirked or softened in the course
of the novel, and the heroine is a girl that holds one’s attention, not
merely by what happens to her, but by what she is. There is a certain
grandeur in the conception of the tale, like a great architectural
idea disguised by bad drawing. Furthermore, just now, when everybody
thinks everybody else ought to be a farmer, this epic of the farm has
a particular importance. Here was a girl who really loved the country;
loved living on a farm; loved all kinds of agricultural work; loved to
make and see things grow. And, as presented in the novel, this love is
understandable and intelligible. There are not many such girls. But it
would be well if there were more.
Living all her life in daily contact with nature, there is an
elemental force in Gene Stratton-Porter which partly accounts for the
hitting power of her novels. But in her latest story, “Her Father’s
Daughter”, her passion for the California mountains and deserts has
made her neglect not only the graces of style but the reality of
her supposedly human beings. Linda, the high school wonder, is an
impossible person; and the contrast between her, as a child of nature,
and her supposititious sister, Eileen, stands out too grossly. By far
the best things in this book are the cooking receipts and the intimate
facts about the desert. Here the reader feels like a child in the
author’s hands.
In addition to the literary shortcomings of this novel, it is sadly
marred by anti-Japanese propaganda. Somebody in California has been
stuffing our novelist, who is more gullible in international politics
than in the study of nature. The villain of the story is a Japanese,
who, enraged at losing his place at the head of his class in the high
school, attempts to murder the boy who outpaced him, and is himself
done to death by Katherine O’Donovan, the Strong Cook, otherwise the
best character in the novel.
Despite my disappointment in “Her Father’s Daughter”, I shall read Gene
Stratton-Porter’s next novel. If she is not a literary artist, she is
anyhow a wonderful woman. No one lives closer to nature than she; and
her undoubted vigor comes partly from this contact.
But if one wishes to see the difference between girls that are made
to fit a purpose, and a real girl--the difference between puppets and
humanity--let one, after reading “Helen of the Old House”, and “Her
Father’s Daughter”, study with attention Booth Tarkington’s “Alice
Adams”.
_Kenneth Macgowan_
Of all of our American dramatic critics, Kenneth Macgowan is probably
the best known in England. This is partly because in his books he
has chosen to discuss the drama as a whole, its development and its
experiments, rather than to confine his efforts entirely to current
reviewing. Also, he has allied himself with such experimenters
as Robert Edmond Jones, the scene designer, and Eugene O’Neill.
Macgowan is of Scotch-New England descent. He was born in Winthrop,
Massachusetts, and was graduated from Harvard. He gravitated to New
York City journalism via the Boston “Transcript” and the Philadelphia
“Public Ledger”. Macgowan is slight, forceful, capable of great
enthusiasm and of violent prejudice. He has always been an apostle
of the new, of the slightly bizarre. His “Continental Stagecraft”
is a book which challenges the American producer. His “The Theatre
of Tomorrow” was a sort of glorified modern footnote to Craig and
Moderwell. A young man much interested in trends and ideas, his
influence has already been marked in the development of the American
theatre.