importance. I mean aspiration, the deep desire of all human
without exception sometimes to be better, nobler, finer, truer.
Stories of daring in the face of unconquerable odds, stories of
devotion, above all stories of self-sacrifice are made to gratify
this emotion. They are purges for the restless soul. Some critic
of our short story discovered not long ago that the bulk of the
narratives chosen for reprinting had self-sacrifice as theme. This
is precisely what one would expect of comfortable, ease-loving
peoples, like the Germans before the empire and the Americans of
our generation. When no real sacrifice of goods, of energy, of
love, or of life is necessary, then the craving for stories of men
who give up all and women who efface themselves is particularly
active. The hard, individualistic stories of selfish characters--
Ben Hecht's for example, and Scott Fitzgerald's--have been written
after a war period of enforced self-sacrifice and by young men who
were familiar with suffering for a cause. But most American
readers of our generation live easily and have always lived
easily, and that undoubtedly accounts for the extraordinary
popularity here of aspiring books. Reading of a fictitious hero
who suffers for others is a tonic for our conscience, and like
massage takes the place of exercise. By a twist in the same
argument, it may be seen that the cheerful optimist in fiction,
who Pollyannawise believes all is for the best, satisfies the
craving to justify our well-being. I do not, however, mean to
disparage this element of popularity. It is after all the
essential quality of tragedy where the soul rises above
misfortune. It is a factor in noble literature as well as in
popular success.
So much for some of the typical and instinctive cravings which cry
for satisfaction and are the causes of popularity. To them may be
added others of course, notably the desire for sudden wealth,
which is a factor in "Treasure Island" as in all treasure stories,
and the prime cause of success in the most popular of all plots,
the tale of Cinderella, which, after passing through feudal
societies with a prince's hand as reward, changed its sloven
sister for a shopgirl and King Cophetua into a millionaire, and
swept the American stage. To this may also be added simpler
stimulants of instinctive emotion, humor stirring to pleasant
laughter, pathos that exercises sympathy, the happy ending that
makes for joy. Stories which succeed because they stir and satisfy
in this fashion are like opera in a foreign tongue, which moves us
even when we do not fully understand the reason for our emotion.
They differ from another kind of popular story, in which a popular
idea rather than an instinctive emotion is crystallized, and which
now must be considered.
Each generation has its fixed ideas. A few are inherited intact by
the generation that follows, a few are passed on with slight
transformation, but most crumble or change into different versions
of the old half-truths. Among the most enduring of prejudices is
the fallacy of the good old times. Upon that formula nine-tenths
of the successful historical romances are built. That American
wives suffer from foreign husbands, that capital is ruthless, that
youth is right and age wrong, that energy wins over intellect,
that virtue is always rewarded, are American conceptions of some
endurance that have given short but lofty flights to thousands of
native stories.
More important, however, in the history of fiction are those wide
and slow moving currents of opinion, for which prejudice is
perhaps too narrow a name, which flow so imperceptibly through the
minds of a generation or a whole century that there is little
realization of their novelty. Such a slow-moving current was the
humanitarianism which found such vigorous expression in Dickens,
the belief in industrial democracy which is being picked up as a
theme by novelist after novelist to-day, or the sense of the value
of personality and human experience which so intensely
characterizes the literature of the early Renaissance.
If a novel draws up into itself one of these ideas, filling it
with emotion, it gains perhaps its greatest assurance of immediate
popularity. If the idea is of vast social importance, this
popularity may continue. But if it is born of immediate
circumstance, like the hatred of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
or if it is still more transient, say, the novelty of a new
invention, like the airplane or wireless, then the book grows
stale with its theme. The like is true of a story that teaches a
lesson a generation are willing to be taught--it lives as long as
the lesson. What has become of Charles Kingsley's novels, of the
apologues of Maria Edgeworth? "Main Street" is such a story; so
was "Mr. Britling Sees It Through"; so probably "A Doll's House."
Decay is already at their hearts. Only the student knows how many
like tales that preached fierily a text for the times have died in
the past. But I am writing of popularity not of permanence. In
four popular novels out of five, even in those where the appeal to
the instinctive emotions is dominant, suspect some prejudice of
the times embodied and usually exploited. It is the most potent of
lures for that ever increasing public which has partly trained
intelligence as well as emotions.
Perhaps it is already clear that most popular novels combine many
elements of popularity, although usually one is dominant. Among
the stories, for instance, which I have mentioned most frequently,
"Main Street" depends upon a popular idea, but makes use also of
the revenge motive. It is not at all, as many hasty critics said,
an appeal to curiosity. We know our Main Streets well enough
already. And therefore in England, which also was not curious
about Main Streets, and where the popular idea that Sinclair Lewis
seized upon was not prevalent, the book has had only a moderate
success. "If Winter Comes" combines the revenge motive with
aspiration. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel made its strong appeal
to curiosity. We had heard of the wild younger generation and were
curious. His second book depends largely upon the craving for sex
experience, in which it resembles Mr. Hergesheimer's "Cytherea,"
but also plays heavily upon the motive of escape, and upon sheer
curiosity. "Miss Lulu Bett" was a story of revenge. Booth
Tarkington's "Alice Adams"--to bring in a new title--is a good
illustration of a story where for once a popular novelist slurred
over the popular elements in order to concentrate upon a study of
character. His book received tardy recognition but it disappointed
his less critical admirers. Mr. White's "Andivius Hedulio" depends
for its popularity upon curiosity and escape.
The popular story, then, the financially successful, the
immediately notorious story, should appeal to the instinctive
emotions and may be built upon popular prejudice. What is the
moral for the writer? Is he to lay out the possible fields of
emotion as a surveyor prepares for his blue print? By no means.
Unless he follows his own instinct in the plan, or narrates
because of his own excited thinking he will produce a thinly clad
formula rather than a successful story. There is no moral for the
writer, only some rays of light thrown upon the nature of his
achievement. The way to accomplish popularity, if that is what you
want, is to write for the people, and let formula, once it is
understood, take care of itself. As an editor, wise in popularity,
once said to me, "Oppenheim and the rest are popular because they
think like the people not for them."
What is the moral of this discussion for the critical reader? A
great one, for if he does not wish to be tricked constantly by his
own emotions into supposing that what is timely is therefore fine,
and what moves him is therefore great, he must distinguish between
the elements of popularity and the essence of greatness. It is
evident, I think, from the argument that every element of
popularity described above may be made effective upon our weak
human nature with only an approximation to truth. The craving for
escape may be, and usually is, answered by sentimental romance,
where every emotion, from patriotism to amorousness, is mawkish
and unreal. Every craving may be played upon in the same fashion
just because it is a craving, and the result be often more popular
for the exaggeration. Also it is notorious that a prejudice--or a
popular idea, if you prefer the term--which is seized upon for
fiction, almost inevitably is strained beyond logic and beyond
truth, so much so that in rapid years, like those of 1916 to 1920
which swept us into propaganda and out again, the emphatic falsity
of a book's central thesis may be recognized before the first
editions are exhausted. It would be interesting to run off, in the
midst of a 1922 performance, some of the war films that stirred
audiences of 1918. It will be interesting to reread some of the
cheaper and more popular war stories that carried even you, O
judicious reader, off your even balance not five years ago to-day!
We have always known, of course, that a novel can be highly
popular without being truly excellent. Nevertheless, it is a
valuable discipline to specify the reasons. And it is good
discipline also in estimating the intrinsic value of a novel to
eliminate as far as is possible the temporal and the accidental;
and in particular the especial appeal it may have to your own
private craving--for each of us has his soft spot where the pen
can pierce. On the contrary, if the highly speculative business of
guessing the probable circulation of a novel ever becomes yours,
then you must doubly emphasize the importance of these very
qualities; search for them, analyze them out of the narrative,
equate them with the tendencies of the times, the new emotions
stirring, the new interests, new thoughts abroad, and then pick
best sellers in advance.
Yet in eliminating the accidental in the search for real
excellence, it would be disastrous to eliminate all causes of
popularity with it. That would be to assume that the good story
cannot be popular, which is nonsense. The best books are nearly
always popular, if not in a year, certainly in a decade or a
century. Often they spread more slowly than less solid
achievements for the same reason that dear things sell less
rapidly than cheap. The best books cost more to read because they
contain more, and to get much out the reader must always put much
in. Nevertheless, the good novel will always contain one or more
of the elements of popularity in great intensity. I make but one
exception, and that for those creations of the sheer intellect,
like the delicate analyses of Henry James, where the appeal is to
the subtle mind, and the emotion aroused an intellectual emotion.
Such novels are on the heights, but they are never at the summit
of literary art. They are limited by the partiality of their
appeal, just as they are exalted by the perfection of their
accomplishment. They cannot be popular, and are not.
The "best seller" therefore may be great but does not need to be.
It is usually a weak book, no matter how readable, because
ordinarily it has only the elements of popularity to go on, and
succeeds by their number and timeliness instead of by fineness and
truth. A second-rate man can compound a best seller if his sense
for the popular is first-rate. In his books the instinctive
emotions are excited over a broad area, and arise rapidly to sink
again. No better examples can be found than in the sword-and-
buckler romance of our 'nineties which set us all for a while
thinking feudal thoughts and talking shallow gallantry. Now it is
dead, stone dead. Not even the movies can revive it. The emotions
it aroused went flat over night. Much the same is true of books
that trade in prejudice, like the white slave stories of a decade
ago. For a moment we were stirred to the depths. We swallowed the
concept whole and raged with a furious indigestion of horrible
fact. And then it proved to be colic only.
With such a light ballast of prejudice or sentiment can the
profitable ship popularity be kept upright for a little voyage,
and this, prevailingly, is all her cargo. But the wise writer, if
he is able, as Scott, and Dickens, and Clemens were able, freights
her more deeply. As for the good reader, he will go below to
investigate before the voyage commences; or, if in midcourse he
likes not his carrier, take off in his mental airplane and seek
another book.
II
ON THE AMERICAN TRADITION
THE AMERICAN TRADITION
I remember a talk in Dublin with an Irish writer whose English
prose has adorned our period. It was 1918, and the eve of forced
conscription, and his indignation with English policy was intense.
"I will give up their language," he said, "all except Shakespeare.
I will write only Gaelic." Unfortunately, he could read Gaelic
much better than he could write it. In his heart, indeed, he knew
how mad he would have been to give up the only literary tradition
which, thanks to language, could be his own; and in a calmer mood
since he has enriched that tradition with admirable translations
from the Irish. He was suffering from a mild case of Anglomania.
Who is the real Anglomaniac in America? Not the now sufficiently
discredited individual with a monocle and a pseudo-Oxford accent,
who tries to be more English than the English. Not the more subtly
dangerous American who refers his tastes, his enthusiasms, his
culture, and the prestige of his compatriots to an English test
before he dare assert them. The real Anglomaniac is the American
who tries to be less English than his own American tradition. He
is the man who is obsessed with the fear of "Anglo-Saxon
domination."
How many Anglomaniacs by this definition are at large in America
each reader may judge for himself. Personally, I find them
extraordinarily numerous, and of so many varieties, from the mere
borrower of opinions to the deeply convinced zealot, that it seems
wiser to analyze Anglomania than to discuss the various types that
possess it. And in this analysis let us exclude from the beginning
such very real, but temporary, grievances against the English as
spring from Irish oppressions, trade rivalries, or the
provocations which always arise between allies in war. All such
causes of anti-English and anti-"Anglo-Saxon" sentiment belong in
a different category from the underlying motives which I propose
to discuss.
These new Anglomaniacs, with their talk of Anglo-Saxon domination,
cannot mean English domination. That would be absurd, although
even absurdities are current coin in restless years like these.
At least one Irishman of my acquaintance _knows_ that King George
cabled Wilson to bring America into the war, and that until that cable
came Wilson dared not act. I can conceive of an English influence upon
literature that is worth attacking, and also worth defending. I can
conceive of a far less important English influence upon our social
customs. But in neither case, domination. That England dominates our
finance, our industry, our politics, is just now, especially, the
suspicion of a paranoiac, or the idea of an ignoramus.
"Anglo-Saxon domination," even in an anti-British meeting, cannot
and does not mean English domination; it can mean only control of
America by the so-called Anglo-Saxon element in our population.
The quarrel is local, not international. The "Anglo-Saxon" three
thousand miles away who cannot hit back is a scapegoat, a whipping
boy for the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" American at home.
What is an "Anglo-Saxon" American? Presumably he is the person
familiar in "want" advertisements: "American family wants boarder
for the summer. References exchanged." But this does not help us
much. He is certainly not English. Nothing is better established
than the admixture of bloods since the earliest days of our
nationality. That I, myself, for example, have ancestral portions
of French, German, Welsh, and Scotch, as well as English blood in
my veins, makes me, by any historical test, characteristically
more rather than less American. Race, indeed, within very broad
limits, is utterly different from nationality, and it is usually
many, many centuries before the two become even approximately
identical. The culture I have inherited, the political ideals I
live by, the literature which is my own, most of all the language
that I speak, are far more important than the ultimate race or
races I stem from, obviously more important, since in thousands of
good Americans it is impossible to determine what races have gone
to their making. There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon
American--and so few English Americans that they are nationally
insignificant.
An American with a strong national individuality there certainly
is, and it is true that his traditions, irrespective of the race
of his forbears, are mainly English; from England he drew his
political and social habits, his moral ideas, his literature, and
his language. This does not make him a "slave to England," as our
most recent propagandists would have it; it does not put him in
England's debt. We owe no debt to England. Great Britain, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and ourselves are deeply in
debt to our intellectual, our spiritual, our aesthetic ancestors
who were the molders of English history and English thought, the
interpreters of English emotion, the masters of the developing
English _mores_ that became our _mores_, and have since continued
evolution with a difference. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and
Milton, Wycliffe, Bunyan, Fox, and Wesley, Elizabeth, Cromwell, and
the great Whigs, these made the only tradition that can be called
Anglo-Saxon, and if we have an American tradition, as we assuredly
have, here are its roots. This is our "Anglo-Saxon domination."
But if the roots of this tradition are English, its trunk is
thoroughly American, seasoned and developed through two centuries
of specifically American history. As we know it to-day it is no
longer "Anglo-Saxon," it is as American as our cities, our soil,
our accent upon English. If we are going to discuss "domination"
let us be accurate and speak of the domination of American
tradition. It is against the American tradition that the new
Anglomaniac actually protests.
Dominating this American tradition is, dominating, almost
tyrannical, for one reason only, but that a strong one, a fact not
a convention, a factor, not a mere influence--dominating because
of the English language.
In our century language has become once again as powerful as in
the Roman Empire--and its effects, thanks to printing and easy
transportation, are far more quickly attained. Hordes from all
over Europe have swarmed into the domain of English. They have
come to a country where the new language was indispensable. They
have learned it, or their children have learned it. English has
become their means of communication with their neighbors, with
business, with the state. Sooner or later even the news of Europe
has come to them through English, and sometimes unwillingly, but
more often unconsciously, they have come under the American, the
real "Anglo-Saxon" domination.
For a language, of course, is more than words. It is a body of
literature, it is a method of thinking, it is a definition of
emotions, it is the exponent and the symbol of a civilization. You
cannot adopt English without adapting yourself in some measure to
the English, or the Anglo-American tradition. You cannot adopt
English political words, English literary words, English religious
words, the terms of sport or ethics, without in some measure
remaking your mind on a new model. If you fail or refuse, your
child will not. He is forcibly made an American, in ideas at
least, and chiefly by language.
I submit that it is impossible for an alien _thoroughly_ to absorb and
understand Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech or Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter"
without working a slight but perceptible transformation in the brain,
without making himself an heir of a measure of English tradition. And
the impact of English as a spoken tongue, and the influence of its
literature as the only read literature, are great beyond ordinary
conception. Communities where a foreign language is read or spoken
only delay the process, they cannot stop it.
The foreigner, it is true, has modified the English language
precisely as he has modified the American tradition. Continental
Europe is audible in the American tongue, as it is evident in the
American mind; but it is like the English or the Spanish touch
upon the Gothic style in architecture--there is modification, but
not fundamental change.
Many a foreign-born American has been restless under this
domination. The letters and memoirs of the French immigrants from
revolutionary France express discomfort freely. The Germans of
'48, themselves the bearers of a high civilization, have often
confessed an unwilling assimilation. The Germans of earlier
migrations herded apart like the later Scandinavians, in part to
avoid the tyranny of tongue.
Imagine a German coming here in early manhood. His tradition is
not English; he owes nothing to a contemporary England that he but
dimly knows. Speaking English, perhaps only English, he grows
impatient with a tongue every concept of which has an English
coloring. The dominance of the language, and especially of its
literature, irks him. He no longer wants to think as a German; he
wants to think as an American; but the medium of his thought must
be English. His anger often enough goes out against English
history, English literature. He is easily irritated by England.
But it is the American past that binds and is converting him. Such
consciousness of the power of environment is perhaps rare, but the
fact is common. In our few centuries of history millions have been
broken into English, with all that implies. Millions have
experienced the inevitable discomfort of a foreign tradition which
makes alien their fatherlands, and strangers of their children.
This is an "Anglo-Saxon" domination. But it is useless to struggle
against it.
There is a similar discomfort among certain American authors,
especially just now, when, for the first time since the Civil War
and the materialism that succeeded it, we are finding our national
self once again in literature. Mr. Mencken and Mr. Dreiser have
vigorously expressed this annoyance with American tradition. They
wish to break with it--at least Mr. Dreiser does--break with it
morally, spiritually, aesthetically. Let the dotards, he says, bury
their dead.
Mr. Mencken wishes to drive us out of Colonialism. He says that
Longfellow has had his day, and that it is time to stop imitating
Addison, time to be ashamed of aping Stevenson, Kipling, or John
Masefield. He is right.