and the clever, ignorant reviewing, which, in spite of notable
exceptions, characterized the newspaper view of books. The
technical critic of technical books had long been practising, and
his ability increased with the advance in scholarship that marked
the end of the nineteenth century. The problem was how to make him
write for the general intelligent reader. For years the old _Nation_,
under the editorship of Garrison and of Godkin, carried on this
struggle almost single-handed. For a generation it was the only
American source from which an author might expect a competent review
of a serious, non-technical book. But the weight of the endeavor was
too much for it. Fiction it largely evaded, as the London _Times
Literary Supplement_ does to-day. And with all the serious books in
English awaiting attention in a few pages of a single weekly, it is no
wonder that the shelves of its editorial office held one of the best
modern libraries in New York! Or that Christmas, 1887, was the time
chosen to review a gift edition of 1886! The old _Dial_ had a like
struggle, and a resembling difficulty.
It was in 1914 that _The New Republic_ applied a new solution to the
problem, and from its pages and from the other "intellectual weeklies"
which have joined it, has come not merely some of the best reviewing
that we have had, but also a distinct lift upwards in the standard of
our discussion of contemporary books of general interest. After 1914
one could expect to find American reviews of certain kinds of books
which were as excellent as any criticisms from England or from France.
But the solution applied was of such a character as to limit
definitely its application. _The New Republic_, the present _Nation_,
_The Freeman_, _The Weekly Review_, and, in a little different sense,
_The Dial_, were founded by groups held together, with the exception
of _The Dial_ coterie, not by any common attitude towards literature,
or by any specific interest in literature itself, but rather by a
common social philosophy. These journals, again with the one
exception, were devoted primarily to the application of their
respective social philosophies. Even when in reviews or articles there
was no direct social application, there was a clear irradiation from
within. When _The New Republic_ is humorous, it is a social-liberal
humor. When _The Freeman_ is ironic there is usually an indirect
reference to the Single Tax. And _The Dial_ will be modern or perish.
As a result of all this the space given to books at large in the
social-political journals was small. And in that space one could
prophesy with some exactness the reviewing to be expected. Books
of social philosophy, novels with a thesis, poetry of radical
emotion, documented history, and the criticism of politics or
economic theory have had such expert reviewing as America has
never before provided in such quantity. But there was a certain
monotony in the conclusions reached. "Advanced" books had
"advanced" reviewers who approved of the author's ideas even if
they did not like his book. Conservative books were sure to be
attacked in one paragraph even if they were praised in another.
What was much more deplorable, good, old-fashioned books, that
were neither conservative nor radical, but just human, had an
excellent chance of interesting no one of these philosophical
editors and so of never being reviewed at all. Irving, Cooper of
the Leatherstocking Series, possibly Hawthorne, and quite
certainly the author of "Huckleberry Finn" would have turned over
pages for many a day without seeing their names at all.
Thus the intellectual weekly gave us an upstanding, competentcriticism
of books with ideas in them--when the ideas seemed
important to the editors; a useful service, but not a
comprehensive one; the criticism of a trend rather than a
literature; of the products of a social group rather than the
outspeaking of a nation. Something more was needed.
Something more was needed; and specifically literary mediums that
should be catholic in criticism, comprehensive in scope, sound,
stimulating, and accurate.
To be catholic in criticism does not mean to be weak and
opinionless. A determination to discuss literature honestly and
with insight, letting conclusions be what they must, may be
regarded as a sufficient editorial stock in trade. It is
fundamental, but it is not sufficient. Just as there is
personality behind every government, so there should be a definite
set of personal convictions behind literary criticism, which is
not a science, though science may aid it. Sterilized, dehumanized
criticism is almost a contradiction in terms, except in those rare
cases where the weighing of evidential facts is all that is
required. But these cases are most rare. Even a study of the text
of Beowulf, or a history of Norman law, will be influenced by the
personal emotions of the investigator, and must be so criticized.
Men choose their philosophy according to their temperament; so do
writers write; and so must critics criticize. Which is by no means
to say that criticism is merely an affair of temperament, but
rather to assert that temperament must not be left out of account
in conducting or interpreting criticism.
Ideally, then, the editors of a catholic review should have
definite convictions, if flexible minds, established principles,
if a wide latitude of application. But although a review may thus
be made catholic, it cannot thus attain comprehensiveness. There
are too many books; too many branches upon the luxuriant tree of
modern knowledge. No editorial group, no editorial staff, can
survey the field competently unless they strictly delimit it
by selection, and that means not to be comprehensive. Yet if the
experts are to be called in, the good critics, the good scholars,
the good scientists, until every book is reviewed by the writer
best qualified to review it, then we must hope to attain truth by
averages as the scientists do, rather than by dogmatic edict. For
if it is difficult to guarantee in a few that sympathy with all
earnest books which does not preclude rigid honesty in the
application of firmly held principles, it is more difficult with
the many. And if it is hard to exclude bias, inaccuracy, over-
statement, and inadequacy from the work even of a small and chosen
group, it is still harder to be certain of complete competence if
the net is thrown more widely.
In fact, there is no absolute insurance against bad criticism
except the intelligence of the reader. He must discount where
discount is necessary, he must weigh the authority of the
reviewer, he must listen to the critic as the protestant to his
minister, willing to be instructed, but aware of the fallibility
of man.
Hence, a journal of comprehensive criticism must first select its
reviewers with the greatest care and then print vouchers for their
opinions, which will be the names of the reviewers. Hence it must
open its columns to rebuttals or qualifications, so that the
reader may form his own conclusions as to the validity of the
criticism, and, after he has read the book, judge its critics.
All this is a world away from the anonymous, dogmatic reviewing of
a century ago, But who shall say that in this respect our practice
is retrograde?
It is a great and sprawling country, this America, with all manner
of men of all manners in it, and the days of patent medicines have
passed, when one bottle was supposed to contain a universal cure.
But in this matter of reading, which must be the chief concern of
those who support a critical journal, there is one disease common
to most of us that can be diagnosed with certainty, and one sure,
though slow-working, remedy, that can be applied. We are
uncritical readers. We like too readily, which is an amiable
fault; we dislike too readily, which is a misfortune. We accept
the cheap when we might have the costly book. We dislike the new,
the true, the accurate, and the beautiful, because we will not
seek, or cannot grasp, them. We are afflicted with that complex of
democracy--a distrust of the best. Nine out of ten magazines, nine
out of ten libraries, nine out of ten intelligent American minds
prove this accusation.
And the cure is more civilization, more intellectuality, a finer
and stronger emotion? One might as well say that the cure for
being sick is to get well! This, indeed, is the cure; but the
remedy is a vigorous criticism. Call in the experts, let them name
themselves and their qualifications like ancient champions, and
then proceed to lay about with a will. Sometimes the maiden
literature, queen of the tournament, will be slain instead of the
Knight of Error, and often the spectators will be scratched by the
whir of a sword. Nevertheless, the fight is in the open, we know
the adversaries, and the final judgment, whether to salute a
victor or condemn an impostor, is ours.
Thus, figuratively, one might describe the proper function in
criticism of a liberal journal of catholic criticism to-day. One
thing I have omitted, that its duty is not limited to criticism,
for if it is to be comprehensive, it must present also vast
quantities of accurate and indispensable facts, the news of
literature. And one prerequisite I have felt it unnecessary to
dwell upon. Unless its intent is honest, and its editors
independent of influence from any self-interested source, the
literary tournament of criticism becomes either a parade of the
virtues with banners for the favorites, or a melee where rivals
seek revenge. Venal criticism is the drug and dishonest criticism
the poison of literature.
THE RACE OF REVIEWERS
As a reviewer of books, my experience has been lengthy rather than
considerable. It is, indeed, precisely twenty-two years since I
wrote my first review, which ended, naturally, with the words "a
good book to read of a winter evening before a roaring fire." I
remember them because the publishers, who are lovers of
platitudes, quoted them, to my deep gratification, and perhaps
because I had seen them before. Since then I have reviewed at
least twice as many books as there are years in this record--about
as many, I suppose, as a book-page war-horse in racing trim could
do in a month, or a week. My credentials are not impressive in
this category, but perhaps they will suffice.
As an author, my claim to enter upon this self-contained symposium
which I am about to present is somewhat stronger. Authors, of
course, read all the reviews of their books, even that common
American variety which runs like the telegraphic alphabet: quote--
summarize--quote--quote--summarize--quote, and so on up to five
dollars' worth, space rates. I have read all the reviews of my
books except those which clipping bureaus seeking a subscription
or kind friends wishing to chastise vicariously have neglected to
send me. As an author I can speak with mingled feelings, but
widely, of reviews.
Editorially my experience has been equally poignant. For ten years
I have read reviews, revised and unrevised, in proof and out of
it. I have cut reviews that needed cutting and meekly endured the
curses of the reviewer. I have printed conscientiously reviews
that had better been left unwritten, and held my head bloody but
unbowed up to the buffets of the infuriated authors. As an editor
I may say that I am at home, though not always happy, with
reviewing and reviewers.
And now, when in one of those rare moments of meditation which
even New York permits I ask myself why does every man or woman
with the least stir of literature in them wish to review books, my
trinitarian self--critic, author, editor--holds high debate. For a
long time I have desired to fight it out, and find, if it can be
found, the answer.
As an author, I have a strong distaste for reviewing. In the
creative mood of composition, or in weary relaxation, reviewing
seems the most ungrateful of tasks. Nothing comes whole to a
reviewer. Half of every book must elude him, and the other half he
must compress into snappy phrases. I watch him working upon that
corpus, which so lately was a thing of life and movement--my book--
and see that he cannot lift it; that he must have some hand-hold
to grip it by--my style or my supposed interest in the Socialist
Party, or the fact that I am a professor or a Roman Catholic.
Unless he can get some phrase that will explain the characters of
my women, the length of my sentences, and the moral I so carefully
hid in the last chapter, he is helpless. Sometimes I find him
running for a column without finding a gate to my mind, and then
giving it up in mid-paragraph. Sometimes he gets inside, but
dashes for the exit sign and is out before I know what he thinks.
Sometimes he finds an idea to his liking, wraps up in it, and goes
to sleep.
I recognize his usefulness. I take his hard raps meekly and even
remember them when next I begin to write. I do not hate him much
when he tells the public not to read me. There is always the
chance that he is right for _his_ public; not, thank heavens,
for mine. I am furious only when it is clear that he has not read
me himself. But I cannot envy him. It is so much more agreeable to
make points than to find them. It is so much easier, if you have a
little talent, to build some kind of an engine that will run than
to explain what precise fault prevents it from being the best.
When I am writing a book I cannot understand the mania for
criticism that seems to infect the majority of the literary kind.
As a reviewer I must again confess, although as an editor I may
bitterly regret the confession, that the passion for reviewing is
almost inexplicable. Reviewing has the primal curse of hard labor
upon it. You must do two kinds of work at once, and be adequately
rewarded for neither. First you must digest another man's
conception, assimilate his ideas, absorb his imagination. It is
like eating a cold dinner on a full stomach. And then when you
have eaten and digested, you must tell how you feel about it--
briefly, cogently, and in words that cannot be misunderstood.
Furthermore, your feelings must be typical, must represent what a
thousand stomachs will feel, or should feel, or could feel if they
felt at all, or instead of being hailed as a critic you will be
accused of dyspepsia.
The mere mental labor of picking up the contents of a book as you
proceed with your criticism, and tucking them in here and there
where they fit, is so great that, speaking as a reviewer, I should
give up reviewing if there were no more compelling reasons than
requests to write criticism. There are, there must be; and still
speaking as a reviewer I begin to glimpse one or two of them.
Revenge is not one. Critics have written for revenge, quoting
gleefully, "O that mine enemy would write a book!" Pope is our
classic example. But publishers have made that form of literary
vendetta unprofitable nowadays, and I am glad they have done so.
Much wit, but little criticism, has been inspired by
revenge. Furthermore, I notice in my own case, and my editorial self
confirms the belief, that the reviewer craves books to extol, not
books to condemn. He is happiest when his author is sympathetic to
his own temperament. Antipathetic books must be forced upon him.
Which leads me to the further conclusion that the prime motive for
reviewing is the creative instinct. We all of us have it, all of
the literary folk who make up a most surprising proportion of
every community in the United States. It works on us constantly.
Sometimes it comes to a head and then we do a story or a poem, an
essay or a book; but in the meantime it is constantly alive down
below, drawn toward every sympathetic manifestation without,
craving self-expression and, in default of that, expression by
others. If a book is in us we write; if it is not, we seize upon
another man's child, adopt it as ours, talk of it, learn to
understand it, let it go reluctantly with our blessing, and depart
vicariously satisfied. That is the hope, the ever-renewed hope,
with which the besotted reviewer takes up reviewing.
The creative instinct indeed is sexed, like the human that
possesses it. It seeks a mystical union with the imaginings of
others. The poet, the novelist, the essayist, seek the mind of the
reader; the critic seeks the mind of the writer. That we get so
much bad reviewing is due to incompatibility of temperament or
gross discrepancy in the mating intellects. Yet reviewers (and
authors), like lovers, hope ever for the perfect match.
I know one critic who tore his review in pieces because it
revealed the charlatanism of his beloved author. I know an author
who burnt his manuscript because his friend and critic had
misunderstood him. I see a thousand reviews (and have written
several of them) where book and reviewer muddle along together
like the partners of everyday marriages. But next time, one always
hopes, it will be different.
As an editor, I confess that I view all this effusion with some
distrust. One plain fact stands high and dry above the discussion:
books are being published daily, and some one must tell the busy
and none too discriminating public what they are worth--not to
mention the librarians who are so engaged in making out triple
cards and bibliographies and fitting titles to vague recollections
that they have no time left to read. Furthermore, if reviewing is
a chore at worst, and at best a desire to gratify a craving for
the unappeasable, editing reviews is still more chorelike, and
seeking the unobtainable--a good review for every good book--is
quite as soul-exhausting as the creative instinct.
And, again as an editor, the perfect marriage of well attuned
minds is well enough as an ideal, but as a practicable achievement
I find myself more often drawn toward what I should call the
liaison function of a reviewer. The desire to be useful (since we
have excluded the desire to make money as a major motive) is, I
believe, an impulse which very often moves the reviewer. The
instinct to teach, to reform, to explain, to improve lies close to
the heart of nine out of ten of us. It is commoner than the
creative instinct. When it combines with it, one gets a potential
reviewer.
The reviewer as a liaison officer is a homelier description than
soul affinity or intellectual mate, but it is quite as honorable.
Books (to the editor) represent, each one of them, so much
experience, so much thought, so much imagination differently
compounded in a story, poem, tractate on science, history, or
play. Each is a man's most luminous self in words, ready for
others. Who wants it? Who can make use of it? Who will be dulled
by it? Who exalted? It is the reviewer's task to say. He grasps
the book, estimates it, calculates its audience. Then he makes the
liaison. He explains, he interprets, and in so doing necessarily
criticizes, abstracts, appreciates. The service is inestimable,
when properly rendered. It is essential for that growing
literature of knowledge which science and the work of specialists
in all fields have given us. Few readers can face alone and
unaided a shelf of books on radio-activity, evolution, psychology,
or sociology with any hope of selecting without guidance the best,
or with any assurance that they dare reject as worthless what they
do not understand. The house of the interpreter has become the
literary journal, and its usefulness will increase.
A liaison of a different kind is quite as needful in works of
sheer imagination. Here the content is human, the subject the
heart, or life as one sees it. But reading, like writing, is a
fine art that few master. Only the most sensitive, whose minds are
as quick as their emotions are responsive, can go to the heart of
a poem or a story. They need an interpreter, a tactful
interpreter, who will give them the key and let them find their
own chamber. Or who will wave them away from the door, or advise a
brief sojourn. To an editor such an interpreter is an ideal
reviewer. He will desire to be useful, and passionately attempt
it. He will feel his responsibility first to art and next to the
public, and then to his author, and last (as an editor I whisper
it) to the publisher. Reviewers forget the author and the public.
Their mandate comes from art (whose representative in the flesh
is, or should be, the editor). But their highest service is to
make a liaison between the reader and his book.
And the conclusion of this debate is, I think, a simple one.
Reviewing is a major sport, fascinating precisely because of
its difficulty, compelling precisely because it appeals to strong
instincts. For most of us it satisfies that desire to work for
some end which we ourselves approve, regardless of costs. The
editor, sardonically aware of a world that refuses to pay much for
what men do to please themselves or to reform others, sees here
his salvation, and is thankful.
THE SINS OF REVIEWING
I have known thousands of reviewers and liked most of them, except
when they sneered at my friends or at me. Their profession, in
which I have taken a humble share, has always seemed to me a
useful, and sometimes a noble one; and their contribution to the
civilizing of reading man, much greater than the credit they are
given for it. We divide them invidiously into hack reviewers and
critics, forgetting that a hack is just a reviewer overworked, and
a critic a reviewer with leisure to perform real criticism. A good
hack is more useful than a poor critic, and both belong to the same
profession as surely as William Shakespeare and the author of
a Broadway "show."
The trouble is that the business of reviewing has not been
sufficiently recognized as a profession. Trades gain in power and
recognition in proportion as their members sink individuality in
the mass and form a union which stands as one man against the
world. Professions are different. They rise by decentralization,
and by specializing within the group. They gain distinction not
only by the achievements of their individual members but by a
curious splitting into subtypes of the species. Law and medicine
are admirable examples. Every time they develop a new kind of
specialist they gain in prestige and emolument.
A reviewer, however (unless he publishes a collected edition and
becomes a critic), has so far remained in the eyes of the public
just a reviewer. In fiction we have been told (by the reviewers)
of romancers and realists, sociologists and ethicists, naturalists
and symbolists, objectivists and psychologists. Are there no
adjectives, no brevet titles of literary distinction for the men
and women who have made it possible to talk intelligently about
modern fiction without reading it?
My experience with reviewers has led me to classify them by
temperament rather than by the theories they possess; and this is
not so unscientific as it sounds, for theories usually spring from
temperaments. No man whose eliminatory processes function
perfectly is ever a pessimist, except under the compulsion of hard
facts. No sluggish liver ever believes that joy of living is the
prime quality to be sought in literary art. And by the same
eternal principle, moody temperaments embrace one theory of
criticism; cold, logical minds another. I identify my classes of
reviewers by their habits, not their dogmas.
But in order to clear the ground let me make first a larger
distinction, into mythical reviewers, bad but useful reviewers,
bad and not useful reviewers, and good reviewers. Like the
nineteenth century preacher I will dispose of the false, dwell
upon the wicked, and end (briefly) with that heaven of literary
criticism where all the authors are happy and all the reviewers
excellent.
The reviewer I know best never, I profoundly believe, has existed,
and I fear never will exist. He is the familiar figure of English
novels--moderately young, a bachelor, with a just insufficient
income in stocks. Oxford or Cambridge is his background, and his
future is the death of a rich aunt or a handsome marriage. In the
meantime, there is always a pile of books waiting in his chambers
to be reviewed at "a guinea a page," when he has leisure, which is
apparently only once or twice a week. The urban pastoral thus
presented is one which Americans may well be envious of--_otium
cum dignitate_. But I have never encountered this reviewer in
London. I fear he exists only for the novelists, who created him
in order to have a literary person with enough time on his hands
to pursue the adventures required by the plot. Yet in so far as he
is intended as a portrait of a critic, he stands as an ideal of
the leisured view of books. There has been no leisured view of
books in America since Thoreau, or Washington Irving. Even Poe was
feverish. Our books are read on the subway, or after the theater,
and so I fear it is in London--in London as it is.