And from that Boon suddenly went off into absurdities.
"Should all literature be anonymous?" he asks at the head of a sheet
of notes.
"But one wants an author's name as a brand. Perhaps a number would
suffice. Would authors write if they remained unknown? Mixed motives.
Could one run a church with an unsalaried priesthood? But certainly
now the rewards are too irregular, successful authors are absurdly
flattered and provoked to impossible ambitions. Could we imitate the
modern constitutional State by permitting limited ambitions but
retaining all the higher positions inaccessible to mere enterprise and
merit? Hereditary Novelists, Poets, and Philosophers, for example. The
real ones undistinguished. Hereditary Historians and Scientific Men
are already practical reality. Then such mischievous rewards and
singlings out as the Nobel Prize could be distributed among these
Official Intellectuals by lot or (better) by seniority. It would
prevent much heartburning...."
These last notes strike me as an extraordinary declension from the, at
least, exalted argument of the preceding memoranda. But they do serve
to emphasize the essence of--what shall I call it?--Boonism, the idea
that there is a great collective mental process going on in many
minds, and that it is impertinent and distracting to single out
persons, great men, groups and schools, coteries and Academies. The
flame burns wide and free. It is here; it is gone. You had it; you
have it not. And again you see it plainly, stretching wide across the
horizon....